What Are You Focusing On?

This essay originally appeared in the Monday morning newsletter on 8/16/21.

One of the books I’m currently reading is Deep Work by Cal Newport, who is a computer science professor at Georgetown and author of a few books (I just finished one of his other books, Digital Minimalism). Deep Work is Newport’s take on the underappreciated value of intense focus and explores how today’s emphasis on distracting communication tools might be holding people back from producing their best work. Newport hypothesizes that the value of being able to concentrate on a demanding task without distraction (“deep work”) is becoming more rare at the same time that it’s becoming more valuable. 

I’m finding the book interesting so far, and I can’t wait to get to the “practices” portion because as someone who works in a reactive industry (my to-do list often gets flipped on its head due to something urgent popping up), I’m interested to see if the concept is something I can apply at work.  

In one of the first chapters of the book, I stumbled across an idea that really resonated with me. It had to do with the connection between attention and happiness. Newport mentions behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher and how she wanted to develop the “grand unified theory” of positive psychology. 

In physics, a grand unified theory involves physicists merging all different theories into one single theory that describes everything and is simple, structured and organized. In her book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, Gallagher says that people often speak of the many things you can do to increase your quality of life, but she believes there’s a single statement that wraps everything up into a clean, simple, easy-to-understand idea (her “grand unified theory”). Gallagher suggests that your life – who you are, what you think, feel and do, what you love – is the sum of what you focus on.

As Newport writes in Deep Work, people “tend to place a lot of emphasis on circumstances, assuming that what happens to us (or fails to happen) determines how we feel.” However, according to Gallagher, decades of research contradict this. Her research suggests our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to.

Newport relates this idea back to his deep work concept by asking readers to consider the type of mental world that would be constructed when dedicating significant time on deep endeavors. If it’s true that our world is the outcome of what we pay attention to, when focusing on this deep, rich type of work, our experience with work would likely would become much more meaningful. Additionally, such concentration monopolizes our attention and prevents us from noticing some of those smaller, less pleasant things.

This all makes a lot of sense to me and I like the simplicity of Gallagher’s grand unified theory. But to say that the management of attention is the key to improving virtually every aspect of your life is quite a statement. Could it be true?

Honestly, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it (my attention is focused on the idea of what my attention is focused on – wow, we’re getting meta this morning). 

I like this idea because it feels different than the “look on the bright side” advice that often falls flat. The idea is not about ignoring problems or annoyances. It’s about being more intentional about what we are choosing to focus on. Because we’re biologically wired to focus on potential problems or what’s going wrong for survival, it’s no surprise that without consciously controlling our focus, we can find ourselves defaulting to ruminating on something bad instead of something good. But maybe all we need are a few prompts to remind us every so often to consciously choose what to pay attention to.

Personally, I’m excited to see if this mindset makes a difference and am planning to do one of the below three things each day this week to be more intentional about my attention. What do you think? Would you be in to experiment too? If you’re interested, I’m sharing a few potential approaches below. Hope one of them resonates with you!

Three Ways to Focus on Your Focus:

1. Ask yourself, “what’s going right?” I wrote about this idea last September, and almost a year later, I’m happy to report I’m still keeping up with the practice. The way I incorporate this into my day currently is to ask myself the question as I’m wrapping up work. As soon as I jot down those three things that went well, I bring my attention to the good. Even on the stressful, not great days, I still challenge myself to find at least three small things – like a meeting ending early or a nice comment from a colleague – that went right. It’s seriously been a game changer for me. I also like this practice because it’s very flexible and simple. Maybe instead of at the end of a work day, you ask yourself this on a weekly basis or maybe instead of focusing on what’s going well at work, you focus on what’s going right in your personal life. It’s such a small thing, but I’m telling you, the effect this question has on my mood is incredible. 
2. Set up prompts. As mentioned above, it’s proven that our brains are wired to notice and remember the bad more than the good. It’s a survival mechanism that helped to keep cave-dwelling ancestors safe in a world with many physical threats, but in today’s comparatively safe world, this biological predisposition to focus on the negative can leave us feeling drained, unhappy and low. While we can’t change our nature and we shouldn’t ignore reality or pretend things are wonderful when they’re not, knowing that our default mode is to dwell on the negative can help us see that sometimes we have to take action to get good vibes flowing. One easy way to remind yourself to check-in on what you’re paying attention to is to set up a couple of reminders to encounter throughout the day. Maybe it’s writing “Where’s My Attention?” on a Post-It note and placing it on your desk or fridge or scheduling a few reminders on your phone. You could even establish physical triggers, like thinking about where you want to focus your attention for the rest of the day when you’re brushing your teeth or getting into a car. 
3. Flip the script. On Saturday, a friend invited me to tag along on a day trip to a lake house in Wisconsin. It sounded like it would be an amazing time (I mean… can’t really think of a better Saturday than sitting on a boat in sunny-and-75 weather with a drink in hand), but my only hesitation was around logistics. I knew it would be a long trek for me out to my friend in the suburbs and then another hour or so from her house to Wisconsin. I found that identifying this hesitation helped to put things in perspective because I quickly realized that getting to spend time with this friend would easily outweigh the potential downsides from traveling to and from the burbs. So, I flipped the script. Instead of lamenting about my solo travel time, I decided to focus on making these two 45-minute car rides into my relaxation time. I listened to some music, sat very still, and focused on thinking about the time as my “recharge time” before being social. I had the best time and I’m so glad I went. I even enjoyed my commuting time too! Being intentional about where I was directing my attention really made all the difference. 

What will you focus on today? Will you try one of the above or do you have another way you monitor your attention? I’d love to hear about it!

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