How to Focus

I’m 15 minutes into the quarterly report when my email pings with an urgent request from my boss. Before I can respond, my phone buzzes with a question from accounting. A colleague pops by asking me to review their presentation, and somehow I’m saying yes. Then, the sales manager hands me a revised agenda for the Zoom meeting starting in 30 minutes, the one I completely forgot about. Now I’ve got three tabs, two apps, and a blinking cursor in front of me, and all I can think about is that gif of Kermit the Frog furiously typing on a typewriter.

Sound familiar? I’ve been here more times than I can count, and I bet you have too. Between Slack messages, meeting requests, and “quick” questions that consume hours, deep focus often gets pushed to evenings and weekends, if we can find it at all. So, what’s going on? Are we sabotaging ourselves by saying yes to too much? Is our office working against us?

I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but… Well, our office is working against us! Even government researchers acknowledge that poorly designed spaces actively undermine concentration. Jason Fried nailed it when he pointed out that offices should promote productivity, but people consistently report getting more done on their commute, in busy cafés, or late at night when everyone’s asleep. When are people least focused? At the office, the very place that’s supposed to be designed for focused work!

The average employee is only able to focus for 2 hours and 53 minutes out of an 8-hour workday. What’s happening to the rest of our time? Every day, we’re losing 5 hours to emails, meetings we didn’t need to attend, scrolling LinkedIn, responding to Slack, being distracted by weekend gossip echoing from the water cooler… and random thoughts about Kermit the Frog, of course.

So, what is focus, really? Why does it matter so much? And short of redesigning your entire office building, what can you do to make it possible?

IN THIS EDITION:

1. What Is Focus?
2. Why Do We Struggle With Focus?
3. How to Improve Your Focus
4. The Cost of Ignoring Burnout

Most people think focus is just concentrating harder on what’s in front of them. And that is part of the equation, but before you can focus deeply on anything, you first have to choose the right thing to focus on and block out everything else. You can’t work on the quarterly report and your email and that Slack message and your colleague’s question at the same time. When you do that, you’re just frantically bouncing between them, convincing yourself it’s productive when it’s not. Research proves that when we toggle between tasks, we can lose up to 40% of our productive time just from mental switching.

Real focus is about managing your entire thoughtload (all the competing demands, worries, and distractions constantly vying for attention) so you can actually concentrate without getting pulled toward every shiny little object. It requires saying yes to one thing and no to everything else in the moment.

This gets tricky when you realize that focus isn’t just one thing. Psychologist Daniel Goleman found we actually need three different types of attention. Each serves a distinct purpose, and we cycle through them constantly throughout the day:

• We need inner focus to sort through our own thoughts and figure out what matters.
• We need outer focus to channel our energy, tackle the tasks in front of us, and get meaningful work done.
• And we need other focus to hear what people are saying so that we work together more effectively.

All three are important for their respective reasons, but when you’re attempting to create all three types of focus while juggling seventeen browser tabs, you stretch your attention too thin and lose touch with yourself, struggle to move projects forward, and fumble your interactions with colleagues.

If you think you’re a great multitasker, this probably stings a little. It would be awesome if our brain worked like ChatGPT, but it literally cannot process multiple complex tasks simultaneously. When you think you’re multitasking, you’re actually just rapidly switching between tasks, and that switching drains your time and mental resources far more than you realize.

The average worker switches between apps and websites nearly 1,200 times per day, which means you’re spending four hours reorienting yourself. Research also shows that you probably check your email every five minutes, and it takes 64 seconds to refocus on your previous task. You don’t need to be a mathematician to figure that’s one out of every six minutes sucked into the email vortex alone.

The price of your fragmented attention goes beyond lost time. Without focus, you’re just reacting to whoever yells loudest or whatever new thing that pops up. You never get around to the work that has value. Every distraction splits your attention and tanks your effectiveness, which means you make more mistakes and get less done. But the real cost? You’re stuck producing outputs—checking boxes, sending emails, attending meetings—without creating the outcomes that actually move things forward.

Focus is what separates being busy from being effective. It’s the difference between working all day and getting nothing meaningful done versus working a few focused hours and actually making an impact.

The obstacles to focus are real: exhaustion, stress, and information overload all contribute, and when everything feels pressing, you end up immobilized by choices instead of energized by clarity. But let’s take a closer look.

1. Information Overload

First, there’s the sheer volume of information. Right now, you’re bombarded with more data in a single day than your grandparents encountered in an entire month. That’s a lot of info, and your brain’s filtering system, which is supposed to separate signal from noise, gets overwhelmed. Think of it like RAM in a computer. When you’re blitzed with competing demands, you max out that capacity. The result? More mistakes, slower processing, and the glitches that happen because the cache is full.

Beyond capacity limits, your brain is constantly toggling and fighting itself. One part wants to stay focused on goal-directed work, while another part generates internal thoughts and sends you off on… Kermit the Frog. When you’re tired, bored, or distracted, the wandering part wins, pulling your attention away no matter how hard you try to concentrate.

2. Sleep, Stress, and Health

Your physical state plays a huge role in your ability to focus. When you’re sleep-deprived, your brain can’t filter distractions or sustain attention the way it should. Focus depends on brain chemicals like dopamine being at the right levels, and when you’re running on too little sleep, those levels drop. Cognitively, you’re starting the day depleted before you even sit at your desk and pop open your laptop.

Chronic stress creates a different issue. When you’re stressed, your brain stays locked in fight-or-flight (or freeze or fawn) mode, scanning for threats around every corner. The mental resources you need for concentrated work get diverted to anxiety about deadlines or the seventeen items on your to-do list. Grief and other intense emotions do something similar, making the simplest tasks feel overwhelming and exhausting.

Medical conditions mess with focus, too. Depression, ADHD, and hormonal imbalances can all make it harder to concentrate. Even seemingly straightforward issues like needing new glasses or a hearing check can squeeze your cognitive resources. When you’re squinting at your screen or straining to hear in meetings, that mental effort eats into the energy you need to focus.

3. Your Workplace

Then there’s your workspace, which is still conspiring against you! Poor lighting tires your eyes and saps your focus. Noise, whether it’s watercooler chatter or the constant ping of notifications, fragments your attention. Even the temperature affects your performance. When your workspace is too hot or too cold—not quite Goldilocks “just right”—your brain burns energy managing discomfort instead of focusing on your work.

The way we work today doesn’t help. Between the expectation to always be “on,” the endless stream of back-to-back meetings, and the pressure to respond instantly, sustained focus becomes nearly impossible. People who focus well despite these pressures have usually set clearer boundaries about when they’re available and learned to say no to meetings and requests that don’t need them.

If this article is resonating with you and you’d like to share these insights with your team or organization, I have a keynote on focus, thoughtload, and creating conditions where deep work is actually possible. Use the link below to make an inquiry:

Improving your focus is less about discipline than about conditions. When your body is rested, fueled, and active, your brain naturally filters distractions and sustains attention. Before you chase new productivity tricks, make sure your foundation can actually support focus.

Start with the Basics

First, sleep is non-negotiable. When you’re well-rested, your brain can filter distractions instead of being hijacked by every little interruption. Aim for seven to eight hours a night.

Second, move your body. Research shows that just 150 minutes of aerobic activity a week can significantly improve concentration and attention. It also increases blood flow to your brain and releases chemicals that enhance your cognitive function.

Third, watch what you eat. Skip the Insta-food and opt for a Mediterranean-style diet with healthy fats, fish, nuts, grains, and all those leafy greens you probably avoided as a kid. Turns out your brain actually needs them for sustained clarity and concentration.

Engineer Your Office Space

You can’t redesign your office building, as much as you might want to, but you can control your immediate workspace. Even small changes can either support focus or destroy it.

Eliminate visual clutter and keep only what’s needed for current tasks within sight. The simple act of putting your phone out of reach can also dramatically improve concentration. Research shows that your cognitive capacity improves when your phone is in another room. And I mean actually gone, not just face down on your desk.

If you’re in an open office, you need boundaries. Psychologist Linda Lai suggests creating a “fourth wall,” which means some kind of signal that you’re unavailable or don’t want to be interrupted. Headphones do the trick. So does a simple “In the zone, come back later” sign.

When you really need to focus, find an empty meeting room or a quiet corner. Also, try using different physical spots for different types of tasks to help your brain shift into the right work mode.

You’re sleeping better and your workspace is sorted. Now, for the practical tools and techniques to help you focus right now. I talk about these all the time because they work.

My favorite is the Pomodoro Technique, which is straightforward. Choose one task, work for 25 minutes with complete focus, then take a 5-minute break. During those 25 minutes, treat everything else on your plate as non-existent.

Time-blocking takes the same approach but bigger. You can’t protect your focus all day—that’s impossible—so block off specific chunks for deep work. During those blocks, eliminate the usual interfering suspects: close email, mute notifications, remove your phone from sight, and then work on just the one thing.

Struggling to manage everything competing for your attention? Get it out of your head! A Bullet Journal works great for managing your thoughtload—all those competing demands, worries, and distractions we talked about earlier. The system helps you capture intrusive thoughts the moment they pop up so you can deal with them at the right time instead of letting them derail your focus. When you can physically see what actually needs your attention versus what’s just creating mental noise, you make better decisions about where to invest your limited focus.

Once you’ve captured everything, not everything deserves the same level of focus. Think of your work in three buckets: focal, peripheral, and hidden:

• Focal activities are the ones you’re accountable for and actively managing. These live in your thoughtload and get your proactive attention throughout the day.
• Peripheral activities are things you contribute to but aren’t leading, so you respond when asked but don’t carry them in your head constantly.
• Hidden activities are the ones you’ve clearly communicated aren’t on your radar at all. You’re transparent about being out of the loop, and you’ve let people know not to expect your input.

The clearer you are about which bucket something belongs in, the less mental energy you waste worrying about things that don’t need your focus right now.

Here’s another technique that’s simple but powerful: for every priority you commit to, identify three things you’re going to pay less attention to. I call this “1 Yes, 3 Less.” Once you’ve decided what gets your focus, you need to be explicit about what doesn’t. You can delay something by pushing it to next week, distribute it by asking someone else to handle it, or diminish it by setting a strict time limit like 15 minutes. The key is being intentional about what you’re not doing, so those tasks don’t continue draining your mental energy and stealing your focus from more important tasks or projects.

A few other quick wins? Batch similar tasks together—knock out all your emails at once instead of responding throughout the day. If something takes under two minutes, do it immediately instead of letting it clog your mental space. And when you need a quick reset, try an exercise like box breathing: breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, hold for four. Experiment with different approaches and find what works for you.

Here are some more insights into managing focus and thoughtload from the blog:

Use Stress to Your Advantage

Reducing the Spillover Between Home and Work Stress

Addressing the Root Causes of Work Stress

How to Manage Job Stress

Are You Taking Steps to Prevent Burnout?

Good and bad stress

Your boss will still send urgent requests, accounting will still have “quick questions,” you’ll be tempted to “multitask,” and your office will continue to conspire against your focus, but now you understand what’s happening and can decide what gets your attention. When you say yes to one thing and no to everything else, you claim your power to focus, and when you can actually focus, something shifts.

You’ll be less likely to reach that Kermit-level fury again, which is progress. When you’re working with focus instead of fighting against it, you invest your cognitive resources where they actually matter instead of draining them on faux-multitasking or constant context-switching. The work that used to take all day will get done in a few focused hours, you’ll feel more present and capable, and you’ll have energy left for family, friends, and the things you love beyond office hours.

[2] Why work doesn’t happen at work – Jason Fried | TEDxMidwest

[3] Workplace productivity statistics in the UK – Andrew Fennell | StandOut CV

[4] Multitasking: Switching costs – American Psychological Association

[5] Daniel Goleman – Wikipedia

[6] How Much Time and Energy Do We Waste Toggling Between Applications? – Rohan Narayana Murty, Sandeep Dadlani, Rajath B. Das | Harvard Business Review

[7] Reducing the effect of email interruptions on employees – Thomas Jackson, Ray Dawson, Darren Wilson | International Journal of Information Management

[8] Part of the Daily American Diet, 34 Gigabytes of Data – Nick Bilton | The New York Times

[9] 20 years of the default mode network: a review and synthesis – Vinod Menon | National Library of Medicine (PMC)

[10] Why Can’t I Focus? – Sharon Liao | WebMD

[11] Effects of Light on Attention and Reaction Time: A Systematic Review – Golmohammadi et al. | National Library of Medicine (PMC)

[12] Office types and workers’ cognitive vs affective evaluations from a noise perspective – Tobias Otterbring, Christina Bodin Danielsson, Jörg Pareigis | Journal of Managerial Psychology

[13] Role of Physical Environment in Enhancing Workplace Productivity – Psychology Town

[14] Breaking down the infinite workday – Microsoft WorkLab

[15] Change in Sleep Duration and Cognitive Function: Findings from the Whitehall II Study – Ferrie at al. | National Library of Medicine (PMC)

[16] The effects of insufficient sleep and adequate sleep on cognitive function in healthy adults – Zimmerman et al. | Sleep Health

[17] American Heart Association Recommendations for Physical Activity in Adults and Kids – American Heart Association

[18] Aerobic physical activity to improve memory and executive function in sedentary adults without cognitive impairment: A systematic review and meta-analysis – Coles M Hoffmann, Megan E Petrov, Rebecca E Lee | National Library of Medicine (PMC)

[19] Enriching the Mediterranean diet could nourish the brain more effectively – Picone at al. | Frontiers in Nutrition

[20] Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity – Ward et al. | Journal of the Association for Consumer Research

[21] The Truth About Open Offices – Ethan Bernstein, Ben Waber | Harvard Business Review

[22] Understanding effort regulation: Comparing ‘Pomodoro’ breaks and self-regulated breaks – Biwer et al. | PubMed

[23] Time-Chunking and Hyper-Refocusing in a Digitally-Enabled Workplace: Six Forms of Knowledge Workers – James E. Gaskin, Tanner Skousen | Frontiers in Psychology