Hyper focus

At work, I often catch myself working on one thing while my thoughts are on a completely different topic. I then have to keep “pulling myself back” and refocus. Sometimes I also start on one thing and suddenly a completely different task comes to mind, which I then squeeze in and quickly get done.

All of this means that in the end I take longer. Because I noticed this myself, I bought the book “Hyper focus” by Chris Bailey. I did so in the hope of learning methods that help me approach my tasks in a more focused way. In this book review, you’ll find out why it was a good decision and why I took away lots of practical tips.

Have you ever noticed, while eating out or meeting friends, how often people hold their smartphones in their hands and aren’t really present at all? Or how often we are tempted at work to look at our devices, tools, chats and so on? Probably all of us know this. Chris Bailey tackles these challenges in his book “Hyper focus” and gives us methods for dealing with the following questions:

• How often do we habitually overload our attentional space?
• How often does our attention wander because of interruptions and distractions?
• How many tasks, ideas, commitments and other unresolved problems are buzzing around in our heads?

He describes all of this in a very light and vivid way.

So it is about learning how, both at work and in private life, we can better focus on what matters right now and avoid distractions.

“Hyper focus” really suits everyone whose main activity is knowledge work and who are often challenged creatively – in other words, people who work more with their heads. I notice myself that sometimes my thoughts are no longer on the conversation or the task at hand. That slows me down. We humans always have a certain attention span – and that is exactly what we should make use of. In “Hyper focus”, we learn techniques for achieving exactly that.

“Hyper focus” really gave me some useful tips for reducing how often my thoughts keep wandering off. And he doesn’t do it in an esoteric style either – I would have had no patience for that.

What bothered me is that he repeats similar information over and over in every chapter. That stretches the message out unnecessarily! So I skimmed through some pages faster, because they really kept saying the same thing.

On the positive side, Chris consistently makes an effort to provide scientific background information to back up his conclusions and advice (e.g. on the Zeigarnik effect).

All in all, with “Hyper focus” Chris Bailey has succeeded in tackling an acute problem that we all feel in our everyday lives in a practical way and in showing solutions.