Ep 26 Five Strategies for Finding Focus When Life Gets Crazy
Welcome to the Get Your Writing Done podcast. I'm Trevor Thrall, author of the 12-Week Year for Writers. If you enjoyed today's episode, please submit a review wherever you get your podcasts. And for updates on the podcast and other writing resources, you can subscribe to my monthly newsletter at GetYourWritingDone.com.
Have you ever sat down to write, finally, and only to find yourself 30 minutes later or so, firing off a devastating response to some fool on social media? or hitting the buy now button on Amazon to get those dish towels you've been looking for for months or realizing just as you're trying to get started on chapter three that the first thing you need to do is finish a memo for your boss.
Man, let's face it. Finding focus is hard in the best of times. But guess what? It is back to school time, folks. This is the hardest time of year to get things done. It is the busiest and it doesn't matter if you're going to school, if you have kids going to school, it's the fourth quarter of the year when things get crazy, it's the holidays eventually here. If you have trouble finding focus during the rest of the year, man, it's guaranteed that you're going to have trouble at this point. So today's episode is all about finding focus when life gets crazy.
If the examples at the beginning of the show sounded familiar, let me just comfort you just a little bit. You are not alone. You are not alone at all. In fact, you're an extremely good company. And by good company, I mean you're in it with everyone. Let me read a short excerpt from an article by Ezra Klein in The New York Times on this very topic. And he is reporting on some research done by a professor named Gloria Mark. And I'm going to put a link to this book in the show notes.
All right, here's the clip. Gloria Mark, a professor of information science at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of "Attention Span," started researching the way people used computers in 2004. The average time people spent on a single screen was 2.5 minutes. "I was astounded," she told me. "That was so much worse than I thought it would be." But that was just the beginning. By 2012, Mark and her colleagues found the average time on a single task was 75 seconds. Now, it's down to about 47. This is an acid bath for human cognition. Multitasking is mostly a myth. We can focus on one thing at a time. "It's like we have an internal whiteboard in our minds," Mark said. "If I'm working on one task, I have all the info I need on that mental whiteboard. Then I switch to email. I have to mentally erase that whiteboard and write all the information I need to do email. And just like on a real whiteboard, there can be a residue in our minds. We may still be thinking of something from three tasks ago."
And to make it worse, so that's pretty amazing, right? You are not alone because when we survey random folks out there, 47 seconds is the longest anyone is looking at a single screen. That's astounding, but worse, worse is that the research also finds that when you are interrupted from a task, whether it's by yourself or others, it takes about 25 minutes to get refocused on the original task. And I don't know how long your writing sessions are. Let's say they're a couple of hours. You squeeze it in here and there. How many interruptions can you handle and still get any writing done at all?
And I'm sure you're with me here. I've had many a writing session essentially be reduced to zero through interruption. So focus, man, it's tough. So it's bad out there. But the problem is for us writers is we desperately need to focus. That's the only way the writing happens. And given how hard it is, evidenced by the research, to combat these daily assaults, how in the world are we supposed to cope when life gets even busier on top of all of that?
Now, you have undoubtedly, if you listen to this, you have undoubtedly heard of most of the standard, the very familiar ways that people talk about combating distractions. And I think they're all great, but I think they have limited upside. So what are these? Well, turn off your phone. That's a good one, because I think the phone is the number one path to the dark side these days. Being in a quiet space where you're not going to get interrupted, OK, that's great. Maybe you have an app that blocks you from getting on the internet. So you can't go do all the terrible things. OK, that's great. Maybe you have a white noise app or a music app that helps you stay focused or a low distraction writing app that helps you stay focused. Maybe you have little signs that say, do not disturb. Or you use a Pomodoro timer to keep you focused. All these are great. All these have a place.
But I think the central problem with all of them is that they're asking you to exert willpower and discipline in the moment. And the problem with doing that is that the person I like to call in the moment you is very, very bad at avoiding distraction. In the moment you loves shiny things, is looking for the next dope mean high and is hard to reign in if you haven't thought about how to do so. And so all of these tactics can work, but what you're asking is you're asking yourself in the moment to decide to use the Pomodoro, to decide to turn on the browser blocker, to decide to turn on the white noise. on a good day when you have plenty of energy and your willpower bucket is still relatively full, maybe you can manage that.
But I know I'm not alone here that many a time I sit down to write and I am not at full. I am somewhere less than full. And if you're having a day where it's a, your writing is happening after a long day of work or maybe it's first thing and you're just like, oh, you're super tired, yet that's a lot to ask yourself. And so, you know, now, these are all useful tools. I'm not, you know, denigrating them. And for sure, if you can turn them into a habit, the use of a Pomodoro timer or whatever it might be, right? Where it doesn't take you a lot of effort to implement that tactic, then that can be a very useful part of your routine.
But for me, I strongly believe they can never be a complete solution to the problem of focus. because I believe that the battle to find focus is one or lost long before you sit down direct. And so for the rest of the plot, I'm gonna try to explain what I mean by that. And I'm gonna outline five strategies that I think will help you find a more profound level of focus than you're ever gonna find through tactics that work in the moment.
And so to start on this explanation of why I think this is true, Let's, you know, I'm a recovering academic here. So let's start by defining our terms. Webster's defines focus, the verb, as to concentrate attention or effort. Simple enough, but I think it's important to start by defining focus because as I often used to tell my students, my policy students, if you wanna stop something from happening, you know, where's the off button for terrorism? Where's the off button for poverty? Where's the off button for, you know, pollution?
One of the first things you have to figure out is where's the on button? What's causing pollution? What's causing poverty and so on? And so if you're trying to get more focus, a really good idea is to start looking at what sorts of things kill focus. Or put another way, you know, What drives your brain to focus on something, whether it's what you want or not, right? Because I think a lot of times, the problem with focus is that we tend to focus on the things that aren't as productive, right?
So with this simple definition in mind, let's think about four different sources of focus, four different pathways that your brain ends up focused on a topic. And I'm gonna sort of divide these into these four pathways and I think of them as kind of maybe like a pyramid if you will in a sense, from the most foundational to and subconscious to the most conscious. So starting at the subconscious most level, the level of the heart. where your passions and deep-seated interests are, you're gonna end up focusing your attention and you're gonna end up taking action. And because action and attention are related, something you attend to, tends to turn into action, something you're doing forces attention. So sort of a spiral there.
So things you love, what do I mean by that? Well, somebody you love. Now there's a big focus for you. But things you love doing. You love to eat, you love to cook, you love to write, you love whatever sorts of things, right? Maybe you love traveling. So if you think about the things you love, my guess is you're gonna, if you do a quick sweep of your week and you think about how much time you spend thinking about different things, you'll find that a good number of hours or minutes, whatever, has been spent focused on things that you love. Now, you might not have planned to think about those things at any given time, but because they're in your deep, seated self-subconscious and you're very attracted to these things, your brain is going to find its way to them.
So that's one, at the most subconscious level. At a slightly more sort of conscious level, but still maybe not fully intentional, I think of it as the body level. Where you physically spend time or where you physically find yourself captures your attention also structures your actions. So where do you spend time and how does that do that? Well, you spend time with friends, you spend time with family, you spend time at work which definitely grabs your attention and focuses your actions. You might find yourself at the gym at church on a trip. So clearly the places your body is are going to demand attention. I mean, if you're walking in a city, you need to make sure you don't get hit. So there's some focus on traffic. Simple as that. Again, not always something that you're conscious of doing, but you're attending to things because of your environment.
Okay, now let's get a little bit towards the conscious level of things. Maybe still not what you'd call totally conscious. And that is to say the ideas and images and words that your brain is exposed to. So conversation that you have with someone. Ideas that you learn about in a book or in a blog post. A TV show that you watch. The magazine article you read. Social media discussions. Experiences that you have that raise ideas.
So your brain is being constantly bombarded with ideas and photos, information all day long and those things compete for attention and focus along with everything else. And this is sort of creeping towards consciousness because many times we decide what sort of ideas or what at least category of ideas to attend to, right? Like in my Apple news feed, I've got all the things that I'm following. So I'm not picking every story that I'm going to read, but I'm shaping the flow to some important degree through my own preferences.
And then finally, the fourth source of your focus is the conscious most one. And that is those things that you have decided to focus on. The only voluntary focuses that you have are these small number of things that you have decided should be your focus. Maybe a writing project, maybe a love interest, maybe a couple of other things. But when you sort of walk through all the different things that are getting into your brain and driving your energy and your effort every day, you know, taking the kids to school, you know, thing you got dragged into at work, right? Most of these things are involuntary. They're just the result of living a life, living, working, doing your thing.
And the busier you are, the more competition your focal decisions are going to have from other sources. And so my central sort of argument here is that your ability to sit down and focus in the moment is a lot more dependent on this competition than it is on you magically being a disciplined person with tons of willpower. If you have a lot of stuff going on, then you are going to have a much harder time focusing on any one thing when the time comes to do so. And so that sounds like a challenging situation, and I think it is.
But knowing where the on button is gives us some clues to the off button. As does, I think, an understanding of the difference, as does an understanding of this in-the-moment-you concept. Because in the moment you is looking for the path, the easy path, is looking for not having to make decisions, but just make it easy for me and I'm gonna do that thing. And so the combination of understanding this, the competition for your brain and the nature of your in the moment use self, right? We can use those to figure out strategies to make it easy to write and thus to increase your ability to focus on writing in the moment. And so I'm gonna offer you five different strategies that you will undertake before a writing session ever occurs that are going to, I think, radically improve your focus at your writing sessions. And they're going to reflect this sort of heart, body, brain sort of trifecta.
And so the first, I'm going to start with the heart, and the first strategy is to work on the right things. You know, if you've read 12 Week Here for Writers, you know that I'm big, I harp a lot on the vision thing. And the reason is very, very simple. If you've ever sat down to work on a project that you did not want to work on, you know how hard it is to focus. I cannot tell you how many times I sat down to write a student paper all through my schooling and just thought to myself, I would rather literally be doing anything else. You could name a thing, I would rather do that than write this paper. And the result is it took me forever to write some of my papers because I would spend a lot of time doing other things instead of writing those papers.
So what's the easy solution to this? The easy solution is to focus on writing things that you really, really want. And for some of us this is easier than others, but I think it makes a lot of sense to do a little quick check with yourself and make sure that you are working on a writing project that gets you as psyched as possible. Because when you're motivated, when you're excited about what you're working on, your ability to focus is phenomenal. And I can always tell the difference. When I am really high on a project, I can sit down, if I have an idea pops into my brain, I can sit down in the middle of traffic and start writing and be completely focused. Whereas when I am not into something, I will avoid it for months. And then when I sit down, it'll be like pulling teeth. So I think there's a, you just, it's a thousand times different, you know, difference to be motivated and excited. So working on the right things is strategy number one.
And, you know, just before I let that one go, I think sometimes, you know, there's the right thing for your career or the right thing, 'cause this is what your boss thinks or the right thing because this is what other people think. It's easy to buy into external validations or external judgments about the right thing to work on. The market should tell you what to work on. This is what's really selling. I need to write one of those. I just frankly cannot stand that because I just don't think you're gonna have a great time writing that. Your focus is gonna be crap. That's not gonna be a fun thing to do and you're not gonna bring your best to it anyway. So why would you do something like that? But I get it. I get why people do it. I've seen students write the dissertation that their professor wanted written. And I never thought those were a good idea. So work on the right things, your focus will follow.
Second strategy involves your body. And that strategy is clear the decks. And you know, when I do my quick start workshops, I do a simple little exercise where I ask people to sort of take 100 points if your week's worth of activity is divided up among 100 points. You know, make a list, you know, tell me how much points you spent on every activity last week and look at how much was writing. And then ask yourself, is that the right amount that I want for my writing? And you know, I think a lot of times, you know, writers don't get anywhere near as much time as they would like to write. That's my general sense. And that's tough from the simple perspective that you'd rather be writing. Number one, number two, you're going to get more done the more time you can spend. So, you know, I want to spend more time writing.
But I think Clear the Dex for me has a different meaning here. What I mean by Clear the Dex is if we think about your focus as being dependent on what's in your brain, right? The less that is in your brain other than the writing, the more you're gonna be able to focus. So reducing the clutter in your brain is gonna deliver huge dividends. So, you know, the project you don't like very much, drop it. The committee at XYZ place that you do because you feel like you need to be a good person, drop it. Drop things that don't matter. cleaning the house to the standard that your mother would like. Drop it. I dropped that a long time ago. You know, there are so many things out there competing for your energy, whether it's physical or you know, and here's the point. It doesn't, if it's physical, it's mental. If it's, if you spend an hour a day cleaning, it's grabbing your attention. If you're spending an hour doing a committee at school, church, wherever, that's taking your brain away. And it's always sitting there as a competitor, a potential competitor, for your focus when you'd actually rather be focusing on writing.
So I suggest that you clear the decks. Get rid of any clutter. And for writers and creative types, the clutter comes in self-inflicted forms as well all the time. Because like I said, we have a lot of commitments that are involuntary. But then we all have as good people. We want to do things right by our communities, our families, our friends, so we make commitments to them. Those need to be reviewed, as well as your creative commitments that you are making either to collaborators, to groups, to a writing group. Maybe you belong to seven writing groups. Do you really need all seven right now, and you're really trying to get stuff done, or could you actually make better use of that time writing?
But then also, from a focus perspective, if you have four or five different writing projects on the burner and you're trying to focus on one of them during a writing session, man, that's a recipe for a rough time because all of these other projects are going to be popping up in your brain right in the middle because you're going to write a sentence for project one and it's going to remind you of something that you should write down in project three and then you're going to go to, oh, bit, bit, bit, bit, and the multitasking is going to kill you. And so you need to clear the decks in all respects. So it's a double win because it's going to reduce the amount of time you're committed elsewhere, it's going to reduce the amount of mental clutter that's competing for your attention.
And I think the other thing that, you know, a sort of a third benefit is that when you clear all these decks, one of the things you're doing is you're saying, "I'm giving myself permission to spend this time writing instead of doing all these other things." And I think we need that permission so we can sit down and feel comfortable and not get distracted by the things we're not doing, right? Because I don't know if this is true for you, but I often feel like I'm stealing time from family and from other people when I'm writing, especially now that I don't have a job where my job is to write during the day. So I write at other times, not always during the work time, but on the weekend, stuff like that. So I need to give myself permission to write so that I don't spend my writing session worrying about other things. And clearing the decks is a great way to reduce the number of things that you could possibly feel guilty about. So play with the decks is strategy number two.
Closely related is strategy number three, make the time. So I have a whole bunch of briefs, podcasts, I'll link to here because I've talked about this, in fact I've talked about it in relationship to starting the school year. But I think one of the most powerful things about time is the way it can help ease the mental load of what you're doing. I don't think everyone always appreciates this because I think a lot of writers haven't had the privilege, haven't had the experience of having a super consistent writing schedule.
Now, I've been lucky because as a professor I had so much time to write, even though I complained bitterly that it was never enough. I had the ability to have a consistent schedule that had lots of time in it so that I could realize the benefits of having a consistent schedule. But if you haven't, my strong recommendation is to figure out a way to carve out a consistent schedule for yourself. Even if it's not very much time, if it's time that can be sacrosanct, if it can be consistent on a week to week basis so that you always know it's there, it's always going to be your writing time. Everyone around you understands it's going to be your writing time. Everyone agrees with you that it's your writing time. Anyone you need to make a deal with that this is your writing time, you've made that deal with.
The reason that this is huge is twofold. is like anything that's a habit or routine, the mental energy required to do a thing reduces dramatically the more routine it gets. And so I think we all know the challenge that it can be to sit down and start from cold writing, especially if it's something complicated, super creative, like it can be, you know, staring at a page, you know, especially if it's if it's the start of a chapter or the start of something, it can be really hard to get started. That can be the toughest time. And so that is the time when the in-the-moment you person is going to say, "Hey, I thought I saw somebody shiny." And you're going to spend 30 minutes doing something other than starting chapter 3.
So what helps is if your brain is so completely used to writing Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 p.m. that you don't have to struggle the same way to get started. And I can tell you, if you haven't had a consistent schedule before, you may not know what I'm talking about. But I tell you, man, it's like Pavlov's bell ringing, the dogs start slobbering. They know the food's coming. And if you can have a consistent schedule, it will be much easier for your brain to get into writing mode. So that's a huge win that will improve your focus because it doesn't open the door to distracted, shiny, shaped guy.
The second thing is that as I was just saying with the clearing the decks thing is that again, it's very easy. Writing is quiet and you may have a busy life and you may have a loud busy life. Like I have three kids when they were all little. You have two dogs, three kids, a wife, a job, a side hustle, all sorts of stuff going on and I get to sit down and right? I mean, I just, you know, you just you sort of sigh and you're like, oh boy, I mean, I have some time to myself. And then you start realizing I don't know if it's okay to do writing. Maybe I need to do that other stuff. I mean, I haven't mowed the yard. I haven't, you know, I know that one of the kids needs a thing and a thing.
But if it's your schedule, if it's your schedule and you've hammered out and you've said you know what this is the time I can afford to spend writing and I can get all the other things I need done done I don't need to use this writing time for that I've made my schedule this is sacred then your brain can drop the worry and stop focusing on all those other things that need to get done and they will get done eventually but they're not getting done during a writing session that's the benefit of a schedule schedule makes it easier to write and easier to stay focused because you're not worried it's time to do something else. And that's really, you just need to keep all those other things out of your brain and that's a powerful way to do it.
Alright, number four, make a plan and do the prep. Again, in the moment you sort of thrive, or rather doesn't thrive on quiet time, if you have not given, in the moment you clear direction about what to start doing, in the moment you is going to find something shiny to look at. Something easy to do, something fun to do. Eat chocolate, smoke a cigarette. Anything is more fun than work, so whatever it might be. So making a plan gets you around this problem by making it crystal clear what's going to happen when you get to your writing session.
Now I know a lot of people who think planning means, well, I've plotted out the book, I know what comes next, but if you sit down at your computer, you open it up and you have to stare at the page for a while or look through your stuff to figure out what to work on during that session. Man, you are leaving the door wide open for other thoughts to come in. And while you're thinking of all the different things that you could do, one of them might be to scroll social media. One of them might be to call a friend. One of them might be to go get something to eat and then, oops, now I need to clean the kitchen. Right? You don't want to leave the door open for in the moment you to make a decision to go do something fun and easy. You work, you know, fun anyway.
And so having a plan, what a plan can tell you is, I'm going to get done. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to read my notes from yesterday. Second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to start working on the section two or whatever that you know, right? And then that way you've given yourself clear marching orders and you don't leave the door open for having to make tough decisions because having to decide between, hmm, figure out what to do and scroll social media, that's hard for in the moment you.
But if you have a one, two, three list and says do these three things, then you've put in the moment you in the saddle, you said go this way, that's going to be the easiest thing for in the moment you to do, and you're going to do it, or you're going to be much more likely to do it. So I recommend that your plans, now again, focus, how do we keep focused? And I think the best way to keep focus is to try to work on one thing per session. Definitely one project. Now remember what what the professor said. If you get distracted switching back and forth it's gonna take you like 25 minutes to regain that. Not even if that's an exaggeration for you. 10 minutes, five minutes. Like if you go back and forth too many times between different projects and tasks if your two-hour writing session just got really short.
So my preferences are to come up with writing session specific plans. You You might have a weekly plan that says, "I'm going to work on Chapter 3 this week." But if that's going to be divided up among three different sessions, my recommendation is for each session, go into that session knowing exactly what part of Chapter 3 you want to work on. I'm going to work on the introduction. I'm going to work on the middle session. I'm going to work on the conclusion, or whatever that piece is, so that your brain knows exactly what to expect. That's going to really help reduce all those switching costs that you get. And it's going to reduce the number of times when you open the door to doing things that are wildly not on task Okay, so that's number four make a plan do the prep and
Then the fifth and final strategy for you That you're gonna do well before a writing session ever begins is to make a deadline You know nothing focuses our attention like something do the next day, right? We all know the the late night burning the midnight oil to pull an all-nighter to finish a paper for the next day right and and that's not a very healthy way to do a deadline, but I think it's also the case that deadlines have a very helpful role in Focusing our attention because when that motivation rises the urgency rises we have a strong compulsion to focus and so you know, part of the 12-week year for writers is using the healthy part of deadlines to help us focus on the most important things.
And so I strongly recommend that for each piece of writing that you're doing, chapter by chapter, however it is that you work post by post, podcast by podcast, that you have a deadline that means something to you that's important in your life that has some pull, but you know what, even if it's sort of fake, it's better than no deadline. because that deadline is going to keep you much more focused. I don't have time for that. I gotta finish this by the deadline. That's going to be your brain's thinking there. So having a deadline can be a very useful way to focus.
But now I'm just going to bring it back. So working on the right things, clearing the decks, making the time, creating a consistent schedule, making a plan and making sure that you have everything ready before you start so you don't waste time and let the end of the moment you go crazy while you're getting ready to start. making a deadline. All of these things happen independent of your writing sessions and long before. The battle to focus, you just can't win it by sitting down and saying, "Ugh, focus!" That's never going to be a winner. You need to win the battle for focus up front. And, you know, I don't want to belabor it, but it's not just a technical science.
Being able to focus is a lot about how you want to live and what you're willing to do to get focus because focus isn't free. Focus, you only have so many hours in a day, so anything you want to focus on is a trade-off because it's an hour spent writing is an hour not spent doing something else. Nice versa. And clearing up the, clearing up the, you know, clearing the decks for writing means you're getting rid of other things that maybe, you know, are important to you, they're important to to other people. And I don't suggest that you just sort of clear the deck willy-nilly, Trevor said so, it's OK. These are things you need to be thoughtful about.
But I always joke, each one of my kids is a book I didn't write. And sometimes people take that the wrong way, like I'm complaining. I might only complain in jest. No, the point is that my kids are so important that I would never have written those books. I would wildly prefer during our kids' younger years to be helping raise the kids than writing another pointless book that the academic world doesn't need. You know, that's the kind of the tradeoff you're making though, right, is you're deciding how to spend the most precious thing you have, which is your time. If writing is important to you, you will give up things to do it. If you realize that you can't, then you need to realize that writing is gonna go slower and sort of less, you know, be less of a big deal in your life.
And that's fine. That's a conversation that's really worth having with yourself. But I think one of the things that I'm trying to get at with this conversation is to reduce the self-flagellation that most of us have when we sit down and we have trouble focusing. Because I just heard a lot of people complain like, "I'm just so terrible, I'm so bad, I get so distracted. I just can't stay focused." Man, no one can stay focused. That's not normal to just be able to sit down and bang on a computer for five hours in a row with nothing else interrupting you. You can build that muscle over time to some degree, of course, but it's not like falling out of bed. And it's not you, it's evolution made you do it. This is how we're built.
And that's why it takes the person I call routine you, and I'll be saying more about routine you and in the moment you in future podcasts in my next book, the Weekly Writing Routine Workbook, but it takes efforts by routine you ahead of time to structure the environment to allow yourself to do a good job in the moment. It's just not a given that it's going to be easy to do your writing in the moment without having made some pretty rigorous efforts to make it possible. Successful writers, productive writers are not people who just sit down and write. They have strategies and systems. So all right, that's a lot for one. I hope you find focus. And until next time, happy writing.
