In this day and age, it feels like we are spread too thin, we have competing priorities, and these days a lot more people are working from home, so that the lines between focused work, and home and family, are very blurry. How are we meant to focus our attention so that we can get the right tasks done, without constant interruptions and without having to reread the same sentence over and over? In this episode I’m going to give you a two part framework which is based on how your attentional system works, so that you can focus more effectively, set yourself up for success and stop feeling frazzled.

Listen to the episode!

Listen on Spotify or Listen on Apple Podcasts

Focus, or concentration, is a huge topic – I’m going to use the term focus and concentration interchangeably in this episode. Concentration is something that we all struggle with at times, made worse when there is a lot going on and you have a deadline. I want you to know that if we can take a look at our working environment, and how we are doing activities, then we can take the pressure off our brain’s attentional system so that it doesn’t feel like we’re just really bad at concentrating.

So first I want to explain what attention is, and then I’m going to explain to you the two ways in which your attentional system is activated. In other words, we want our attention to turn on, and this can be done in two ways. Then I’m covering a whole bunch of practical tips that can help you focus – some are more common ones to help with distractions, and some are ones that you might not have heard before.

What is Attention?

So, firstly, what is attention. I want you to think about attention as a spotlight. We can really only focus our attention on one thing at a time, in the same way that a torch can only shine its light on one thing at a time in the dark. If I want to pay attention to something, I shine my attentional spotlight on it. If I need to move my attention, I can do that. For example, if I’m cooking, and I remember that the rice needs to be stirred, then I direct my spotlight over there, then I can hear the bacon sizzling so my attention goes over to that pan, and then I hear one of my kids talking to me, so my attentional spotlight moves over to them. You can see that attention moves around, and can go to things that you see or hear or to any of the senses, including senses inside your body as well.

Bottom-up and Top-down Attention

The two ways in which this attentional spotlight works (or turned on) are called bottom up, and top down. Using our spotlight analogy, the bottom-up way is where something in the environment grabs our attention, and we react by quickly moving our spotlight to that thing. The top-down way is that we ourselves CHOOSE to move the spotlight onto something new. So, bottom-up is when the object of focus is outside and comes up into our mind, and top-down is when we use our mind first and the decision figuratively moves down into the outside world.

So, now that we know that our attentional spotlight can be directed in two ways, lets go over some ideas on how we can improve both of these methods of activating our attention. By looking at it from both directions, we can use a range of tips so that we can focus better.

How to Improve Bottom-up Attention

Clearing your Clutter

Let’s cover bottom-up first. When you are trying to focus on an activity, then you could potentially be distracted by a range of things in your space, moving your attentional spotlight away from where you want it to be. So we want to minimise these as much as possible. To do this, start with taking a look at your space. Where are you when you are trying to work on a particular activity? Maybe you work in an open plan office, maybe you work in your office at home. Maybe you’re trying to paint on the dining room table, or read a book, where there are noisy kids playing on the floor next to you. Maybe your space is really cluttered and the things are distracting you or bothering you. It’s time for a space audit and overhaul. Often, space is very restricted and inflexible, so you can’t often change it, but look at it with fresh eyes and ask questions about whether anything about it can be improved. Can you ask your boss if you can have things moved around? Can you talk to your partner about a plan to shift some furniture? The most effective way to optimise your space is to have a relatively clear desk, so schedule time each day, just a couple of minutes, to tidy up, which will help reduce visual distractions. You might not realise it, but visual clutter even if you’re not consciously paying attention to it, can take up precious attentional resources.

When is Best to Work?

Now that we’ve covered your space, let’s think about when you work. If you can better plan when you work, then you can minimise things distracting you in that bottom-up direction. The best thing to do to make sure you’re working at a good time, is to plan it out. So take 5 mins at the start of the day, or the end of the previous day, and think about these things:

1. When will my longest period of uninterrupted time be? You should put your most important task or your task that requires some creative flow here
2. What interruptions might happen today? If I know that my colleague arrives in the office space at 930am and will want to chat, what can I plan to get done before then? If I know that the kids arrive home at 4pm, I can make sure I get deep work done before then.
3. What help can I get? Is there someone you can talk to or notify and tell them that you’re not available in those hours? Can you block out time in your calendar when there are no meetings, or you are in do not disturb mode?
4. What can I get done in smaller pockets of time? There are always times in the day when you only have say 10 or 20 minutes, and it feels like too short a time to start anything meaningful, so you end up wasting it away on something that you don’t even really want to do, like flicking through the news or social media. Instead, have a list of things you can get done in short bursts, which might be things like delete emails, write social media captions if you are a small business owner, plan out the weeks meals, tidy one space in your house. You want these ideas easily accessible somewhere so that you can easily refer to them when you find yourself with those short pockets of time.

Verbal Interference

Ok, so we’ve covered your space, and the time that you’re working, now I want to cover one final tip when it comes to improving the bottom up activation of your attention and getting rid of distractions. This involves being careful about what you are listening to when you’re trying to focus. Listening to something else can interfere with your focus, but it depends on what you’re listening to, and what type of activity you are trying to complete.

The biggest distraction comes when you are trying to write, AND you are trying to listen to anything with words. Now I mentioned this in the last episode about working memory, so go back to that episode which explains more about this phenomenon. To explain it briefly, you might be trying to write a report or a presentation, and also listen to a song with words, a podcast, or someone else talking, and this will be distracting for you. Do whatever you can to stop this situation – get noise cancelling headphones, listen to instrumental music, or find a quiet space to work. So if you are doing anything with words like writing, reading, even brainstorming, or doing finances, don’t have any other verbal information coming in. By limiting the verbal information coming in from a bottom up direction, you are reducing distractions, which improves your focus and actually helps you complete a task faster.

Hey are you enjoying this post? I share even more good stuff via my weekly newsletter, and you can get your free copy of “Three Things You Need to Know About Time Management” straight away.

How to Improve Top-down Attention

So we’ve just covered three ways we can help our attentional system in a bottom up way, so that we can avoid having other things interfere with what we are doing.

Now I want to move on to the idea of optimising your top-down attention – so what I mean by this is to get better at choosing to focus on this one task and staying focused on it over time. This is a really interesting idea, because we’re no longer talking about distractions and thinking about your environment, we’re talking more broadly about how do I choose the right tasks, keep my brain focused on this task, and continue to stay focused until it’s completed. Let’s go through these ideas and tips to help our top-down attention.

Staying Alert

To help guide your attentional spotlight in an intentional top-down way, we first want to think about feeling really alert and well, and so things to focus on here are things like having a really good sleep, and staying well nourished. We know that these factors alter our cognitive function, so making sure we’re operating from a strong baseline is really important.

Priorities

The next thing we want to focus on is deciding what task want to work on. Taking a couple of minutes to prioritise your tasks is going to really help you hit the ground running when it comes to actually starting a task, and continuing with it. You might choose to structure your work or your day in a particular way that suits you, so if you know you are more alert in the morning, do lengthy or more difficult tasks then, and if you know you work better in the middle of the day then try working then. Think about the tasks that you’re really motivated to do, and those that feel draining. You could get the more difficult task done first, and then reward yourself with a more interesting task later, or you could start with something fun to get yourself going and have a quick win, and then do the more difficult task afterwards. The point here is that structuring your tasks intentionally is going to have you working most efficiently and help you focus on what you’re doing.

Motivation

Now, how do we actually stay on task once we’ve started? There are a couple of tips here. You’ve already reduced external distractions that we talked about in the bottom-up processes, so here we want to pump up your ability to stay on task. You can do this by firstly thinking about your motivation for doing the task – why are you doing it? Think about this using positive language. Maybe you’re doing your finances, and you don’t really like this work, so try and find a positive spin. If you’re doing your finances at all, then you probably believe that doing this will really help you save for that fantastic overseas holiday or something like that – you can even keep a picture of the location on your desk. Maybe you have a report due by 5pm, and your motivation is to get it done by then so that you can be home in time for dinner with your family. Keeping these positive incentives in the forefront of your mid will help you stay on track.

Note Down Distracting Thoughts

The next tip I have is to keep a notepad and pen next to where you work, to write down any thoughts you have to remember for later. If you are trying to focus, and you remember that you have to reply to that text message from your friend – rather than getting your phone out, you can just jot it down quickly so you don’t switch tasks and lose your train of thought – plus your phone of course can be super distracting, so a paper and pen is a much better idea. Now yes these are distracting thoughts that are popping into your mind, so you could think of them as bottom-up information, but sometimes the processes are both activated so it can be mixed here.

Binaural Beats

The final thought I have for you with staying on task is to give binaural beats a try while you are working. Binaural beats are something you can listen to which are thought to help you concentrate and recall information. This is a particular type of music that is set to a particular frequency, and the idea is that is affects the type of brain waves that your brain is producing. When we are concentrating really well, our brain is producing usually beta waves, and sometimes gamma waves, and so to move into this experience, it’s thought that we can listen to these types of binaural beats and our brain will match the frequency of the brain cells function to these frequencies.

There has been quite a bit of research in this area, and depending on what study you look at, the results are actually quite mixed, but there was a meta-analysis conducted in 2023 by Basu and Banerjee who looked at all the studies that examined memory and attentional effects, and they tried to make some conclusions about whether binaural beats were helpful. They did find that binaural beats in general did improve attention, but it was difficult to know which frequency was best, but it was thought to perhaps be in the gamma range. So what does this mean for you? Hop onto your music player and search for gamma binaural beats, and see if listening to it works for you.

Now Let’s Get to Work!

So in this episode we covered how the attentional system works, and that it can be activated from the bottom up, by things outside of our minds, and in a top down direction, by choosing to direct and maintain our focus. I gave you three tips to reduce distractions that grab our attention away from what we want to be doing, and these were cleaning your space, timing your work periods so as to reduce distractions, and avoid distracting input that competes with what we are trying to do. I then covered five tips on how to optimise our top-down attention by making sure we can choose the right task and maintain our attention well, and these tips were to have good sleep and nutrition, structuring your day around when you focus best, thinking about the motivation for doing the task, writing down other thoughts that pop into your mind, and try listening to binaural beats.

Jump onto Instagram and let me know which tip was most helpful for you!

And remember my favourite quote by Mary Oliver, tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? See you next time.

---

Ready to dive in further? Join my signature time management course TIMEWISE, where you’ll learn all the science and strategies to dreaming, planning, and beating procrastination, so you can craft the life of your dreams.

---

Useful references:

Basu, S., & Banerjee, B. (2023). Potential of binaural beats intervention for improving memory and attention: insights from meta-analysis and systematic review. Psychological Research, 87(4), 951-963.

Beck, M. R., Trenchard, M., Van Lamsweerde, A., Goldstein, R. R., & Lohrenz, M. (2012, September). Searching in clutter: Visual attention strategies of expert pilots. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society annual meeting (Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 1411-1415). Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

Katsuki, F., & Constantinidis, C. (2014). Bottom-up and top-down attention: different processes and overlapping neural systems. The Neuroscientist, 20(5), 509-521.