I’ve said this before, but I feel it’s important to lead with it here: mindfulness is not a means to an end. Mindfulness is a means to a means—a way of waking up to life. Without mindfulness, so much of life escapes us. Without mindfulness, we’re governed by impulses and distractions. Mindfulness allows us to take the blinders off and start living with intention. When we practice mindfulness with this perspective, earnestly for the sake of life itself, certain benefits accrue. These benefits can be applied to everyday commitments like work, study, and relationships. These secondary benefits of mindfulness include reduced feelings of stress and anxiety, enhanced memory, and improved focus. Let’s remain on that last one—focus—as the topic of this article.
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I’ve been somewhat obsessed with focus in my own life ever since I read a book called Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown (paid link). That book opened my eyes to the concept of ‘less is more’, but not in a superficial, catch-phrase-y way. The author presents compelling evidence that suggests knowing what is essential in your life, eliminating distractions, and having the courage to make difficult tradeoffs in the relentless pursuit of true focus on those one or two essential things is a huge part of the happiness formula everyone is searching for. This landed home for me because I have struggled with wanting to do it all, with thinking that I can take on the world through sheer willpower, thinking that I can fit it all in.
The concept seemed so powerful to me that it set me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I read Deep Work by Cal Newport (paid link), Indistractable by Nir Eyal (paid link), and Peak Mind by Amishi Jha (paid link). Mindfulness is an undercurrent running through all of these wonderful resources. It’s hard these days to find books on human performance that don’t mention mindfulness and meditation. The scientific literature in support of the fact that regular mindfulness practice can improve focus and memory is robust.
Enough about my personal stance on focus. Let’s dive into what I feel are some of the most salient and useful mindfulness- and science-based tools to help improve your focus. I’ll be leaning on the books I mentioned above, science podcasts such as the Huberman Lab podcast, but also mindfulness tradition works such as How To Focus by Thich Nhat Hanh (paid link) to share what I hope are tips that will help you improve your focus.
Reducing distraction and noise
Distraction is defined as ‘as something that prevents someone from concentrating on something else,’ so it is quite literally the antagonist of focus. There’s acute distraction in the form of someone interrupting your workflow with a question or a car door slamming outside your window as you’re settling into your meditation. Then, there’s chronic distraction, which I believe is one of humanity’s greatest challenges today.
Chronic distraction comes in the form of media—the endless stream of 60-second enticing clips that social media companies decide we should see, the sophisticated ads that number in the thousands that we’re exposed to each day, the wide range of projects and topics our employers believe falsely that we’re able to focus on, and the excess of choices that disguise themselves as convenience.
Reduce the number of options, choices and opportunities
Technology has made it incredibly easy for us to access almost anything, any person, or any place in the world. But it takes time and effort to sift through a long list of options. Options come at a cost. Also, once we do make our choice, we’re left with some degree of uncertainty or dissatisfaction, knowing there were so many other options that may have been better. When faced with an opportunity, ask yourself ‘If this opportunity had not been presented to me, how hard would I be willing to work to obtain it?’ Simplify your life. Decide what works for you and stick to it. Consume less, and have the courage to remain steadfast in your commitments despite what everyone else is doing. When faced with multiple options, rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. If it’s not a 9, then it’s a zero. All of these practices can help you eliminate the distraction of dilemma associated with excess choice.
Close the gates to distraction
In mindfulness traditions, it is said that the hindrances of mindful awareness and focused attention come from the outside, not from within. Specifically, distractions enter our conscious experience through the five bodily senses, known as the Five Gates: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Dedicate a 10- to 15-minute meditation session once per week during which you attempt to give your full attention and awareness to one of the five bodily senses. Developing the skill of getting in touch with your senses on a more intimate level builds the capacity to notice distractions as they arise because they often arise through the senses. This is important because we’re bombarded with so many distractions that they become background noise and go easily unnoticed. You can’t avoid what you don’t see.
Prevent distraction
The best way to reduce distractions in your life is to prevent them from happening in the first place. Turn off notifications on all your apps. Leave your phone in another room when you want to focus. Don’t check email until after 12PM. Send fewer emails. The more emails you send, the more replies you’ll have to eat away at your focus. Be mindful of transitions between tasks, as it’s often in these transitions that we find distractions. Inform others of the times you plan to focus and kindly ask them not to disturb you during these times. However, when you are interrupted by a loved one, respond with compassion. An interruption from a loved one is an ideal opportunity to show you care.
Mindfulness to improve your focus
In Buddhism, it is said that mindfulness precedes concentration and concentration precedes insight. Personal and spiritual breakthroughs don’t happen without mindfulness. We must sustain concentration and intention to begin to see clearly.
Many peer-reviewed studies have come to the same conclusion: regular bouts of mindfulness meditation lead to higher levels of focus. The protocols differ slightly between studies but most suggest that 10-15 minutes five times per week will have the desired effect, although longer durations work, too. It makes sense. Mindfulness meditation is the attempt to focus on something, typically the breath, and return focus to that thing once your own thoughts inevitably distract you. The restoring of focus is where the exercise really takes place. By gently returning focus after being distracted by thoughts, over and over, we’re building the ‘muscles’ of focus, and gradually we spend more time focused and less time distracted.
Pure focus is single-pointed awareness. Mindfulness is the ability to remain focused on the here and now. There are many ways to put yourself into a state of mindful awareness. You can focus on the breath. You can concentrate on the sounds around you. But one of my favorite ways to drop into the present moment is to ask myself, ‘What am I thinking right now?’ This breaks the habitual cycle of default-mode thinking and quickly restores my present-moment awareness.
The science of focus
Studies have shown that 90 minutes seems to be about as long as anyone can sustain deep focus. Structure your day and projects around several periods of 50 to 90 minutes during which you intend to focus deeply. Binaural beats of a frequency of 40Hz have been shown to promote states of focus, so it’s a good idea to listen to them for a few minutes before your focus period begins. You can find tracks of binaural beats at 40Hz on YouTube. Whether the binaural beats or some other practice, it’s important to ease into a session of intense focus. Much like an athlete warms up and stretches before competing, we can’t expect to drop into focus with the snap of a finger.
During periods of focus, you can listen to white, pink, or brown noise, which have also been shown to promote states of focus. They’re great, too, for blocking out ambient conversations if you happen to work or study around other people. When you’re finding it difficult to focus, go for a walk. Fresh air and open spaces can re-energize you, and you may even find that disengaging from your work will allow you to return to it with a fresh perspective.
Final thoughts
Although not explicitly, in this article I’ve touched on three different types of focus. I’ve shared tips on how to sit down and focus on a task optimally. I discussed how to take a structured approach to decisions, choices, commitments, and engagements—how to distill them down to only the essential few so that you can give them your full focus. But I’ve also touched on the type of focus that is mindfulness in general. This last one is the most important. The ability to cultivate mindful awareness more often than not is the ability to connect with life. If we’re not focused on life—on the mundane aspects of it like driving home from work or grocery shopping or picking up our kids from school—then what are we focused on? If we can’t see the beauty in these everyday moments, then what are we seeing? Is it social media? Television? Advertisements? Of course we don’t want to focus on those things. We want to focus on the people around us. We want to delight in their presence. We want to listen to our bodies and take restful moments sitting on the grass in the sun. Mindfulness helps build the capacity to focus on a task, sure, but it also helps us regain focus on life itself.
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