

Believe it or not, worry affects you less when you schedule a time to worry: You stress less about work when you have a plan. This gives you permission to work on it and ignore other things. If it’s important, give a project it’s own exclusive block of time. (Here’s more on using your prime hours wisely.) Night owl or morning lark? Work on important things when you’re not depleted. Want to insure you can focus? Give whatever is most important your prime hours, when you have the most energy.Įnergy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance. The implication is that the attentional resources of these farmers–in other words, their ability to focus–were depleted by their financial worries. Before the harvest, as a consequence of being strapped for cash, the farmers were in a general state of worry, and their IQ tests were significantly lower than after the harvest, when the money flowed more freely and the farmers did not have to attend to their financial concerns moment-to-moment. Eldar Shafir of Princeton and Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard tested the IQs of Indian farmers before and after their harvest–times when their finances were maximally depleted and maximally flush, respectively. Via Up: How Positive Outlook Can Transform Our Health and Aging:ĭrs. Reducing stress improves your ability to stay focused. How can you improve your attention span? Here are five tips: Those who can sit in a chair, undistracted for hours, mastering subjects and creating things will rule the world - while the rest of us frantically and futilely try to keep up with texts, tweets and other incessant interruptions. Now I’m wondering if I should have made this post shorter.Ĭal Newport, Georgetown professor and expert on expertise, thinks the ability to stay focused will be the superpower of the 21st century. Too much effort, too busy, meh, gotta go, HEY LOOK SOMETHING SHINY!!! - another 5% of you just vanished.

You couldn’t stay focused long enough to engage with this post at all.

If you guys are anything like the readers of, 38% of you are already gone.
