Unfocus Your Mind
Improve your focus by taking time to ‘unfocus’
Google “how to improve my focus” and the first answer is an offer to spend $60 on “the smartest brain pill to increase concentration”.
We’re tempted to buy anything that helps us do more, more, more. Coffee anyone?
You’ve surely read articles advising you to turn off notifications, to get a good sleep, or to try the Pomodoro technique (using a kitchen timer to break work into 25-minute bursts… the timer’s tomato shape isn’t as important as the name suggests…). It’s not rocket science, and yet we still can’t crack it consistently.
It was tempting to write this article on how to focus, reiterating how important it is to go to bed on time and eat a good breakfast. But it’s probably not going to be the article that changes your mind.
What if instead of yearning for greater focus, we embraced the benefits of an unfocused state of mind?
What is the focus?
In Will Power & Self Discipline, Remez Sasson wrote that concentration is the ability to direct one’s attention following one’s will. But do we really know what we want? And do we always want to do what we need to do?
Think back to the last few times you were trying and failing to focus. Were you attempting to focus your attention on something you wanted to do, or something you felt you should do?
There’s no doubt that a lot of the reason we struggle to focus is because we’d rather be engaged in something else. Yet we’re scared to offend the productivity gods and write off an afternoon without ‘achieving’ anything.
I hear you, “yes, that’s all very well but I can’t just take today off — I’ll be working late tomorrow.” Parkinson’s law suggests otherwise: work fills the time we have available, and if we dared to embrace windows of unfocused time rather than fighting them, we might be faster and more efficient when we’re ready to focus.
What does it mean to unfocus?
The power of un-focusing the mind begins with understanding that our efforts to focus sometimes absorb too much of our attention and dilute our productivity.
Neuroscientist Srini Pillay, M.D., author of Tinker Dabble Doodle Try, a book focused on unlocking the power of the unfocused mind, explains that “the most effective way to recharge your ability to focus is to unfocus”.
There’s a difference between being ‘unfocused’ and being distracted. Most distractions today are passive, such as reacting to buzzing notifications or scrolling social media — they happen to us and disrupt our train of thought.
Unfocused time refers to activities we actively engage in that do not contribute to the things we need to focus on. It’s not another item on our never-ending to-do lists, nor is it a passive distraction from the to-do list.
Where distraction numbs our mind or forces us to passively engage with something different (cat videos are great for both of these), unfocused time allows the mind to wander and recharge.
Pillay recommends “adding deliberate and regular unfocus to your repertoire”. His work demonstrates how planned unfocus moments “stimulate cognitive calmness, jumpstart productivity, enhance innovation, inspire creativity, improve long-term memory and help you stay on target”. Believe it or not, ditching the to-do list for a moment gets things done more quickly.
What can I do to unfocus?
Remember being left alone as a child and somehow occupying yourself with no particular goal in mind? The challenge for us as adults is to harness that feeling again and find new ways to unfocus.
Pillay’s book provides a starting point for different categories of ‘unfocused activity’ we can try:
Tinker with ideas or with physical objects. This will “release your mind to wander from a state of stuckness into a possibility frame of mind, triggering neural connections and new insights”.
This might look like mending something around the house, experimenting with a new cooking technique, exploring ideas for an event you hope to organize, or the layout for the home you’ve always wanted.
Dabble in a new hobby or even a daydream. This “disrupts your habitual and reactive thinking, helping you find new solutions to old problems.”
This might look like daydreaming in bed rather than getting up, painting, gardening, knitting or making pottery.
Doodle on a scrap of paper or in a notebook. This helps you “tap into another brain frequency to remove obstacles and create opportunities and inspiration.”
Try using different pens or stencils and filling the full page.
The important and perhaps uncomfortable commonality between these areas is that they should not be goal-focused. If you’re cooking, making dinner for the family by a set time may not help the mind un-focus, especially if you’re time-pressured. Similarly, the moment that dabbling in pottery becomes the start of a pottery business, the mind is brought into sharper focus and other creative dabblings are required to keep “creator’s block” at bay.
In a world where so many of us ensure each action has a focused purpose, we forget that recharging our ability to focus can become a purpose in itself.
How to set myself up for “unfocus time”?
It’s all well and good aspiring to paint on a Sunday afternoon, but before you head off to the art shop (buying new toys is the easiest part of any new hobby), here are a few reflections on where to start.
- Schedule it. Block dedicated windows of time in your calendar — this may sound counterintuitive, but especially if you’re a person who needs to break the “focus habit”, this helps to hold you accountable
- Ritualise it. Create or extend an existing ritual by attaching your ‘unfocus time’ to a habit you already do. Perhaps you play around on your guitar for 30 minutes after you leave your laptop for the evening, or daydream for 20 minutes before bed.
- Vary it. If the scheduled time arrives and you don’t feel like the activity you’ve planned, what else do you feel like doing? It’s rare we tap into our desires in a given moment, think “What do I want to do?” and act on it.
- Embrace it. In the beginning, we talked about not being able to focus on a given task we need to do. What would happen if instead of getting frustrated and procrastinating in the moment we’re struggling to focus, we disconnected and enjoyed a small dose of unfocused time instead?
So often, struggling to focus leads to procrastination and distraction. Though severely side-tracked, we somehow still finish the task in the time we have — it’s just a painful process to coax ourselves into action.
What if as soon as we noticed we were struggling to focus, we took a moment to unfocus and recharge? Imagine dropping what you’re doing and doodling on a piece of paper, taking a short walk or tinkering with something around the house, then coming back refreshed and ready to complete the task.
Who knew that embracing time to be less productive could make us… more productive? Next time you’re struggling to concentrate on a task, it might be time to leap off the hamster wheel of focus, focus, focus and dabble in something else.
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👋 Hi, I’m Emily, thanks for reading! I also write weekly 1-minute newsletters on personal development — join my community for free here
