118: 5 Neuroscience Based Strategies to Stay Focused at Work

The Neuroscience of Success Series

Welcome to our special podcast series I’m calling “the Neuroscience of success”. Each week I’ll be sharing a super cool neuroscience or psychology study, and how you can use these neuroscience hacks in your own life to build confidence, stop that nagging inner critic, and get more done in your day so you can reach your goals.

In this episode I’ll tell you about a famous psychology study involving a gorilla costume, and how this experiment taught us about our brain’s limited ability to focus attention.

The super cool neuroscience study I’m going to tell you about today is actually one you can do with your family and friends, stick around until the end and I’ll show you how. Plus I’ll share 5 neuroscience-based hacks to improve your focus and concentration at work.

The Invisible Gorilla Study

I want you to imagine you’re a participant in this study.

You walk in, meet the researchers and they ask you to sit down at a desk to watch a short video.
In the video there are 3 people wearing white shirts, and three people wearing black shirts passing a basketball.
Your goal is to count how many passess the people in the white shirts make.
So you’re sitting there, focusing intently on the screen, paying attention to who has the ball, and counting the passes, then all of a sudden another person walks onto the screen in a gorilla costume,
They walk into the middle of the people passing the ball, bang their hands on their chest a few times, then walk out of the frame.
After the video is over the experimenters ask you, did you see the gorilla?

I know right now you're probably thinking, yes of course I saw the gorilla Nicole. How could I miss a man in a gorilla costume coming on screen… but here’s the thing, when they did this study at Harvard in 1999, half the participants watching never saw the gorilla. It’s as if the gorilla was invisible!

This experiment tests what’s called selective attention. Basically can you stay focused on one thing and ignore other stuff. Which we have to do all the time, and your brains do this without us even knowing. What this study showed was just how much we are missing that goes on around us, and we do this without even being aware!

How much are you missing around you?

You can do a mini version of this experiment yourself right now.

Look around the room and notice how many things you’ve been ignoring while you listen to this episode.
Did you notice what color the books are on your bookshelf, that stray coffee cup on your counter, the light coming through your window, the hum of your furnace or air conditioner, the smell of your coffee or food you cooked earlier in the day…
Did your perception change once you started noticing these things?
Chances are it did.
Once you paid attention to the smells, sounds, sights, even tasks and textures you were ignoring they were all of a sudden front of your mind.
Anyone else notice that the chair they’re sitting on isn't’ actually that comfy, or that your shirt has a really annoying tag you need to cut out later…

Our brains can only process so much information at once. We take in almost an infinite amount of sensory information from our environment all the time, but we have processes in our brains designed to weed out what’s important, and ignore the rest.

Because if we were focusing on all the stuff all the time it would be too overwhelming for our brains. You know those air freshener commercials where they joke about going nose blind to the smells in your house? That’s a great example of this attentional blindness. The stuff our brains start to ignore after a while because it isn't’ helpful and is distracting.

The problem with our very distracting world

But here’s the thing, we live in a very distracting world. Especially when it comes to modern technology. All those distractions pull at our focus.

So when we’re trying really hard to focus on counting the ball, we keep getting distracted by the gorilla. Like if you're trying to focus on a report for a client but that annoying bing of a new email keeps pulling your focus.

Not all of our distractions are external like email alerts or a colleague popping in to ask a question, we have a lot of internal distractions too…

… thinking about what you need to get done tonight, that meeting that’s coming up with your boss you’re stressing about, or what you're going to do with your kids on the weekend to keep them busy and off the screens.

Because our brains have limited ability to focus, those internal and external distractions can drain our batteries fast, and make it harder to get stuff done (plus they add a lot of stress and anxiety to our days).

My top 5 strategies to stay focused at work

Here are 5 of my top strategies to stay focused at work, and ignore the gorilla in the room when you're really trying to focus on an important task.

Strategy #1 - Declutter your space.

Close extra browser windows, turn off email alerts and text message alerts, put away projects you’re not working on… we want to declutter our space so there are less of those gorilla’s trying to pull our focus.

Remember, your brain is taking in all that information from your senses and deciding what’s important.

If your desk is cluttered, you have 20 tabs open at once on your laptop, and your phone is binging at you every 30 seconds, your brain is having to actively ignore a lot of stuff. Which takes tons of mental resources.

Clear your space and it will free up brain resources to focus on what you need to get done.

Strategy 2 - Take regular breaks, more often than you think.

A lunch break part way through your day is not enough.

Our brains can only stay focused on one thing for about 60-90 minutes. Then our attention fades and we’re going to be more distracted, lose motivation, and probably end up frustrated with yourself.

When I plan my day I plan my tasks in 60-90 minute chunks. Then I take a 5-10 minute break, and move on to something else.

I like this strategy not only because it gives me breaks to refresh my brain, it also forces me to make better use of my time.

You might have heard folks talk about Parkinson’s Law → the adage that the work we have will expand to fill the time we allot.

If I give myself 2 hours to record a podcast, you bet it’s going to take me 2 hours. But I find if I only give myself 90 minutes, I get it done in that time too.

There’s some real science and psychology at work here.

Because our brains have limits, when we work within those limits we get more done, and feel less stressed out because you're not fighting against your brain all day.

Strategy #3 - Resist the urge to multitask.

If you’ve been listening to this show for a while you know I can get up on my soapbox about the problems with multitasking.

Here’s the science → our brains can’t multitask. Not in the way we think they can.

Yes I can talk and walk at the same time, but in reality there’s research with more complex mental skills even walking and talking is hard (ever watch one of those funny video shows where someone is walking and talking to a friend then walks into a sign, yeah it happens all the time).

What our brains really do is type of alternating attention. They don’t do two things at once, they quickly shift focus from one task to the other and back, so if you're not focused on walking at the right moment, you run into the sign.

Trying to multitask or juggle a million things at once also drains those attention systems in our brains faster, so you’re going to burnout and get less done.

Resist the urge to multitask. Focus on one project, then move on to the next one.

Strategy #4 - Keep a notepad handy when stray thoughts come up.

I use this one every day. I keep my planner next to me.

I use Michale Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner actually, and every day there is a place for your task list, schedule, and a page to write notes.

When I'm working and I have an internal distraction, like an idea for a new project, or I remember something I need to do later I write it down.

This actually frees up those attention systems as well.

Remembering to remember something is a skill called prospective memory, and it requires attention, memory, and planning skills - so a lot of brain power.

If you're trying to keep track of stuff you need to get done in your head, or you want to remember to do that thing latter, it’s a mental gorilla pulling your focus.

Write it down, then you can come back to it later and stay focused on what you were doing.

Strategy #5 - Be clear on your priorities every day.

As a recovering perfectionist and overachiever, I’m no stranger to taking on way more than is humanly possible.

Having 20 things on my to-do list when realistically I only have time for 4, and then beating myself up at the end of the day for all the stuff I didn't get done…sound familiar?

Being clear on what’s really priority and urgent every day (and what else can wait or be cut from the list entirely) is a great way to free up brain space.

Each day I set my big 3. The three things that if I get them done it will help me make the most progress towards my current goal (whether that goal is work related or not, sometimes my goals are about time with family or my health or something else entirely).

I do those 3 things first, then if I still have time, and energy I can check off some other tasks.

Set your priorities each day to save your brain some energy and reduce that stress of feeling like you’re not doing enough.

Bonus episode resource

Want to see how I set up my day for success? Check out my free workbook - Your Daily Productivity Checklist. This free workbook will walk you through the steps I use to set up my day to maximize productivity so you can get more done in your day (without feeling totally overwhelmed or staying up all night to squeeze it all in!) Download your copy of Your Daily Productivity checklist at drnicolebyers.com/checklist

Time for some fun - How to do the Gorilla experiment on your friends

Okay I promised you could use this famous psychology study on your own family and friends. Now that I’ve told you how the gorilla study works, you’ll see the gorilla when you watch the video. Don’t tell your friends the secret.

If you go to theinvisiblegorrila.com you will find the original video these researchers used. Push play, and show it to a friend, then at the end ask if they saw the gorilla? If not, let them watch again.

Key takeaways

Remember - our brains can do amazing things, but they also have limits.

When we try to push past those limits with things like doing a million things at once, trying to get it all done (even when your to do list is longer than is humanly possible), it can burn you out, and make your brain less efficient so you not only feel more stressed, you get less done.

Start using the strategies you learned here today to reduce some of the work your brain has to do every day, so you can save energy and time for the things you really want to focus on.

Show Highlights

[01:48] Imagine you are a participant in this study.

[03:08] We miss so much happening around us. Do this activity now to see what you’re missing.

[04:43] Our brains start ignoring certain things, but our technological world is extremely distracting and pulls at our focus.

[06:00] Strategy 1: Declutter your space.

[06:46] Strategy 2: Take regular breaks more often than you think.

[07:54] Strategy 3: Resist the urge to multi-task.

[08:58] Strategy 4: Keep a notepad handy for when a stray thought comes up.

[09:52] Strategy 5: Be clear on your priorities everyday.

[11:47] To use this psychology study on your family and friends, go to The Invisible Gorilla and press play.

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