This blog post is based on a two-part podcast series from January 2021. You can listen to the first part here, and the second part here.
In any given workday, our goal is typically to get as much done as possible. Often, however, we spend the day feeling frazzled -- hopping reactively between multiple tasks, emails, texts, catch-ups with colleagues, and our physiological needs. By the end of the day, we feel worn out and we often didn’t accomplish all that we’d hoped to at the start of the day, even if we put in heroically long hours because we’re so committed to getting everything done.
Lying in bed after one of these long days, I often find myself thinking that it could have gone very differently, if only I’d be able to avoid distractions, focus on the most important work, and get it done. With such a day, it would be possible to finish early (or at least not late!), feel like I still have gas in the tank, and then spend the evening with loved ones or on cherished hobbies.
So, is such a mythical day of focus possible? Absolutely.
Six years ago, a friend posted on my social media feed about the positive experience they’d had using an app called Headspace for a year. Having recently developed a regular yoga practice, I’d had some exposure to mindfulness but had never undertaken any structured mindfulness training. From the moments of clarity I’d experienced while sitting counting breaths for a few minutes during yoga classes, I suspected that such a structured meditation program would bring a wealth of peace into my life.
Well, the program did bring a wealth of peace into my life. But it also exponentially increased my attention span. Which, it turns out, is really all meditation or mindfulness practice is. These words -- meditation, mindfulness -- conjure up all manner of elaborate explanations and are wrapped within countless elaborate rituals -- but at its core, meditation is extremely simple: It’s learning to pay attention. That’s it. Learning to be present with your senses, learning to be present with your thoughts, and learning to direct your thoughts more effectively and efficiently.
When I first downloaded the Headspace app onto my phone six years ago, all of the sessions that I attempted were relatively short; they were five minutes long. But it was excruciating for me to sit with myself with my mind, even for those five minutes. And so I must admit that in those early sessions, I would often check my phone for notifications, I would check email, I would check the calendar for the day, I would check what time it was repeatedly; anything to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of not actively doing something.
But I stuck with the practice. I stuck with it for months, then stuck with it for years. Despite the challenge. And even today, there are sometimes very challenging days. But the key to progress on any habit is to stick with it, especially when it’s challenging or difficult to summon the motivation to start. In the interest of maintaining the habit, I therefore formally practice mindfulness once every single day: Sometimes all I squeeze in is three minutes while I'm sitting on the subway into the office or right before I turn out the lights for bed. Typically, however, an historical session for me has been about 10 minutes long.
Relatively recently, I began experimenting with adding into my headspace practice a remarkable headband-based technology called Muse, which averages the activity of the brain cells in an area of your brain called the prefrontal cortex. Your prefrontal cortex is responsible for your ability to maintain your attention on any particular thought and the headband provides you with real-time auditory feedback on the average speed that the brainwaves of your prefrontal cortex are oscillating at. The details of this neuroscience are a story for another time, but essentially the slower the brainwaves of your prefrontal cortex are oscillating, the less your mind is racing off, getting caught up in random, unfocused thought.
My experience with both of these apps -- Headspace and Muse -- together has been transformative. I let headspace play, say on my stereo, and then I play the real-time audio feedback from the Muse headband into headphones. This pairing of the Headspace and Muse apps has proved terrifically beneficial for me: For encouraging a sense of peacefulness in my day, as well as for improving my ability to prioritize my thoughts and maintain my attention on the thoughts that are most helpful to me at any given time, say, for completing a particular task like writing a blog post or recording a podcast episode.
After years of structured mindfulness practice, I have at moments thought that perhaps I’d already reaped all of the benefits by carrying out my brief daily Headspace-plus-Muse ritual. Boy, was I ever wrong.
In fact, the coronavirus pandemic unexpectedly led to a dramatic acceleration in my commitment to deliberate mindfulness as well as a corresponding dramatic acceleration in attentional benefits.
After a few months of COVID lockdown, I was in an emotionally challenging period. I’m a highly social person. I love hanging out with groups of friends and I even love going into the office to spend time with my witty and fascinating colleagues.
So while I’d been meditating daily for years -- but typically for only up to ten minutes a day -- I had a sense that I needed to deepen my meditation practice further to confront these challenging lockdown-related emotions. Thus, for several months now, along with being sure to use my Muse brainwave-feedback headband every single day while digesting a Headspace guided meditation, I’ve also been gradually lengthening my meditation sessions. More specifically, in the summer of 2020 I began using the Headspace 365 pack, which was the original 365 day series of meditations that featured in the app when it was first launched many years ago. I tackled the 365 pack in part because I had already completed every other pack of meditations that are available in the Headspace app, but also because I knew that it would force me to -- after six years of daily mindfulness training -- finally extend the duration of my daily sessions.
The 365 pack starts with ten 10-minute sessions then goes on to fifteen 15-minute sessions. And then, for the remaining 340 days in the 365 pack, you do 20-minute-long sessions. Now, I don't have time, every single day, or more accurately, I don't yet make time every single day for 20 minutes of meditation. So, I do one 20-minute session from the 365 pack on about half of all days. And for the sake of maintaining my daily ritual of doing at least some structured mindfulness training, on the other half of days, I do the quote-unquote “Today’s Meditation” from the Headspace app home screen, which I then typically set for a three- or five- or ten-minute session.
It's on the days where I do the 20-minute meditation, however, that I've noticed the dramatic acceleration in benefits. Having noticed that, I am now committed to three days a week where I do a particularly long session. The guided Headspace 365 session always ends after 20 minutes but I set the Muse headband to continue sensing my brain waves for unguided meditation (simply bringing my attention back to my breath whenever it drifts away) for one minute longer each week.
So two weeks ago, I was doing a 28-minute long session three days a week. Last week, I was doing 29-minute sessions three days a week. And this week, I did three half-hour sessions over the course of the week. I'm going to continue experimenting with adding another minute each week until I notice that the benefits start to plateau; maybe that'll be around the 45-minute mark or something like that, but I really don’t know!
The point is that by doing these longer sessions, even after years of meditating without missing a day, I've noticed a huge impact on my attention span. Challenges suddenly seem trivial and manageable. I fly through my to-do list during the day. I don't waste time, I don't become consumed by distracting or unhelpful thoughts, or by irrelevant events that may or may not be happening on the internet. I'm present with my senses in my body and the moment. I'm more creative, I'm more confident. And I'm even more patient, more empathetic, and loving; it really has been a journey.
So, as you might now guess, I highly recommend training your attention. I believe that it can have huge benefits on your career. And, more generally, in your life.
I recommend starting small with training your attention with a structured, guided mindfulness practice, but block off the time on your calendar for it in advance or put it as a daily to-do item that recurs on your phone. Consistency is the key to habit formation in the beginning, not the duration of the sessions.
Initially, you could start with one minute meditations every day for a week. And then maybe just stay there. But if a minute starts to feel easy, then in the second week, go up to two minutes every day, and so on. These small incremental changes can eventually accumulate to long and hugely beneficial sessions, although even those short sessions in the very beginning are likely to prove helpful.
Whenever you do finish a session, reward yourself. Have a piece of chocolate or have a cup of coffee, whatever you find intrinsically satisfying. By rewarding yourself, you'll reinforce the behavior and it will become easier and easier to maintain a daily mindfulness practice, which will gradually train your attention more and more.
As I detailed already, I've been using Headspace and Muse for many years now. I do think they're outstanding and I highly recommend them but I don't have any paid sponsorships or anything like that. I'm not partial to those two tools for any reason other than my personal positive experience with them. Other apps that I've experimented with more briefly or have been recommended to me that seem to be really great are:
Sam Harris's Waking Up
And if you're looking for something completely free, you can check out Insight Timer.
All right, that's it. Those are my tips and tools for sharpening your attention. Happy trails!