Focus mode: By deliberately and intentionally managing your attention, you can enter hyperfocus mode: choose an important target of attention, block out the distractions that inevitably arise during work, and focus solely on that task.

In focus mode, you consciously direct your attention to something;

Your ability to focus depends on the following factors, which all affect the quality of your focus: ·The frequency with which we seek novel attentional targets (this is often the reason why we reject the focus mode in the first place); ·The frequency of attentional space overload; ·How often distractions and distractions derail attention; ·Keeping a number of tasks, commitments, ideas, and other unresolved issues in your head; · Frequency of “meta-awareness” exercises (examining the contents of one’s own attention space).

Control distractions: The first step to staying focused is to decide how long you want to focus. The second step is to eliminate distractions. By clearing distractions in advance, it will be easier for you to focus on the task because there are no other "competitors" and the task will naturally occupy your attention space. As long as distractions derail our effectiveness frequently and for long periods of time, we must deal with them in advance—so we don’t have to spend precious willpower resisting their temptations.

Four types of distractions

Interference-free mode

Less disruptive work mode

Simplify your environment

music

Clean up your brain environment

work with purpose

The goals we set are often vague, but being specific greatly increases our likelihood of success.

For example, you have been hastily setting personal goals this morning and made this list: 1. Fitness 2. Stop working when you get home 3. Go to bed at the right time I keep these goals intentionally vague, so how can I make them concrete and easy to stick to? First, when setting these goals, you should consider how effective they will be. They are certainly more effective than doing nothing. In fact, Gollwitzer found through research that even with such a vague goal, your success rate in completing the goal can be increased by 20% to 30%[37]. So, with luck, you can accomplish two or three goals on your list. not bad! However, the more specific the goals you set, the greater the benefits and your probability of success.

In one study, Gollwitzer and his colleague Veronika Brandstätter had participants set a goal to complete a difficult task over the Christmas break, such as finishing the semester. Papers, renting a new apartment, mediating conflicts between lovers. Some students set vague goals, while others set what Gollwitzer calls “implementation intentions.” His explanation of the term is: “Having a very detailed plan for what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it This becomes interesting when you compare the two groups of participants in Gollwitzer's and Brandstadt's studies. The group of students who set "practical goals" achieved a goal completion rate of 62%. The group of students who didn't set "practical goals" performed much worse: their usual goal completion rate was 1/3—compared to a completion rate of only 22%. This result (further confirmed in subsequent studies) was truly surprising. Setting specific goals will increase the success rate by 2 to 3 times [38].

Please keep this in mind. Now, let’s change my three vague goals into “practical goals”: 1. "Fitness" is changed to "arrange time and go to exercise during lunch break"; 2. "Stop working when you get home" is changed to "Set your work phone to airplane mode, put your work computer in another room, and put aside work for the entire night"; 3. "Go to bed at an appropriate time" is changed to "Set the bed alarm for 10 p.m. and get ready to sleep when the alarm goes off."

There are two points worth noting when setting specific goals: First, you have to really care about your goals. Setting goals that are not particularly important to you, goals that you have given up on for a long time, as "practical goals" will not work very well. If you set a goal in the 1990s to collect the world's largest Furby doll, you may not have much motivation to achieve it today. Second, easily achievable goals don’t have to be too specific. Deciding in advance when to implement a task is far more important for difficult tasks than for easy tasks [40]. If your goal is to work out at least once on the weekend, you don't have to set a specific time to work out. However, if you want to accomplish something more challenging (for example, never eat dessert at a restaurant on Saturday), it's necessary to set more specific goals. Politely decline the dessert menu when you see it and treat yourself to a cup of sugar-free coffee—by planning this ahead of time, you can make your vague goals more concrete. This works great for family goals, too, but as Monday approaches, you'll need to be more careful with your goal-setting. Gollwitzer added: “Planning can be very effective when the goals are very difficult, or if you set too many goals and it’s difficult to achieve them all.”

In some ways, the divergent mode is a strange thinking mode to write about because you let your mind wander without much guidance. Focused mode is difficult, but we spend 47% of our day in some form of diffuse mode, and can be effortlessly entered whenever our focus weakens or our mind wanders.

There are two ways our mind wanders: unconscious mind wandering and conscious mind wandering

Think back to the last time you had creative inspiration and it was probably when you weren't focused on something. In fact, you may not be staying focused at all. You might be taking a long shower, taking a walk during your lunch break, visiting a museum, reading a book, or relaxing on the beach with a drink. Maybe while you're sipping your morning coffee, a brilliant idea pops up like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere. Somehow, your brain chooses to connect a few of the pile of "information dots" running around in your head while you are resting and "recharging" - we understand "information dots" to mean the information in your memory. an idea or message.

It's easy to get into diffuse mode: Leave your thinking alone. In focus mode, you consciously direct your attention to something; in diffuse mode, you consciously let your mind wander. As soon as you free up attentional space outside of what you’re doing right now—running, biking, or anything else that’s not filling up your attentional space—you’ll enter diffuse mode.

1. Spread your attention in a richer environment

2. Write down the problem you want to solve

3. Go to sleep with questions

4. Take a step back

5. Deliberately not completing tasks

6. Absorb more valuable information points

In fact, the reason why the information points we absorb and connect to are important is that the focus of our attention is often filtered through the information we already know. Looking at the sea, biologists may be thinking about the creatures lurking under the water, artists may be thinking about what paint to use to paint the sea, sailors may be thinking about the wind and waves, and writers may be thinking about what language to use to describe the sea.

When reading this book, the knowledge of vocabulary, sentences and paragraphs has already been embedded in your brain, making reading an "implicit" behavior: you don't have to think about it at all. The example of “reading” illustrates well the power of collecting and connecting information dots. By learning something new, you convert points of information from the external environment into memories so that you can connect to and utilize them in the future. Your brain is doing this process all the time from birth to death.

As we accumulate more and more bits of information about a problem, we naturally develop expertise, which in turn helps us better manage our attentional space. Interestingly, the more we know about a field, the less attentional space that information takes up. My supplement: For example, in terms of driving proficiency, you may be in a hurry at the beginning, but then you will become familiar with the road and form a habitual behavior. (Collecting information points is actually very simple. It means to find valuable information in related fields, aggregate it together, and aggregate related fields together. It can be used in many different ways.)

For example, during a conversation, we can intuitively know that a team member is unhappy and that there is something he is not saying. We know this because we have had the same experience in the past and remember to some extent the signs that revealed its uneasiness. This is how intuition works: it acts on information in our memory that we cannot consciously retrieve

What we focus on is what we are. Nothing affects our effectiveness and creativity more than the information we absorb in the past. Accumulating a large number of valuable information points can bring us countless help. We can connect the dots between lessons learned and challenges faced. The more valuable information points we connect to, the more sensitive we are to new “triggers” of inspiration when exposed to new information points, and the more effective our divergent patterns become. Our focus patterns will also be more effective because we can use our attentional space more efficiently, avoid making mistakes, identify opportunities to take shortcuts and make better decisions, and do the job at hand with more knowledge.

How often it enters divergent mode depends on a variety of factors. For example, it correlates with how often you enter focus mode (needing to recharge). Focus mode consumes brain power, while diffuse mode helps restore brain power.

Not only can you enter divergent mode during work breaks, you have many opportunities to enter divergent mode every day: · Disconnect from the Internet from 8 pm to 8 am the next morning; · Completing a task is a sign that you should enter divergent mode; ·Buy an alarm clock so you are not distracted by your phone as soon as you wake up; ·Bring only a notepad and walk to get coffee; ·Leave your phone at home for a day and challenge yourself; ·Take a long shower; ·Let yourself be bored for 5 minutes and notice the thoughts that come to your mind; ·Control distractions and simplify your environment to ensure that your attention does not “spill out” when you are working on a creative task; ·Listen to music while cooking and don’t watch entertainment programs; ·Go for a nature walk; ·Visit an art museum; ·When exercising, don’t play music or read blogs. Objectively speaking, the divergent model seems to be ineffective. You look out the window on the bus; you walk or jog in nature without wearing headphones; you write in a notepad in the waiting room instead of constantly scrolling through your phone - although you don't look busy, But your brain is definitely busy.