Three Easy Tips to Improve Focus and Attention for Adults with ADHD
Be honest. How often are you able to make it through a news article or blog post without being distracted by a Slack message, phonecall, or email?
The reality is that most of us constantly engage in multitasking, allowing our attention to shift at a rapid-fire pace in both personal and professional contexts. We do it so readily that we seldom acknowledge the potentially negative effects of this divided attention on our well-being and productivity.
Did you know that the brain produces dopamine when we quickly shift attention between tasks? This type of imperceptible reward makes us more likely to continue juggling multiple activities at the same time, despite research indicating that extreme multitaskers actually perform worse on tasks related to memory and focus (and, believe it or not, divided attention!).
A study from the University of California found that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return one’s full attention back to the original activity after a brief interruption. While it may feel like answering Slack messages during meetings (guilty) or finishing a report while eating lunch is improving productivity, only about 2-2.5% of the world’s population is proficient in multitasking. It is also quite taxing on the brain, placing increased demands on the frontoparietal control and dorsal attention networks. As another study concluded after synthesizing research on the effects of multitasking on the brain, “individuals almost always take longer to complete a task and do so with more errors when switching between tasks than when they stay with one task.”
Now, I’m not implying that all multitasking is inherently bad; I’m currently writing this article while walking on a treadmill, and this simultaneous gross motor movement helps my brain focus on these kinds of creative projects. Additionally, individuals with neurodivergent brains often go to the other extreme, hyper-focusing for hours on one interesting project while neglecting eating, rest breaks, or checking in on loved ones (ask me about the time I made a Star Wars Jawa costume from scratch). However, a simple ten-minute practice of focused, sustained attention each day can help you begin to “exercise this muscle,” so to speak.
This week, I’d like to invite you to practice the long-lost art of monotasking, which is simply sustaining attention to a single task for a determined period. When is the last time you watched a full-length film or read several book chapters without checking your phone? Or watched a sunrise, fully immersed in the sensory experience without thinking about work, bills, or other life stressors? Monotasking can serve as a meditation, of sorts, allowing us to return our attention to a single activity while acknowledging (and releasing) the temptation to let our minds wander elsewhere.
Below, I’ve included a few tips to set us up for success:
1. Reduce environmental distractions. We can start by either putting our phone across the room or on DND, using headphones with soft instrumental music to drown out noise, and keeping our workspaces organized to avoid scrambling to locate important documents or items.
2. Set timers for “focus time.” If I’m working on a creative project, I like to set a timer for 30 minutes; during this chunk of time, I don’t check emails or other messages until the alarm goes off, allowing the mental space to attend to the most pressing task at hand.
3. Allocate at least ten minutes each day to the art of monotasking. This could mean savoring each bite of a home-cooked meal (at an actual table…not on the couch while binging Ted Lasso—sorry.), watching fireflies in the backyard, or listening to a few chapters of an audiobook without doing the dishes or other chores.
I’m here to be your accountability buddy, and I’d love to hear how your monotasking practice is going and if you find that it makes a difference in feeling present, productive, and engaged in your daily life. To help get you started, here is a wonderful video from one of my favorite Youtubers, who shares how monotasking has enhanced her own well-being. This video inspired the theme of my article, and I hope you find something here to take with you.
Happy focusing!
