Hyperfocus

The introduction opens in a small diner in Kingston, Canada. Bailey watches the people nearby: two young women who turn their phones face down and pick them up again every thirty seconds, a couple who look at nothing but each other, a man whose attention is split between a song, his friend's order and his own breakfast. Bailey chose this diner, the book says, because it has no Wi-Fi. The idea is simple: attention is everywhere, and we almost never consciously choose where to spend it. Research suggests we work on a computer for an average of just forty seconds before being distracted.

Before the book begins, Bailey offers seven practical tips that capture its spirit. Put your phone in another room. Write distracting thoughts in a notebook to get them out of your head. Ask whether the book is worth your time. Have a coffee if it isn't late in the day. Read with a pen and underline. Take a short break when you notice your focus slipping. There is even a confessed «bad habit»: tearing out the first page of every book to use as a bookmark, which Bailey's partner considers sacrilege.

Chapter 1's key tool is a grid of four types of task, sorted along two axes: productive or unproductive, attractive or aversive. Productive but boring tasks are «necessary», productive and attractive ones «purposeful», attractive but unproductive ones «distracting», and those that are both unproductive and boring «unnecessary». Social media, news sites and idle chat fall into the third box. Bailey argues that most people have only three or four purposeful tasks and that living on autopilot means leaving them to the last minute. A simple framework, but a useful one.

Chapter 2 explains the biological limits of attention and is the most interesting part of the book. According to Timothy Wilson, our senses take in about eleven million bits of information per second, of which we consciously process only about forty. Short-term memory holds around four items. Bailey calls this our «attentional space» (working memory) and compares it to a computer's RAM, with a nice observation: Batman and Robin, three Olympic medals, «The Three Musketeers» — our culture is shaped around this limited memory.

The practical lesson is a subtler view of multitasking. Experts say you can't do two things at once; Bailey clarifies that you can't do two complex things at once, but habitual tasks such as walking while listening to an audiobook, or sorting laundry while on the phone, combine easily. The best pairing is one complex task with one habitual one. The book also notes that our minds wander 47% of the time and that simply noticing it («meta-awareness») improves performance.

The weakness is length. The ideas are clear, but the same points are repeated and some sections run on like blog posts. The author's examples from the author's own life as a «productivity expert» are sometimes useful and sometimes read like self-promotion. The Turkish translator made some helpful adaptations, such as replacing the English names in a memory test with Turkish ones.

• Research explained through simple grids and diagrams
• Small exercises in every chapter that you can try right away
• Candid examples from experiments the author ran on themselves