How to Practice “Meta-Attention” to Get More Deep Work Done

“Distraction, at its core, is this: confusion about what matters."

...or, better still, attention to attention: learning to become more aware of the things that consistently distract you.

To become more aware of the many distractions working against you, start tracking your attention.

“The antidote for mind-wandering is meta-awareness, attention to attention itself, as in the ability to notice that you are not noticing what you should, and correcting your focus.”

Applied to productivity, it’s a time efficiency practice that brings your awareness to everything that’s trying to take your attention to the task at hand.

When you practice meta-attention, you stay in observation mode: noticing distractions as they interrupt your deep work and quickly derail them before they turn your single-tasking habit into multitasking. As you notice the distractions, you refuse to react and return to focus mode.

You can build a productive system that takes care of some distractions whilst practicing meta-attention:

• Design your immediate work environment to support deep work
• Keep one tab at a time
• Work in springs of 30 minutes at a time
• Taking short breaks in between deep work
• Working offline when necessary and
• scheduling email/ notification time.