“Your focus didn’t collapse. It was stolen.”

So believes Johann Hari whose article in The Guardian stopped me in my tracks this week. If you’ve been watching my stories this week, you’ll know that I’ve been struggling to focus. I’ve landed back in the real world with a huge ‘To Do’ list unable to tackle any of it. There’s been a voice inside me berating me for this: “Stop being lazy. Stop wasting time. Get up and do something - you’re never going to achieve anything at this rate…” but after reading Hari’s article, I’m convinced he’s on to something.

I’ve talked before about how I believe there’s no such thing as multi-tasking. It’s bullshit. Our brains simply can’t do two things at once. Every time we switch our attention from one thing (cooking dinner, for example) to another (helping the kids with their spellings) and back again, we are juggling. We aren’t focussed. We are constantly refocussing leaving us mentally exhausted and unable to get into a flow. Even when you’re working and you check a text, you focus on your work dissipates and you’re brain has to refocus on the text.

It never used to be like this. Before phones and technology, there wasn’t nearly as much open, unfettered access to our brains as there is now. But now, our brains are so easily accessible that our ability to focus has become so unpracticed that we wonder whether we’ll ever be able to function in a state of flow again.

Well, read the article - it’s interesting and here’s the kicker, it’s not just phones and technology that are to blame. What we eat, where we live, how much we sleep, our work hours, the air we breathe…all of these things affect our ability to focus. So while I was wondering whether there was something seriously wrong with me, I began to realise that there’s something seriously wrong with the way the world is set up.

I feel overwhelmed almost all of the time. A constant ticker-tape of shit to do runs through my head 24 hours a day, but when it comes to writing it down, I can’t remember a damn thing. My fail-safe technique - the list - has been snatched away from me because I simply can’t focus my brain to think about one thing. It’s always ready to jump to something else, it’s alert for the next bright shiny thing and I’ve allowed it to get into that habit.

I don’t know what the solution is but I do know that it doesn’t have to be this way. When I spent three days in a cabin with no phone, my focus and concentration came back almost instantly. I read three books, did a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle and wrote almost constantly. I found my flow so I know it’s there but it’s hard to know how to recreate it in the real world.

They say that knowing there’s a problem is the first step. Understanding what that problem is has to be helpful so I’m going to forge ahead, armed with this new viewpoint. I’m not going to berate myself for my ineptitude, my lack of staying power, my laziness anymore. Instead, I’m going to remember that this isn’t a defect of my character but a symptom of social habits that I’ve sleepwalked into allowing to take my brain hostage.

Knowledge is power right? Well, now that I know what’s going on, I’m working on ways to stop it happening. Who’s with me?

Cat x