Monday 29th of February was many things to me; my first university class, my first media one class, my first lectorial ever – however it wasn’t the first time I have reflected upon my inability to focus.

We covered the topic of ‘deep attention vs hyper attention’; two opposite ends of the pole. To summarise – deep attention is a state of mind where the individual can focus on a single object for long periods of time, while blocking out all other forms of information. Hyper attention is the cognitive mode where focus is switched rapidly between multiple objects. Upon learning about the two cognitive modes, I immediately identified myself with being more hyper attentive.In theory, hyper attention sounds like the most advantageous of the two. The ability to focus on and complete multiple tasks in a period of time makes it sound as if it were a superpower. I wish it were as simple as that. Speaking personally, I know hyper attention is nothing like that. If I were to receive $1 for every hour I’d spent wasting on multi-tasking… well, I probably wouldn’t have to rely on a HECS loan to pay for university.

The pros associated with deep attention completely outweighs the cons associated with it along with the pros associated with hyper attention. Focusing on a single task at hand allows for an efficient and effective completion of the task, allowing you to create a larger quantity of work (at a higher quality) as opposed to hyper attention. Cal Newport; a computer scientist, addresses this perfectly by stating:

“you need to put in a lot of hours to become exceptional, but raw hours alone doesn’t cut it”.

To simplify, you can spend hundreds of hours multi-tasking and focusing on multiple objects at once, but in the end, the result will just be mediocre. Spending less time efficiently on a single task will; in most cases, result in an exceptional result.

Thus, I believe it’s time I started drawing a line with how I use my time. It’ll most likely start by getting rid of the big distractions in my life, primarily; Facebook and Instagram. It’s finally time that I started to focus.