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Hyperfocus, by Chris Bailey
"You ARE what you choose to focus on."
Matt Karamazov
July 15, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 16 minutes
📚 Hey, good evening!
If you keep getting distracted from your most important work…
If you keep having your precious, limited attention pulled away from what matters most towards what matters least…
And if you want to stop the endless, self-defeating cycle of procrastination and frustration and instead bring yourself back to life…
Then Chris Bailey’s book, Hyperfocus, can absolutely help you.
I’ve read it, and his previous book, The Productivity Project, and here in this email you’ll find a summary of the former, plus a multitude of fantastic takeaways that will help you live more fully and intentionally in a world that’s constantly yelling at you to pay attention to what everyone else thinks is important.
There are lots of incredible insights to be found in this book, so let’s get right into it!
Today’s book is called Hyperfocus, by Chris Bailey, and in the summary and notes below, we’ll get into some of the key takeaways.
But here’s one of the best quotes from the book, which will give you some idea of what you’re in for:
“The most urgent and stimulating things in your environment are rarely the most significant. This is why switching off autopilot mode is so critical.
Directing your attention toward the most important object of your choosing - and then sustaining that attention - is the most consequential decision we will make throughout the day. We are what we pay attention to.”
In my experience, one of the highest-leverage things you can do is to control your own mind. That’s really one of the only things in the universe you do have real, though limited, control over, and your mind is where everything starts.
It’s where everything happens and where all the action is: anything you’ve ever thought about, heard, seen, felt, or experienced was experienced inside your own mind.
So it makes sense to work from the inside out and do what you can to strengthen your mind, calm your mind, and flex it - as much as you can!
Then, the benefits will spill over to the rest of your life and your entire conscious experience will be radically improved.
As always, my book notes and summary for this book are available on my Patreon, as well as my personal notes from more than 1,150+ other books. Updated monthly.
The support I’ve received on Patreon over the years has been nothing less than incredible. It honestly just started out as a way to make some extra money, but it’s become so much more than that.
First off, I want to mention two of my biggest supporters by name, Jeremy Steingraber and Paul Phillips!
Everyone’s support helps, of course, but to have someone believe in me and my work to the extent that they do is just…I can’t even put it into words without swearing haha.
I appreciate the hell out of everyone who supports me on Patreon, which is basically what I’m saying, and I want to help you out too by sharing my best book notes and summaries on there for you to enjoy and profit from.
There are plenty of other cool rewards available too, but the main thing is that you get more than 1,150+ summaries and thousands of pages of book notes for just $1!
They’re updated monthly with all the new books I’ve been reading and taking notes on, but I do have to say that my earliest book notes need to be updated, and I’m working on that.
Just to be fully upfront with you guys.
I mean, they’re very good, but my notes from 2020 onwards are much more in-depth and complete than the ones from, say, 2015.
Back then, I was taking notes just for myself, but now I have to go back and make sure that other people can navigate them easily as well!
I should have them all updated by the end of the year, though, and my latest reads are updated monthly.
But again, thank you to everyone for either supporting me on Patreon or even considering doing so, and you can click here for my complete notes from today’s book and more than 1,150+ other books too.
Happy reading!
People seem to be conflicted about what’s most important to one’s quality of life - your time, or your attention.
I would argue that they complement, strengthen, and inform one another, in that you can have all the time in the world, but if you can’t focus on anything during that time, you’re not going to wind up doing anything important or meaningful at all.
The reverse is probably true as well since you could have all the focus and the attentional space of the Dalai Lama, but if you have no time freedom, you won’t be happy with the state of your life either.
Hyperfocus is one of the better books out there (and certainly one of the most comprehensive) on focus, attention, and productivity. It’s his follow-up to The Productivity Project, which I also enjoyed, and he explains in simple, helpful terms how to use this amazing, though limited gift of time and energy we receive each day.
As he says, what you pay attention to becomes your life, and so you have to be extremely selective about what you allow into your attentional space. You need to ruthlessly curate your own reality, or else it’ll end up filled with other people’s priorities, other people’s agendas, or, perhaps even worse, nothing meaningful at all.
Chris Bailey also makes the extremely important point that productivity means doing exactly what you intended to do, even if that’s simply resting. If you intended to do nothing but read all day, lazily relaxing with a cup of coffee (or 8) while you take a break from the world, then you’re still being perfectly productive. I think that’s so important for people to understand!
So many people feel “guilty” when they’re not working, and there’s just something so…self-defeating about that. It was great to read about Chris Bailey’s stance on that issue. It shouldn’t even be an issue. Human beings need rest and relaxation, in exactly the same way we need to engage in meaningful work. A full life includes healthy portions of each.
There’s also a ton of excellent material in this book about maximizing creativity and learning, and it’s worth reading for those chapters as well. The biggest takeaway, though, is that what you pay attention to matters. It needs to be intentional, and conscious if your life is going to mean anything at all.
“Take time to weigh the value of your routine consumption. A tactic I find helpful is to view the description of books, TV shows, podcasts, and everything else as ‘pitches’ for your time and attention.
Ask yourself: After consuming one of those products, will you be happy with how you invested your time and attention?”
“Maintaining a distractions list as you read will capture the important things that float to the surface of your consciousness. Writing them down to make sure they don’t slip through the cracks will let you refocus on the task at hand.”
“You are what you pay attention to. Attention is finite and is the most valuable ingredient you have to live a good life - so make sure everything you consume is worthy of it.”
“At any one time, your attentional space should hold at most two key things that you are processing: what you intend to accomplish and what you’re currently doing.
This isn’t possible 100 percent of the time, especially as you become immersed in a task, but by being mindful of your intention, you can be confident that what you’re immersed in is what you’re actually aiming to get done.”
“The state of your attention determines the state of your life.”
Productivity is doing exactly what you set out to do, even if that’s simply resting and relaxing. If you meant to relax and that’s exactly what you did, then you are still being perfectly productive.
“If you have a lot of tasks on your to-do list, ask yourself: which are the most consequential? This exercise works well in tandem with the four types of tasks in your work.
Once you’ve separated them into the four quadrants of necessary, purposeful, distracting, and unnecessary, ask yourself: Out of the necessary and purposeful tasks, which have the potential to set off a chain reaction?”
“It’s impossible to share quality time without also sharing quality attention.”
“When you practice being with your breath, you practice being with your life.”
“Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.”
“At work, the more attention you give to what’s in front of you, the more productive you become. At home, the more attention you devote to what’s in front of you, the more meaningful your life becomes.”
“The concept of hyperfocus can be summed up in a single tranquil sentence: keep one important, complex object of attention in your awareness as you work.”
Currently, I don’t have a complete breakdown of Hyperfocus published on the Stairway to Wisdom (my library of expert book breakdowns), but below I’ve listed some similar breakdowns that you may enjoy instead.
When you become a member of the Stairway to Wisdom, you’ll gain access to more than 100+ book breakdowns like these ones here, as well as a premium weekly newsletter that will help you build the kind of life for yourself that you’ll love living.
Against all the forces conspiring to steal your focus and attention, this book provides 87 strategies you can use to fight back. Not only that, but you'll also learn a 4-step strategy for reclaiming your time and energy so you can direct it toward what really matters.
47-Minute Read | 12,300 Words
You haven't lost your ability to focus - it was stolen from you. In this book, you'll learn about the 12 contributing factors to declining attention spans across the world, who and what is behind them, and how you can reclaim your mind.
49-Minute Read | 12,900 Words
Most people are not NEARLY as alive and awake as they COULD be. This classic book teaches why waking up is much closer and easier than you might think. You'll also learn to experience the gorgeous reality of everyday life that was always available if you only had eyes to see.
30-Minute Read | 7,700 Words
That’s it! I hope you found these book recommendations helpful, and I’ll be back with even more books for you very soon!
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With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your day!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
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