You’ve finally beat procrastination and forced yourself to sit down at your desk to do the important work you’ve been putting off that requires your full concentration.
You begin—and within seconds you’re distracted with something. Your mind wanders. You just can’t focus. Again.
You’re so discouraged and assume you have some sort of attention deficit issue.
But in truth you probably just keep putting yourself in a compromised work environment.
"Even when you realize how much your environment is shaping you, it's still shaping you more than you realize." - Nick Milo
Your environment has a big impact on your thoughts, mood, decisions, actions and behaviours. It's why restaurants and retailers spend massive amounts of money creating the right vibe to alter how their customers feel (and hopefully spend).
What’s great about attentioneering your environment for improved concentration is you don’t need to develop any new skills. In fact, you don't need to do anything better; you’re just setting up guardrails that prevent you from doing dumb stuff like checking your phone in the middle of working. By taking these simple steps, you'll feel like you're on a powerful nootropic. Like you’ve been granted a superpower.
Your environments
Note that I talk mainly about doing deeply focused work (aka deep work) in this post, but the advice applies to school studies just as well.
When discussing environment, I like to break it down into three kinds: physical space, workspace, and work device.
There are a lot of variables at play in your overall environment. Are you working from home or an office? Is the environment noisy (coffee shop chatter; your kids running around at home) or quiet? What kind of work or studies are you doing? What space and resources do you have access to around you? Essentially it all comes down to how much control you have over your environment. For this discussion, I'm going to assume you're working from home and can control your environment to a large degree.
Two important things to note before we begin: when doing deep work, give yourself a start time and plan out your environment so that everything’s ready in advance of that start time. Don't just gradually start your morning and begin working whenever you’re all set up and feeling ready (because you’ll find ways to stall and procrastinate). Set a time in your calendar and commit to starting on time. Treat it like an important meeting you’re leading. You wouldn't begin prepping for the meeting once it starts; you'd have everything ready to go prior to its start.
Alright, let’s get going.
Physical space
Your physical space is the room you're working in. This could be in your home, your office, coffee shop, library, or outside.
Different space for deep work: Ideally, you'd do your deeply focused work in a space different from your regular work or where you do more administrative tasks. Doing this will provide cues to your mind that this work is important and needs special attention. So, if possible, try a different room or area of your home to do this work. It doesn’t have to be a permanent setup; it could be as simple as using the kitchen table for your deep work session if you normally work from a cluttered desk in the bedroom.
Walls not windows: It's better to have your desk face a wall than a window. You might think looking out a bright window at some nature is calming and provides inspiration, but it's really just a distraction when working deeply. I know, staring at a wall sounds painfully boring—and that’s the point.
Temperature: If you're able to control the temperature of your environment, consider how it feels. Are you too hot? Too cold? What can you do to adjust the temperature (or your clothes) before you start working so that it doesn't become a distraction after you start?
Tip: Wear layers so it’s easy to take something off or throw something on without having to do a whole wardrobe change. Just make sure these layers are either on you or nearby.
Music: If planning to listen to music, have your headphones ready and the music selected before your start time. It’s recommended to listen to music without vocals, as studies show hearing music with a voice distracts us more than music without. Research also suggests that the most productive type of music to listen to while focusing is music that sounds familiar and is relatively simple. Note that 'familiar' is relative.
Tip: Use 40hz binaural beats to prime your brain leading up to your session but not throughout the entirety of your session.
Take stock of objects in your environment: Environmental cues—seemingly innocuous things in our space, like books or pictures hanging on the wall—don't actively disrupt us like notifications do, but they can still pull us away from what we intend to accomplish. So it's best to remove as many visual cues as you can in advance before doing deep work.
Take stock of the objects in your environment and identify which ones may attract your attention. Then clear these. Note that there are some objects which can be beneficial, like plants. But generally, the more complex the object, the more it will pull you into distraction. This is another reason to have your desk face the wall rather than a window or overlooking your physical space.
Remember: It's significantly easier to deal with distractions in advance. Once they appear, it's often too late to stop them.
Workspace
Your workspace includes the surface you’re working on (desk, table) and what you’re sitting in (or standing on if you’re a fellow stander).
Clear clutter: The more clutter on your workspace, the more clutter in your mind. A clear desk to do deep work from will ensure there’s nothing waiting to pull at your attention.
Remove everything from your desk that you don't need for this specific session. Books, notes, YOUR PHONE, everything. Question everything.
De-device yourself: Take off your smartwatch and turn it and your phone off. Seriously, don’t just put things on silent. Turn them off. Your mind will know the difference.
Now put both devices (as well as tablets and any other devices you have) in another room, if possible. Or at least put them in a purse or bag. They need to be both out of sight and out of reach. We're more likely to check our phone more frequently when we can see it—even if it isn't buzzing or ringing. Research also shows that merely having your phone in your visual field interferes with concentration; it subtly, almost imperceptibly, pulls at your attention—and you’re then forced to expend mental resources to fight this.
Don't work with food on your desk: Do you snack while you work? It can be comforting, but it’s also habit-forming. And you might think it’s not distracting, but it usually is. Maybe you spill something on your keyboard, or your fingers get sticky and you need to wipe them, or you get a piece of food stuck in your teeth that you’re now wrestling with. All these things happen and we barely notice them, but they add up to the enemy: distraction.
Do work with drinks on your desk: Before you start, make sure you've prepared fluids to stay hydrated. Definitely have water, but you may also want coffee or tea. Whatever it is, just have it ready on your desk so it doesn’t become an excuse to take an unscheduled break to go get something.
Comfort: Ensure you’re comfortable, whether sitting or standing. Ask yourself, Is there anything I can do right now to be more physically comfortable? How’s your chair height? Your footwear? Physical discomfort can quickly turn into distraction.
Use a distraction catcher: Keep a pen and piece of paper on your desk and within reach so you can jot down anything that pops into your head that’s unrelated to the task at hand. Maybe you just remembered you have yoga class after work and you forgot to add it to your calendar. Quickly capture it on paper instead of opening up your calendar or, worse, trying to keep it in your head until you’re done (which will take up cognitive resources and prove very distracting). Once you write it down, you’ll be free to keep working without worry that it’ll get missed.
Tip: also jot down things that distracted you during the session (whether from your external environment or your internal one) so you can think about how to improve next time.
Work device
So far, you've attentioneered your physical space and your workspace. Turn now to your work device. This could be a desktop, laptop, tablet or a notebook and pencil (it could also be your phone but this should be avoided at all costs. Please please try to find another way to do your work than from your phone).
I'm going to assume you're working on a computer.
Gather resources: Download things you need to do your work from apps like Slack, Drive, or email so you’re not opening them in the middle of your session to get something only to get distracted by something else.
Do this well in advance of your session. Like, the day before, if possible. Doing it in advance is important for two reasons: (1) if you notice there’s something you can’t find or your colleague sent you the wrong file, it gives you time to track it down; (2) you don’t spend the minutes leading up to your work session frantically jumping from app to app and putting your mind in a frenzied state.
Shut it all down: Shut down all apps and tabs that you won’t be using during the session. If you think you may use an app, better to shut it down ahead of time and open it later if needed.
If you do open an app or website to work on, immediately close it once you're done. Don't leave it open (Closing apps and tabs right after use is a great habit in general that I recently developed; it really helps keep me on task throughout the day).
All messaging apps on your work device need to be fully shut down, not just have notifications turned off.
Tip: Have your tasks listed out on paper ahead of time and beside you so you don't even need to keep your task manager app open.
A word of warning
That was a lot to cover. And you might be thinking, This is a lot to do! Is it really all necessary? How will I ever focus at a coffee shop or the office where I have less control over the environment?
Two things come to mind: (1) a lot of what I’ve covered will become second nature once you do it a few times. Personally, I have a simple checklist I use to keep the process quick; (2) this guide is for those who have trouble focusing under any circumstances. The purpose of setting up an ideal environment is so you can first learn how to concentrate with as little friction as possible.
Once you develop this skill in an ideal environment (and you also master internal distractions, which I'll talk about more another time), you can slowly start to introduce some distractions back in.
The ultimate goal is not to have your concentration hinge on having a perfectly meditative space and be unable to work if there's the slightest distraction. That makes you fragile. You want to become antifragile. You want the ability to maintain laser-sharp focus for several hours in a bustling cafe without headphones. That’s the goal.
So, at the beginning you'll want to be kind to yourself and make it easier by eliminating as many distractions as possible. And this will take some time to get right.
But eventually, with practice, you'll become less worried about distractions. They'll simply have less hold on you. They'll be less enticing.
