Chris Bailey

While falling into autopilot mode can help us keep up the pace of work and life, attention is our most limited and constrained resource. The more we can manage our attention with intention, the more focused, productive, and creative we become.

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.

There are two main criteria to consider when categorizing what to focus on: whether a task is productive (you accomplish a lot by doing it) and whether a task is attractive (fun to do) or unattractive (boring, frustrating, difficult, etc.).

Necessary work includes tasks that are unattractive yet productive.

Unnecessary work includes the tasks that are both unproductive and unattractive

Distracting work includes stimulating, unproductive tasks and as such is a black hole for productivity.

purposeful work—the productivity sweet spot. These are the tasks we’re put on earth to do; the tasks we’re most engaged in as we do them; the tasks with which we make the largest impact.

our brain receives eleven million “bits” of information in the form of sensory experiences each second.

after focusing on something, we can hold only a small amount of information in our short-term memory.

Attentional space” is the term I use to describe the amount of mental capacity we have available to focus on and process things in the moment.