Are you paying attention?

Author Winifred Gallagher claims that there are two distinct types of attention.

'Bottom-up' attention is evolutionary (we notice bad smells or loud noises and get distracted easily).

'Top-down' attention is what we choose to focus on (including work and pleasure). This controls the quality of our lives and the progress we make on tasks.

The sense of being pulled in many directions at once gives us a lack of focus. We're easily distracted by 'bottom-up' demands, including technological distractions.

We sit down to work and the phone rings, or pings a new SMS, someone tweets, facebook emails an update, someone asks us to have a coffee (or we just smell coffee), and suddenly we've developed a series of little rituals.

'I'll just have a coffee, check email, check my phone, then get started on this project...' (Or, 'I'll just put a load of washing on, stack the dishwasher, have a coffee, check email, then get started on my tax return...'

Start today

Take a minute or two to list your biggest 'bottom-up' distractions. What causes you to glance up from the task at hand and go off on a tangent? What little rituals have you created that take your focus away from what you set out to achieve?

Scientists have identified that the human brain has an optimum focus time of 90 minutes for one task.

Isolate one 90-minute block of time when you will eliminate your favourite distractions (including the distractions of easier work tasks) and give the priority task some 'top-down' focus.

Measure how much more you accomplish this way - and how much better you feel because of this - and you will start building your attention 'muscle'.