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This could be reading some fiction, listening to an audiobook on a walk, or even something more active like painting or drawing. “That puts me into the right state of mind for when I come back and overcome that mental block,” she said.
Taking time away from the screen is essential and doesn’t necessarily mean you have stopped working. “I go for a walk confident that actually, even though I’m not visually sitting and looking like someone who’s working, I know my mind is working,” she said.
This attitude helps her take breaks without feeling guilty or unproductive.
Shut off all potential avenues of incoming information
Maintaining a state of focus (gear two) can be hard and requires an element of self-control, Storoni said, so minimizing distractions can be very helpful.
When she’s doing focused or creative work, Storoni puts her phone face down on silent, pauses her email notifications, and doesn’t read anything.
“I don’t speak to anyone, I don’t take any messages, nothing until I’m out of that zone,” she said, adding: “As soon as you engage with something, you can’t say, ‘okay, we’re not processing this information.’ You have to because that’s what attention is.”
Having to process information from different streams at once can easily tip someone out of that focused zone as there’s too much competition for their attention. This means there are fewer resources for the task at hand, and the quality lessens, she said.