Hyperfocus and time management

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I’m not sure how to ask this question but I’ll see if it comes out coherently.

I get very stuck in hyperfocused states sometimes. It is frustrating, because the goal is generally to bring a project to some state of completion, but somehow it ends up taking much more time than I’d like. It turns into this battle of priorities, where I get irritated at things like the requirement for food. Thoughts run through my mind like:

“I’ll just work a little longer. It’s almost at a stopping point.”
“I only have so much time to do this. I have to do it now or it will never get done in a reasonable time.”
“Why does it take me so long? Other people don’t seem to need to spend this much time on similar projects. Am I just slow?”
“I’m spending so much time on this and have so little to show for it, but I enjoy it so much.”

I don’t appear to know how to meter the activities that really inspire me, so what I often do is avoid it altogether so I don’t get sucked into anything.

But, that is no way to live, either.

Sometimes, I am not sure when the hyperfocus bug will strike. For instance, I decided to try out needle felting. I started my first project at 5 in the evening, and didn’t stop until it was “finished” at 2 am. I took a short break to eat once.

The second project took me two days, and I did a little better (stopped at midnight), but it was like an itch to get it done when I wasn’t working on it.

So, I apparently really enjoy needle felting, but now grapple with the danger of that burning need to focus on only that project until it is finished.

The struggle, too, is that my mind is so one-track. If I am working on a project, it is all that fills my mind. I can’t do things in parallel very well, or have multiple priorities going on at once, or I start to unravel.

My question is, does anyone else have this difficulty, and how do you manage it?

I would sit in a chair and watch the clock if it were 15 or twenty minutes before a meeting because if I started to work on something, I would usually be so focused, I would forget the meeting. It was extra frustrating because most meetings were complete waste of time anyway.

When I was teaching my daughter to drive, I noticed her focus would sometimes cause her to not look around. It is possible for us to develop an "interrupt" function so that we can survey the environment periodically. The next step would be to force yourself to set a project aside and tackle something else for a while.

Yes, this is relatable. I try to organize appointments early in the day for this reason.



What does that interrupt function look like for you?

I've tried timers to create "interruptions" for breaks (bathroom, water, food, stretch). I've also tried scheduling "block time" for particular projects.

Sometimes it is successful, sometimes it isn't. Statistically speaking, it's not very effective at breaking the pattern. If I force myself to set a project aside and work on something else, my mind will often continue working on the previous project in the background. There is a sense that I've forgotten something important (the same sort of feeling as if you left the house with the stove on). The disorientation might pass after a half hour or so, but it sheds some light on the difficulty of switching tasks in general.

I'm going to brainstorm some more here, in case it is useful for others (and anyone: please feel free to chime in).

To deal with the difficulty in switching tasks, I've experimented with creating a buffer time between tasks/projects. This is a little more successful, especially if I include a buffer activity which requires little cognitive demand (such as taking a walk or doing a routine maintenance type of task). Still, regulating my focus is dependent on how much rest I've had beforehand. After stressful periods, my ability to set limits diminishes significantly. I struggle with what to do during those times (besides avoid stress, but that comes with drawbacks, as well).

The key might be creating "habituation systems" to prime and prioritize otherwise unstructured activities. In my example of needle felting one evening, that was a new activity that I had no experience with and that project wasn't planned or part of any routine. So, I was unable to set appropriate limits on it (or even recognize that I might need to do that).

What could be helpful is a designated space or setup for a designated activity, where variables like time-blindness can be accounted for, and where leaving that space/setup means leaving that activity (physically and cognitively). This is how work environments operate by default (usually to keep people on-task!). It might be useful to extend that type of regulation to personal settings, as well.

a small electronic timer might be a useful way to break one's focus

I did exceptionally well with time management when I was working in office management. This was because there wasn’t any ambiguity in my job duties. I knew exactly what was needed and what was expected to do my job because the role was defined in detail from the beginning. It was easy to stay on task because I had a solid daily routine and office structure.

In my personal life it can be more challenging because there isn’t any defined structure or strategy unless I create it. In order to get anything done in my personal life I must create a flexible daily to-do list on my calendar to help give me a better sense of time required or time remaining. I don’t usually assign a specific time unless I have a scheduled appointment somewhere. For me, it’s better to list what needs to be accomplished in a week and in a month. Then I fine tune to the day and to my energy level. I give myself flexibility to think, observe and analyze which is different than NT. A wall calendar serves as a visual aid for me. I use a digital calendar too but my wall calendar is utilized the most. I make notes on it and I use a journal for thoughts that are relevant to the world around me. I’m a ‘noticer’ so that can influence my personal time management too, especially if I identify an anomaly.

I've learned to easily drop in and out of hyperfocus.

It helps to set small reasonable goals. It is harder to stop after quickly reaching a goal, but that helps in dropping out of hyperfocus.

I like using my phone timer and making it a rule that I can only add time or respond when it goes off. So every minute I get interrupted with it until I act on it.

I've also got a time timer that I've attached to the wall to quickly gauge the remaining time I intended to spend on what I'm doing.

Once I had an idea to develop a new spreadsheet tool for work.
My manager didn't want it but I got so interested in the idea that I took time off work and spent 3 weeks straight developing it on my own time, stopping only to eat and sleep.
After I was finished (and it worked pretty well, by the way), my manager still did not want to use it, so it was a total waste of time, and lost me 3 weeks of rec leave. I just got caught up and was unable to think about anything else until it was "finished".

What I'm saying is, even decades after learning how to pull out of hyperfocus to do the basics like eat and sleep, it still causes me trouble sometimes.

Edit: just realised I offered no advice on how to manage it. My suggestion is to just try to channel hyperfocus into things that will be useful, preferably that you can monetise. I would have achieved that in the above example if my manager had been supportive, but unfortunately not.