Focus is no longer our default. It’s not something that tends to happen by accident anymore. In a culture built on notifications, infinite scroll, and instant answers, students need both a pull toward deeper thinking and a push away from the distractions that steal their attention. When we design learning with compelling reasons to engage and structures that reduce noise, we help students build the kind of focus that makes real learning possible.
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A Snapshot of Deep Focus
It’s a Tuesday night in the library and I glance around at the forty Mock Trial students and multiple coaches spread about. One boy is reworking a script alone in a corner. A girl is rehearsing her lines with note cards and sticky notes. Four students work with their coach on potential objections and how they’ll argue each one in front of the judge.
I catch a glimpse at my phone. We’ve been at this for twenty minutes and yet it feels like no time at all.
“Okay, now try that same line again but imagine you are afraid instead of angry. I want you to put yourself in your character’s headspace. Can you do that?” I say.
She nods and takes a deep breath, before setting down her note cards. I repeat the question as the stand-in attorney and she recites her lines with new body language and a tone of fear. She pauses at the end. “Should I emphasize the word anything or the name Sabrina?”
“Try both and tell me how the tone changes.”
We practice the final three questions and zone in on a challenging part to memorize and then I offer her a fist bump. “That was amazing. Can you see your growth?”
“Maybe,” she admits.
“You’ve nailed your tone and diction. You have it almost entirely memorized, too. I can’t believe the growth I’ve seen in a week,” I point out.
Two other students join us and we practice cross examination strategies. I start with their list of weaknesses and potential counters and we finesse the answers, analyzing how a mock jury might connect to the arguments but also the emotional tone. Last year, a student described Mock Trial as one part theater and another part chess. That’s how it feels right now. It’s systems thinking and acting with a heavy dose of improv mixed in.
I take another glimpse at the room. Some of the students seem intense, others relaxed. Some are silently working while others are loud. A few are going solo while others are working collaboratively. A few are on their computers. Others are going fully tech-free. But there’s one thing they all have in common. They are focused. Fully focused. This remains the case for the full two-hour block.
Tonight, like every Tuesday night, is a sharp contrast to the cultural perception of the so-called Anxious Generation. These are the supposedly tech-addicted youth who cannot consume any media longer than 15 seconds; the Tik Tok generation with tiny attention spans who are stuck in short term dopamine cycles. And yet, here they are, focusing on something meaningful and relevant. In fact, when the clock strikes eight and it’s time to go, many of them groan in frustration. They want to keep working.
But I also recognize that this type of deep focus is deeply counter-cultural, despite the fact that deep focus is more relevant and necessary than ever.
Why Focus Matters
When I wrote The Depth Advantage, I focused on the core competencies of deeper learning. I started with a few driving questions. What will students need as they navigate the complexities of a changing world? In a world shaped by algorithms, what deeply human competencies will students need to master? In a distracted, fast-paced, instant world, what will students need in order to do work that endures? I ultimately realized that what students need is deeper learning.
We can think of these competencies as skills that become habits that ultimately grow into a mindset. And this mindset stands in stark contrast to our culture of constant distraction.
Note that I actually added focus to the previously existing deeper learning competencies. I realize it might seem like a given but focus is the building block of all other deeper learning skills. Cal Newport refers to this deeper focus as “deep work.” It’s what happens when you delve into meaningful, sustained work that requires full cognitive attention. Newport argues that the constant interruptions of email and social media reduce our attention while also increasing cognitive load. This ultimately reduces our ability to get into deep work. Note that deep work can be collaborative and social or it can be solitary. It can be more analytical but also more creative. It can involve synthesis of information but also divervent thinking. It can look active or more sedentary. But the unifying idea is sustained work toward something that requires our full mental attention.
Cal Newport describes deep work as the ability to engage in “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.” Newport contrasts deep work with “shallow work” — tasks that are non-demanding, easy to replicate, and often done in a distracted or interrupted state, like checking emails or attending brief meetings.
When you engage in deep work, you are more likely to hit a state of flow. If you’ve ever been “in the zone,” where you tune everything out and hyperfocus, you’ll know what I mean. You feel fully alive, fully connected, and fully focused. Time seems to fly by.
This state of flow is admittedly rare but a key piece of it is the sense of sustained focus on an engaging task. This is what Schlechty described as the authentic engagement, where you are both focused and committed to the task at hand. So, what we are really aiming for is the highest level of student engagement.
Deep work allows people to fully engage with complex, cognitively demanding work without distractions, which can lead to better problem-solving and creative thinking. In a distracted age, this is more important than ever.
I’ve written before about how the corporate ladder has become a maze. And as our students navigate this maze, they will need to be resilient. In an age of machine learning, they will need to solve “sticky problems,” where the solution to a problem often leads to a new problem. They’ll need to develop deeper contextual knowledge and analytical thinking that goes beyond the algorithm. In other words, they will need to be really good at what AI can’t do and really different with what AI can do.
So, if we want students to be fully engaged academically, they need to be focused. If we want them to hit a state of flow and engage in deeper creativity and problem-solving, we also need deep focus. If we want them to develop those deeper learning competencies that will help them navigate a changing world, they will need, yet again, deep focus.
But how do we get there in a culture of incessant distractions? The answer lies in both the push and pull of focus.
The Push: Creating an Environment of Focus
If we think about that Mock Trial group, it’s easy to say, “They want to be there. They chose to be there. Of course they focus.” But the truth is they have to develop that deeper learning focus over time and it begins with their boot camp in summer. That’s where they practice being fully present. Like someone building up the endurance in running, they have to build up the skill of focusing for a longer period of time. But there are also certain structural aspects that lead to deeper focus. No one is on their phones. I’m not sure if it’s an explicit norm but it’s definitely a part of the culture. There are clear guidelines that reduce confusion but also longer stretches of time that demand focus. Our meeting space (the library) is also the perfect physical environment for deep focus.
Not everyone has the luxury of meeting in the library. However, there are some key “push” elements that can help prevent distraction and improve focus. In terms of technology, we can ban smart phones (or at least limit their use to a few key strategic moments). We can be deliberate about going non-tech throughout aspects of the school day as well. I would love to see schools embrace certain tech choices that reduce options, such as Remarkable tablets that function more like a notebook than a tablet.
We can also reduce visual clutter. When walls are packed with posters, anchor charts, motivational slogans, and a million bright “look at me” colors, it can feel a bit like having fifty tabs open. A simple reset helps. Keep only the current, high-leverage visuals up, move the rest to a rotating display, and make student work the centerpiece. The goal is not a sterile room. It’s a room where attention has fewer places to leak, so students can practice staying fully present for longer stretches of time.
Sometimes students lose focus because they don’t know what their supposed to do. This happens when directions are confusing. This is why it helps to reduce extraneous cognitive load, which is the mental energy students waste trying to figure out what you mean instead of doing the thinking you want. It starts with clear directions and examples students can see. It also helps to focus on consistency. Use the same visual cues every time (where to look, what to do first, how to show your work), keep layouts predictable, and design handouts and with UX design in mind.When the experience feels intuitive, students can spend their brainpower on learning instead of decoding the system.
But the push of a focused environment is not enough. For students to embrace focused deeper learning, they need a compelling reason for it. In other words, they need something pulling them into a focused state.
The Pull: Giving Students a Reason to Focus
If we think about the motivation to focus, it can help to use this framework from Self-Determination Theory. I love this because it adds necessary nuance to the ideas of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
There are moments when someone might need something more external. If the subject feels irrelevant or the task seems too boring for a student, there’s a time and a place for a reward (ranging from a prize to verbal affirmation). But to pull students into a state of focus, they often need to be at a place of identified regulation (where they are accomplishing a relevant goal, making a difference, solving a problem, etc.) They need to see a sense of authenticity that taps into the notion of integration. They need to tap into natural human intrinsic motivation in the desire for novelty, curiosity, and creativity. So, let’s think about a few of the reasons why students might have a reason to focus.
Students have a better reason to focus when the learning feels authentic. Dan Meyer makes a great distinction between context and pseudo-context. A student knows that nobody is buying 76 watermelons. No catcher is using the Pythagorean Theorem to throw out a runner. By contrast, it makes sense to think of arrays in connection to a wind farm or statistics in relation to sports. Pseudo-context is essentially the turkey bacon of learning. It pretends to be real but students know better. One way that we can add authentic contexts is by combining PBL and design thinking in a way that incorporates contextual thinking into each phase.
However, authenticity doesn’t mean everything has to be “real world.” There’s something powerful about being lost in an a fantastical fictional world. But even then, the authenticity is in the themes. It feels real and relevant to students.
Still, there’s a time and a place for tasks that don’t seem to be all that authentic and yet are simply fun to do. Take this writing prompt about making a to do list for a villain.
Why does this work when it’s so bizarre and lacks authenticity? Well, actually that’s precisely why it works. It’s unusual. It’s novel. And novelty is one of the core things that leads us to focus. Novelty draws our attention. This might involve interacting with a new idea that you’ve never considered before or learning a new skill that you want to master. Sometimes it’s a sense of confusion over a counterintuive idea.
This sense of confusion can tap into another “pull” for focus: curiosity. When students actually want to know the answer, focus stops feeling like compliance and starts feeling like pursuit. A good question creates tension and even suspense. It’s why we love mysteries so much. Curiosity plants a gap between what I know and what I want to know, and that gap pulls us forward. In other words, curiosity is the why that turns sustained attention into something you choose instead of something you endure. It might involve doing a short Wonder Day project.
Or it might be a longer inquiry-based learning project.
Critical thinking leads to focus because it demands that you slow down and stay with complexity long enough to make sense of it. When students are weighing evidence, spotting patterns, challenging assumptions, and deciding what they actually believe, they can’t just skim and move on. They have to linger. They have to hold multiple ideas in their mind at once and test them against each other. In that moment, focus becomes the price of admission. You can’t think critically on autopilot, and that’s exactly why it deepens attention. So, there’s a sense in which critical thinking demands our attention but also a sense in which it gives a compelling reason why we would want to pay attention.
A simple strategy here would be to do a quick audit of lessons and see how often students are getting the chance to engage in higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Curiosity is the spark, but creativity is what happens when students keep following the question long enough to make something from it. When students are making something, not just consuming information, they have a reason to care about the details. They revise, they troubleshoot, they chase an idea past the obvious first draft, and that kind of sustained attention starts to feel less like endurance and more like absorption. Creativity also rewards lingering.
The longer you stay with a problem, the more angles you notice and the more original your choices become. That’s why it helps to build in projects, mini-projects, and divergent thinking challenges that invite students to generate, test, and refine ideas over time.
To Build Focus, We Need Boredom
When I was a kid, my brother and I invented a version of hockey that we played in our formal dining room. It involved pushing all the furniture away and using plastic bats and whiffle balls. We invented it in the middle of the summer when it was too hot to go outside. One spring, we created our own version of American Gladiators complete with the tank tops and the short shorts and the signs. We even moved lamps to make the the lighting look more theatrical.
I spent hours reading the newspaper and The Economist because we had no other stimulus during breakfast. We didn’t get cable tv until my eighth grade year and even so, we had to share the tv with our entire family. That meant I spent hours drawing, painting, writing, and redecorating room I shared my brother.
In other words, I grew in an environment with fewer options, less amusement, and more boredom. But this sense of space and boredom pushed my creative thinking (an idea I explored in-depth in this article I wrote eight years ago). Boredom is the brain’s awkward on-ramp to focus. It’s like when the noise drops out, attention finally has something to lock onto. It’s the space needed to delve deeper. Boredom forces you to stop chasing novelty and start noticing, which is where sustained concentration quietly rebuilds itself. And once you sit in that stillness long enough, creativity shows up, not as a lightning bolt, but as the next interesting thought you actually have time to finish.
The truth is, we universally hate boredom. There’s a famous “just think” experiment where participants had access to a button that would deliver a mild electric shock they had already said was unpleasant. A noticeable chunk of people chose to shock themselves rather than stay bored. About 67% of men and 25% of women pressed the button at least once. So, we hate it but we need it.
I like to think of boredom as a gift, a habit, and a discipline. Boredom is a gift in the sense of deeper mindfulness. Strategic boredom allows for mind wandering and problem-solving. It’s why so many authors lock themselves in a shed or a cabin with no stimulus and wait for a period before writing. But even boring tasks can lead us to better creative thinking. There’s another study on boredom where researchers had people do a painfully dull task first, like copying phone numbers from a phone book, and then gave them a divergent thinking challenge, where they had to generate lots of different ideas for how to use a simple object. After the boring task, people tended to produce more ideas, and often more original ones. The takeaway is that boredom hands the problem over to the subconscious for a bit, so your brain can quietly make new synaptic connections in the background, and then those ideas surface once you are finally asked to create.
Boredom is a habit in the fact that you need to develop it consistently. Here’s where the notion of boredom endurance (also called boredom tolerance) comes into play. If students are in the habit of short-term dopamine cycles, they’ll have a low tolerance for boredom. This can be especially challenging for some students with ADHD (and I can relate). It can help to develop this habit incrementally. You can think of it like a video game. You start easy and you progressively add time or take away stimulus to allow for more focus. When I taught middle school, we would start out with three minutes of silent reading. Kids complained of the boredom. But a week later, we were at five minutes and students would endure the boredom and begin to focus. Over time, they weren’t really bored at all. They simply moved into reading from a place of excitement.
Over time, this habit becomes a discipline. Students learn how to use boredom strategically. They figure out how to go on short walks to allow for deeper focus. They learn how to tune out distractions and embrace a lack of stimulus so they can focus on their writing. They create short moments of boredom as a sort of prep work for their creative work. Here students choose the empty space because they know what it does to for their attention. They embrace a few minutes of discomfort because they trust that, on the other side of that discomfort, their mind will settle. They’ll enter that deeper focused space where their best ideas have room to show up.
