by Suzanne Lieurance
Modern life encourages us to juggle everything at once. We answer emails while thinking about dinner, check social media between paragraphs, and interrupt our writing to look up one quick fact. It feels productive, but our brains pay a price every time we switch tasks.
Research on attention has shown that after an interruption, part of our attention stays with the previous task. This ‘attention residue’ makes it harder to give our full focus to the work in front of us. For writers, that means every interruption can pull you farther away from the state of flow you’re trying to reach.
Flow requires sustained attention. It happens when your mind becomes fully engaged in one meaningful challenge. Constant task-switching prevents that from happening because your brain never has enough uninterrupted time to settle deeply into the work.
Single-tasking isn’t about doing less. It’s about doing one important thing exceptionally well. During your writing session, close unnecessary browser tabs, silence notifications, and keep your phone out of reach. Promise yourself you’ll check messages after you’ve finished your planned writing time.
Many writers discover that once they remove distractions, the hardest part isn’t writing—it’s simply staying with the work long enough for their imagination to take over. Give yourself that opportunity.
As you’ve explored throughout this month’s Writing in Flow challenge, walking, sleep, and an organized workspace all help prepare your mind. Single-tasking ties those habits together by protecting your attention once you’ve started writing.
Today’s challenge is simple: choose one writing task and stay with it until your timer ends. Don’t measure success by your word count. Measure it by how completely you gave your attention to your work.
Continue Exploring
Related articles:
• Why Writers Need a Pre-Writing Ritual
• Stuck on Your Manuscript? Take It for a Walk
• How Sleep Helps You Solve Writing Problems
• Become a Writer Who Finishes
• Visit the July Writing in Flow Challenge hub for the complete series.
Your Next Step
Before your next writing session, decide on one specific writing task. Remove as many distractions as possible, set a timer, and commit to doing only that task until the timer ends. Then notice how much easier it becomes to think creatively when your attention stays in one place.
References
Leroy, Sophie. ‘Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue.’ Organization Science, 2009.
Mark, Gloria. Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity. Hanover Square Press, 2023.
Suzanne Lieurance is the author of over 40 published books and a transformational Law of Attraction coach for writers who are ready to stop waiting to feel like the real thing. At Write by the Sea, she guides writers through the identity shift that changes everything — not just the writing, but the whole life built around it. She is the publisher of Manifesting Monthly magazine and the host of Monday Morning Manifestors.
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This article is a great reminder for me because most of my life I spent multitasking. As I’ve gotten older and started writing, I had to break the multitasking habit and learn to focus on one thing at a time. When I am writing and my mind starts to go down a different rabbit hole, I add a note in the document I am working in or write it down in my spiral notebook and keep on writing.