For working parents of neurodivergent children, focus at work can be demanding.  With appointments during the working day, being on tenterhooks for phone calls from the school, ongoing stress and worry, the mental load of life can leak into the working day.

Carson Tate, in Work Simply, says ‘attention is a finite and fleeting resource’.  Ideally, we will intentionally manage our attention to make the most of this resource.  When we are in stress mode, Tate explains, our attention is ‘involuntary’, it is directed towards whatever it is that threatens us.  This is different from voluntary attention, where we can choose how to direct our focus.  It can be very hard to shift away from ‘involuntary attention’, particularly if our stress dominates our lives.  However, there are some things we can do to support ‘voluntary attention’:

Transitioning into work:

• Put everything you need to think of somewhere before you start work (e.g. a list/ a journal). This way it is ‘out of your mind’ and you can be reassured it has a place until you have a time or break where you can come back to it.
• Static stretching: Greg Wells suggests that stretching a muscle and holding in it position for 20-30 seconds, while you are sitting or standing still, can help us decrease tension. Static stretching has a range of broad health benefits and is a way to help manage stress, here are a few examples: 1https://www.lifehack.org/797461/static-stretching

During your working day

• Group similar tasks together: this is called chunking. This helps to support our attention because it minimizes our cognitive transition between different kinds of tasks.  When we switch tasks it takes us time to ‘reset’ our attention.
• Be wary of Multitasking (or dual task interference – see David Rock’s Your Brain at Work). Rock’s research shows that when you try to do more than one task you don’t operate at the same energy level for both.  The more tasks you try to do, the more your performance level decreases for each of these tasks.  According to Glaveski (2020): ““Just quickly checking” anything, even for one-tenth of a second, can add up to a 40% productivity loss over the course of a day, and it can take us 23 minutes to get back into the zone after task switching.  Rather than sporadically checking things throughout the day, we should batch check email, instant messages, social media, and even text messages, at predetermined times.”  However, it’s important to mention a caveat here, as much of research on multitasking assumes “neurotypical” psychology and homogeneity in how distractions are processed and managed.  A study by Rutherford et al (2007) where a sample of autistic participants were required to divide their attention across two tasks, showed “smaller divided-attention costs than […] matched adults” in control test group (were individuals were matched for education level, age and IQ).  This is still an ongoing area of research.
• Avoid busyness: It can feel like the more you get done, the more productive you are being. However, particularly when you are stressed, ‘doing less’ is ultimately more effective.  As Alex Soojung-Kim Pang explains ‘you get more done when you work less’ because if you have focus, without distractions and other simultaneous tasks, you can get a lot more done, and you are a lot less likely to make mistakes.

Remember:

• Breaks: Tate says ‘physical movement is one of the most effective ways to reset and discharge negative energy’. We’ve looked at static stretching above.  Research from Kim et al (2017) suggests that taking breaks during your work time is beneficial (this is called internal recovery).  They qualify this by arguing that the kind of break you take is also important – relaxation and exercise being amongst the most effective to ‘reset and ‘restore’ energy.
• Work can be helpful as a kind of distraction if you re stressed: deep thinking can be a way of managing stress says Wells.  Thus, even if things are tough, you can give yourself permission to focus on work to support managing stress.

If you would like some support to improve focus Care For You Coaching supports parents and carers to support their families. If you’d like to talk, I’m here to listen, book a free (no obligation) initial consultation at: https://careforyoucoaching.co.uk/contact/, We will support you to support your loved ones.