Plan to get UNFOCUSED

Focus! Concentrate! Pay attention! And whatever you do, don’t daydream. Sound familiar? From the day we start school we’re told, time and time again, that in order to succeed, we need to focus.

But according to psychiatrist and brain researcher Dr Srini Pillay, author of Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try: Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind, ‘focus’ is not the be all and end all of success.

In fact, Dr Pillay believes it’s essential to build regular, deliberate ‘unfocus’ time into your day, saying that it promotes brain calmness, increases productivity, improves long-term memory and sparks creativity.

And it all comes down to the way the brain works. When we’re focused, we use a part of the brain called the frontoparietal cortex. Dr Pillay describes this part