![]() ![]() All a good palette cleanser requires is that you unseat yourself and move your limbs. Going to your mailbox to retrieve the mail is too useful instead, just walk to the other side of the room and knock the wall with your pinky-knuckle. Marching in place while touching your nose (left-right, left-right, halt!) is more like it. Thus, doing ten push-ups is great exercise, but a risky palette cleanser. it should require no special effort, and shouldn’t be useful for accomplishing anything. Make the palette cleanser activity both easy to do and completely non-functional i.e. Choose what you want to do next (and what you were just hyperfocusing on must be a valid option!).a split with jazz hands (all four limbs).hopping while touching your chest and back at the same time (one leg + two arms).standing and patting your head (two legs + one arm).When you feel like poking yourself to stop hyperfocusing, perform a benign physical action that involves the use of at least three limbs-for example:.We can put a tiny, flavor-neutralizing activity in between a hyperfocused activity and the next activity we might be avoiding. This is either genius or unsupportably bourgeois, but in any case we can make good use of it as a way out of hyperfocus. I was informed that the sorbet 1 was a “palette cleanser”: it would, in effect, rinse off my taste buds, so that the flavor-pardon me: flav our-of rabbit would be completely gone from my mouth, and the venison would be a full, untainted gustatory experience unto itself. I asked if this were some abstruse European custom of inserting a proto-dessert before the main course (after all, Europeans eat salad after the entrée-and the Canal House had adopted this un-American sequence). Between the rabbit and deer, my wife and I were each brought a tiny dish of sorbet. It was, like, nine courses, including-I kid you not-both rabbit- and venison-based appetizers. I was given the gift of a gourmet dinner at a restaurant called the DePuy Canal House in High Falls, NY. I was introduced to the concept of palette cleansers on my thirtieth birthday. As soon as you become aware that you might be hyperfocusing, take a palette cleanser moment. So let’s make interrupting hyperfocus the easiest, lowest-commitment thing to do, something that you have no motive to avoid. ![]() Even if there’s no presentation to work on, making the next click on the current web page is an effortless way to avoid doing virtually anything else, including the very process of deciding what to do next, which might involve those “executive function” thingies. ![]() Part of the problem is that researching toenail clippers is an easy way to avoid working on that presentation in other words, hyperfocusing is a super-effective avoidance tactic. Hyperfocusing is the body’s way of saying I’m busy! I’m not listening! Have you had the experience of mentally poking, nagging, even yelling at yourself to stop what you’re doing so you can start the next activity, all the while completely ignoring yourself? And again.… One of my clients described the state of hyperfocus as analogous to being paralyzed. A few minutes later (5, perhaps, or 45…) you have the same thought again. You know you’re hyperfocusing when you have that thought and yet continue clicking on all the color variations of this toenail clipper: light blue, hot pink, rainbow (different hues for different toes!). When hyperfocusing on shopping for toenail clippers, for instance, you might think to yourself, I should stop this and work on my presentation for tomorrow. The term hyperfocus refers to being riveted in an activity so riveted that prying yourself away becomes a real challenge. Ever get engrossed in a perfectly innocent activity-such as looking up whether or not all sloths are three-toed-and then two hours later realize that reading endless reviews of toenail clippers is keeping you from getting started on that presentation that’s due tomorrow? ![]()
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