Since we are bombarded with sensory input all day long and would go crazy if we had to deal with all of it, the reticular activating system does two things. It serves as a constant filter to block the unimportant, and it also serves as a gateway to allow important sensory input through to the higher-order brain structures for mental processing.

You can, in effect, program your reticular activating system and significantly increase the odds that your brain will pay attention to something that is important.
If it is important for you to pay attention to something and remember it, put it in writing. The physical act of putting something in writing helps program the reticular activating system to notice it. Once you write down what you want to notice, consider using these two main strategies for encoding

Powerful ideas are often rejected because they seem too simple to be true.

Acknowledge that consistently overloading yourself is a form of dysfunctional behavior driven by irrational thinking.

Make the decision to pace yourself at work and stop trying to squeeze a few more miles out of an empty tank. Stop confusing frenetic motion with constructive action.
Try breaking an eight hour day into 48-minute segments (there are, of course, 10 of these segments available). Make a commitment to spend at least 48 uninterrupted minutes tomorrow working on the most important things you need, want, or have to do to be successful. Then operate in your normal manner for the rest of the day. The next day go for two 48-minute blocks of highly focused time. My suggestion is that you draw your Plimsoll Line at about three 48-minute blocks of focused time most days. I am not suggesting that you only work 144 minutes each day. I am simply suggesting that you mentally designate three highly focused periods in a workday as a highly successful day. Then, cut yourself a little slack and stop pushing yourself so hard.

You often discover that people who are widely admired are highly focused when interacting with others. They make appropriate eye contact. They listen attentively and give others their full and undivided attention during a personal interaction.

Design most of your days so you will complete the three most important things you need to get done each day before noon.

Use the triage technique to schedule your morning activities and then shift down one more gear into a binary decision-making mode (the opposite of choice overload). The term binary means “consisting of two parts or two separate elements.” If it is before noon, you simply compare any potential distraction — e-mails, phone calls, drop-in visitors, etc. — with the most important unfinished item on your list of the three important things to get done for the day. It is much easier to compare competing demands for your time and make a decision if you are comparing two things, rather than trying to constantly juggle a multitude of things.

Repeat the process in the afternoon or work in a totally unstructured manner. Do whatever works best for you. I personally think there is a lot of value in having plenty of unstructured time.

When you define yourself as a writer, your long-term vision and short-term focus are easy to determine. Writers write.