11 Sept 2026
Where Did My Brain Go?
For parents who work and homeschool in the same house — sometimes in the same hour — the hardest part of the day often isn’t the work or the teaching. It’s the switch between them. This episode breaks down the science of “attention residue,” why your brain doesn’t fully leave one task when you move to the next, and a simple, practical method — the Focus Block Method — for protecting your attention on both sides of the handoff.
What You’ll Learn
* Why you can feel physically present with your kids but mentally still “at work” — and why that’s not a focus problem, it’s a documented cognitive one
* The real research behind why a single interruption can cost far more than the interruption itself
* How to build “focus blocks” into a homeschool day that also includes a job, a business, or client work
* A ninety-second transition ritual to use between switching from work mode to teaching mode (and back)
* Why removing the decision to check social media (with a screen time limit, a blocker app, or a physical device) works better than willpower
* How a weekly “top three to five” list keeps your protected blocks aimed at what actually matters, not just what feels urgent
Research & Resources Mentioned
* Leroy, Sophie. “Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, vol. 109, no. 2, 2009, pp. 168–181.
* Mark, Gloria, Victor M. Gonzalez, and Justin Harris. “No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work.” Proceedings of CHI 2005 — foundational work on task interruption frequency. Related follow-up: Mark, Gloria, et al. “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress.” Proceedings of CHI 2008, ACM, 2008. (Source of the ~23-minute recovery finding.)
* Newport, Cal. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Grand Central Publishing, 2016.
Additional Resources
* Harvard Business Review, “Stop Letting Yesterday’s Frustrations Ruin Today,” Sophie Leroy’s 2020 HBR piece on attention residue and how to clear it between tasks
* Cal Newport’s website (calnewport.com) for ongoing writing on deep work and attention in daily life
* A simple “block audit” you can do with a notebook: track one full day, marking every switch between work, teaching, and logistics, to see where your own residue is building up
Key Terms
* Attention residue — the portion of cognitive focus that stays “stuck” on a previous task even after you’ve physically moved to a new one, first documented by Sophie Leroy in 2009.
* Chrono-blocking — organizing your schedule around the type of cognitive task (deep, shallow, logistical) rather than by the clock alone.
* Deep work — a term coined by Cal Newport for focused, distraction-free cognitive effort that produces new value and is hard to replicate; contrasted with “shallow work,” which is logistical and low-cognitive-demand.
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