Energy Surfing: the science of sustaining focus without crashing

If your focus disappears halfway through the day, this explains why and what to do about it

Have you ever hit the afternoon wall? Times when you're sitting at your desk, staring at a report or a complex set of data, and your brain simply refuses to process the information. You find yourself reading the same sentence three times but your focus has gone, your thinking has slowed, and mental fatigue quietly creeps in.

When this happens, most people respond the same way: push through. They reach for another coffee, a snack or drift through the next hour on admin tasks in an attempt to feel productive again.

We tell ourselves that stopping will ruin our flow, that continuous work equals continuous output.

Unsplash: Joao Ferreira

Organisational psychologists call this the Recovery Paradox. When our cognitive resources are depleted, we are least likely to adjust how we're working.

But pushing through doesn't restore productivity. It leaves you more depleted and less able to focus. And why is that? It comes down to our biology.

The Biological Truth: We Are Not Machines

The problem isn’t effort. It’s that we're working in ways that don't align with how human beings function. We treat our brains like machines, expecting it to operate at full capacity without a dip.

But human biology isn’t linear; it’s rhythmic and cyclical.

Most people have heard of circadian rhythms (our 24-hour biological clock), but few know about ultradian ones, short biological cycles that repeat throughout the day.

One of these directly affects focus and mental clarity.

Sleep researcher Nathan Kleitman names this rhythm the Basic Rest-Activity Cycle (BRAC).

For around 90 minutes, your brain is externally focused and primed for complex problem-solving and analytical reasoning. After that, it naturally switches to a lower-frequency state, a period of rest and consolidation. Your capacity to think and work well rises, peaks, falls, and recovers. Like waves. Yet most of try to work as if the ocean is flat.

When your brain drops into that low-energy trough, it’s shifting from concentration to consolidation.

If you force continued focus, you interrupt that process, leading to poorer thinking, errors and deeper fatigue.

Hitting a wall and needing a break isn’t weakness. It’s biology.

The Concept of Energy Surfing

The most effective knowledge workers don’t fight this biological cycle. They work with it.

Instead of pushing through, they learn to read the signals. They notice when energy is building, lean into deep work. As focus starts to fade, they recognise fatigue and distraction as signs that the wave has peaked and step back before their energy drops too far.

How to Surf the Waves

So what does this look like in a working day? To apply this, you need to structure your tasks around cognitive capacity, not just time.

Working in waves

Surfers know that waves come in sets. They're not continuous nor evenly spaced.

Your capacity works in much the same way.

To plan your work, think of your day as a series of waves to ride.

How you can do this:

• Spot the wave - notice rising focus

• Catch the wave - start something that matters

• Ride the wave – stay with it while your focus and energy hold

• Exit cleanly – step away when you become fidgety

• Recover – do something that helps the brain reset

Wipeouts as feedback

A wipeout is when you hit the wall. It’s not failure, it’s bio-feedback.

It usually means you pushed too far or tried to force energy that wasn’t there. The skill is in noticing what led to it, so you can exit more cleanly next time.

Waiting as part of mastery

Great surfers don’t spend all their time catching waves. They spend most of it waiting, watching, and readying.

In many workplaces that would look like laziness. In reality, it’s strategy.

Resting isn’t a break from productivity. It’s what makes the next wave of work possible.

Active Rest: How to support your brain

To restore cognitive functioning, your breaks need to support what your brain is trying to do. A minimum is to step away from any screen for those 15 minutes - no more focusing and processing.

Take a short walk. Sit outside. Make a drink. Do the dishes. Listen to music. Stretch. Anything that doesn’t make the same demands on the brain as your work does*. This releases it to do the consolidating it needs, rest and reset.

When you return, you’ll find you haven’t lost momentum, you’ve restored it.

You come back clearer, sharper, and ready for the next wave of deep work.

*Tip! These kind of activities are known as active rest. This blog explores its restorative power

Moving beyond the theory

Understanding the science of the Basic Rest-Activity Cycle is the easy part. The challenge is applying it in a real working day, when deadlines are tight, your inbox keeps filling up and meetings litter your calendar.

This is where most people get stuck. Not because they don’t understand the theory, but because changing how you work takes intention.

If you want to start working with your energy instead of against it, the first step is simply noticing your energy patterns.

The next step is to experiment with one focused 90-minute window in your day, and see what happens to your concentration.

If that feels too long, especially if the task is hard or draining, you can shorten the cycle. Techniques like the Pomodoro (working in shorter bursts with regular breaks) are a useful way to maintain momentum, when 90-minutes feels too long a stretch.

The goal isn’t to get this perfect it’s to start noticing what your brain actually needs.

Bottom line

We’re not supposed to be “on” all day.

Your capacity to work comes in waves. When you work with those waves instead of pushing through them, everything starts to feel more manageable.

Take care of you.

Curious how this shows up in your own day?

With my Refine coaching clients, we use a simple 10-day tracker to spot when focus rises, energy dips, and resets.

If you’d like a copy, just email me and I’ll send it over. It’s a simple tool, but it often sparks useful insights into what’s draining — or sustaining — your focus.