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If you have a short attention span, you’ve probably always considered it to be one of your drawbacks. It makes it difficult for you to focus and it makes working long shifts at work a real pain.

However, it does have its benefits, though they’re mostly going to help you in the long run, not in the short term. A leaky attention span can help you come up with greater creative ideas over time, allowing you to return to them when you have the time to dedicate to it.

Those who are more easily distracted have been shown to be more creative in a number of studies. The problem is, you’re likely not being paid to be creative all the time. You need to have time to be creative, but most of your time is likely spent doing physical work or work that’s bringing ideas to life instead of making new ideas.

In those times, a short attention span can be detrimental, because it disrupts your focus while you’re trying to actually create something that embodies the ideas you’ve come up with previously.

The workaround here is to have a system set up for quickly logging your ideas that pop into your mind so that you can return to them later, and spend time focusing on the task at hand in the present.

You could use something as simple as a little notepad with a pen. Anytime you’re working and get pulled off track by an idea, quickly jot it down and you can return to it later when you have time.

You’d be surprised at how much you continue to be distracted by ideas just because you don’t want to forget them. Once you know they’re written down and can be returned to later on, you can return to focusing on what you’re doing.

It’s beneficial to have all of these little ideas stored away, because at some point you might try to brainstorm something to work on, and you might not have anything coming to mind. Then, you can reference your notebook and use one of those little sparks of imagination to fuel a whole new project that you might’ve otherwise forgotten.

By keeping tabs on your overactive imagination like this, you retain all of those smaller sparks of creativity that can blossom into wonderful, big projects – while still working diligently to bring existing ideas to fruition.