Shadowing Practice: Tools to Improve Your Focus & Concentration | Huberman Lab Essentials - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science -based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance.
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I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
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Today, we are discussing focus and concentration and tools for improving your focus and concentration.
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And those tools will allow you to tap into the neurochemistry
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and the neural circuits within your brain and body
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that peer -reviewed science has reliably shown can significantly improve your focus and concentration abilities.
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Just to give you a little teaser of the kinds of tools that I'm going to provide you on today's episode, a previous guest on the Huberman Lab Podcast was Dr. Wendy Suzuki.
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Dr. Suzuki is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at New York University, or NYU, as it's commonly referred to.
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Her laboratory made a very important discovery, which was that a very brief, just 12, actually 13, if you really count the intro,
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but 13 -minute daily meditation performed for a period of about eight weeks significantly increased people's focus and concentration abilities.
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And the great news is you didn't need all eight weeks.
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It was just, that's how long that you ran the study.
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So during today's episode, I will describe that protocol in detail.
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I'll also provide you an even briefer alternative to that protocol that you can use if, for instance, you find yourself with only three minutes or four minutes or five minutes a day to meditate.
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Because today's episode is mainly focused on tools and not so much the underlying mechanisms.
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I'm mainly going to focus on what to do and when and how to do it.
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But I just want to take about three minutes
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and briefly describe a model that is a visual image that you can put in your mind
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that will help you incorporate the tools that I'll provide and that generally will help you understand at a mechanistic level, how focus and concentration work.
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What I want you to imagine is an arrow
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and an arrow of course has an arrow head and it has the shaft of that arrow.
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The neurochemical system that really represents the shaft of that arrow, right?
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The straight line is epinephrine, also called adrenaline.
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It turns out that epinephrine slash adrenaline are released within your brain from a little location, a little cluster of neurons called locus coeruleus, but you do not need to remember that name,
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and from your body, from the adrenal glands.
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And the release of epinephrine from those two locations overall increases energy.
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It increases alertness.
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It does not alone increase focus, okay?
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So things, whether or not they're behavioral or psychological or supplements or drugs that increase epinephrine allow focus to occur.
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They are necessary for focus, but they are not sufficient for focus.
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That is, they are required, but they are not enough to create focus.
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So we're going to need epinephrine in the equation.
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Now the arrowhead on this metaphorical arrowhead that represents focus and concentration
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is going to be represented or related to the mechanisms of acetylcholine.
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And the best way to think about it is it's like a spotlight.
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It highlights specific neurons, nerve cells that should be active or more active, I should say, than the other neurons in the environment.
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If you have an arrow with a very big arrowhead that's really broad, really blunt, imagine a mile wide arrowhead, that's not very focused on any one location.
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It's not really pointing to any one location, is it?
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But with a narrow, really tightly focused arrowhead, well, that's focused on one location.
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So we have alertness, epinephrine, and then we have the actual direction in which our concentration and focus is placed.
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And that's, at least in this mental model, I'm creating acetylcholine.
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And then in order to have ongoing focus, we need another neurochemical.
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And it turns out that that third neurochemical is dopamine, a molecule often associated with pleasure and reward, but it's really the molecule of motivation.
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These three neurochemicals together, acetylcholine, epinephrine, and dopamine, really allow you to get focused,
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to focus very precisely, and in fact, increasingly precisely over time, to really narrow and narrow and narrow your focus progressively within a single bout of focus,
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and to continue to do that and to be able to do that repeatedly whenever you want.
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Let's jump into the tools for concentration and focus.
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One of the most important things to build and maintain your focus and concentration is to optimize your sleeping behavior.
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That is to get enough quality sleep, I would say 80 % of the nights of your life.
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Not everyone can get optimal sleep 100 % of the nights of their life.
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Nobody, truly nobody achieves that.
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However, sleep has been shown to relate to cognitive performance, physical performance, hormone output, and so many other things,
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what we can reliably say is that sleep modulates just about every process in your brain and body.
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So assuming that you are sleeping well 80 % of the nights of your life, or at least working.
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on the various protocols and tools to sleep well and sufficiently long, 80 % of the nights of your life.
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And you are interested in additional tools that are sound -based in order to improve your ability to concentrate and focus.
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There are quality peer -reviewed studies supporting the idea that white noise
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or pink noise have been shown to not improve concentration per se,
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but to improve people's ability to transition into concentrated states there is indeed some data to support the fact
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that white noise and to some extent pink noise
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and brown noise can amplify the activity of neurons in the
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so -called prefrontal cortex this front area sort of the bumper behind your forehead
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that is directly related to your ability to direct your own focus
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and remain focused on certain things these are tools
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that really have been shown over
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and over in humans to decrease the transition time into focus
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this is a really key point a lot of people are
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challenged with getting into a mode of focus none of us however should be expected to just sit down
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and drop directly into a state of focus i think that's completely
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an unfair request of ourselves i mean for instance you wouldn't expect yourself to go out on the track
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or go out for a run
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and not warm up you might jog for a few minutes
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or even walk before you would jog
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and then jog before you would run right i would hope you would do
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that and if you're doing resistance training i doubt
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that you go over and load up the bar
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or the machine with the maximum amount of weight that you can move and then just drop right into that, you always do a warmup.
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And I think it's very important to understand mental work, focus, and concentration as requiring that warmup.
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There's a gradual dropping into any state, whether or not that state is sleep, right?
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You go from shallow sleep to deep sleep and then out eventually.
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Focus two, you go from shallow focus to increasingly deep focus.
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That is in our metaphor of the arrow, it's very broad.
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It's pointed at a lot of things.
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And over time, as we drop into focus, that arrow is narrowing and narrowing and narrowing.
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It is not what we call a step function.
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It's not like you go from unfocused to focused and then you drop into your maximal focus.
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By understanding that it's dynamic, by understanding that you are going to be continually going in and out of progressively but varying levels of focus,
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you will greatly release the pressure on yourself to feel focused all the time when you want to be.
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So be patient with yourself and also understand that focus is an ability,
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that you can improve your ability to focus by engaging the neural circuits responsible for focus repeatedly over time through
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so -called neuroplasticity, the ability of your nervous system to change in response to experience.
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And that has a couple of different components, but put very simply, what we repeat gets etched into our nervous system and becomes easier over time.
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The question I often get is how long should I try to focus?
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Well, the research literature point to the key importance of so -called ultradian cycles.
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You've all probably heard of circadian cycles or circadian biology, circa the day, circadian is about 24 hour cycle well our brain
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and body operate within that day or within each
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and every day i should say with 90 minute ultradian cycles
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so my suggestion would be anytime you're going to sit down
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and try and focus you're going to try
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and do a focused bout of physical exercise or skill learning
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or musical learning or maybe you're even just having a conversation maybe you're a therapist
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or you're attending therapy or a class how long should it be
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and the ideal duration is about 90 minutes everything from our sleep states or the different and stages of sleep, and our waking states is divided into these 90 -minute cycles,
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or so -called ultradian cycles.
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I acknowledge and accept the fact that the first five to 10 minutes of that 90 minutes are a transition time.
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It's like the warmup for focus, but I do include it in that 90 minutes.
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I'm often asked how many ultradian cycles one can perform throughout the day.
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That depends on how well you've slept, how well you are nourished, which we'll talk about in a moment, and how well trained up your focus capacity is.
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Again, this is not to say that you should go to your teacher
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or your PhD advisor or your parent or your friends and say, listen, I can't really concentrate or think about anything for more than 90 minutes per day.
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That's not what I'm saying.
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These are deep focus bouts.
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These are bouts of mental work or physical work where you're really forcing yourself to focus and refocus, to sharpen the head of that arrowhead, to redirect it to what you're trying to concentrate on.
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And it is indeed hard work.
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I would even think about it more or less like a workout of any kind.
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Your ability to focus, and in fact, your ability of neurons to encode specific information in your environment, that is to represent what's out there in the world,
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is actually related to your blood glucose level.
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There's a beautiful study that was published in Neuron not long ago that showed that the tuning, that is the precision with which neurons in the brain will represent things in our environment,
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is actually much greater when there is sufficient glucose in the brain.
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Translated into English, this means that when we are fasted or when our blood glucose is very low, we aren't able to perceive and think about things as clearly.
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Now, there's a twist to this, however.
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One of the things that you hear very often is
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that some people like being fasted because they like the clarity of mind that it provides.
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Here's the situation.
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Neurons, unless you're in a ketogenic diet, really thrive on glucose.
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They love glucose.
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So why would it be that some people experience a heightened state of mental clarity when they are fasted?
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I've certainly experienced that before.
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Well, I should say that provided you're well hydrated enough and you have enough electrolytes in your system, what tends to happen is that when you ingest food,
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there's a shift in your nervous system towards so -called parasympathetic mode.
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You probably heard it as rest and digest, although it does other things, a more relaxed mode that can indeed make us very sleepy
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if we have too many carbohydrates it actually can make us quite sleepy however
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if we have any food if we have enough of it
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that is if our gut is full it diverts blood to our gut
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and we become sleepy and we can't focus as well imagine a u -shaped function right where
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if you're very fasted you're going to have a high degree of focus
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and concentration but then if you ingest some food
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and your belly is full your focus and concentration is reduced
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but having enough of blood glucose and maybe even elevated blood glucose will increase cognitive function.
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So you sort of have to pick your condition.
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What do you want for your bouts of focus and concentration?
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I actually do both.
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So what I do is, as I mentioned before, I eat my meal sometime around 11 a .m., my first meal typically, unless I'm very hungry when I wake up.
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And so I will do my workout and one bout of focused work.
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I always think of this as my hard work early in the day.
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And I do that fasted.
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I'll be consuming water with electrolytes.
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That's my first focus bout of 90 minutes or less.
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And then I'll eat.
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And then I do notice after I eat, I actually have a diminished capacity to focus.
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But then again in the afternoon, I will do another 90 minute bout of focus.
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So to make this very simple or as simple as I can for you, being fasted is great for focus and concentration,
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provided you're not thinking about food the entire time.
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And being fed is terrific for focus and concentration, actually can improve neuronal function, provided that you didn't eat too much food.
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So one way to manage this is
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if you're going to have a lunch to make sure that you don't stuff yourself at lunch, that you're not overeating and to not get quite so full
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that you push your nervous system into this parasympathetic mode and make it hard to focus in the afternoon.
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But if you're eating large meals, you are going to diminish your concentration and focus, period.
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I know many people are curious as to whether or not caffeine can improve focus and concentration.
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And indeed it can.
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There is a kind of general range in which we can talk about caffeine as being useful for focus and concentration.
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And the range is basically from 100 milligrams to 400 milligrams.
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I want to caution everybody out there, if you're somebody who suffers from anxiety or panic attacks
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and you're not used to ingesting caffeine and you run out
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and ingest 400 milligrams of caffeine in the form of espresso or yerba mate or an energy drink or in pill form, that is going to be very uncomfortable for you.
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You're going to be sweating profusely.
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Your heart rate is going to increase you're going to be quite panicked in fact
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or at least anxious
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but most people do quite well to ingest 100 to 200
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milligrams of caffeine prior to doing some focused work i will caution those of you
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that think that you can drink caffeine in the evening or nighttime and still fall asleep
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all of the research points to the fact
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that the architecture of your sleep and the depth of your sleep is disrupted even
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if you're able to fall
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and stay asleep the sleep you're getting is simply not as good as the sleep you would get
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if you were to shut off your caffeine intake at least eight hours before bedtime
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and ideally more like 10 or even 12 hours before bedtime
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but of course there are practical constraints as well there's an excellent study
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that was carried out not
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that long ago on how stress itself can increase our ability to focus
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and concentrate you know most people think of stress as impairing our ability of focus
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but that's actually not true
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when we are stressed it involves the deployment the release of adrenaline epinephrine and that adrenaline both changes our visual field.
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In other words, it narrows our vision to a more tunnel -like focus.
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That is, it makes the arrow in our metaphor of the arrow more sharp and it improves our concentration.
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So the study that really shows quite definitively that acute stress, meaning stress that comes on fairly suddenly, improves concentration performance.
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It's a paper published in the journal Experimental Psychology in 2020.
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The title of the paper is, not surprisingly, Acute Stress Improves Concentration Performance.
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First author, DeGroot, D -E -G -R -O -O -T -E.
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And this study involved taking a number of subjects and stressing them out or not prior to a cognitive or concentration task.
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And there are a lot of data in this paper, but I'm just going to home in on one specific set of data.
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And I should mention as I go there that they measured things like cortisol, a stress hormone, and they measured anxiety.
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It was a quite thorough study.
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And what they found was that concentration performance improved many fold,
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I should say, from there was a greater than doubling of concentration and performance in the stress group.
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And stress in this context was provided using a standard way of inducing stress.
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What they basically do is they bring subjects into the laboratory and they have to do a simulated job interview, an arithmetic task, and they're being evaluated as they're doing this.
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So this isn't, you know, intense psychosocial stress.
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You know, they're not watching anything disturbing.
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They're not being traumatized in any kind of way.
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This is fairly low levels of stress that rates their levels of epinephrine,
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and we know this from this study and other levels of cortisol and other stress hormone modestly within their brain and blood.
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But that even modest increase in these stress hormones and their reported psychological levels of stress really enhance their focus and concentration.
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Now, of course, there are other ways to increase stress levels
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and to do that in healthy ways to improve concentration and performance.
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And one of the best ways to do that, because it's so surefire and it's generally safe, provided you do it safely, is deliberate cold exposure.
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This is something I've talked about on the podcast before, but deliberate cold exposure can be achieved by getting into a cold shower for one to five minutes.
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We know that getting into cold water or under cold water greatly increases epinephrine levels and dopamine levels.
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There's a beautiful study that was published in the European Journal of Physiology that showed that the increases in dopamine are massive,
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near doubling or more of dopamine levels that are very long lasting for hours
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and epinephrine and in ways that support not just immune system function because they do that and mood because it does that,
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but that can really improve concentration and focus.
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This is not a biohack.
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I don't like the word hack.
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I know it's commonly used, but a hack is something where you're using one thing for a different purpose than it was originally intended for.
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And here I'm not referring to the shower or the cold bath, I'm referring to epinephrine.
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Epinephrine is a neurochemical that will place your vision into more of a tunnel mode, which will allow you to focus on cognitive work or physical work in a more specific way.
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You're not going to be as distractible.
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And it's very easy to achieve by getting into a cold shower or a cold body of water
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for a brief period of time.
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People always ask how long to get under or into cold water and how cold to make it.
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Here's the thing.
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It should be uncomfortably cold, but safe to stay in for one to five minutes.
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Cold water exposure, I should say deliberate cold water or non -deliberate cold water exposure, reliably increases epinephrine levels.
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It is incredibly useful as a tool for this.
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Some of you might think this is a little bit silly as a tool for focus and concentration, but if you look at the data on epinephrine and how powerfully it can increase focus,
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I think you'd be very impressed.
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I mean, it certainly can increase one's ability to attend to specific visual stimuli.
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So for reading or math work, et cetera, it's going to be very useful the point here is
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that a lot of people would love to
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and i think ought to leverage the health promoting
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and powerful effects of increasing epinephrine on focus and concentration
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and running out and getting stressed by a life event
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or getting into an argument or something like
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that simply as a way to increase focus and concentration doesn't seem
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that adaptive to me so deliberate cold exposure is a straightforward way to do
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that it doesn't involve anyone else i suppose you could do it with somebody else but it doesn't require or anyone else.
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And again, there are zero, low, and even negative cost ways to approach that.
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Now I'd like to discuss some of the purely behavioral tools
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that quality peer -reviewed science say can improve focus and concentration significantly.
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At the beginning of today's episode, I talked about the study from Dr. Wendy Suzuki's lab, where they explored a 13 -minute meditation done every day for a period of eight weeks.
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That meditation led to significant improvements in focus and concentration ability, as well as other aspects of cognitive performance.
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It also improved mood and reduced stress.
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So you might be wondering, what exactly is this meditation?
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The meditation is very simple and it's one that anyone can perform.
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What you would want to do is set a timer for about 13 minutes.
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I don't think it has to be exactly 13 minutes, but since that's what they included in the study, you would set a timer for 13 minutes.
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You would sit or lie down, close your eyes, and you would simply focus on your breathing.
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Ideally, you would do just nasal breathing for a period of 13 minutes, concentrating on that breathing, and concentrating,
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meaning bringing your awareness to a point just about an inch inside of your forehead while also concentrating on your breathing.
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Now, here's the thing about meditation that all studies of meditation show, which is that unless you are a very experienced meditator,
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your concentration, your focus will drift away from your breathing and away from that location about an inch inside your head,
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inside your brain, that will happen maybe every 10 seconds, every 20 seconds, maybe even every five seconds.
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But an important part of such a meditation practice to improve concentration and focus is that you are continually refocusing.
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back to that specific location and refocusing back on your breath.
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This is something that, again, is not often discussed.
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People think that if you do a meditation and you're supposed to concentrate on your breath, that if your mind drifts, that somehow you failed in that meditation, but actually that's not the case.
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A huge component of improving your ability to focus and concentrate by way of neuroplasticity, rewiring of the circuits for focus and concentration,
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is the repeated return to a state of focus from a state of non -focus or diminished focus, okay?
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So think about it like trying to drive down the freeway and staying between the lane lines, excuse me.
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And every once in a while, because there's a bit of drift on the vehicle, maybe the wheels aren't aligned correctly or there's something else wrong with the chassis or the steering device, it starts to drift right a little bit.
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Then you hit the rumble strip to go, and then you pull back to the center.
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That's really what a focused meditation practice is about, as opposed to expecting yourself to stay between the mental lane lines, so to speak.
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By doing that repeatedly over and over, what you're really training up is the network within your brain that indeed includes that prefrontal cortex that you're focusing on,
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as well as some other structures, the infratemporal cortex, indeed the hippocampus, a structure associated with memory,
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and other components of the neural circuit that are involved in directing our mental focus and concentration.
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The point here isn't how long you focus
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or somehow trying to achieve total focus for the entire 13 minute or 17 minute or 60 minute bout of meditation.
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While that would be wonderful, and I think many people aspire to do that, that's a lot of hard mental work.
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I think for most people out there,
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including myself, a relatively short meditation practice of about 13 minutes in which you fully expect your focus and concentration to drift,
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but that you are continually refocusing is going to be the most effective.
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Yes, indeed, the most effective at teaching yourself to focus and stay concentrated.
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In fact, I invite you to interpret every time
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that you focus off that location about one inch behind your forehead as an opportunity to refocus
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and think about the refocusing as the trigger for teaching your neural circuits how to focus for extended periods of time.
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And as a bonus to that sort of meditation practice, the study from Wendy Suzuki's lab also showed that people experience improvements in sleep and improvements in memory.
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So not just improvements in mood and reduction in stress and improvements in focus and concentration, but all these other positive benefits from just doing that 13 -minute -a -day meditation practice.
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It's one that I've started to adopt and have felt tremendous benefit from
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and that I encourage many of you to try as well.
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Now, there's another set of behavioral tools that can really help enhance one's ability to focus, and those are visual -based tools.
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In fact, the tools I'm about to describe are actually being employed in a number of schools in China
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and elsewhere in order to teach children to focus better and for longer periods of time.
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The key principle here is that much of our cognitive focus, our ability to think about something in a very specific way
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and stay focused on it to read or to follow a line of conversation or math or music,
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et cetera, is going to be directed by our visual system.
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That's also why they put blinders on horses.
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That's also why sometimes wearing a hoodie or a hat
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or limiting your visual field in some way can help you enhance your cognitive focus.
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It can help limit distraction.
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You're just not seeing as much.
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So what is a practice that has been studied in various laboratories
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and that's being employed in various schools is to have children
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or adults visually focus on one location for a given period of time.
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How long?
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Anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes and believe it or not, three minutes is a long time to maintain visual focus at one location.
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If you were to try that right now, you'd probably find it to be a bit of a strain, but if you want to try it, you can.
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Also keep in mind that the refocusing is the key component of teaching yourself or your brain how to focus better.
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So if you're going to incorporate this practice, what you would want to do is pick a location.
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It could be on a wall.
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It could be on your computer in front of you, although I would encourage it to not be the contents of your computer screen you might just want to blank your screen, you might want to put a piece of paper with a crosshatch there, any sort of visual target,
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or you can imagine a visual target, and then focus your visual attention on that target and try to breathe normally, try and stay relaxed, and certainly allow yourself to blink so that your eyes don't dry out.
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By focusing on that particular location and by forcing yourself to refocus on that location, anytime your gaze, your vision drifts from that location,
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you are encouraging the circuits for focus to get better at focusing for longer
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and longer going to refocusing when your focus drifts off of that location.
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This practice is recruiting certain elements of your
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so -called prefrontal cortex, also the.. frontal eye fields
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which are locations not far from the prefrontal cortex
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that are involved in deliberately directing your gaze to particular locations in space here's what i recommend
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set yourself a low bar at first and set a timer
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and try to focus on one location for 30 seconds
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and that's it for that day the next day you might add five seconds
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and then the next day five seconds after that
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if you miss a day no big deal simply do the practice for the same amount of time
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that you did the last time that you did the practice
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and then gradually try and increase the amount of time
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that you can focus on one visual location overtly by looking directly at that location
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so what i recommend is having a 30 second to three
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minute period at the beginning of about a focus where you're going to do work
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or physical work and anchoring your vision to one location somewhere in the room
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or if you want to do it covertly you can do
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that setting a timer and trying to do that for anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes, what you're doing when you exercise
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that practice is you are ramping up neural activity within the neural circuits that create focus and concentration.
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And then I would move to the work that you're trying to do, either mental work or physical work.
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And if about halfway through your 90 -minute bout or at some point in your 90 -minute bout of work or exercise, you feel that your concentration is drifting,
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rather than look at your phone and scroll through the thousands of contexts that exists within social media or your phone, try just picking a location again on the wall,
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focusing back on that location, using that as a ramp up to then direct your focus back towards
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if your weight training sets and reps that you might be performing, if you're running, you might do this,
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or cycling, you might do this by focusing on a particular location and really homing in on that location physically.
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And this is a practice that a lot of athletes use in fact.
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And if you're say doing musical practice or math, well then you'd want to focus on something other than the task that you're trying to perform.
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But again, using visual focus as a way to ramp up
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and increase your overall ability to focus and concentrate and then applying
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that to whatever it is that you're trying to learn or perform.
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Next, I'd like to talk about compounds that can improve concentration and focus.
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And these are most often consumed as supplements, although some of them I should mention can also be derived from food.
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One of the key compounds that supports concentration and focus
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because it generally supports mood concentration and focus and brain function in general are the omega -3 essential fatty acids.
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And it's really clear that getting somewhere between one and three grams of EPA essential fatty acid per day can improve outcomes,
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that is can improve mood and can improve cognitive function.
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Again, in the context of focus and concentration, it's in modulating the neural circuits and brain function that are going to support focus and concentration.
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It's not as
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if taking one to three grams of EPA essential fatty acids
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per day is going to tap directly into only the circuits for focus and concentration.
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The other thing that can positively modulate brain function and
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that actually works as a fuel for neurons to function and can improve cognitive performance in particular within the brain circuits,
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such as the prefrontal cortex that are involved in concentration and focus is creatine.
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I know many people are familiar with creatine monohydrate for its effects on muscle growth and strength and performance.
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But it's quite clear
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that the bulk of scientific studies have examined the role of creatine in the clinical context
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and as its role in improving cognitive performance.
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So my read of the literature has led to a practice in which I ingest five grams per day of creatine monohydrate, the sort of standard form that's available,
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really isn't geared towards muscle growth or strength
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or performance as much as geared toward tapping into the creatine phosphate system within the brain
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and specifically the benefits of creatine for prefrontal cortical networks.
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Again, modulating, not directly mediating, but modulating and generally supporting the brain networks that are going to allow me to generate focus and concentration.
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Now, in terms of compounds that more specifically mediate concentration and focus, we have to go back to that arrow metaphor model
358
that we talked about at the beginning of the episode that included epinephrine, adrenaline, acetylcholine, which acts as this attentional spotlight.
359
In fact, acetylcholine and elevated levels of acetylcholine have been shown over
360
and over again to improve or even directly gate neuroplasticity by increasing focus directly.
361
As I mentioned earlier, there are a number of different foods which contain choline.
362
You can look those up online.
363
Choline acting as an amino acid precursor to acetylcholine.
364
But of course there are compounds, there are supplements that can further and more acutely increase acetylcholine.
365
And indeed, I use these myself.
366
The most effective one I've found is alpha GPC.
367
Alpha GPC consumed...
368
at dosages of 300 milligrams to 600 milligrams prior to a work bout or prior to a workout, greatly increase one's ability to focus and concentrate.
369
At least that's been my experience.
370
And there are some good data in humans.
371
Now, a number of people have contacted me about a recent study suggesting that alpha -GPC, when taken chronically over many years,
372
could increase one's vulnerability to stroke.
373
I've looked at those data, and my read of the data is that they're not very conclusive, although anytime you see something like that, you obviously want to be concerned.
374
And it seems to be related to increases in TMAO, which is a marker related to the cardiovascular system.
375
And one known way to offset increases in TMAO that are associated either with alpha GPC or increases due to other things,
376
so ingestion of particular food compounds actually can increase TMAO, is to offset that by taking 600 milligrams of garlic.
377
Now, I've been taking Alpha -GPC pretty consistently for a number of years.
378
I do not take it every day.
379
I would say I take it about four days per week, again, prior to workouts or bouts of cognitive work.
380
I have not seen my TMAO spike, and I've evaluated that by way of blood tests.
381
But based on this recent study and the concerns about TMAO,
382
I make it a point to always ingest a 600 milligram capsule of garlic anytime I take Alpha -GPC, which again, for me is about four days per week.
383
So if one wants to increase the amount of dopamine transmission in the brain
384
and body for sake of increasing concentration and focus, one of the most efficient ways to do that is by ingestion of the amino acid L -tyrosine.
385
I use L -tyrosine in capsule form.
386
I will take 500 milligrams of L -tyrosine, 300 milligrams of alpha -GPZ, and a cup of coffee.
387
Do this early in the day before a workout or before a bout of concentrated mental work.
388
I don't want to give the impression that I combine every tool that I've talked about today for a given work bout.
389
That to me seems like a very inefficient way to go about life.
390
In fact, I make it a point to try and use tools to increase my ability to concentrate and focus,
391
but not to combine more than two or three of them at any one time.
392
Other days, I confess, I've slept very well
393
or my enthusiasm about what I'm about to work on is such that I don't require any of these tools.
394
Again, there's no requirement there's no pressure to use any of these tools, behavioral supplement based or otherwise.
395
It's simply a matter of using the tools
396
that are going to allow you to achieve the states you want to achieve
397
and to improve your ability to go into those states without any help at all.
398
I prefer to look at supplements of the sort
399
that I just described as a route into a deeper trench of focus
400
and concentration that I use as a tool to teach myself to focus
401
and concentrate more deeply such that I don't need those tools every single time I try and focus and concentrate.
402
I think this is an important point because I think
403
that many people think of supplements as a crutch
404
or a way of simply getting into a state for which no other tool will suffice or replace.
405
But in that context, I want to remind you of the larger context of pharmacology, which is the vast landscape of prescription pharmacology for ADHD,
406
for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
407
Now, I covered that landscape in intense detail on the episode on ADHD and focus.
408
And just to summarize, there is, of course, Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse, Modafinil, R -Modafinil, a number of different compounds,
409
all of which generally increase dopamine transmission in the brain, so increasing dopamine, and all of which generally increase epinephrine, adrenaline transmission in the brain and body
410
and many of those compounds have been of tremendous benefit to children and even some adults who suffer from ADHD.
411
So properly prescribed at the appropriate dosage, those compounds can really help people with clinically diagnosed ADHD.
412
The way they help those people is a bit surprising, however.
413
You might think, well, they turn on the brain chemicals that allow those people to concentrate and focus.
414
That's true, but they also have the benefit of teaching those brain circuits how to engage.
415
And that's one of the reasons why somewhat paradoxically giving a stimulant like Ritalin
416
or Adderall to a kid that legitimately needs it.
417
Obviously you don't want to do this without the oversight and careful evaluation of a psychiatrist, but giving that to a kid who has severe ADHD,
418
you would think would make them more rambunctious, less able to focus and more distractible overall.
419
After all, Ritalin, Modafinil, R -Modafinil, all these things are stimulants.
420
So you take a kid who has attention deficit
421
hyperactivity disorder and give them these drugs that increase transmission of dopamine and epinephrine and you think, wow, it's going to make them even more distractible and hyperactive.
422
And indeed it has the opposite effect.
423
It doesn't necessarily make them feel calm, but it makes them feel that they can focus.
424
They really can anchor their attention.
425
And the idea is that it's teaching those neural circuits, or those neural circuits rather are teaching themselves to engage and to focus and concentrate.
426
And the ideal situation is one in which the total dosage of those compounds, those drugs can be reduced over time as those circuits learn to come online through purely behavioral tools
427
but I strongly discourage the use of powerful prescription drugs that have not been prescribed you.
428
First of all, it's illegal.
429
Second of all, it's quite dangerous to hit the accelerator of those neural circuits with such vigor
430
because it can increase dependency
431
and they can have a number of other side effects outside the context of clinically diagnosed and prescribed ADHD medication.
432
I always believe that behavioral tools should come first, then focus on nutrition.
433
In fact, I would say behavioral and nutrition tools.
434
And of course, get excellent sleep.
435
Then focus on supplementation.
436
And then, and only if those are failing to bring your brain
437
and body to the state you need to be in to perform well in school and work and life, et cetera, do I recommend that people lean on prescription drugs.
438
So today we've talked about a number of different tools and to some extent, some mechanisms involved in concentration and focus.
439
And really the goal has been to provide you an understanding of the neurochemical systems
440
and a little bit about the neural circuits that can allow you to achieve states of attention and focus.
441
My hope in giving you all this information in one single location is
442
that you will be able to pick and choose
443
which of these protocols you would like to incorporate into your attempts to improve your focus and concentration.
444
Once again, the goal is to teach your brain, that is, to increase neuroplasticity in the neural circuits that allow you not just to focus,
445
but to refocus your attention.
446
And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it's also critical to be able to defocus.
447
I highly encourage people to take a period of time each day to daydream, to walk down the hall without looking at your phone,
448
to not have to incorporate more sensory information, to not place increasing demands on yourself to focus and see
449
and realize how having a period of deliberate decompression
450
and defocusing can allow your brain to focus so much better when you do decide to return to a bout of focused, concentrated work or physical work.
451
So thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion, all about the mechanisms and especially the tools for enhancing concentration and focus.
452
And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 452 sentences and 6909 words to shadow. The speech runs for 37:17. The speaker talks fast, about 185 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 81% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- concentration /ˌkɑn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/ (noun) — The act, process or ability of concentrating; the process of becoming concentrated, or the state of being concentrated.
- concentrate /ˈkɑn.sən.tɹeɪt/ (verb) — To bring to, or direct toward, a common center; to unite more closely; to gather into one body, mass, or force.
- circuit /ˈsɝ.kɪt/ (noun) — The act of moving or revolving around, or as in a circle or orbit; a revolution
- meditation /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/ (noun) — A devotional exercise of, or leading to, contemplation.
- bout /ˈbaʊt/ (noun) — A period of something, especially one painful or unpleasant, like an illness.
- neural /ˈnʊɹəl/ (adjective) — Of, or relating to the nerves, neurons or the nervous system.
- arrow /ˈæɹəʊ/ (noun) — A projectile consisting of a shaft, a point and a tail with stabilizing fins that is shot from a bow.
- cognitive /ˈkɑɡ.nɪ.tɪv/ (adjective) — Relating to the part of mental functions that deals with logic, as opposed to affective which deals with emotions.
- compound /ˈkɑmpaʊnd/ (noun) — Anything made by combining several things.
- alpha /ˈæl.fə/ (noun) — The name of the first letter of the Greek alphabet (Α, α), followed by beta. In the Latin alphabet it is the predecessor to A.
- behavioral /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/ (adjective) — Of or relating to behavior.
- glucose /ˈɡluː.kəʊz/ (noun) — A simple monosaccharide (sugar) with a molecular formula of C₆H₁₂O₆; a principle source of energy for cellular metabolism.
- caffeine /ˈkæfiːn/ (noun) — An alkaloid, C₈H₁₀N₄O₂, found naturally in tea and coffee plants, which acts as a mild stimulant on the central nervous system.
- breathe /bɹiːð/ (verb) — To draw air into (inhale), and expel air from (exhale), the lungs in order to extract oxygen and excrete waste gases.
- deliberate /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət/ (adjective) — Done on purpose; intentional.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- think about /ˈθɪŋk əˌbaʊt/ (verb) — To ponder.
- get into (verb) — To move into (an object), such that one ends up inside it.
- talked about (adjective) — Discussed by many people.
- drop into (verb) — To visit.
- look at (verb) — To observe or watch.
- talk about (verb) — Used to draw attention to the speaker's characterization of someone or something.
- sit down (verb) — To assume a sitting position from a standing position.
- turn out (verb) — To end up; to result.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 102 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: breathe /bɹiːð/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, bath /bɑːθ/, athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: concentration /ˌkɑn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/, meditation /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/, exposure /ɪkˈspəʊ.ʒə(ɹ)/, transmission /tɹænsˈmɪʃən/, transition /tɹænˈzɪʃ.ən/
- Long words — get the stress right: concentration /ˌkɑn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/, behavioral /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/, deliberate /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət/, adrenaline /əˈdɹɛnəlɪn/, mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like concentration, concentrate, circuit.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been shown · have been shown · you've slept |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are released · are required · be represented |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | discovery, which was · somebody who suffers · mode, which will |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.