How To Improve Your Focus Permanently

In this video, I'll teach you how to create focus on command. That means being able to sit down when you need to study or work and being able to concentrate within minutes. You're not sitting there getting distracted, taking half an hour to get into it.

You're not getting sleepy or procrastinating halfway through. It's the ability to completely lock in even when you are tired, even when you don't want to, even when there are distractions around. I'll teach you the researchback strategies that I've learned to develop the skill for myself as well as some simple strategies that you can use on a daily basis.

These are things I've coached to thousands of people which I've also used to help me get through medical school and working as a doctor while running a business full-time. So, the first thing we have to understand is what focus actually is. Once you know what it is, then you can start to control it.

And the first thing you have to understand about focus is that focus is not a state. Focus is not a goal. Focus is a process.

And so in my early days, I used to think that in order to be better at focusing and develop deep concentration, I would need to just try really hard to not get distracted. But that's not how focus works at all. The best way to think about focus is by thinking about the focus muscle.

Just like a muscle, you can start weak, barely able to lift anything, but you can train that over time. And just like a muscle, that training does take time. And just like a muscle, it doesn't just automatically get better just because time is passing.

So if you're struggling with focus right now, or if it takes you a really long time to enter into deep flow and concentrated work, that probably means that your focus muscle is underdeveloped. That's not going to magically get better over time. Like 10 years from now, you're going to have the same problem.

actually, you're probably going to have an even worse problem because there are lots of things in the modern world that actually continue to weaken that focus muscle. But it is something that you can train and you should also train it to the point where you can do it on command. And this on command ability is actually really important.

If you are able to initiate focus on command, it opens a lot of opportunities for you that are normally closed off. So let's say you cannot focus on command. What this means is that your ability to concentrate is inconsistent and the amount of time it takes to enter into concentration is usually very long.

So this means that let's say you have a block in your day. So this is your Monday schedule and you've said that during this time between 12:00 p. m.

and 3 p. m. you want to get some really high quality work done.

The output you get, the quality of your work, whether this time block actually fulfills your goal or not largely depends on whether you can actually be in flow and be focused during this time. And if you are not focused, this time will elapse. 3 hours will pass by and at the end of that you will not have achieved the output that you need.

And then that creates a backlog. So the stuff that you're now behind on, you need to do that on Tuesday. And again, if you're not able to consistently focus, then that goes to Wednesday.

And so this backlog just continues to grow and grow and it's easy to become overwhelmed. And so it's much easier to handle lots of different tasks when you know that when you set aside some time to do some concentrated work, you can actually do it and the quality of that work is going to be high. When you can do focus on command, then not only does it give you that consistency and not only does it give you the confidence to be able to have something in your schedule and actually pull it off, it actually allows you to now create plans for progress.

The issue when you have inconsistent focus is that you don't know how big this backlog is going to grow because you don't know how focused you're going to be during this session. If you have a good session, you might be able to get through more than you expected. If you have a bad session, this backlog is only going to get bigger.

But until that time passes, you just don't know what's going to happen. This makes it very hard to create any meaningful medium-term plans. And the side effect of this is that you feel like you're losing control over your life and you can't make progress on the things that are really important to you.

And so training your ability to focus goes far beyond just being able to sit down and concentrate. But the big question is if focus is like a muscle and it can be trained then why is it so hard for people to have good focus and why do so many people have underdeveloped focus muscles? So this is how I want you to think about focus in the future.

So we've got this axis here time on the x and this is your distractability on the y ais. We're going to start off by drawing this dotted line in the middle. And this is going to be something that I call the distraction threshold.

So when you're above this distraction threshold line, you're not able to get meaningful work done. This is a bad place to be. You're easily distracted.

You're not in flow. When you're below this line, you are in a good place. You are able to access that flow.

And so the first idea here is that you do not need to have like perfect perfect focus every single day to just get meaningful work done and be in flow. It just has to be below this threshold amount and that's going to be good enough. But the key takeaway is to understand that there are certain forces that increase your distractability and then there are certain forces that decrease your distractability.

And on any given day, it's the balance between these two forces that will dictate whether you are focused that day or not. And so the goal of creating focus on command is to recognize when you're above this distraction threshold, you're recognizing the forces that are pushing you up there and then you use strategies that force it down so that you fall back below this threshold and you can enjoy your time here until you inevitably come back up. And so this fluctuation is very normal.

It's not normal to be able to just be perfectly focused every single time like with with no issues. It is a process of putting yourself into focus every single time. And what's important here is that we want this period of time where we are distracted but bringing ourselves into focus.

We want this time to be as short as possible. So if trying to get back into focus looks more like this and it's taking you all of this time to enter into concentration. This is really problematic for three reasons.

First of all, it's very frustrating and very demotivating, which means that over time, you're going to be less and less willing to enter into these focus sessions because you just don't really believe that you can concentrate. And so, that's very disempowering. But the second thing is that it disproportionately wastes time.

So, what I mean by this is that let's say that it takes you 5 minutes to enter into focus and and this is good. You know, if five minutes entering into focus, that's that's a good spot to be in. Now, if it takes you too long, this could take 20 to 30 minutes for a lot of people.

Actually, even longer for some. So, if you have a 3hour block to do some focused work, the difference is not in this situation where you have 2 hours and 55 minutes of good work versus having 2 hours and, you know, 30 minutes of good work. This these would both be good situations to be in.

In reality, what actually happens is that every time you break out of focus, so remember I said that this fluctuation is very normal. It means that every time you break out of focus, it's then going to take you all of that time to enter into it again. And so your focus block within this 3 hours might only last, let's say, uh 20 minutes or 30 minutes at a time.

So in this first instance here, it takes you 5 minutes to enter into focus every single time. So you take 5 minutes to enter into focus. You focus for about 30 minutes and then it takes you another 5 minutes to get back into your next flow state and then you have another great 30 minute session.

So overall, you know, 80 to 90% of the time that you're spending within this 3 hours is actually focused and really productive. In this situation, it takes you 30 minutes to enter into flow. And then you're going to focus, let's say, for 30 minutes.

And then it's going to take you another 30 minutes to enter into flow. and then you're going to focus for another 30 minutes. So overall, the amount of time that you're spending hasn't just gone down by, let's say, 20 minutes.

It's actually gone down to only 50% of that time being actually productive. And that's because every time you break out of flow, it takes you a long time to enter into flow again. That's why training focus on command is such a powerful skill.

So that was the second reason. The third major issue here is that it probably makes your flow state shorter. So, as if this wasn't bad enough, your focus session is probably not even going to be 30 minutes long, the reason is that if it's taking you a really long time to enter into this flow state again, it means that there are lots of forces keeping you above this distraction threshold.

And those forces are still going to be there even when you are in flow. So, there's more forces pushing you out of flow faster. So actually it's going to look like this.

If this is the distraction threshold line, you're going to be distracted, taking a long time to enter into flow. Then you've got a short window of focus which is rapidly coming back up again where you're then distracted and then it's taking a long time like that. So that actual focus window may only be something like 15 minutes which means that in a 3hour block of time that you intended to spend only about 30 to 40 minutes of it may actually be high quality work and you will probably feel this if you get easily distracted which is that the amount of time you block out for yourself doesn't seem to even make a difference.

So, if you're in this situation where all three of these things are happening to you, that is a very difficult place to be in from a productivity perspective and it's going to make it really hard for you to achieve challenging goals where you have to have consistency of flow every single day for weeks at a time. So, I'm going to teach you how you can manage this in two different parts. So, I'm going to focus on what are the forces that increase your distractability, make things harder for you, and then what are the strategies to bring you down.

And actually, you have to do it in that order. First, you want to remove the forces that keep you really distracted so that you don't need so many strategies to bring you into focus. If you only focus on strategies that increase focus when you're distraction forces are still really high, then it's going to be very effortful and that's going to make it hard to keep sustainability.

So, you might be really good in your first week, but by week two and week three, it takes so much effort to keep yourself in focus that you're going to slip up. So let's clean this board up and we'll start with these negative distraction forces. Now before I go into this I will mention that if you are feeling like oo this has been an interesting perspective I wish I had known this before then uh you could have known this before if you joined my newsletter.

So these concepts uh and the things that I'll be talking about I cover them also in uh my newsletters. They're completely free. I write them up myself, not chachi BT.

I think about all the things that have helped me to develop a great learning system and a great system of self-management and focus and distill these things down into actionable key takeaways that only take you a few minutes to read. So, if you are into optimizing your learning and focus system and you want to learn from some of my insights both personally and as a coach, then you may be interested in checking out my newsletter. As I said, it's totally free.

I'll leave a link to that in the description below. What are these big distraction forces? Most of the distraction forces are going to be external and that there are actually things in your outside environment that are creating the distraction for you.

And the simplest way that you can do a self audit to figure out which external distractions tend to increase your distractability the most is using these two different categories. either thinking about the distractions as either environmental or interactive. So an environmental distraction is something that actually physically pulls you away from focus because it's distracting you.

So a great example would be like a phone notification or some kind of distracting noise, you know, people talking around you. It can also be something that's visual. So seeing something distracting or I think one that's important and often overlooked is comfort.

So something that makes you uncomfortable. So for me personally, if it's too hot and stuffy, I know that that's a big uh flow breaker for me. Whereas an interactive type of distractor is usually a social or task obligation.

So it's actually other people are pulling you out. So it could be someone walking into your room, someone asking something of you or calling you, you know, wanting something that breaks you out of that flow. Uh or it could be purely the knowledge that someone might interrupt you, that someone may call you or if we're talking about a task, the knowledge that there is this thing that you have to do later.

These are the things that are going to pull you out from that focus state. And what I found is that a lot of people are aware of these environmental distractors and they're more used to optimizing those, but they don't really optimize the interactive ones as much, but those can be the ones that are really distracting. Like if you are really in flow and then someone literally walks into the room and like talks to you needing your attention.

There is no strategy that is going to keep you so like meditatively immersed in flow that you don't even hear them. That's really unrealistic. And so for anyone trying to improve their focus, one of the first things that you need to do as your first step is to do your distraction cheat sheet.

There's like two different ways that you can try to tackle this focus issue. The first thing is to sit down and then list out every possible thing that could be distracting you and then figure out whether it's distracting you or not and then create a plan for all of those things. But that's going to take an enormously long amount of time.

The much more effective way of doing it is just try to have a good session of flow and then when you get distracted and when you break out of flow just have a piece of paper next to you and then write down what was it that broke you out of flow and you can try to categorize it. Was it an environmental issue? Was it an interactive issue?

And then you create a personalized list of things that tend to distract you and you can create an action plan on how you might optimize those things. And especially when it comes to interactive issues. So, we're talking about things like a person literally coming in.

You often have to think a little bit outside the box. It's easy to assume that you can't control what another person is going to do and therefore that distraction, you know, can never be overcome. But you have to realize that these interactive distractors are often so powerful that you're you're not going to be able to overcome that.

So, having that distractor exist is going to be, you know, somewhat incompatible with having ideal focus on command. And so even if you can't be bothered or if it's a little uncomfortable, it can really be worth it to have conversations with certain people to just set expectations and just let them know, hey, I'm trying to focus here. Here are some kind of boundaries or guidelines on how to manage that to protect that focus time.

But by gradually addressing each of your major distractors session by session using this distraction cheat sheet, it gets easier and easier to focus. And so coming back to this point, it means that there are less of these forces pushing you up. However, this is only one side of the coin.

And in fact, if you only use these external facing strategies, you will be bottlenecked. And that's because of what I said about most people having an underdeveloped focus muscle. What I see all the time in my coaching practice, especially for people that struggle with developing focus, is that they've done a pretty good job at optimizing these environmental and interactive distractors, but they still struggle to enter into focus and maintain that for long periods of time.

And that's because the forces that actually keeping them in flow are so weak that even with this side optimized pretty well, it's not enough. You know, it's like trying to make your car go really fast so you make sure there's no obstacles on the road, the road is in the perfect condition. You've got brand new tires, but your car doesn't have an engine.

And so for any long-term strategy on building focus, you have to develop these focus forces. And the main one here is the strength of your focus muscle. And of course, like I mentioned, when your focus muscle is strong enough, you don't need to optimize so many of these things.

You can be in a distracting environment with people talking around you, loud noises, whatever it is, but your ability to get into focus and stay in focus will still be very strong. And so for most people that you look at that have great flow, their focus muscle is also really well trained. And so for you going from wherever you are now, which presumably if you're watching this video, focus is something that you want to get better at.

Your journey of improving focus needs to look like this. So right now, this is the level of importance slash kind of where your focus needs to be. And this is over time.

In the beginning, you need to focus a lot on the external strategies because these are the things that once you optimize immediately lower the distractability and therefore it's going to improve your ability to focus kind of from day one. And then at the same time, you need to slowly start training and developing your focus muscle. And so although eventually this is the thing that is the most important long-term compared to the external strategies at the beginning it's the opposite way around.

The external strategies are going to be more important for you than training your focus muscle because your focus muscle needs time to train and develop. So start now but don't expect it to be amazing and life-changing for at least the first one to two months of training. And so in the short term it's the external strategies that give you that benefit.

Whereas in the long term it's the focus muscle that gives you the major benefit. Now some of you will be looking at the idea of training your focus for one or two months and think man I can't be bothered with that. All I can say to you is good luck with your life.

But the perspective I would offer is that it's going to be tough either way. On one hand, it's going to be tough being consistent with training that focus, or on the other hand, it's going to be tough living your life unable to properly focus. So, you're going to have to pay the cost of some hard work.

Either way, pick the outcome you want. In the next part, I'm going to go through how you can train your focus muscle. But before that, I'm going to introduce a small little tip which fits in a interesting place because it's technically an external strategy, but when you apply it, it doesn't just bring your distractability down, it also helps to bring you into flow.

And it's one of the very few things that not only breaks the distractor, but then pulls you even deeper into flow. And this is something that's actually called neural entrainment. So neural entrainment is this complicated mysterious phenomenon where something that's rhythmic can actually harmonize with your brain waves which forces you into a state of more focus.

So this rhythmic thing, it could be movement, it could be motion. So just like repetitive rhythmic doodling can also stimulate this. But one that I think is particularly powerful is neural entrainment with sound because noise is one of the biggest distractors.

So if you can neurally entrain using rhythmic sound that not only blocks out the external distraction but also brings you into focus and that is very powerful combination and the easiest way that you can do that is by using brain FM which is a sponsor of today's video. Brain FM basically does the thing that I just explained. They have music which neurally entrains you into focus and they've actually published research that shows that it's effective especially if you have ADHD.

I use it all the time. I'm genuinely a big fan of the product. I use it anytime I need to enter into flow really really quickly.

I definitely recommend that you check them out. Of course, I've got a code that you can use which is brain. fm/justinssung.

If you use my code, you can get a 30-day free trial where you get unlimited access to all of the music. you can try it out for yourself, see how it personalizes to your preferences. If you don't like it, you can always cancel.

So, I'll leave a link to that in the description below as well. So, that was about neural entrainment, which is an interesting one. And now, let's go through the best methods for developing your focus muscle.

And so, a simple way to think about the current state of your focus muscle and how developed or underdeveloped it is is to think about what happens when you get a distracting thought. So, let's say that each of these crosses is a distracting thought. The human brain has lots of random stray thoughts popping up all the time.

That's a very normal part of the brain. Like every one to two seconds, a brand new thought is going to appear. Now, your brain is going to have a certain set of habits and processes that it uses to manage these thoughts.

And one of the most detrimental habits for focus is fixation. What this means is that these distracting thoughts will come into your brain and instead of just letting go of it and you know letting yourself get back to task, it's going to actually grab onto that thought and it's going to pull you away from whatever you were meant to be focusing on. And that is you getting distracted.

So it's not so much that distraction is that you are focused on one thing and then you're sort of slowly like fizzling out from that task. It's actually a thought is coming, something else is coming, and your brain is fixating on that and they're being pulled away to something else. And so what the focus muscle does is that it doesn't prevent these thoughts from occurring.

The thoughts are still occurring very, very quickly. And it doesn't even prevent that thought from latching on and pulling you away. What the focus muscle does is it makes it much faster for you to be able to bring yourself back.

So you notice that you're being pulled away and immediately you can snap back. And when your focus muscle is strong enough, you're able to be pulled away and snapped back very very very quickly. So fast that you may not even realize that you are being pulled away in the first place.

Now if someone's focus muscle is weak, they will be pulled away and then they are distracted, daydreaming, their mind is wandering, thinking about all sorts of different things for 5, 10, 15 minutes or hours before they pull themselves back into focus. And so to train the focus muscle, your training routine involves being pulled away and then practicing bringing yourself back. And based on neuroplasticity research, which is basically what training your brain actually means.

There are three main conditions that need to be met to effectively retrain the way that your brain thinks. And you can remember this using the acronym FIT. It's like getting your brain fit.

This stands for frequency, intensity, and time. Frequency means that your training stimulus needs to be frequent enough. Your training stimulus is going to be the thing that pulls you away and then you trying to bring yourself back.

So you can call that one repetition. So those repetitions have to be frequent enough. If you're being pulled away and you bring yourself back and do that one rep only once every 20 minutes, that's not going to be enough.

You know, that's basically the equivalent of you having one stray thought, bringing yourself back, and then letting yourself just get distracted again for like the next 20 minutes. That's not going to be enough to create change. You ideally want to be getting distracted, bringing yourself back, getting distracted, bringing yourself back just constantly.

The second one is intensity. The intensity means that your training stimulus needs to be strong enough. So, in this case, it actually means it has to be distracting enough to actually pull you out of focus.

Now, this is one that we don't really have to worry too much about because even just a stray thought is enough to pull most people out of focus if they haven't trained their focus muscle. So, you usually don't need to do anything to make the intensity strong enough unless your focus is really well developed and you're trying to, you know, become like Buddha, in which case you may need to distract yourself more aggressively. And the third one, which is time, is about duration.

So you basically have to train for long enough. Just like with a normal muscle, you go to the gym once, you're not going to be jacked. You need to do that process again and again and again for, you know, months, maybe years.

So again, depending on your level of distractability right now. If your focus muscle is really underdeveloped, then it's going to take you one or two years to really strengthen that. Whereas if you're just getting a little bit distracted, it might only take you a couple of months.

So, what is the actual technique that you can use to train this muscle that achieves all of these criteria? It's very easy. Sit on the floor, turn the lights off, close your eyes, focus on your breathing.

That's it. All you have to do is just sit there and then just try to focus on your breathing. It doesn't have to be breathing actually.

It can be any kind of focus anchor. So, it could be like a word that you just say repeatedly in your mind. It's just something for your thoughts to come back to and your brain will do the rest.

As soon as you sit there trying not to think about anything and trying to just focus on your breathing or saying this word over and over again, within the first few seconds, you're going to get distracted. They're going to be other thoughts coming into your head. Probably one of the thoughts is going to be, "This is dumb.

Why am I sitting on the floor? " And every time that thought comes into your head, all you do is you do a repetition of your focus muscle trying to bring yourself back to whatever your focus cue is. So if it's your breathing, thinking about your breathing again.

If it's a word, coming back to saying that word and then you will lock into focus for like 1 second and then you'll be pulled away again. So at the beginning it will take you a little while like you might get distracted for 20, 30, 40, 50 seconds until you realize, oh crap, I've become distracted and then you bring yourself back. And that's totally fine.

And then over time, you'll be able to detect when you're straying and being distracted more quickly. And it'll be easier to bring yourself back. And eventually that 1 second of focus will expand out to 2 seconds and then 3 seconds and 4 seconds and 5 seconds.

And it doesn't sound like a lot. Being able to focus for 5 seconds, but that is pentupling your current ability to focus. As someone who has done this practice for years, I can tell you that it is really, really hard to be able to focus on something without being distracted for more than 5 seconds.

Now, for those of you that are familiar with this, this is basically what is called mindfulness meditation. And so, if you search for some mindfulness meditation apps or, you know, YouTube videos online, you'll see lots of uh different guidance to doing this. But at its core, when you're using this to train your focus, this is all you need to do.

And you want to do this for at least 10 to 15 minutes a day. The more you can do this, the better it is. Like if you can sit there and just smash out reps for like two hours, you know, slow clap to you cuz that's really really hard to do.

But if you can do it, you're going to get more benefit from it. And the good thing is that unlike training a muscle where if you work out for like 10 hours a day, your body is just going to be absolutely destroyed and you'll overtrain yourself. It's really hard to overtrain your brain.

You can get thousands and thousands of repetitions in a day and your brain will just continually mold and adapt to it. The biggest barrier that I often see is that people will start this process of training and then they will get really easily distracted as you would expect and because they're getting distracted, they feel like they're not doing it right. So, it feels like a waste of time and they get very impatient as they're sitting there.

And these are all very normal feelings to have. Even though I've been doing this for years, I have those feelings all the time. But you have to realize that is actually the point.

Like the point is to have those thoughts and to have those feelings and to practice bringing yourself back. And when you're able to practice building and developing that focus muscle in that kind of setting, it means that outside of that setting when you're trying to study, when you're trying to work, when you're having a conversation with someone, you'll find it easier to lock in and focus. But you'll also notice that it helps to improve your procrastination and your emotional regulation.

It makes it easier to get to sleep. But remember, even if you follow that advice exactly, you're probably not going to see any noticeable impact for at least the first month. And for those of you who do stick it out with consistency for longer than that, welcome to a life of focus.

So, those are the major strategies to help you focus on command. And if you're looking for some more techniques and strategies and you're really wanting to optimize absolutely everything, then you might want to check out this video here uh where I go through all the different aspects about creating deep work and flow. I hope you found this helpful.

Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.