You’re Not Stupid: How to Fix Your Attention Span

here's a list of the most common tips you'll find on YouTube to fix your attention span but unfortunately if you are using these tips then you probably will not be able to fix your attention span or focus and it's not because these techniques don't work it's because they are Band-Aid Solutions which means you're going to be back on YouTube tomorrow or maybe a week later but definitely within a month just looking for those tips again and I don't want that for you so in this video I'm going to give you a cure rather than a

Band-Aid for your attention span by focusing on the first principle fundamentals for focus and distractions that are backed by science and the first step to curing your attention span is to understand your win criteria a win criteria is basically what needs to happen for you to have won so in like if you're playing a game of chess you win if you Checkmate them or they forfeit most people when it comes to focus and attention span have the wrong win criteria they think that if they use a technique or apply a tip and they're able to

focus therefore they've achieved the win criteria they've solved the focus and attention span issue that's not how it works I give you an example back years ago when I first started working out uh I used to just want to like throw heavy weights around and I really didn't take care of my health as much as I should have and so I I had honestly like pretty bad form and so I'd hurt my wrist and then I'd hurt my shoulder I hurt both shoulders and so in order to stop my wrist and my shoulders from hurting

I got wrist wraps and then I did like these like postural kind of like activities to stretch my shoulders back uh but then I'll just like throw this heavy weight round with terrible form again and so it aggravate the injury and then I had to get like even thicker wraps and then I had to apply like the Tiger Bomb and I took ibuprofen and so I had all of these things that I was doing to achieve the wi criteria of not being in pain which seems like a fair win criteria but the problem is not

the fact that I'm in pain the pain is the symptom of the problem the problem was that I was doing the exercise incorrectly in such a way that it was creating pain it's exactly the same thing with focus and attention span the wind criteria is not being able to sit down and study for like a couple of hours with good Focus the criteria is being able to do that to have good focus and to have good attention span without needing so many Band-Aid Solutions and techniques and tips to get you there because I want you

to think about your ability to focus and have attention like this let's imagine that there's this graph here and this barrier this is like the wall you need to overcome to have good attention this is like the the wall of distraction if your Baseline level of focus is like down here then using a few tips and techniques can help you to get over this and then you'll be in Focus again but it means that every single time you need to sit down and do something you need to use all those techniques to get you over

that wall the better solution is just fix our innate ability to focus so that we don't even need the techniques in the first place it's about permanently improving our attention span rather than temporarily elevating our attention span and if you're already feeling this like you need even more like you're doing all these tips but you still need even more and more and more and the effectiveness of these tips is like fading away then it's very urgent that you work on this and you actually improve your inade ability and it's urgent because step two you got

to understand the rules of the game that we're playing here step two understand the rules of the game let's say that right now your level of innate attention span is pretty low it's it's down here somewhere and you're thinking that over time I'm sure it will get better or you kind of can't be bothered training and improving your inade attention span that's not going to work out well and the reason is that the game we're playing right now is one where if you do not train your attention span it's being untrained for you just by

living like existing like a normal human being in society we are being bombarded with constant messages from multi-trillion Dollar companies that are spending billions of dollars to figure out how to hack your attention span and keep it attention is the new currency and ironically even like me as someone who makes YouTube videos I think all the time about your attention span and in this case to keep it long enough so that you actually learn to have a better attention span ironic really if you don't actively work on your attention span over time it will actually

just get worse which means it will be harder and harder and harder to overcome that W and actually Focus I had a student a few years ago and she would lock herself in her garage in fact she would she cleared out her garage and only put a desk she' go in there no laptop no phone just textbook and pen and paper like old school and then just study she would lock it and then give the family the keys uh every time she want to go to the bathroom she would have to like knock on the

door get permission to do that and so you know credit to her for taking it so seriously but if you're at that point where it takes such a level of refinement to create Focus it's going to be very very hard to achieve difficult goals in your life life if you have such a narrow scope in which you're able to be functional and have deep work but the good news is you can train it and you can improve that and you should quickly in fact you have to train it quickly because like I said the rules

of the game are it's being untrained by default so you need to be able to train it faster than it's being untrained so what do you need to do that's step three there are two different types of strategies there is a short-term and a long-term strategy and you do need to use both of them your short-term strategy involves using techniques and tips so I was watching the recording of this and then I realized that the shortterm versus long-term strategies weren't really clear so let me just explain really quickly now the short-term strategies are the techniques

and tips that temporarily elevate your attention span and then the long-term strategies are the ones that permanently improve your attention span so that you don't need as many of those shortterm tips and techniques in the first place and then I'm going to explain the short-term ones first and instead of just explaining to you like all the different techniques that you can use I've got other videos where I talk about this as well if you want like a list of the common ones again here it is you can take a look at this but honestly the

value is not really just knowing all of these techniques the value is understanding how you can solve the problem with using these techniques which is actually the step four which is optimizing the short-term strategies the problem with just using these techniques is that there are a lot of them and some of them work and then some of them don't and some of them work sometimes and sometimes they don't and so it's really difficult to figure out which technique or tip to use in what type of situation really there are actually only two main principles that

make a big difference to your ability to stay focused in the short term and as long as whatever technique you're using hits these two prerequisites of focus it's probably going to be effective first prerequisite for having really good Focus immediately short term is prioritizing deep work deep work is basically when you are able to really lock in on just a single task and enter into the state of flow time is flying fing by your brain is super engaged just the focus kind of comes naturally basically your brain working as best as it can it's like

your peak level of efficiency is unlocked when you're able to do deep work so as a rule of thumb anything that allows more deep work is better for your productivity anything that hinders your ability to do deep work is going to be detal increase your distractions and overall unproductive even if it feels like you're doing more stuff it's not going to be done as quickly and it's not going to be done to the same level of quality now there's a lot of research on what conditions need to be met to enter into a deep work

state in the first place and without boring you with the details here is the checklist that I go through that allows me to consistently enter into a deep work state almost every single time number one you want to have a clear objective before going into any session you want to know exactly what the outcome is that you want at the end of it don't have a time Block in your calendar just just saying study or like work be very specific about what it is you want to get done in that period of time and try

not to plan things longer than like 1 hour or so be specific enough that you know that after 15 minutes 20 minutes 30 minutes at most an hour you know exactly what the output you're going for is this helps to create this tunnel vision in your mind and it gives your brain more Focus number two only ever do a singular task at once multitasking is not a thing no one can really multitask people that are good at multitasking they're just switching between tasks very quickly and every time you switch from one task to another it

induces something that's called a cognitive switching penalty which is basically your brain has to switch out of the mode of thinking that it's in switch to another one and then when you switch back it has to sort of remember what it was doing and then it takes a bit of time for it to get back into things and during that period of time that's a great opportunity for distractions or procrastination to set in and also if you're switching very often it means that you may be working on something for an hour but if you're switching

every 10 minutes then literally half that time might just be burned through cognitive switching penalty so whenever you're sitting down to try to get some work done be very clear about what you're trying to achieve but make it a singular task don't try to do multiple things at the same time number three try to prep the hard stuff what I mean by this is that if you've got a big task that you need to do you might feel overwhelmed because there's all the stuff you need to unpack you know it's going to take a lot

of work think about what part of that task feels the most overwhelming and try to do a little bit of that before your session something that doesn't really require a huge amount of focus it could just be planning out a few things collecting a few resources the stuff that you know is going to make it easier for you to jump in and do the when you need to by reducing how overwhelming it feels and just creating a nice sort of package you gifting your future self with a head start there's also this thing called the

zra Nick effect I might be pronouncing that wrong but it's basically this phenomenon where the brain finds it easier to complete tasks that we've already started so by taking that big overwhelming task and starting it in advance we are activating this zga Nick aect and making it more motivating and more like likely for us to finish that task and the final one which this is going to sound a little bit strange but it is plan to start not to finish what this one means is that when you have a big task you know that that's

going to take a lot of work and so already your brain looks at that as a big piece of work and feels less motivated to try to do that it's always looking for a shortcut and so if we just plan to start and we're not really worried about finishing we just plan to start and see how far we get and maybe as far as we get means that we finish but maybe it isn't then what that does is it means it's easier for our brain to get into it because it knows that it doesn't have

to commit to this huge big amount of cognitive resources so what that means is that two things first of all we're more likely to just get into it without procrastinating but second of all because we getting into it and we're meeting the other checklist we are able to enter into this deep work Flow State which means our brain is operating very very effici so even if we don't finish it what we were able to complete is probably the best we would have been able to do anyway because we're using our brain as efficiently as possible

and a lot of the time when we do get into this Flow State it's so easy just to get through work that we can finish it there are times where I've blocked out like 3 hours to do something that I thought was going to take a long time I followed this checklist I just planned to start and I just finished the whole thing in like 45 minutes never underestimate how much you can get done when you're in a state of flow now this was the first prerequisite if whatever technique and other tip that you're using

helps you to meet this checklist and gets you into deep work states it's a good one there's another prerequisite the second one is to always frontload front loading basically means setting yourself up for Success there was a study that was done a long time ago looking at the brains of people with really great discipline and motivation versus people without great discipline and what they found was that the brain activity of the people who were really really disciplined wasn't really innately that different from the people who got easily distracted what they found was that there was

a characteristic behavior that people with lots of discipline tend to do which is that they will use their time in advance to set themselves up for Success later for example if you want to go for a run then don't hide your running shoes and your running clothes like in obscure parts of your wardrobe have them right there put them on a chair next to the door make it easy to access get changed into it way in advance of when you need to go for the run so you already dress all you need to do is

get up and go if it's about studying think about what textbooks you need to have open think about what tabs you need to have open on your browser what you need to be accessing uh What notes you need to be writing have all of that stuff set up in advance clear your desk make it so that the only thing you need to do is just start front loading is about thinking about every step that needs to happen to go from not starting to starting the task and it's doing as much of those steps in advance

as possible and one of the best things that you should frontload is removing distractions most of the time you can anticipate what things are going to distract you if I'm sitting here trying to work and it's loud and people are talking that's going to distract me that's going to pull me out of my deep work so that means that I should have my headphones next to me available I should know uh what app or what I'm going to listen to to block out that distraction if I know that there are people uh that might come

in and disturb me or people that might message me I'll put my phone on do not disturb or I'll put my phone somewhere else these are all the things that individually people can think of as tips or techniques but it's personalized for everyone not everyone needs a nuclear option of removing every single distraction around them to be able to focus and sometimes it's not realistic all you need to do is just think about what are those distractors that I can anticipate that I can predict that are likely to come up and what can I do

in advance so that those things are blocked off and it's not enough just to do them in advance you have to do them far in advance if you're trying to deal with all of this stuff at the time you need to do the activity that's where you're going to get higher likelihood of procrastinating or not being bothered or following through with the task get all that stuff done the day before the night before the week before so that when it comes time to you actually having to sit down and do it there is nothing stopping

you other than just a tiny little bump of motivation and focus that you need that was the shortterm strategy what about the long-term step five is about doing the long longterm stuff and if you do step four and optimize the short term in terms of deep work and frontloading and you train your innate ability with step five you will solve the focus and attention span issues for the rest of your life so how do you actually train your focus I want you to think of focus like a muscle and we're going to call it the

focus muscle if you go to a gym and you want to train your physical muscles you need to pick up some weights and that weight is relatively heavy there's no point going to a gym and then picking up like a singular Speck of dust okay you you're never going to grow any muscle that way it's the same thing with Focus to develop our Focus muscle we need to put it under some load some pressure something that's challenging not so easy for it to be meaningless but also not so challenging for it to be impossible and

you don't even need a gym membership to train your focus muscle in fact there are only three things you need to meet to be able to train TR the focus muscle number one is Target number two is time and number three is intensity The Target just means you need to have a Target Behavior or Target Sensation that you're focused on the overall idea is very simple you're going to give yourself one Target and try to direct your brain to focus on that Target at all times so a really easy target that's used a lot in

lots of different types of practices is breathing just take slow deep breaths and try to focus purely on the breath coming in and then going out it seems simple but is extremely extremely difficult partly because the act of breathing in itself is not very engaging it's like innately a kind of boring thing to do so by picking that kind of Target it means that it increases the opportunity for ourselves to get distracted that applies the pressure the load and so if you close your eyes and purely try to focus on the breathing then after really

like 2 or 3 seconds you're going to start feeling that there are these other distracting thoughts coming into your brain and so the way that you train the focus muscle is that every time you feel that distracting thought coming in you bring your attention back to the breathing and so at first you will get distracted very very often like literally once every 2 or 3 seconds it will take you several seconds to even realize you got distracted in the first place and it will take you several seconds to try to bring your focus back and

as soon as your focus is Back 2 seconds later you're distracted again that's very normal and what that means is that you're getting really good quality repetitions in you're getting really good uh training for the focus muscle and so when you have that Target the next thing that you need to do is just have more exposure time so if you think about every time you get distracted and then bring yourself back as one repetition that might take you 20 to 30 seconds so we want to do a number of those repetition normally about 20 to

30 minutes a day means that you can see results after a month but even 20 to 30 minutes is quite daunting for a lot of people so if you can just do like 5 or 10 minutes as much as you can then it's better than nothing and the time is necessary because our brain will not actually rewire itself if it doesn't have enough consistent exposure we actually have to forcibly uh put our brain in enough level of discomfort for a long enough period of time that it will rewire itself if we only give ourselves a

tiny little bit of that discomfort from that training like let's say we only do 2 3 minutes a day that's probably not enough to actually make a difference the growth in retraining only comes During the period of discomfort so until you feel that sense of discomfort the the training hasn't really started yet and the other thing that's necessary other than just time spent training it is the intensity of the training so the reason I told you to use breathing as a Target is because it creates a high level of intensity it's a very mundane activity

so it requires a high level of focus to stay on it this is different to like for example playing a game I used to play a lot of games and I still do game actually and I can stay locked in for like Hour 2 hours no problem like I don't even have to try to stay focused when I'm playing a game that's a situation where I'm technically staying focused but the intensity is very very very low because it's too easy the load it's it's like lifting a feather and so we want to make sure that

whatever we're setting our Target at it could be walking it could be doing the dishes it could be gardening or you know just breathing like I said but whatever it is we want it to be something that is simple it needs to be challenging and if you engage in this long-term Focus muscle training for around about 30 days or so of 20 30 minutes a day ideally you will start to notice some changes but because it requires brain rewiring you won't notice any difference within the first probably 2 weeks at least it doesn't mean that

change isn't happening it just means that it hasn't happened enough for you to notice it yet but again if you want to have a focused life where you're not always getting distracted every single day and feeling like your attention span is getting smaller and smaller and smaller because it actually is then you do need to train this and it has to be an active process so if you take the long-term strategy and you combine it with the two prerequisites of focus in the short-term strategy you'll be able to not only improve your focus today but

have your focus improving for life as well as evaluate any tip or technique that you see out there and see whether it's going to work or not for you now one more short-term strategy that you can apply specifically when it comes to studying and learning is to make the activity of studying innately more engaging therefore making it easier for you to focus and enter into this deep work state and if you're interested in learning a little bit more about that then I recommend checking out this video that I made about that topic here