🤯🧠10 ideas to stop #ADHD and make long focus on one thing easier. Adjusting brain chemistry with neuroscience research.
What is focus? It's a "brain cocktail" that has 3 ingredients: dopamine, noradrenaline, acetylcholine. It is ALSO a relationship between distractions management, your motivation and clarity of your end destination, aka "What ✅done looks like?" Most people don't have clinical ADHD. Most people have the wrong setup for focus to happen. Here are 10 research-based anti-ADHD ideas.
1. 👀Reduce visual distractions. Where your gaze goes - your focus flows.
The brain dedicates cognitive capacity and resources to everything that it can register - to not miss the important and to keep you safe. The more resources are spent on random stuff - the less resources you have for your most important task. Plus it encourages mind-wandering about random stuff.
2. 👂Reduce audio distractions. Your brain is always listening.
If there are random noises - our brain will keep getting pulled out of deep focus to keep you safe. It also takes resources to block out random noises to focus. Filtering out background noise is a job in itself! Usually, the more focus the work requires - the less distractions you can tolerate. Setting yourself up for success with focus is a lot about setting up the distraction-free environment.
3. 📵Put your phone away. Out of sight - Out of mind.
Research shows that the closer your phone to you - in your sight, a bit far away but still visible, or in some other room - the closer it is, the worse your cognitive performance is. Your brain knows - there's a lot that's happening in your phone. So it manages it just in case, when visible. My phone lives in a closet.
4. 🚨Take care of emergencies first. Be ok with being unreachable.
Our brain always knows that something might happen - someone might need us, we have a problem to solve. So before the focus session make sure to take care of as many things as possible so there's nothing you need to be worried about. There's someone famous who said, that "if you want your brain to come up with great ideas in the shower - make sure your brain isn't taking care of errands and emergencies in there"
5. 🖥️Keep unrelated apps and tabs closed. Reduce digital clutter.
Back to the idea of managing our environment. Our brain 🧠 always does it. If there's something that keeps popping up on our screen, something that can grab our attention, distract our thoughts - it will take some of our brain power and it will weaken our focus. Prevent this by doing "digital cleanup" before focused work.
6. 🎵Use background music, binaural beats, white noise to strengthen focus.
Some music and noise might strengthen our focused state. It's individual. For me it's light jazz, what they call "elevator music" or music fromtunes BrainFm. Some people love nature sounds or some tune on repeat. When I edit my writing - I can't have any music or noise on. Binaural beats of 40 Hz have great research related to focus.
7. ⏰Use first 8 hours of your waking to dedicate to deep, focused work.
Focus is a demanding brain state conditioned by the levels of dopamine and noradrenaline in the brain. Your brain has the most resources in the morning AND dopamine and noradrenaline peak in the first hours of waking.
8. Write down what ✅done looks like to prevent mind-wandering.
If you want your brain to focus 🎯 - you got to give it something to focus on. The best practice - manually writing down what you want to focus on, what problem to solve, what results to get. I keep a small notepad by my computer. Every time my focus weakens - I write down what I need to focus on again.
9. 👁️Stare at one point for 30 sec. Where our gaze goes - our focus flows.
Our eyes are the only part of our brain sticking out of our brain. What our eyes do leads to our brain's activity. Research shows that staring at one point for 30 sec strengthens our single-point focus state.
10. 🍳Don't overeat. Some caffeine helps. Eggs are amazing.
The digestive system is energy-intensive to maintain. The more you eat - the more blood flows from your brain to your stomach, making it harder to focus since focus requires a lot of blood circulation.
Caffeine: stimulates dopamine and noradrenaline required for focus. Too much leads to overstimulation and anxiety. 100-200 mg, or a small cup of coffee, is what usually works for most people.
Eggs 🥚🥚🥚 - the greatest sources of choline (acetylcholine in the brain) - one of the most potent brain nutrients that a lot of people don't get enough of. Essential for learning, memory, focused attention - also creativity, REM sleep and mental health. Eat your eggs, 3 is the magic number (covering RDIs). Or take supplement like Alpha-GPC. Read more about "Focused Breakfast" in my article on Entrepreneur.com
11. BONUS IDEA: Move every 30 minutes.
Want your brain to function optimally? - Brain blood circulation is crucial. How do you get your blood pumping especially while sitting? MOVE! I simply do 10 squats or pushups or burpees (depending on where I am) every 30 minutes. (30 minutes intervals idea is based on NASA research)
LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS! What did you learn? What did I miss?
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