HealthyGamerGG - Dr. K, How Do I Focus?

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Today Dr. K dives into focus, understanding and controlling the mind, boredom, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The mind tells you not today, not today, not now, not now. We'll do it tomorrow. Here are all the thousand reasons. You're not ready yet. You could fail. It may not be good enough. Dr. Kay, what do you do on days when you cannot seem to focus on the things that you need to do? When do you just consider the day a write-off?

Why does this happen seemingly with no explanation? Hey, all, I love to, I have to write this article for a website and cannot for the life of me seem to focus today. all I have to do is edit it and change a few minor things, but no matter how many times I sit down to do it, I just can't focus. I've done a number of things in an attempt to take my mind off it. Changed my surroundings, sat in different places, ran some errands, cleaned the bathroom, did the dishes, mopped the floor, went for a walk. Now it's late afternoon and I'm once again trying again, but still with no luck. Look, this person is unlucky. Right?

So I'm wondering, at what point do you consider the day a write-off? How do you stop from judging yourself harshly for not working on whatever you needed to, even though you gave it an honest try? Why are some days like this? It's a great post, fantastic post. So sometimes you've got to get some work done. I really got to get this work done. And you try to get the work done, and you just can't seem to focus on it.

You sit down to do the work, the work needs to be done. And your mind is like, yeah, sorry, bro, not just going to do it today. Or sorry, girl, not going to do it today. I just can't focus. So then you're like, well, crap, okay, I just can't focus today. So do I take an L? Do I just say to myself, okay, this day, like is lost. Like, I'm screwed.

Okay, I'm just not, it just ain't happening today because my mind ain't going to do it. Right? It's kind of weird. Then the other problem is that, like, you really got to do the work. And you know that you sometimes can do the work. Like sometimes when you sit down, your mind is willing to do the work. But today is an unlucky day. Because that's what happens, right?

It's R&G. It's like some days the mind is like, yeah, okay, I'll do it. Other days it's like no matter what you can do, whatever you need to do, your mind is like, yeah, I just ain't going to happen today. And so the other thing that happens is like on those kinds of days, it's like, okay, like I don't want to waste the day. So what am I going to do? I'm going to be productive today.

Even if I can't do it, I'm going to try to change. I'm going to run some errands. I'm going to clean the bathroom, do the dishes, mop the floor, went for a walk. Right? I'm going to do all the right things. Now it's late afternoon. I'm trying again, no luck. Because that's what's supposed to work, right?

I'm supposed to help the, I mean, if I clean things for a little bit, then my mind will focus. It's really confusing because our mind, doesn't do what we want it to do. And then comes this whole thing about like, do I accept that today is a loss? Because then it's like you get in this really tricky sort of situation where it's like, do you beat yourself up for not being able to focus?

Or do you go down this new age, like positive emotion, like acceptance? Like, oh, I'm sorry, bro. You couldn't just work today. You did your best, but you did the best. It just didn't work out. You're unlucky. It's not your fault.

don't worry about it. Love yourself. Accept yourself. Don't beat yourself up because you couldn't write the article that you need to write. It's like, wait a second. Do I just accept this? Do I keep trying? Do I beat myself up? Do I accept?

Do I, you know, do I, is it toxic if I like beat myself up and like give myself a swift kick in the butt and make myself sit down and buckle down and work? Or do I accept that this is an L today and I'm not going to do anything? And do I practice self-love and self-compassion? and then tomorrow, like, what if it doesn't happen again? And do I self-love more? Do I need more of a hug? Like, how much self-love and cleaning and other kinds of distracting crap that is productive, right?

Because we don't want to waste the day. Because if we waste the day, then we'll beat ourselves up and we'll feel guilty. We don't want to do that. So, like, what do you do? Like, what do you do? Do you self-love? Do you hope for better luck tomorrow? Because that's what we end up doing, right?

We just try again tomorrow and hope that things work out. So we're going to talk about this, and I'm going to teach you all what to do with your mind. Because the thing is, the mind doesn't want to do the work. And when your mind doesn't want to do the work, what do you do about that? So let's understand a couple of basic things. Let's talk about human performance for a moment. So you've written an article before. You know how to write the article.

And yet your individual performance at writing the article is highly variable. So we have this assumption that performance correlates with like knowledge or expertise. So this is a conversation that I have with people that I work with in finance. So a couple of years ago, I was working for a distressed investing private equity fund. So this was a group of people who essentially take failing companies and try to figure out, okay, which of these failing companies are actually like have the potential to be very successful if we change management or if we do things like that, and which of these companies are actually crap, right?

So they're basically like the dumpster divers of finance, where sometimes there's like really good stuff in there that due to market forces or mismanagement or whatever, like is crap. And it's really interesting, right? Because what these people are essentially doing is investing in failed businesses. So the dumpster divers of finance, in a good way. And the cool thing is that like on a given day, like if they make the right choice,

they can make a ton of money. Because there's actually like a really good company out there that just got unlucky. But they really could provide a lot of value and things like that. And if you make the right choice, it's like you make a ton of money. So they were doing really well, actually. And so as we were talking about, it's like, how do you know which ones to invest in? So then you can talk about analytics and number crunching and all this kind of stuff. And like they use all those kinds of tools.

But at the end of the day, it's kind of orange. I mean, it's not truly RNG, but there's some things just align within you. And what I really found when I was working with these people is that they sort of like, it was like highly variable depending on how their brain is working that day. So if their brain was working really, really well, they would be able to see the pattern. Right? They were able to see the forest instead of the trees because the analytics are all the trees. You can crunch the numbers.

I do my diligence for all 10 of these companies. but then something about my brain and pattern recognition just clicks and I'm able to see it. So the issue became about not being more experienced or being more knowledgeable, but understanding how to achieve a certain state of mind and controlling the mind to get it to do what you want it to do. The other place that we see this is in e-sports. And not even e-sports, just playing video games. So theoretically, when I work with an e-sports professional, every game they play, they have more knowledge than the game before.

Theoretically, every game they play, they should be getting better, right? Because you've played one additional game. But what we tend to find is that performance is wildly variable. So what determines whether you're going to play well that day or whether you're going to play poorly that day? You don't have to be a professional. You can play Dota, League of Legends, CSGO, Valerent, like, whatever you want, Fortnite, PubG, vampire survivors, whatever you want. And what you'll tend to find is that theoretically you should be getting better every day.

But what we tend to see is people are hard stuck at their rank for like a decade. And on some days they play well and on some days they play poorly. The problem is that they don't know how to cultivate the right kind of day. They don't know how to cultivate the right kind of mind. So what we're going to talk about is how to train your mind to, focus. We're going to go to the heart of it, the crux of it. So we have a whole guide about ADHD and how to do stuff where we talk about all these different complex factors. We talk about environment. We talk about the neuroscientific effects of cleaning your bathroom. We talk about

things like prioritization and organization. And we talk about all sorts of like how your mind works, how to control distractibility in the mind. We cover a bunch of different stuff in the guide, and all that stuff is useful. But what we're going to tunnel down into today, right, because we don't have time to do 20 hours of teaching today, there's a lot of good stuff in there, but we're going to focus on the crux up. So let's start with a little bit of neuroscience. So I have my mind. Mind doesn't want to focus. And then there's this other part of your mind. I need to focus. And there are times where, like, you kind of, you know that your mind is not doing what it's

supposed to. So the first thing to kind of acknowledge is that they're, like, different parts of you. So you know that you need to focus, but your mind is like, I don't want to. So we're going to sort of say that there's a self. This is actually a part of the mind, too, but I'm going to put it in the self column for now. So the first thing to understand is that, like, you can direct. to your mind, but sometimes the mind doesn't comply. Now, from a neuroscience perspective,

the ability for this to win involves essentially frontal lobes. So frontal lobes are responsible for things like impulse control. They're also responsible for things like delayed gratification.

They're also responsible for things like directing our attention. Okay? So we want to basically strengthen the frontal lobes. But what I want you all to just notice is that there are different parts of your mind that are kind of conflicting. And how do we make one win and the other lose? Because right now what's happening is this part of the mind is winning. Right now the way that the equation is, is like this. Right?

So let's try to understand what our options are. So I've got work to do. Option number one. Versus. And if I try to work, I'm going to be, it's hard to focus. If I don't work, I'm going to be bored. Mine doesn't like being bored. So I still want to be productive. So even if I can't work, let me be productive with like cleaning. Right? Because then the day isn't a whole loss. That's good, right? And then some of us, maybe this doesn't

apply to you, but I know it certainly applies to me, will do something that's dopaminergic. So we'll do something like a video game. So which of these does our mind hate the most? Which one does it want to avoid at all costs? Absolutely right. So if we're going to rank these, what does it want to do the most? It wants to do this first, this second, this third, and this fourth. The problem is that your mind knows

that you can't tolerate this. So your mind is playing a waiting game with you. Where all I have to do is like, I know that this person isn't going to accept boredom. So instead, what the person is going to do is they're going to move towards productivity. Right?

Even if they stop me from doing the dopaminergic crap for a little while, it's just the waiting game. I know I'm going to win this. So like, here's the options. If I force this person to be bored, If I don't focus on the work and I let the mind be distracted, they're going to become bored. And once they become bored, they can't tolerate being bored. All I have to do is distract them from the work.

They're going to become bored. Then they're going to be like, oh, my God, I'm wasting time. They're going to be productive for a while. They'll work for two to four hours, right? Because we've got errands and stuff. And then what are they going to do? Then it's the afternoon. Oh, no, the day's a loss.

Oh. I'm trying again. No luck. Okay, well, might as well just play video games and might as well just like take the day off. So your mind is playing a game of chicken with you. And its secret weapon is that it knows that boredom will control you. And the more that you use your cell phone,

the more that you take a dump and browse right at the same time, the more dopaminergic stuff that you do, the more intolerant to boredom you become. Right? Because when I grew up, we used to still get bored. We used to do this thing. I don't know if you guys have ever done this before. called playing outside.

And people may ask me, they're like, what did you play outside? We didn't play something. We just played outside. Every day after school, between like 3 and 6 o'clock, we would just go and play things. Sometimes it would involve balls and bats and basketballs,

but sometimes it didn't. We personally played this game called multi-type. We made up our own game called multi-type, and we would play multi-type, and it was like relatively fun. but the rules were kind of rigged. Right? So this is the key thing.

If you want your mind to focus on a particular day, there's one simple thing that you can do. Understand this, but understand that all of the mind's power over you revolves around boredom. So when my dad was in medical school, he had a rule for himself. That if he didn't feel like studying, and he taught me this rule, by the way.

If he didn't feel like studying, he wouldn't study. He was allowed to sleep as much as he wanted to. He was allowed to sit there and do nothing as much as he wanted to. But those were his only two options besides studying. That's it. Nothing else. This was off the table. This was off the table.

He's got two choices. Work, boredom, or in his case, sleep. That's it. If your mind doesn't want to work, That's okay. We don't need to work. If you can't focus, no big deal. We're just going to sit here and do nothing for the next eight hours. And whenever you're ready to work, we can do that. But if you don't want to work, no big deal. We can take a nap. If you're feeling tired, oh, you're tired, let's go lay down. It works incredibly well. Incredibly well. I did it myself. I didn't feel like working. I wake up in the morning, make myself some breakfast. It's time to work. I don't feel like working. Okay, you can go lay down.

what am I supposed to do when I lay? You can sleep if you're tired. Like if you're tired, like obviously you need energy. Then when I'm done sleeping, I get up, I sit down at my desk and I stare at the frigging page. And if I don't want to stare at the page, I don't have to stare at the page. I can close it. And I'm just going to sit there.

That's it. Eventually what will happen is your mind will focus on work. As long as the mind knows that there's no alternative. because here's the thing. You can actually tolerate boredom better than your mind can. Your mind is going to be completely S-O-L if it's bored.

It's the one that's suffering, not you. And that's where we go back to this sense of self. The self can tolerate boredom fine. Like, what is meditation? It's sitting there, doing nothing with a no-mind state.

Like, isn't that boring? No, like, it's actually wonderful. We love that if you really sit down and do it. So if you want to learn, how to focus, what you've got to do is like practice focusing. And the way that you practice focusing is you keep doing it until your mind starts listening. And if you get bored, you get bored. We're not going to come up with fake stuff to do. We're not going to come up with dopaminergic stuff to do. And you may say, but what about the stuff that I do need to run errands?

So this is where it's really important. Are you deciding to be productive because you feel bored and you don't want to waste the day. Or did you set out with a schedule to do this stuff on this day? Right? There's a big difference. Is your productivity an antidote to boredom or is it stuff that you actually need to get done? Someone earlier was asking, what about doing things like working out? So I have to like cook.

I'm going to shower. I'm going to exercise. So that's fine. Like I can even run errands for an hour or two. But that's going to not be an antidote to boredom. This is really important to understand. Because the moment I make it an antidote to boredom, what I'm actually doing is, is giving into my mind.

I'm not actually controlling it. It's controlling me. It's just tricking me with a more... It's just sweetening the poison. Right? There's like... It's just like poison without the guilt. But it's still giving into the distraction of the mind.

So what should you do? If your mind doesn't listen to you, you're going to sit there and you're going to be bored until it's ready to work. And when it's ready to work, we can work. And then something magical will have. happen. Once your mind understands that you're not screwing around and you will literally have it sit there for 12 hours and do absolutely nothing, it'll start working. It'll start working.

You will have taught it how to do what you tell it to do. You'll sit down and you'll say, we're going to read this thing. Now, there's also like a couple of other like tips here about intentionality. So if you're struggling to do your work, you know, I would sit with the self We'll talk about this kind of like, this is almost like a meditation of sorts, right? So I want you to start by noticing your mind. I don't feel like working. And then what I want you to do is sit down and prepare yourself for work and see what I don't feel really is. Is this a feeling?

Or is what's happening? I'm looking at the page, but my thoughts are wandering. And then like, this is going to create another feeling. like frustration. I'm wasting my time, whatever. And then what's going to happen is as we're feeling frustrated and wasting our time, let me go clean. And as I go clean, what am I actually giving into? Who's in control here? My frustration. I cannot tolerate frustration. And as I can't tolerate frustration, I lose control of my life. Because think about that. Two people. One can tolerate frustration. one can't. Who's screwed in life and who's going to do well. It ain't difficult. So sit there and look at

yourself. Close your eyes the next time you need to work. And look at what does I don't feel like working actually mean? And then what I want you to do as the self, let's see you have to write a paper. Can I write a single sentence? Well, I don't know which sentence to write. That's what the mind rebels with. So notice that as well. You want to notice all these thoughts as they come up. I don't know what to write. Okay. What do you need to learn so that you can write the first sentence? How do we get to the first sentence? So what's getting in the way the first sentence? Right. Is it research? Is it just putting something out there? Is it something? Like what is it that's getting in the way? Now, here you have to be a little bit careful because if you're not careful, you'll end up somewhere over here.

Because they'll be like, oh, we need to do more research, we need to do more research, we need to do more research. Because oftentimes I don't know what to write is actually I'm not confident. And then you're looking for some kind of research, research, research, so that you start to feel confident and then you know what to write. Sometimes what you have to do as the self is tell it, well, too bad. I understand that you're not confident. We're going to write anyway. We're just going to write something crappy. But you're going to sit there until you start writing words on a page.

And if it's wrong, we can fix it later. Because here's the thing that I want you all to understand is you do this process as you sit and really pay attention to your mind. What you'll notice is that your mind is incredibly slippery. And it'll come up with whatever excuse it can to keep you from doing what it doesn't want to do. and your mind knows it's a waiting game. Because if it can stall, if it can stall, if it can stall, you'll become frustrated, you'll give up on the day, you'll be able to take a loss,

you'll practice some self-forgiveness. Oh, no, it's okay. It's okay, baby. It's okay, baby. It's okay, you tried so hard today. You tried for four hours to write. So now that you tried so hard and you failed, now we can go play League of Legends for the next 10 hours. It'll come up with all kinds of things.

Oh, we need to, we're not ready. to start. We need to do more research. Just notice what you need to do in this like, this is like a meditation technique. As you sit and you close your eyes, notice how it will twist and turn and give you as much stuff as it can. But there's always going to be one conclusion. Don't write. All roads lead to one place. Don't write. And once you see that, you'll begin to realize it's all BS. It's all BS. And then you sit down and you start writing. And if your brain is like, I'm not ready yet. Okay, then we're going to sit here until you are. We're not going to be, but we'll, oh, like, we're going to waste the whole day. Let's do it. This needs to get done.

No, but we can be so much more productive if we do this other stuff. That actually doesn't fix the problem. This article needs to be written. So you have to be able to, like, Like the whole point is that the mind tricks you. Like, people will waste their entire lives because of the trickery of the mind. The mind tells you not today, not today, not now, not now. We'll do it tomorrow. Here are all the thousand reasons. You're not ready yet.

You could fail. It may not be good enough. Not today, not today. A day goes by. I've been there. I literally saw it happen in my life year after year. It started around that age I was 15. straight up almost failed out of college was on academic probation my freshman year and still my mind

was like not today not today year went by a second year went by a third year went by it could play this game all day long and why because it knew that it was in a game of chicken with me and i would give in because i was not willing to waste a whole day and in that i almost wasted my entire life if i'm not going to get any work done i might as well have fun i was not willing to waste a day. And when you're willing to waste a day, then your mind will start to listen. You're like, we're going to sit here until we do it. But what about this? That's okay. You're going to waste the day. Okay. I'll waste as many days as I need to to get this done. And once your mind understands that, it's going to get into line. Does that make sense?

Holding yourself hostage, you're not holding yourself hostage. Good point, dinnets. You're holding your mind hostage. Here's the tricky thing. In your mind, there's a set of bars. There's a cell. One of y'all is on the inside, one of y'all is on the outside. The self is on the inside or the mind is on the inside. You get to decide.

Right now, it's holding you hostage. Yoshio is asking you a good question. Why do you consider the mind and the self two different entities? Because of experience. So if you close your eyes, you will be able to observe the actions of the mind. So do I consider myself different from my hand? Is this hand me? Well, sort of. I'm me. Even if something happened to my hand, let's say there was a terrible accident and I lost my hand, that would be awful. But I wouldn't stop being me.

The mind is a part of your being, but it's just a part. And as we start to like peel back the layers of the self, what we end up with is like there's like a pure self in there that is actually not the mind at all. And once you meditate, you'll be able to realize this. Because once you experience existence without mental activity, then you'll understand what the self truly is. Is the self your consciousness basically? Yes.

That's one way to put it. Is the mind a separate conception of the brain? No. Well, a separate conception of the brain? The mind is not the brain. Right? So the brain is a physical organ. The mind is not a physical organ.

So ADHD is not real. No, ADHD is definitely real. Why would you conclude that ADHD is not real from this? We're not saying the mind is false. We're just saying it's not the self. We're not saying that your brain doesn't exist. Ninja First Class is asking, if you lost your brain, are you? That's a fantastic question.

I don't know the answer. Right? So that's, I still think you will be you. So this is where I haven't had, let me think about this. Yeah, I think you would still be you without your brain. There are absolutely severe brain injuries where people will change personalities drastically. So we're not saying that the mind is completely independent of the brain, but they are different. Right.

So we know, for example, that like, just like in what we just explained today, we talked about the correlation, the neuroscientific correlation between some of these mental functions and directing the mind versus the self and the frontal lobes. We can even map some of those mental functions to particular parts of the brain. Now, a biological reductionist will posit that all of the mind is a manifestation of the brain. I think that that's sort of true, but also incomplete. Because I think that in the way that there's like matter and energy, right, the experience of consciousness is different from physical form. So like the experience of taste or pleasure may be mapped onto the brain,

but there's a difference between a physical object and an experience. From like a, what's it called? I'm not good at philosophy, but a quali? There's like some philosophical term for this. Qualia. Right? So the qualia of substance and the qualia of experience, to me feel fundamentally different.

So I agree with that philosophical branch. And that, too, is based on kind of experience. There's, like, a different stuff to, like, you know, touching something and, like, experiencing something. Anyway, great conversation. I mean, like, some of the stuff gets into, like, the philosophy, spirituality, call it whatever you want to. At the end of the day, though, what we're talking about is how to get your mind to focus. And if you guys want a lot of different methods, there are all kinds of stuff that does help. So cleaning your room, for example, does help because of top down and bottom up processing in the brain.

There's a bunch of different stuff. If you guys are interested in that, that's the guide that we're working on. So we were really struggling for a while to figure out, okay, what should we do next? And what I realize is what our community needs more than anything else is like, how do you do stuff? Like, how do I do stuff? It's such a simple question, but it's something that we struggle with so much. So we made Dr. K's guide to ADHD and doing stuff. It's like how does stuff get done?

Like what are the different components? Neuroscience, psychology, spirituality that involve doing stuff. So today we sort of got a, how can I say this? A slice of the process of doing stuff on a very fundamental level of like how does the mind work and like why does it trick you? And like what techniques does it use to trick you? But there's a lot of other stuff too. There is neuroscience. There's even clinical medicine, right, when it relates to ADHD.

And then there's sort of like this yogic perspective on like, how do you control your attention? Why did we combine ADHD with doing stuff? Because ultimately doing stuff is about controlling your attention. So when I sit down and I try to study and I can't, what does that technically mean when I can't study? What that means is that my attention is not going where I tell it to go. I sit down and I try to study and my attention goes elsewhere. I can't stop playing video games. Let's think about that.

Why can't you stop playing video games? Because my attention is constantly on them. I think about them. And the only time I feel at peace is when my attention is stuck in the video game. So it all comes down to attention. And this is where people will say weak willpower. Willpower is a piece of it. But I think willpower is actually a, it's an unsophisticated term.

So this is something that we go into. so there's all kinds of neuroscientific calculations that are going on, that when those calculations are not proceeding properly, it looks like quote-unquote weak willpower. The interesting thing is that you can actually manipulate those calculations to create more motivation, which looks like willpower. But the interesting thing is it's not that the person has increased their willpower. They've actually increased their motivation.

And remember, when you're motivated, you don't need willpower. Willpower is what you use to overcome motivation. And so you may be asking, what do you mean there's some calculation? So I'll give you just a really simple thing. So I have this video on something called the action success calculation. Where your brain constantly, and there are studies on this, so there's something we understand very well, constantly decides what to do, and it integrates all kinds of information. One of the key parts of that action success calculation, one of the key key,

parts of figuring out whether to motivate you or not is actually the success likelihood of a task. So if I think I can succeed at something, I'm going to be more motivated to do it. If I don't think I can succeed, I'm going to be less motivated. Who here thinks it would be cool to own a yacht? Who here is motivated to build a yacht? Well, if you want a yacht, why don't you build a yacht? why don't you build one? Because I don't think I would be successful.

Right? There's like zero motivation for building yachts, even though we all want yachts. So that's like an extreme example. That's so extreme that it almost doesn't make sense. But basically, like, even if you look at like studies of people who will ask other people out, what you tend to find is that you're more likely to ask someone out if you think they're within your league. What does that mean?

That means that the action success calculation is telling you, hey, go ahead and ask this person out because we have a decent chance of being successful. Now, how do you manipulate that calculation to create motivation? Very simple. Self-worth is a huge part of that calculation. So this is why we see this in coaching. Where people will come into coaching, they'll say, I'm not motivated. And what we'll do is we'll work on their humkad, their ego, their sense of self. We'll work on their confidence. And then seven weeks later, they're doing stuff. They're like, yeah, I did it. And then the coach is actually really confused.

They're like, they don't say to their client, but then they'll come into case review and they'll talk to me about it. And they'll be like, I'm really confused. I thought this person, this person we've been talking about this for seven weeks, they haven't done anything for seven weeks. And then suddenly they wake up one day and they're like doing stuff. And it all goes down to these different kinds of like neuroscientific techniques. So when someone becomes more confident in themselves, it alters their perception of the chance of success. As it alters your perception of your chance of success, in our dating example, this becomes very simple. If I have low self-worth, I think I'm in a low league.

I'm in the amateur league. And once I work on my self-worth, I realize, oh, I'm confident. I'm actually like a valuable human being who can offer something in a relationship. And then suddenly I'm able to actually ask out people that I'm attracted to. Instead of asking out people that I think I can end up with who are willing to accept me. And it revolutionizes the way that you live your life. And it all comes down to neuroscience. They're literally basic science studies on schizophrenia and motivation.

That once you look at all of these like end psychological studies about dating and relationship procession, and then you combine them with like brain scans of people with schizophrenia, you can map out how the system works. Once you map out everything from neuroscience to psychology, you also get an understanding of like how the equation is written. And once you understand how the equation is written, then you can start to all. alter certain variables, and then you can almost like calculate motivation.