The Mindset Mentor - How to Improve Your Focus

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, please do me a really quick favor. Please go onto iTunes or Apple Podcasts or Spotify, whoever you listen to us and give us a rating and review. The more positive rating reviews that we get, the more that they actually show, those platforms show this podcast to people who have never heard of it before.

Starting point is 00:00:34 And the way the message gets out there is through grassroots and you guys doing that. So if you love this and you want other people to be able to listen to this podcast episode as well that you may never meet ever in your entire life, please do that for me and give us a rating review. Today, we're going to be talking about how to improve your focus. The beautiful thing about focus is this. I've been doing a lot of research on it for this upcoming book that I have that I'll tell you guys more about. It won't be out

Starting point is 00:00:58 until next summer, but I'll tell you more about it as the time comes. And one of the things that I've come to realize is that focusing is a skill. Focus is a skill. It's not something that you're just born with or not born with. Obviously, everyone has, you know, kind of different levels of focus. For some people, it can be harder to focus. Some people, it's easier to focus. You know, there's a lot of people with ADD out there. And just so you guys know, it's actually being shown through science that most people are starting to give themselves ADD by how addicted they are to their phone and how much stimulus they have to have all day long. And so if you're like, oh, I have ADD.

Starting point is 00:01:34 One of the cool things about ADD is that when you find something that you actually really love, people with ADD, when they find something they really love, can have intense focus on that thing. They can literally click out for like two or three hours and intensely focus on that one thing. So if you do actually have ADD or ADHD, that could be a superpower for you. But when we're looking at focus, everybody can improve their focus. And you have to realize when we talk about, you know, taking action, I'm going to talk about how to take action through the brain. I'm going to talk about how to take action through the body and get you to where you want to be. And if you can understand how your brain works, chemically, but also structurally as well, you can understand how to help yourself get more focused.

Starting point is 00:02:19 You can understand that the brain and the body are in constant communication at all points in time. The brain and the body are in constant communication at all points in time. And once you understand how to use this, it makes getting focused much easier for you. And know this, your brain is going to resist something that's outside of its comfort zone. And so when you start to go from a distracted human to a person who's starting to focus, there will be resistance to it because it feels unnatural. It feels like it's outside of your comfort zone. And so knowing that your brain is going to resist it is the most important thing, first off, because the first few times that you sit down to focus, there will be strong resistance. There will be a big pull to go back to your phone. There will be

Starting point is 00:02:59 a big pull to go on to Facebook. There will be a big pull to do something different than sit down and focus. But if you can sit down and use what I'm going to teach you today and go, nope, I understand that just like anything else, sitting down and focusing is a skill. I am going to master this skill. Then you'll improve. And now why would you want to improve the skill of focus? Think about that for a second. Why would you? You could do anything. Why would you want to get more focused? focus. Think about that for a second. Why would you? You could do anything. Why would you want to get more focused? Because when you are more focused, you get more output for every minute that you have input. So if you're a distracted person, you decide to work for 30 minutes, you're not going to get near as much done as someone who is intensely focused and has built

Starting point is 00:03:39 that skill in the exact amount of 30 minutes. So if you want to set yourself apart from all of the other people in this world who are extremely distracted and not focused at all, we should want to develop superhuman focus and try to be so much better so that we can set ourselves apart. And there's a reason why taking action can be so hard. And the reason why is because a lot of times we need to focus. You know, we've not trained ourselves to be focused. We've trained ourselves to be distracted. I always give the example just to kind of make it make sense for people. But let's say you're gifted $500 million. You get $500 million in your bank account when you wake up tomorrow. What do you do? And you're like, oh, I'm going to do all of these things. I'm going to go buy the house, all this stuff. And then you're like, what? I'm going

Starting point is 00:04:21 to, after a while, you're like, I'm going to find out something that I'm very passionate about. And maybe you decide, you know what? That's basketball. I've never played basketball before, but I'm going to try to improve at basketball. And you decide, you know, 18 hours a day, all that you do is you just six, you know, you sleep for six hours, you wake up, you play basketball all day long for 18 hours a day. You end up, you know, eating, you end up going to the bathroom, all that stuff, but nothing else, just basketball. If you do that, do you think you're going to be pretty good at basketball in the next five years? Yeah, of course. You might not be a professional

Starting point is 00:04:56 basketball player, but you will be better than you currently are right now. You'll be pretty damn good. You'll be way better than the average person, right? If you wake up and you just dedicate your waking hours to basketball, you'd be way better. But why do I say this? Because that's how we are with distractions. We wake up and from the moment that we wake up, we distract ourselves. Some people wake up, their alarm is on their phone. They immediately check their phone in their bed, which is wild. Please don't do that. Get out, live your life. Don't go straight to your phone. Please, please, please. But people check their phone. They check their social media. They check their text messages. They check their emails. They check their phone calls. You know, they start listening to some

Starting point is 00:05:39 music and it's like the first 30 minutes of their day is completely gone. And they have literally designed themselves from that moment to be distracted for the rest of the day. And then they go through the rest of the day and we have Netflix and we have music and we have other people and we have work and we have all this stuff. We have woken up every single day and unconsciously distracted ourself for years. So the same way that you would get really good at basketball over the five years if you literally just for 18 hours a day play basketball. Well, for 18 hours a day for the past five, 10, 15 years, you've immediately just distracted yourself. Do you think you're going

Starting point is 00:06:16 to be really good at distraction? Yeah, absolutely. Do you think it's gonna be hard to focus? Yeah, absolutely. But with that being said, we can know that we can develop the skill of focus and try to become better by doing this. And so essentially what we've done is we have mastered the art of distraction. We've mastered it. We have to learn to now master the art of focusing. And the first thing that you need to do is you need to first figure out what time in the day is best for you to focus. For most people, it's usually morning to late morning. For some, it's afternoon. For me, it's usually like 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. is my most focused time.

Starting point is 00:06:52 That's when I get my most work done, my most important work I always do between 10 and 2. And you'll know it through trial and error. For one of my friends, he literally gets his best work done like 10 o'clock at night, from like 10 o'clock at night to 1 a.m. Just happens to work that way. His brain gets like a second wind and he can crank out a ton of work. That's him. That's when he's found his focus time, but at least he's identified it. And the first thing that you do is you identify what time is best for you. And then what you do, the second thing is to create a ritual around it. So the same way that, you know, if you think of Pavlov's dogs, they were classically conditioned, you know, if you think of Pavlov's dogs,

Starting point is 00:07:26 they were classically conditioned, you know, you ring a bell, you get a treat, you ring a bell, you get a treat, you ring a bell, you get a treat. Well, then when they ring a bell, the dog's mouth automatically starts salivating because they're anticipating it. Well, how can you use the same thing and create a ritual to actually start to focus? So like for me, I have very specific rituals that I've learned over years, over writing this book, every time that I need to sit down and focus and really get some stuff done. Like if I'm sitting down to work, I have a very specific ritual, clean off my entire desk, turn off all of my notifications on my phone. Actually, what I do is I usually put my

Starting point is 00:08:00 phone in the other room. I put it inside of a drawer inside of my kitchen. So it's an idea close to me. I turn my notifications off on my computer and go to do not disturb. Then what I'll do is I will get either coffee or yerba mate. Both have caffeine in them. And that's what I'll sip on as I'm working. I'll get my noise canceling headphones. I'll listen to binarial beats, the same song. It's a three hour song on YouTube. I'll put it on the background. I literally listen to, no kidding, past two years, the exact same song every single time I want to sit down and get focused. And then what I'll do is I'll then sit and I'll stare at the screen

Starting point is 00:08:32 for about one to two minutes and I'll try not to blink. So a whole lot of neurobiological reasons why this is important. Less blinking creates more focus in your brain and mental focus always follows visual focus. And so you can notice visual focus changing when your peripheral vision starts to blur more and you start to notice that the screen that's in front of you is actually what you're focusing on more than anything else. You know, neurobiologist Andrew Huberman, who I had on my podcast, says you want to get in the tunnel. What

Starting point is 00:08:58 does he mean by get in the tunnel? Like you want to actually have the, have kind of the world close off and literally just be focusing on what's in front of you. And now a word from our sponsor, BetterHelp. My mental health is one of my top priorities with all that's going on in the world right now. I actually believe that it should be for more people as well. Think about this. How well would you take care of your car

Starting point is 00:09:17 if you had to keep the same one your entire life? Well, that's how our brains work. So why don't we treat them that way? How we care for our minds affects how we experience life. So it's important to invest time and care into keeping them healthy. There are plenty of ways to support a healthy brain, like learning a new language or taking power naps. And there's also BetterHelp online therapy. And personally, I think everyone should see a therapist at some point in time in their lives, not because there's something wrong with them, but because people constantly should be trying to improve and help themselves as much

Starting point is 00:09:44 as possible. And BetterHelp is an online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat therapy sessions. So you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to. It's much more affordable than in-person therapy, and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. And our listeners get 10% off their first month when you go to betterhelp.com slash dial. That's betterhelp.com slash dial. Another hack that will help you focus as well, put on a hat and a hoodie so that literally there is no peripheral vision and all you can see is what's in front of you and it will help you get more focus as well. And what you do is you actually, let's say I got to sit down to start to write the book. And if nothing is coming out, I force myself to start typing. You know, it's normal to feel frustration and resistance.

Starting point is 00:10:30 It usually takes about six minutes for your brain to warm up to something. It's the same thing as when you go to the gym, you don't just go in and lift the heaviest weights. It takes about six minutes for your brain to do the same thing. You kind of do a warmup set. You do a couple of warmup sets. So until the brain's completely, you know, warmed up, I'll sit there and I'll start typing. If I'm going to be typing for my book, I'm going to be, and I can't think of anything. I'm in writer's block. I'll start actually typing something. Today is a, you know, a Wednesday. I'm wearing a maroon shirt. For breakfast, I had eggs, you know, and you can literally just type anything and allow the brain to start to warm up to this new thing that it's doing. Cause I wasn't typing before and know that it usually takes six minutes for your brain to

Starting point is 00:11:09 warm up. That's when most people give up is during that feeling of resistance. So until the brain's completely changed in an early stages of doing this, your brain is going to, you know, of changing your brain, of getting more focused, it's always going to feel like stress and agitation and anxiousness because those are literally the chemicals that are being released to focus in the brain. So when you want to focus, your brain releases acetylcholine and epinephrine. Epinephrine is another word for adrenaline, but in the brain instead of the body. Adrenaline can make you feel more anxious, more stressed. And that's what happens. Your brain actually releases that

Starting point is 00:11:44 to help you focus. So what's good about that is this is how it warms the brain up. It warms up the circuits that are going to be active. And it almost feels like stress and agitation are the prerequisite for getting into focus states. So when you feel that, like the other day I was sitting down to do something, I was like, the first few minutes, I was like, oh, damn it. I really don't want to do this. I want to do something different. I was like, fight through it, fight through it, fight through it, fight through it. About five minutes in, I didn't have to fight through it anymore. I just felt like I was kind of in the zone. And just know that when you're starting to feel a little bit stressed, a little bit anxious going into it, that can be your brain warming up to

Starting point is 00:12:20 get into deep focus. And this is super, super important. Usually feeling stress and anxious and agitation makes us want to stop. Oh, I'm doing something I'm not supposed to. I need to do something different. We have, oh man, this doesn't feel good in my body. But if we can learn to lean into these feelings, know that it's bringing us focus. We're about to walk through the doorway of focus. We can actually start to tell ourselves, this is a really good thing. We can fight through the anxiousness and the stress we're feeling and know that on the other side is the focus that we're looking for. And this is the reason why, if you think about it, like if you have a very important deadline, like you have a vacation or something, a presentation has to be done tomorrow, you get stressed, you get anxious,

Starting point is 00:13:03 you get agitated, They're already there. And it makes focusing so much easier, does it? That's why you get so much done when you have a vacation coming up. That's why you get so much done when you have a deadline coming up. And so a lot of times our brain will resist a new action. It'll have writer's block, even though writer's block is just really, you know, it's not really a creativity block, it's just the resistance to a new activity. Just start the typing. And then as part of my, my routine, my, my, that I do every single time, my ritual is I always, always, always, always, always, you've heard me talk about before, do the Pomodoro technique. 25 minutes on of one task only, not multitasking.

Starting point is 00:13:42 Multitasking has, there's proof that it makes your output of work way lower and you don't get as much done. One thing that I'm going to do for 25 minutes and I'll work on one thing and one thing only. Then after I'm done with those 25 minutes, the alarm goes off. I have five minutes to go out in my back porch and usually I'll just take my dog Bear out there and he'll just walk around and I'll just see what he's doing and all I'm doing is going to do. The worst thing you could do is go to your phone in your five minutes off because your phone has such a narrow visual field because you're literally looking at this thing right in front of your face. It actually doesn't allow

Starting point is 00:14:17 your brain to do the relaxing that it needs to. It's like when you do a workout and you do a few reps, you're done with the set, you got to rest and then do a set and then rest. This is kind of how the Pomodoro technique works. 25 minutes on, five minutes off. Needs to rest. Worst thing you do is go to the phone. And I'll do the 25 minutes. I'll do five minutes off. And then I'll do this a few more times, usually about two more times. And that is what I consider a 90-minute cycle. And in that 90-minute cycle, I try to get at least, try for two 90-minute cycles per day. If I can get two 90-minute cycles of hardcore focused work done, I have a super, super productive day, like ridiculously productive. If you can imagine getting two cycles of 90 minutes, that's three hours of hardcore intense

Starting point is 00:15:03 focus done, you're going to be light years above everybody else. And what happens is the more you start doing this over and over and over again, you ritualize the whole thing. You understand how the brain and body work. You understand that as you start getting warmed up and a little bit focused, you will feel stressed. You will feel agitated and you go to yourself, you know what? That's right. I remember Rob said this one time, when you feel a stress and agitation, those are the circuits in my brain warming up. As long as I can just fight through, I will eventually get to the other side of this and I will be focused. And when you start becoming aware of that, you actually start getting excited for the feeling of stress and agitation because

Starting point is 00:15:38 you're like, this is my brain warming up. This is great. And then you put your timer on for 25 minutes. You get 25 minutes of work done. Take five minutes off. As you start to get better at this, this is a secret, okay? As you start to get better at this, you'll notice maybe the first few times you try the Pomodoro technique, 25 minutes is hard. Like you can't get to 25 minutes. You're about to explode. And then you do it for a while and like 25 minutes, you can get done. Then you can start expanding your Pomodoro technique. In the same way that your brain can change through neuroplasticity, your focus will actually start to become stronger. So you don't have to stop at 25 minutes. You can go for 30 minutes. And then

Starting point is 00:16:15 you go for 35 minutes. And you go for 40 minutes. You go for 45 minutes. And so usually what I'll do is sometimes I only get to 25 minutes, but a lot of times I'll do 45 minutes on, 10 minutes off, I only get to 25 minutes, but a lot of times I'll do 45 minutes on, 10 minutes off, 45 minutes on, 10 minutes off. That shows you an expansion of your focus, which is showing you that your skill set that you're working on and we were talking about at the beginning of this episode of focusing is actually getting stronger. It's like lifting heavier weights in the gym from 25 minutes to 30 minutes to 35 minutes to 40 minutes to 45 minutes, that means that your focus is improving. If you can continue on this path and continue working on your focus, you will develop superhuman focus among all of the mere mortals. So that's what I got for you for today's episode.

Starting point is 00:16:57 If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And as I've told you guys recently, we do have a new Instagram for the podcast specifically. We're putting up a ton of reels and content just from this podcast. So if you want to follow us and get more Mindset Mentor in your life, follow me on Instagram as well on that one.

Starting point is 00:17:20 It is The Mindset Mentor Podcast. Once again, The Mindset Mentor Podcast. Join over 18,000 people that are following us on there. And I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - How to Improve Your Focus

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.