How to Quickly Improve Focus - Andrew Huberman

After Skool
25 Apr 202320:39

Summary

TLDRLe professeur Andrew Huberman explique comment améliorer la concentration et l'attention en utilisant les mécanismes de focus innés. Il souligne que la focalisation mentale suit la focalisation visuelle, et que l'augmentation de la focalisation visuelle peut améliorer les capacités de focalisation mentale. Il recommande des pratiques comportementales, comme la concentration visuelle sur un petit espace pour un temps prolongé, pour développer une profondeur et une durée de focus. Huberman met également en garde contre les distractions et l'utilisation excessive de stimulatory comme le café ou les médicaments, et insiste sur l'importance de comprendre ses cycles de vigilance pour maximiser l'apprentissage et la plasticité cérébrale.

Takeaways

  • 🎯 L'attention mentale suit la focus visuelle, et on peut améliorer la précision de ce dernier pour augmenter la capacité d'attention.
  • 🚀 L'alertness est la base de la plasticité cérébrale et peut être atteinte par des moyens pharmacologiques ou des sentiments forts.
  • ☕ La caféine est un moyen relativement sûr d'augmenter l'épinephrine et d'améliorer l'alertness.
  • 💊 L'Adderall augmente l'alertness, mais non la focus. Il est utilisé pour le TDAH mais a un potentiel d'abus et d'addiction.
  • 🔍 La focalisation visuelle implique de regarder un petit espace avec précision ou dilaté pour voir un large espace avec moins de détails.
  • 👀 Lorsque nous focalisons notre regard, les yeux se dirigent vers un point commun, augmentant ainsi la précision visuelle.
  • 🦜 Les animaux ont une capacité incroyable de focaliser leur attention visuelle pour des tâches précises, comme ramasser des graines.
  • 🧠 Lorsque les yeux se rapprochent légèrement, cela déclenche la libération de neurotransmetteurs comme l'acétylcholine et l'épinephrine, augmentant ainsi la focus.
  • 📚 Pour améliorer la capacité d'attention, pratiquez la focalisation visuelle en fixant un petit espace sur votre écran ou votre papier.
  • 💧 Réduire les battements de paupières et maintenir la focalisation sur un point précis peut aider à maintenir un tunnel de focus mental.
  • 📱 Les téléphones portables sont conçus pour attirer l'attention visuelle, mais cela peut nuire à notre capacité de nous concentrer sur des textes ou des informations plus complexes.

Q & A

  • Quel est le principe clé pour améliorer la concentration selon Andrew Huberman ?

    -Le principe clé est que la concentration mentale suit la concentration visuelle.

  • Comment la caféine affecte-t-elle la concentration ?

    -La caféine augmente l'éveil en réduisant l'adénosine, ce qui peut être un moyen relativement sûr d'augmenter l'épinéphrine.

  • Quelle est la différence entre l'effet d'Adderall et celui de la caféine sur la concentration ?

    -Contrairement à la caféine, l'Adderall augmente l'alerte mais pas la concentration en elle-même, car il n'agit pas sur le système d'acétylcholine.

  • Comment peut-on utiliser la concentration visuelle pour améliorer la concentration mentale ?

    -En se concentrant visuellement sur une petite région de l'espace ou en dilatant son regard, on peut ajuster son niveau de détail perçu et ainsi influencer sa concentration mentale.

  • Pourquoi les animaux avec des yeux sur le côté de la tête ont-ils une capacité unique à se concentrer ?

    -Ils peuvent brièvement déplacer leurs yeux vers l'intérieur pour se concentrer avec précision, malgré leur positionnement latéral.

  • Quels sont les effets de la concentration visuelle sur le cerveau ?

    -Concentrer les yeux vers un point commun active un ensemble de neurones qui libèrent de l'épinéphrine et de l'acétylcholine, favorisant la plasticité cérébrale.

  • Comment la pratique de la concentration visuelle peut-elle améliorer la capacité de concentration globale ?

    -En s'exerçant à focaliser son regard sur une image précise à la distance souhaitée, on peut renforcer les mécanismes cérébraux liés à la concentration.

  • Pourquoi est-il important de limiter la fréquence de clignement lorsqu'on cherche à se concentrer ?

    -Moins cligner des yeux maintient une concentration visuelle et mentale plus soutenue, car le clignement peut réinitialiser notre perception du temps et de l'espace.

  • Quel est le lien entre la fermeture des yeux et la concentration auditive ?

    -Fermer les yeux peut améliorer la concentration auditive en réduisant les distractions visuelles, permettant une meilleure écoute.

  • Quelle est l'importance de la pratique de l'attention dans l'apprentissage et la plasticité cérébrale ?

    -La pratique de l'attention est cruciale pour modifier le cerveau de manière à rendre les tâches futures moins exigeantes en termes d'attention, ce qui est l'essence de la plasticité cérébrale.

Outlines

00:00

🧠 Amélioration de la concentration et de l'attention

Le paragraphe explique comment améliorer la capacité de concentration et d'attention en utilisant les mécanismes de focus innés. Il souligne que la concentration mentale suit la concentration visuelle, et que l'on peut accroître sa capacité de focus visuel pour améliorer la concentration mentale. Le professeur Andrew Huberman mentionne également les différents moyens d'atteindre l'alertness, y compris les moyens pharmacologiques comme le café et les médicaments comme l'Adderall, soulignant les risques potentiels liés à ces derniers. Il insiste sur l'importance de pratiquer la focus visuelle pour développer une concentration profonde et durable.

05:03

👀 La focalisation visuelle et ses implications cognitives

Dans ce paragraphe, le professeur Huberman discute de la focalisation visuelle en détaillant comment les animaux, comme les oiseaux, utilisent leur vision pour capter des objets précis. Il explique comment les mouvements visuels, comme l'approche des yeux vers un point commun, activent des neurones qui libèrent des neurotransmetteurs tels que la noradrénaline, l'adrénaline et l'acétylcholine, contribuant ainsi à l'amélioration de la concentration mentale. Il recommande de pratiquer la focalisation visuelle pour renforcer cette capacité, en particulier en fixant son regard sur un petit espace de l'écran pour augmenter l'acuité visuelle et la concentration cognitive.

10:04

🎧 Les pratiques auditives et la concentration

Le professeur Huberman aborde les techniques pour améliorer la concentration auditive, soulignant que les personnes qui utilisent leur système auditif pour apprendre, comme les lecteurs de Braille, ont tendance à fermer les yeux pour concentrer leur attention. Il mentionne que les animaux ayant la meilleure audition, tels que l'éléphant et la moth, peuvent également nous enseigner comment focaliser notre attention auditive. Il encourage à réfléchir à la façon dont nous utilisons nos téléphones et les médias sociaux, et comment cela peut affecter notre capacité à nous concentrer sur des tâches plus difficiles et moins stimulantes.

15:09

🕒 Les cycles de concentration et l'apprentissage

Ce paragraphe discute des cycles d'apprentissage et de concentration, expliquant que les cycles ultradiens d'environ 90 minutes sont idéaux pour l'apprentissage. Il suggère de se concentrer pendant l'heure du milieu de ces cycles pour maximiser l'efficacité d'apprentissage. Le professeur Huberman recommande d'éliminer les distractions, de se préparer physiquement pour l'attention (comme en buvant du café), et de comprendre les moments où l'on est le plus alerte dans le cycle de 24 heures pour planifier les activités d'apprentissage. Il insiste sur l'importance de la pratique et de la répétition pour améliorer la plasticité cérébrale et les compétences cognitives.

20:14

🤗 Merci et conclusion

En conclusion, le professeur Huberman remercie les auditeurs pour leur écoute et leur invite à explorer davantage les outils pour la santé mentale, physique et la performance dans son podcast 'The Huberman Lab'. Il mentionne également ses comptes sur les réseaux sociaux et son site web pour accéder à plus d'informations et de conseils basés sur la science.

Mindmap

Keywords

The video is abnormal, and we are working hard to fix it.
Please replace the link and try again.

Highlights

Mental focus follows visual focus, and improving visual focus can enhance mental focus abilities.

Alertness, which can be achieved through various means including love, joy, fear, or pharmacological methods like caffeine, is essential for neuroplasticity.

Caffeine reduces adenosine, the molecule that makes us sleepy, and can safely increase epinephrine levels.

Adderall, similar to amphetamine, increases alertness but not focus, and has a high potential for abuse and habituation.

The acetylcholine system, which can be accessed through pharmacology or behavioral practices, is crucial for focus.

Visual focus can be improved by practicing focusing on a small region of space with precision.

When focusing, the eyes align towards a common point, and the lens moves to create a small, high-resolution visual cone.

Animals with eyes on the side of their heads can pick up small items with precision by briefly moving their eyes inward.

Convergence of the eyes towards a specific visual target activates neurons that release norepinephrine, epinephrine, and acetylcholine.

Practicing visual focus at the distance from which you work can enhance neuroplasticity.

Reducing blink rate and maintaining focus on a specific visual point can improve mental focus.

Closing the eyes can create a cone of auditory attention, which is beneficial for tasks requiring listening focus.

People with ADHD or ADD should work with a psychiatrist to find the right pharmacological and behavioral practices.

The phone's design features make it easy to anchor attention, but this may not always enrich or improve us.

Motion stimuli like videos naturally attract our attentional system, making it harder to focus on static text.

Successful learning often involves boring practices like reading text or listening to podcasts, which engage the cholinergic system for neuroplasticity.

The typical learning bout should last about 90 minutes, including a warm-up period and a focused middle section.

Eliminating distractions and understanding your natural alertness周期 can improve focus and learning.

High-performing individuals often take breaks from maximum mental focus to accelerate the rate of neuroplasticity.

Transcripts

play00:00

[Music]

play00:00

welcome to another episode of after skool I'm  Andrew huberman professor of neurobiology and  

play00:13

Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine  and the host of The huberman Lab podcast today  

play00:18

we will be learning about how to improve focus  and attention so without further Ado let's watch  

play00:24

the animation the best way to get better at  focusing is to use the mechanisms of focus  

play00:32

that you were born with and the key principle  here is that mental focus follows visual Focus  

play00:40

we are all familiar with the fact that our  visual system can be unfocused blurry or  

play00:45

jumping around or we can be very laser focused  on one location in space what's interesting and  

play00:51

vitally important to understanding how to access  neuroplasticity is that you can use your visual  

play00:56

focus and you can increase your visual Focus as  a way of increasing your mental focus abilities  

play01:03

more broadly so I'm going to explain how to  do that plasticity starts with alertness that  

play01:09

alertness can come from a sense of love a  sense of Joy a sense of fear doesn't matter  

play01:15

there are pharmacologic ways to access alertness  too the most common one is of course caffeine  

play01:21

which if you watch the Sleep episodes you know  reduces this molecule that makes us sleepy called  

play01:26

adenosine caffeine can be a relatively safe way to  increase epinephrine now many people are now also  

play01:34

using Adderall Adderall chemically looks a lot  like amphetamine and basically it is amphetamine  

play01:41

it will increase epinephrine release from Locus  to release it will wake up the brain and that's  

play01:46

why a lot of people rely on it it does have a  heavy basis for use in certain clinical syndromes  

play01:53

prescribed such as attention deficit however it  also has a high probability of abuse especially  

play02:01

in those who are not prescribed it Adderall will  not increase focus it increases alertness it does  

play02:06

not touch the acetylcholine system and if those  of you that are taking Adderall say well it really  

play02:11

increases my focus overall that's probably because  your autonomic nervous system is just veering  

play02:17

towards what we call parasympathetic you're really  just very sleepy and so it's bringing your levels  

play02:21

of alertness up as I mentioned Adderall is very  problematic for a number of people as it can be  

play02:26

habit forming learning on Adderall does not always  translate to high performance off or on Adderall  

play02:34

at later times and the Adderall discussion is a  broader one that perhaps we should have with a  

play02:38

psychiatrist in the room at some point because it  is a very widely abused drug at this point in time  

play02:44

the acetylcholine system and the focus that  it brings is available as I mentioned through  

play02:50

pharmacology but also through these behavioral  practices and the behavioral practices that are  

play02:56

anchored in visual Focus are going to be the ones  that are going to allow you to develop great depth  

play03:01

and duration of focus so let's think about visual  Focus for a second when we focus on something  

play03:07

visually we have two options we can either look  at a very small region of space with a lot of  

play03:14

detail and a lot of precision or we can dilate  our gaze and we can see big pieces of visual  

play03:19

space with very little detail it's a trade-off  we can't look at everything at high resolution  

play03:23

this is why we have these the the pupil more or  less relates to the fovea of the eye which is  

play03:28

the area in which we have the most receptors the  highest density of receptors that perceive light  

play03:32

and so our Acuity is much better in the center  of our visual field than in our periphery it's  

play03:37

a simple experiment you can do right now if you're  listening to this you can still do it you can hold  

play03:40

your your hands out in front of you provided that  you're sighted you should be able to see how many  

play03:43

fingers you have in front of you you for me it's  five still got all five fingers amazingly enough  

play03:49

if I move my hand off to the side and I'm I can't  see them with Precision but as I move them back  

play03:54

into the center of my visual field I can see them  with precision and that's because the density the  

play03:59

number of pixels in the center of my visual field  is much higher than it is in the periphery when  

play04:03

we focus our eyes we do a couple things first  of all we tend to do that in the center of our  

play04:08

visual field and our two eyes tend to align in  what's called a virgin's eye movement towards a  

play04:12

common point the other thing that happens is  the lens of our eye moves so that our brain  

play04:17

now no longer sees the entire visual world  but is seeing a small cone of visual imagery  

play04:22

that small cone of visual imagery or soda straw  view of the world has much higher Acuity higher  

play04:29

resolution than if I were to look at everything  now you say of course this makes perfect sense  

play04:34

but that's about visual attention not mental  attention well it turns out that focus in the  

play04:39

brain is anchored to our visual system I'll talk  about blind people in a moment but assuming that  

play04:45

somebody is sighted the key is to learn how to  focus better visually if you want to bring about  

play04:51

higher levels of cognitive or mental focus even  if you're engaged in a physical task now there's  

play04:57

a remarkable phenomenon in animals where animals  that have their eyes on the side of their head  

play05:03

are scanning the entire visual environment all the  time they're not focused on anything think you're  

play05:07

grazing animals your cows your sheep your birds  Etc but think about a bird picking up seeds on the  

play05:13

beach or on concrete that bird's head is up here  it's up about a foot off the ground or if it's a  

play05:19

small bird about six inches off the ground and  its eyes are on the side of its head and yet it  

play05:23

has this tiny beak that can quickly pick up these  little seeds off the ground with immense Precision  

play05:28

now if you try to do that by staring off to the  sides of the room and picking up items in front  

play05:33

of you with high Precision at that tiny scale  little tiny objects you will miss almost every  

play05:38

time they do it perfectly and they don't smash  their beak into the ground and damage it they do  

play05:42

it with beautiful movement Acuity also so how do  they do it how do they create this Focus or this  

play05:49

awareness of what's in front of them it turns out  as they lower their head their eyes very briefly  

play05:55

move inward in what's called a virgin's  eye movement now their eyes can't actually  

play06:00

translocate in their head they're fixed in  the skull just like yours and mine are but  

play06:04

when we move our eyes slightly inward basically  shortening or making the interpupillary distance  

play06:11

as it's called smaller two things happen not  only do we develop a smaller visual window  

play06:17

into the world but we activate a set of neurons  in our brain stem that trigger the release of  

play06:24

both norepinephrine epinephrine and acetylcholine  norepinephrine is kind of similar to epinephrine  

play06:29

so in other words when our eyes are relaxed in  our head when we're just kind of looking at our  

play06:34

entire visual environment moving our head around  moving through space we're an optic flow things  

play06:38

moving past us or we're sitting still we're  looking broadly at our space we're relaxed  

play06:43

when our eyes move slightly inward toward a  particular visual Target our visual World shrinks  

play06:49

our level of visual focus goes up and we know that  this relates to the release of acetylcholine and  

play06:55

epinephrine at the relevant sites in the brain  for plasticity now what this means is that if  

play07:00

you have a hard time focusing your mind for sake  of reading or for listening you need to practice  

play07:06

and you can practice focusing your visual system  now this works best if you practice focusing your  

play07:13

visual system at the precise distance from the  work that you intend to do for sacroplasticity so  

play07:18

how would this look in the real world let's say  I am trying to concentrate on something related  

play07:24

to I don't know science I'm reading a science  paper now having a hard time it's not absorbing  

play07:28

I might think that I'm only looking at the paper  that I'm reading or I'm only looking at my screen  

play07:32

but actually my eyes are probably darting around  a bit experiments have been done on this or I'm  

play07:37

gathering information from too many sources  in in the visual environment now presumably  

play07:42

because it's me I've already had my coffee I'm  hydrated I'm well well rested I slept well and  

play07:47

I still experience these challenges in focusing  spending just 60 to 120 seconds focusing my visual  

play07:54

attention on a small window of my screen meaning  just on my screen with nothing on it but bringing  

play08:00

my eyes to that particular location increases  not just my visual Acuity for that location  

play08:05

but it brings about an increase in activity in  a bunch of other brain areas that are associated  

play08:11

with gathering information from this location so  put simply if you want to improve your ability to  

play08:20

focus practice visual Focus now if you wear  contacts or you have or you wear corrective  

play08:26

lenses that's fine you of course would want to use  those you don't want to take those off and use a  

play08:30

blurry image the finer the visual image and the  more that you can hold your gaze to that visual  

play08:36

image the higher your levels of attention will be  many times on Instagram and here I've been teased  

play08:42

for not blinking very often that's actually a  practiced thing we blink more as we get tired  

play08:47

which as you hear it you'll probably just  say duh as we get tired the neurons in the  

play08:51

brain stem that are responsible for alertness  and that hold the eyelids open start to falter  

play08:56

and our eyelids start to close this is why it's  hard the words I could barely keep my eyes open  

play09:00

which may be how you feel right now but assuming  that you're paying attention and you're alert  

play09:06

when you're very alert your eyes are wide  your eyes are open and as you get tired  

play09:10

your eyelids start to close blinks actually  reset our perception of time and space this  

play09:16

was shown in a beautiful paper in current biology  I'll be sure to post the reference in the notes  

play09:20

and blinking of course is necessary to lubricate  the eyes people blink because their eyes might  

play09:25

get dry but if you can keep focus by blinking  less and by focusing your eyes to a particular  

play09:31

location is probably pretty creepy for you to  experience as I'm doing this but the more that  

play09:35

you can do this the more that you can maintain  a kind of a cone or a tunnel of mental focus  

play09:41

now you may ask well what about the the  experiment where people were you know  

play09:46

feeling this rotating drama or listening to the  auditory queue that doesn't involve Vision at  

play09:49

all ah if you look at people who are learning  things audit with their auditory system they  

play09:54

will often close their eyes and that's not a  coincidence if somebody is listening very hard  

play10:00

please don't ask them to look you directly in  the eye while also asking that they listen to  

play10:03

you that's actually one of the worst ways to get  somebody to listen to if you say now listen to me  

play10:07

and look me in the eye the visual system will  take over and they'll see your mouth move but  

play10:10

they're going to hear their thoughts more they're  going to hear what what you're saying closing the  

play10:14

eyes is one of the best ways to create a cone of  auditory attention and this is what low vision or  

play10:20

no vision folks do they have tremendous capacity  to focus their attention in particular locations  

play10:25

incidentally does anyone know the two animals  that have the best hearing in the world  

play10:30

the absolute best hearing many orders of magnitude  better than humans turns out it's the elephant  

play10:35

that might not surprise you they have huge ears  and the moth which probably will surprise you  

play10:39

I didn't even know that moths could hear but  now it explains why they're so hard to catch  

play10:45

if you are not cited you learn how to do  this with your hearing if you're somebody  

play10:49

who Braille reads you learn how to do this  with your fingers if you look at great  

play10:53

piano players like Glenn Gould you'll they  often times will turn their head to the side  

play11:00

you think about some of the great musicians that  like Stevie Wonder that were blind right they he  

play11:06

would look away because he had no reason to look  at the keys but oftentimes they'll Orient an ear  

play11:11

or one side of their head to the keys on the piano  as I mentioned before people are non-sided to have  

play11:15

better pitch so we have these cones of attention  that we can devote and for most people vision is  

play11:20

the primary way to train up this focus of building  these cones of attention so you absolutely have to  

play11:25

focus on the thing that you're trying to learn  and you will feel some agitation because of the  

play11:29

epinephrine in your system if you're feeling  agitation and it's challenging to focus and  

play11:34

you're feeling like you're not doing it right  chances are you're doing it right and you can  

play11:38

practice this ability to stare for long periods  of time without blinking if your goal is to learn  

play11:43

how to control that visual window for sake of  controlling your focus it can be an immensely  

play11:48

powerful portal into these mechanisms  of plasticity because we know it engages  

play11:53

things like nucleus basalus and these other  brain stem mechanisms I get a lot of questions  

play11:57

about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder  ADHD and attention deficit disorder some people  

play12:03

actually have clinically diagnosed ADD and ADHD  and if you do you should certainly work with a  

play12:09

good psychiatrist to try and figure out the right  pharmacology and or behavioral practices for you  

play12:14

many people however have given themselves a  low-grade ADHD or add because of the way that they  

play12:21

move through their world they are looking at their  phone a lot of the time it's actually very easy  

play12:26

to Anchor your attention to your phone for the  following reason first of all it's very restricted  

play12:30

in size so it's very easy to limit your visual  attention to something about this big it's one of  

play12:36

the design features of the phone the other is that  just as you you've probably heard a picture is  

play12:42

worth a thousand words well a movie is worth ten  thousand pictures anytime we're looking at things  

play12:48

that have motion visual motion our attentional  system will naturally gravitate towards them  

play12:54

it towards those movies it's actually much harder  to read words on a page than it used to be for  

play13:00

many people because we're used to seeing things  spelled out for us in YouTube videos or videos  

play13:06

where things move and are very dramatic it is true  that the more that we look at those motion stimuli  

play13:13

the more that we're seeing movies of things and  things that are very dramatic and very intense  

play13:17

the worse we're getting at attending to things  like text on a page or to listening to something  

play13:22

like a podcast and extracting the information if  you think about the areas of life that dictate  

play13:28

whether or not we become successful independent  healthy individuals most of those involve the kind  

play13:35

of boring practices of digesting information on  a page boring because it's not as exciting in the  

play13:41

moment perhaps as watching a movie or something  being spoon fed to us but the more attention that  

play13:47

we can put to something even if it's fleeting and  we feel like we're only getting little bits and  

play13:51

pieces shards of the information as opposed to  the entire thing that has a much more powerful  

play13:56

effect in engaging this cholinergic system for  plasticity then does for instance watching a movie  

play14:02

and that's because when we watch a movie it can  the entire thing can be great it can be awesome  

play14:07

it can be this overriding experience but I think  for all those experiences if you're somebody who's  

play14:11

interested in building your brain and expanding  your brain and getting better at various things  

play14:16

feeling better doing better Etc one has to  ask how much of my neurochemical resources  

play14:22

am I devoting to the passive experience of letting  something just kind of overwhelm me and excite me  

play14:28

versus something that I'm really trying to learn  and take away and now there's nothing I enjoy  

play14:32

movie content and TV content all the time I scroll  Instagram often but we are limited in the extent  

play14:39

to which we can grab a hold of these acetylcholine  release mechanisms or epinephrine and I think that  

play14:45

we need to be careful that we don't devote  all our acetylcholine and epinephrine all  

play14:50

our dopamine for that matter to these passive  experiences of things that are not going to  

play14:55

enrich us and better us so that's a little bit  of an of an editorial on my part but the phone  

play15:00

is Rich with movies it's rich with information the  real question is is the information rich in for us  

play15:09

in ways that grow us and cultivate smarter more  emotionally uh you know emotionally evolved or  

play15:17

people or is it creating how's what's it doing  for our physical well-being for that matter  

play15:22

so I don't want to tell people what to do  or not to do but think carefully about how  

play15:28

often you're focusing on something and how  good you are or poor you are at focusing on  

play15:32

something that's challenging so once you get  this epinephrine this alertness you get the  

play15:36

acetylcholine released and you can focus your  attention then the question is for how long  

play15:41

and in an earlier podcast I talked about these  all tradian cycles that last about 90 minutes  

play15:45

the typical learning bout should be about 90  minutes that learning bout will no doubt include  

play15:51

five to ten minutes of warm-up period I think  everyone should give themselves permission to  

play15:56

not be fully focused in the early part of that  bout but that in the middle of that bout for the  

play16:01

middle hour or so you should be able to maintain  Focus for about an hour or so so that for me means  

play16:06

eliminating distractions that means turning off  the Wi-Fi I put my phone in the other room if I  

play16:11

find myself reflexively getting up to get the  phone I will take the phone and lock it in the  

play16:15

car outside if I find myself going to get it  anyway I am guilty of giving away the phone  

play16:21

um for a period of time or even things more  dramatic I've thrown it up on my roof before so I  

play16:26

can't get to it till the end of the day that thing  is pretty compelling and we come up with all sorts  

play16:30

of reasons why we need it to be in contact with  it but I encourage you to try experiencing what  

play16:35

it is to be completely immersed in an activity  where you feel the agitation that your attention  

play16:40

is drifting but you continually bring it back  and that's an important point which is that  

play16:43

attention drifts but we have to re-anchor it we  have to keep grabbing it back and the way to do  

play16:48

that if you're sighted is with your eyes that as  your attention drifts and you look away you want  

play16:52

to try and literally maintain visual focus on  the thing that you're trying to learn feel free  

play16:56

to Blink of course but you can greatly increase  your powers of focus and the rates of learning  

play17:02

if you want to learn as an adult you have to be  alert it might seem so obvious but I think a lot  

play17:08

of people don't think about when in their 24-hour  cycle they're most alert just ask yourself when  

play17:14

during the day do you typically tend to be  most alert that will afford you an advantage  

play17:19

in learning specific things during that period  of time so don't give up that period of time  

play17:24

for things that are meaningless useless or not  aligned with your goals it'll be a terrible time  

play17:29

to get into passive observance or just letting  your time get soaked Away by something that is  

play17:36

a valuable asset that epinephrine released from  your brain stem is going to occur more readily  

play17:43

at particular phases of of your 24-hour cycle  than others during the waking phase of course  

play17:49

you should know when those are and then you could  start to think about the behavioral practices  

play17:55

maybe the pharmacologic practices like caffeine  hydration Etc that will support heightened levels  

play18:01

of alertness attention is something that can be  learned and attention is critical for creating  

play18:07

that condition where whatever it is that you are  engaging in will modify your brain in a way that  

play18:14

you won't have to spend so much attention on it  going forward that's the essence of plasticity  

play18:18

that things will eventually become reflexive  the language that you're learning the motor  

play18:22

movement the cognitive skill the ability  to suppress an emotional response or to  

play18:26

engage an emotional response depending on what  your goals are and what's appropriate for you  

play18:31

you should also ask yourself whether or not you're  trying to focus too much for too long during the  

play18:37

day I know some very high performing individuals  very high performing in a variety of contacts and  

play18:44

none of them are focused all day long many of them  take walks down the hallway sometimes mumbling to  

play18:48

themselves or not paying attention to anything  else they go for bike rides they take walks they  

play18:52

are not trying to engage their mind at maximum  Focus all the time very few people do that because  

play18:59

we learn best in these 90-minute bouts inside of  one of these ultradian cycles and I should repeat  

play19:04

again that within that 90 minute cycle you should  not expect yourself to focus for the entire period  

play19:08

of one 90-minute cycle the beginning and end  are going to be a little bit flickering in and  

play19:11

out of focus how do you know when one of these 90  minute Cycles is starting well typically when you  

play19:16

wake up is the beginning of the first 90 minute  cycle but it does it's not down to the minute  

play19:19

you'll be able to tap into your sense of these  90 minute Cycles as you start to engage in these  

play19:25

learning practices should you choose and then  of course getting some non-sleep deep rest or  

play19:30

just deliberate disengagement such as walking or  running or just sitting eyes closed door eyes open  

play19:37

kind of mindlessly it might seem in a chair just  letting your thoughts move around after learning  

play19:41

about will accelerate the rate of plasticity  that's been shown in quality peer-reviewed studies  

play19:47

thank you for joining for this special episode of  after skool if you'd like to learn more tools for  

play19:52

mental health physical health and performance  check out the huberman Lab podcast which is  

play19:56

available on all platforms YouTube Apple  Spotify anywhere podcasts are found also  

play20:00

check out huberman lab on both Instagram and  Twitter there I cover science and science-based  

play20:05

tools some of which overlaps with the content  of the huberman Lab podcast but much of which  

play20:08

is distinct from the content of the huberman Lab  podcast we are also hubermanlab.com that's our  

play20:13

website and there you can find links to all of  our social media and all of our podcast episodes

play20:26

thank you

play20:34

foreign

Rate This

5.0 / 5 (0 votes)

Étiquettes Connexes
NeuroscienceConcentrationNeuroplasticitéPerformanceApprentissageVisionCaféineMédicationADD/ADHDPratiques