How to Quickly Improve Focus - Andrew Huberman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

thank you

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