how i fixed my attention span

Summary

The video script discusses the struggle with maintaining focus in a world full of distractions and the journey to reclaim attention control. It explores the use of an EEG to measure attention span and the implementation of various strategies, such as managing distractions, time blocking, and meditation. The individual's experience with Headspace and meditation leads to an improvement in focus and performance metrics, highlighting the importance of cultivating attention resilience rather than solely relying on environmental control.

Takeaways

• 🧠 The importance of attention and focus was highlighted, with the speaker feeling a loss of control over their attention span.
• 📱 The speaker's struggle with distractions, particularly social media, was emphasized as a significant issue.
• 🧘 The use of an EEG to measure brain activity and attention levels was discussed as a method for tracking focus.
• 🎯 The concept of focus as a limited resource was introduced, which tires out with use and is essential for concentrating on specific tasks.
• 🚫 The speaker's efforts to manage distractions included deleting unused apps, setting time limits, and muting notifications.
• 📝 The strategy of writing down internal distractions was suggested as a way to handle them effectively.
• 📅 The implementation of a detailed calendar to schedule tasks and avoid multitasking was proposed as a productivity tool.
• 🎵 The role of music and ambient sounds in aiding focus was mentioned, with the speaker finding different soundtracks helpful.
• 🧘 The discovery of meditation as a solution to improve focus and manage distractions was shared.
• 🤔 The speaker's curiosity about understanding the 'why' behind meditation's effectiveness was explored.
• 🌟 The balance between reshaping one's environment and reinforcing one's attention through mindfulness was discussed as a spectrum of strategies.

Q & A

What is the main issue the speaker is facing with their attention span?

The speaker is struggling with a lack of focus and an inability to concentrate on a single task without craving distractions, which makes them feel like their life is out of control.

How does the speaker attempt to measure their attention span?

The speaker uses an electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure electrical activity in the brain, which is associated with performance metrics like attention, excitement, and stress.

What is the role of Headspace in the video?

Headspace is a sponsor of the video and provides tools such as focus music, motivational exercises, guided meditations, and more to help improve mental focus and well-being.

What are the three key takeaways about focus the speaker shares?

The three key takeaways are: 1) Attention and focus are different, with attention being a broad concept and focus being a specific process within that awareness. 2) Focus is a limited and exhaustible resource that tires out with use. 3) Focus also filters out distractions, and the more distractions there are, the more focus is wasted.

How does the speaker manage their phone usage to reduce distractions?

The speaker deletes unused apps, sets up time limits for frequently used apps, mutes notifications, installs an app that replaces icons with text, and changes the display to grayscale to reduce the temptation to use the phone.

What is the speaker's strategy for dealing with internal distractions?

The speaker dedicates a page in a notebook to quickly write down passing thoughts and later sorts through them based on action, importance, and time sensitivity, incorporating them into a more specific daily schedule.

How does the speaker optimize their schedule for focus and energy levels?

The speaker uses time blocking or timeboxing, scheduling specific tasks at times when their energy levels are highest and when the task requires a significant amount of focus, while also considering switching costs between tasks.

What impact does meditation have on the speaker's focus and performance metrics?

Meditation improves the speaker's engagement, excitement, interest, and stress levels, making them feel more normal and in control. It also leads to a more consistent level of focus without extreme peaks and dips.

How does the speaker's understanding of meditation differ from productivity tips?

While productivity tips focus on reshaping the environment to eliminate distractions, meditation targets the focus directly, cultivating resilience and the ability to command attention despite distractions.

What is the speaker's conclusion about managing focus?

The speaker concludes that a balance between structuring one's environment and reinforcing one's attention is necessary for managing focus effectively, as the core ability to focus is what ultimately matters.

How does the speaker's experience with Headspace contribute to their focus improvement journey?

Headspace provides a variety of resources such as meditation, movement, and ASMR that help the speaker to manage stress and distractions, ultimately supporting their focus improvement journey.

Outlines

00:00

🚫 Struggling with Attention Span

The speaker opens up about their struggle with maintaining focus and attention, describing a constant craving for distraction that hampers productivity. They express a desire to tackle this issue and turn to technology, specifically an electroencephalogram (EEG), to measure and understand their attention levels. The speaker also mentions sponsorship from Headspace, a platform offering tools to help with focus and mindfulness.

05:00

🧠 Understanding Focus and Distractions

The speaker delves into the science behind attention and focus, distinguishing between the two and discussing their limited nature. They explore the impact of distractions and the possibility of enhancing focus through cognitive training. The speaker then shares their personal experiment, using an EEG to track their attention span and various methods to visualize their daily habits and interactions with technology.

10:02

📱 Managing Distractions and Scheduling

The speaker outlines their strategy to manage distractions, starting with phone usage. They describe the measures taken to reduce phone interactions and how these changes immediately affected their behavior. They also address internal distractions and the importance of capturing fleeting thoughts. The speaker then discusses their new approach to scheduling, time-blocking tasks according to their energy levels and the nature of the work, and shares a tool that helps automate this process.

15:03

🧘 Exploring Meditation and its Impact

The speaker recounts their journey with meditation as a means to improve focus. Initially skeptical, they experiment with Headspace's guided meditation and discover its benefits. They discuss the variety of content available on the platform and how it caters to different needs and experience levels. The speaker's personal experience with meditation leads to measurable improvements in their EEG readings, demonstrating its positive effect on their focus and overall well-being.

🤔 Reflecting on the Journey to Focus

The speaker concludes by reflecting on their journey to improve focus. They acknowledge the effectiveness of minimizing distractions and multitasking, but also express a deeper curiosity about the mechanisms behind meditation's success. The speaker's research leads them to understand the parallels between mindfulness practices and scientific understanding of attention. They emphasize the importance of cultivating one's ability to focus, rather than solely relying on environmental control, as a more sustainable approach to managing attention.

Keywords

💡Attention Span

Attention span refers to the length of time a person can concentrate on a task without becoming distracted. In the video, the speaker expresses concern about their dwindling attention span, feeling an inability to focus on tasks and a constant craving for distractions like social media.

💡Distraction

Distraction refers to anything that diverts attention from a task or activity. In the context of the video, the speaker is battling with distractions, particularly from digital devices like smartphones and social media platforms, which hinder their ability to focus.

💡EEG (Electroencephalogram)

EEG is a non-invasive test that measures electrical activity in the brain, often used to track attention, excitement, and stress levels. In the video, the speaker uses an EEG to monitor their brain activity and gain a better understanding of their attention span and focus levels.

💡Productivity

Productivity refers to the efficiency and effectiveness with which one completes tasks or work. The video discusses the speaker's quest to improve their productivity by managing distractions and using tools like an EEG to monitor their focus.

💡Meditation

Meditation is a practice where an individual uses a technique like mindfulness or focus to achieve mental clarity and calmness. In the video, meditation is introduced as a potential solution to improve focus and attention span.

💡Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a form of meditation where one focuses on being aware and present in the moment, acknowledging thoughts and feelings without judgment. The video highlights mindfulness as a key component of meditation that can influence focus differently than productivity strategies.

💡Multitasking

Multitasking is the ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. The video discusses how multitasking can deplete one's focus and attention span, suggesting that focusing on one task at a time can improve productivity and attention.

💡Focus

Focus is the act of concentrating on a particular task or activity to the exclusion of all else. The video emphasizes the importance of focus and how it is a limited resource that can be improved with techniques like meditation and mindfulness.

💡Headspace

Headspace is a meditation app that offers various resources like guided meditations, focus music, and exercises to help users improve their mental well-being. In the video, the speaker uses Headspace as a tool to learn and practice meditation.

💡Time Management

Time management involves organizing and planning how much time is spent on specific activities. The video discusses the importance of time management in reducing distractions and optimizing focus through strategies like time blocking.

💡Gray Scale

Gray scale refers to the reduction of a display's color capabilities to various shades of gray. In the video, the speaker changes their phone display to gray scale to reduce the temptation to use it, as colorful apps and icons are less appealing in gray.

Highlights

The speaker expresses frustration with their lack of focus and constant craving for distractions, which feels like a loss of control over their life.

The speaker decides to use an electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure their brain activity and get a baseline for their attention span.

The initial findings from the EEG show that the speaker's attention is quite noisy and is often distracted, especially by their phone and social media.

The speaker realizes that they are only engaged and focused for about 12% of their waking hours, leading to the decision to make changes.

To manage distractions, the speaker takes several steps, including deleting unused apps, setting time limits, muting notifications, and changing their phone display to grayscale.

The speaker also starts to manage their internal distractions by writing down passing thoughts in a notebook to deal with later.

A more specific calendar schedule is created, using time blocking techniques to avoid multitasking and optimize for the speaker's energy levels throughout the day.

The speaker finds that after implementing these changes, they are using their phone less, getting more done, and their brain activity shows more focus.

However, a relapse occurs where the speaker uses their phone for seven hours in one day, leading to more distractions the next day.

The speaker decides to try meditation as a last resort to improve focus, using the Headspace app to guide them through the process.

Meditation, specifically mindfulness, is found to improve all of the speaker's performance metrics, including engagement, excitement, interest, and stress levels.

The speaker notes that while meditation made them feel 'fine' and more balanced, it didn't lead to the extreme peaks and dips in focus they previously experienced.

The speaker concludes that fixing focus for those without attention disorders can be as simple as minimizing distractions, avoiding multitasking, and meditating if needed.

The speaker reflects on the difference between productivity books that suggest environmental changes and meditation that reinforces attention itself.

The speaker finds that meditation helps by making the mind more resilient to distractions and easier to command, rather than trying to control the environment entirely.

The speaker suggests finding a balance between structuring one's day thoughtfully and accepting some level of noise or distractions, rather than striving for complete silence or isolation.

Transcripts

- I kind of feel like my attention span is dying.

It's just like whenever I try and do anything,

I start craving some sort of distraction.

I can't just focus on one thing at a time,

even if that thing is sleeping.

But I have things I wanna do, things I wanna focus on.

I just don't, because refreshing Instagram

is always gonna be easier.

And it's a problem!

And I'm tired of it.

I am tired of feeling like my life

is so far out of my own control.

So today we are figuring out how to stop scrolling

and how to start paying attention.

Thank you to our patrons for supporting the channel,

and Headspace for sponsoring a portion of this video.

With focus music, motivational exercises,

guided meditations, and more,

Headspace has over a thousand pieces of content

to help you be kind to your mind.

If you wanna see how Headspace might be helpful to you,

you can try it out completely for free for 60 days.

All you have to do is sign up

with our link in the description,

or scan the QR code on screen.

So what's in the box?

This is an electroencephalogram, or an EEG.

It measures electrical activity in the brain,

which are associated with certain performance metrics,

like attention, excitement, and stress.

Does that look good, how do I look?

Now, these things usually look

a little bit more threatening and wiry.

However, I reached out to this brand called EMOTIV

that creates more simplified consumer options.

They gave me a little discount

so I could actually afford this for the video.

And I look like a cyborg.

I think it looks cute!

Okay, so these are my brainwaves,

and if I focus on it really hard,

it should be able to translate these

into more understandable metrics, like attention.

Look at that, you see the building attention

and spike in excitement, that's my brain!

I kind of feel like a video game character

and these are my stats, this is cool.

Now, you should note that EEG data can be pretty noisy

and things like movement can really impact the results.

However, I think that having any level of recording

is an improvement because I basically never pay attention

to my attention.

It only ever really comes up

when I'm feeling guilty about my screen time,

or I realize that I've done nothing all day.

And only having these really infrequent

and negative interactions with my problem

makes it really hard to be objective about the whole thing,

to understand how bad it actually is,

and see if it's getting better or worse.

But now, with the help of this brain scanner,

I finally got to measure a baseline for my attention span

without getting bogged down by guilt

or forgetting to focus on my focus.

I wore the EEG while I worked, ate, exercised, and relaxed.

I did take it off a few times

because it could get pretty uncomfortable

after really long stretches.

But overall, it was pretty easy to ignore

while I just lived my life for the rest of the week.

Alongside the EEG, I installed a program

to automatically track how often

I switch tasks on my computer,

and I recorded how many times I picked up my phone.

Did you know that you can't actually

export your screen time data?

Then I wrote a quick script

to compile all this data and visualize it.

Here is my life for the past three days.

Ooh, the x-axis is the number of hours in a day.

These blue bars represent

the number of times I picked up my phone.

This gray line tracks how productive I was at my computer.

And these colored lines

are the median performance metrics from my EEG.

Now, some highlights include this moment

where I picked up my phone to start debugging the app

that I was using to scan my brain,

and then I ended up opening Instagram

and spending the next two hours on it.

However, during my meetings the next day,

I was like super interested and attentive, right, great?

No, it's because I kept picking up my phone.

I was supposed to be on a call!

I kept opening up Instagram!

But it's not all bad news.

There are these instances where I put down my phone,

I get into the zone and my brain just lights up.

The only issue is that in my eight-hour workday,

it only happens for like an hour.

It's over here at like two o'clock,

or five o'clock, or ten o'clock.

Now, something similar does happen

to my brain when I am working out,

but how often am I doing that?

All this is to say is that

for these 16-ish hours that I am awake,

I'm only engaged and focused for like 12% of it.

The rest of the time, the 88% of the time,

I'm all over the place.

I'm checked out or I'm distracted.

This could be most of the rest of my life

unless we do something about it.

So let's do that.

So I started looking for any books about attention,

focus, and distractions, and I found a lot of them.

There was just one problem:

They're all identical.

They invent different buzzwords,

and they switch up the personal anecdotes

that they blur with legitimate science.

But fundamentally, if you've read one, you've read them all.

Fortunately, you don't need to read any of them

because here are the three things

that you actually need to know

if you want to fix your focus.

One, attention and focus are different things.

Attention is a broad concept

that boils down to our general awareness.

While focus is one process that controls that awareness,

concentrating it on something specific.

Two, focus is a limited and exhaustible resource.

So you can only really focus on one thing at a time,

and your ability to do that

will tire out the further you get from rest.

Three, focus also filters out distractions.

The more there are, the more of your focus is being wasted.

Now, some research exists suggesting

that certain forms of cognitive training

can increase your capacity and ability to focus,

but the type of training

and the effectiveness has varying results.

The brain is complicated

and there's a lot of nuance in the details,

especially when you're trying to find things

that work for you in your specific circumstances.

So to fix my focus, I'm actually only going to do

a handful of very simple things

that support what we know about focus.

Here's the plan.

First, I need to manage my distractions,

starting with the obvious: my phone.

I deleted the apps that I never use,

set up time limits for the apps I use way too much.

Everything except for my wallets.

And muted basically all of my notifications.

I also installed this app that replaces icons with text.

So now I need to put in a little more effort

before I open anything.

I also changed my display to gray scale.

I have never wanted to use my phone less.

Oh, this sucks.

I wasn't kidding.

Almost immediately, my phone pickups

and screen time dropped dramatically.

However, the silence made me notice

the sheer number of internal distractions I have too.

These passing thoughts that just take me off task,

like wondering if I need to buy more toilet paper,

wishing I learned a musical instrument as a kid,

or thinking about what I'm gonna have for dinner.

They were rarely urgent, but often important enough

that I didn't want to ignore or forget them.

So I dedicated a page in my notebook

to quickly write them down for later.

When later came, I sorted through those thoughts

based on action, importance, and time sensitivity.

And kept it in mind when I was building my schedule,

which got way more specific.

Now, I'm usually the type of person

who only puts like events in my calendar, a normal person.

However, a lot of the books that I've been reading

have recommended time blocking or timeboxing.

I don't know,

it's just setting aside time to do individual tasks.

Apparently it helps you avoid the temptation to multitask.

So every morning I took all of my work, chores,

exercises, and hobbies, and plugged them into my calendar.

Now, I found that the secret is that it's not as simple

as just putting an hour aside for each thing.

Since focus is an exhaustible resource,

I need to take into account

my energy levels throughout the day

and how much effort each task is gonna take.

Like reading research papers and writing

takes a lot of focus for me.

It's just really boring.

But listening to audio books, or animating, I'm locked in.

I actually find it really hard to disengage

from the tasks that I really enjoy.

So I find myself thinking about them,

or even continuing to do them past their allotted time,

which means that I should probably

think about those switching costs

when I'm building my schedule out for the day.

Eventually I realized this process

could be a little more automated, so I got Taha

to put the process together in a Notion template.

Now I can input tasks, tag them,

and it'll show me an order that I can drag into my calendar.

I found it useful, and if you wanna give it a try,

I'll include it in our next newsletter.

But once I controlled my external and internal distractions

and built out a schedule that minimized multitasking

optimized for my energy levels,

all that was left was actually focusing.

It was amazing.

I was using my phone less and getting more done.

My brain was lighting up.

I was way more engaged in everything I did.

I found different soundtracks to make it easier

to get in the zone, and life was great,

until it wasn't.

It is 12.

I haven't left bed yet.

I've just been using my phone, full color.

Every 15 minutes, I hit "Remind me in 15 minutes."

And then 15 minutes later I do it again.

Just feels like we're back where we started.

I ended up using my phone for seven hours that day,

more than I had all week prior.

I had things I could do, things I should do,

but I just couldn't bring myself to get up.

I am kind of proud that I managed

to pull up my code on my phone

and see if there were any clues in my data

that could explain what went wrong.

I know, it's pathetic, but it was a small victory

that led to an interesting discovery.

The nights that I used my phone past midnight

led to days where I felt more distracted

and picked up my phone more often.

I learned in an old video

how important sleep could really be.

So I decided to just give up on the day,

get some sleep, and try again tomorrow.

Aargh!

I feel like I'm drowning.

It's like I'm not doing anything hard, right?

I'm just doing my stuff.

I'm just trying to focus on it more,

except I'm trying so hard to focus

that everything is making me on edge.

Like my cat will try and get my attention,

and I'll be annoyed at him for wanting pats.

It's like there's sand falling

and I'm trying to catch all of the sand,

and you can't do it.

Am I making any sense?

I really need to make every grain of sand count

by like doing everything on target,

and even if I'm enjoying something, I can't,

because I need to move and catch different grains of sand.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, what did you just say?

- Have you ever thought about just meditating,

and doing nothing?

Taking a step back away from the thing

that you're working on, and not working,

like taking a break?

- Maybe it was because I was desperate.

Actually, it is totally because I was desperate,

but I decided to try meditation.

The only issue is I have no idea how.

Luckily, I have Headspace.

I should probably turn the color on, just so that you guys

can see what the app actually looks like.

When I asked Headspace to sponsor a portion of this video,

I genuinely thought I was only going to use

their focus music and white noise,

because I love listening to those

to the point that it is ruining

my YouTube recommendations and Spotify wrapped.

So it's just great to have access to Headspace's collection.

But Headspace also has stretches,

workouts, podcasts, and meditation.

They have content specifically for beginners, like me,

who don't know where to start.

It's in their Basics course.

But if you don't wanna commit to that,

they also have shorter exercises,

including my favorite thing I discovered on this app,

which is, "Star Wars: Breathe with Yoda."

It's a one-minute breathing exercise

and Yoda's just sitting there, levitating rocks, I love it.

However, they also have longer, less structured stuff

for people with more experience.

Just the sheer amount of variety

is probably my favorite thing about Headspace.

They bring together so many resources

to help you be kind to your mind.

So even if meditation doesn't end up helping,

maybe movement will.

Or, another cool thing that I found.

This is so sick, they have ASMR,

and there's like a thing at the bottom

that lets you control the balance

between voice and like environmental noise.

Headspace, do more of this!

If you wanna try out Headspace,

completely for free for 60 days,

you can sign up using the link in the description

or scan the QR code.

Okay, let's learn how to meditate.

- [App] Hi, and welcome to session...

- Hi!

My first experience with meditation was strange.

Now, the voice kept telling me to focus on my breathing,

but I might've focused a little too hard

because I was worried I forgot how to breathe.

I should wear my head scanner thing for this.

Back to breathing.

But eventually, I think I got the hang of it.

And, after 10 minutes,

how am I supposed to know if meditation's working?

Is there a light, like what happens?

- I don't think there's an exact science to it, it's just,

you're supposed to just feel better, or feel changed.

Did it do anything?

- I don't know!

Do you just keep doing it?

- That's kind of it.

I know that's probably not what you wanted to hear but...

- So I just trust the process?

So, for the next few days,

I continued with my focus schedule and wore my EEG,

but I also tried to meditate in the morning, or evening,

or just random moments when I felt like it.

And then, something kinda wild happened.

Meditation works!

And I wish that I could tell you this

because I've achieved enlightenment,

or I have a newfound sense of peace.

But, no, I just feel normal,

about as normal as the distribution

of the sample means of my experimental populations,

justifying the use of a two sample T-test,

resulting in these P values.

Ooh, how significant!

This EEG has seriously paid off,

because even though I don't feel that different,

I was able to use its measurements to do some statistics

and find that meditation has improved

basically all of my performance metrics:

engagement, excitement,

interest, also stress.

But that might be because I was wearing this when you guys

sold out our last merch drop in less than 24 hours.

Thank you for that.

So a good stress.

The coolest thing is that all of this

is on top of what I already gained

by minimizing distractions and avoiding multitasking.

At least according to these regressions I ran.

But the benefits of meditation came at a surprising cost.

You see these peaks of intense focus?

Yeah, those stopped happening.

But I also stopped experiencing these huge dips.

Now I'm just...fine.

This whole thing is just...fine.

You know, I started this video

because I wanted to feel more in control of my attention.

I didn't wanna have to rely on being distracted

every single second.

And you know what?

Done.

I am literally, statistically more engaged.

And anecdotally, I was doing the dishes the other day

and I started playing a podcast out of habit,

and then I realized I'd rather just clean in silence.

Who am I?

I know I should be happy.

Happy that, for folks without attention disorders,

fixing your focus is as simple as minimizing distractions,

avoiding multitasking,

and maybe meditating if it all gets too much.

I should be happy!

But I'm not.

Like, I think it's really cool that meditation can work,

even if you don't know how it works.

But I'm me, and I need to know how.

So I guess if you only cared about fixing your focus,

the video's done, you heard my advice.

But, if you are like me and you wanna know why,

come with me, 'cause we're gonna find out.

It was strange getting to the bottom of this,

because I was looking for an answer

when I didn't really have a question.

I just had a sense of unease

because I had solved my original problem

without understanding how or why my solution really worked.

It was only after spending the day in the library,

flipping through any book I could find about meditation,

when I realized my question and its answer.

You see, earlier,

we learned how focus works according to science.

And the tips I found in those productivity books

were in line with that.

They should have helped me stay focused,

but they didn't, not in the long run.

However, when I added meditation to the mix, it all worked.

The question is how?

Specifically, how did meditation influence my focus

differently than productivity tips?

Okay, so meditation, as we know it,

originated in India with Theravada Buddhism.

However, it's since evolved into a wide range of practices

used throughout the world, including more secularized

and instrumentalized forms that became popular in the West,

with books like "Wherever You Go, There You Are."

This approach to meditation

became known as "mindfulness based interventions."

And it has two main forms, open monitoring,

where you observe your experiences

in real time without reacting.

You just recognize things as they are.

And focused attention,

where you concentrate on something specific, like breathing.

Now the interesting thing

is that this religiously informed framework,

with origins from thousands of years ago,

has a lot of surprising parallels

with our modern scientific understanding of attention.

In fact, some Buddhist practitioners

have been found to outperform the norm

at attention-related tasks, suggesting that meditation is,

at least in part, helping them focus.

Now, I should probably say that a lot of this research,

while promising, is still inconclusive.

Meditation, and even attention,

are still kind of nebulous concepts that make it difficult

to achieve rigorous scientific consensus.

However, despite the similarities I found

between religious theory

and these pop science attention books,

I did notice one key difference:

how they manage distractions.

You see, the pop science and productivity books I read

emphasized cutting out distractions

and building walls in your space and schedule

to protect your focus.

This is straightforward in concept,

but really difficult to maintain

if you have a lot of responsibilities

that are outside of your control.

In contrast, the mindfulness approach

targets your focus directly,

cultivating it to be easier to command

and resilient to distractions.

This forms a sort of spectrum,

where you either reshape your environment

to restore your attention,

or reinforce your attention to endure the world.

Now here's the thing, when you feel your attention span

slipping through your fingers,

that pop science productivity approach is really tempting,

not only because it's unavoidable,

like a lot of the content around reclaiming your focus

is for the sake of using it on something else,

but it's also tempting because the advice is so tangible.

You turn off your notifications, you build out a schedule,

you get rid of the distractions,

and see it replaced with things that you do care about.

Compare that to meditation, which is so subtle

that if I wasn't wearing an EEG for three weeks,

I would've just assumed that it did nothing.

However, the average person like you or I

can never fully control our environments,

and the supports we use to try are shockingly fragile.

So if they break, when they break,

all we're left with is our core ability to focus.

And if that sucks, we end up where we started.

That's why I think meditation helped me out.

The whole exercise is realizing

that your mind naturally wanders,

but you also have the power

to nudge it back to where you want it to be.

Now, I'm obviously not gonna go full tilt

and become a Buddhist monk

because, to be honest, can't pull off orange.

However, the great thing about a spectrum

is that we can find ourselves somewhere in the middle,

structuring our days more thoughtfully

and lowering the noise, not to a silence,

but to a gentle hum that we can enjoy at our own pace.

But either way, have a lovely day!

(gentle music)