“Why can’t I concentrate? Am I this kind of a person who can’t focus?” I call bullsh#t! Instead of making excuses and thinking that you simply aren’t capable of focusing I’m going to teach you how to wire your brain to become more focused.

The Superpower of the 21st Century

I’ve heard the saying: „The ability to focus is going to be the Superpower of the 21st century,“ which may turn out to be true when you think about it.

Our smartphones and other gadgets are constantly keeping our monkey minds stimulated and wired up

Social media notifications and marketing ads are targeting our crocodile brains to seek the feeling of reward from the likes we get

The fast-paced lifestyle of working and trying to keep up with all the news causes a lot of stress and anxiety

You Need to Know How to Control Your Monkey Mind

Are You a Goldfish?

There have been studies that show how the attention span of an average student has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds since the year 2000. A goldfish has the attention span of 9 seconds. Congratulations, you’re less focused than a goldfish now.

Now, this is probably not true because if you were to really try then you can definitely hold your concentration for longer than that. #FOCUSEDLOOK

But the fact of the matter is that you’re probably watching this with several of your browser tabs open. You’re simultaneously on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, e-mail, and you may even be eating.

If you were to put a hunter-gatherer in the same situation then their brain would simply melt down because they aren’t used to that much stimulation. Processed food, funny videos, social validation – all those things are something we modern humans have become desensitized to. We don’t pay that much attention to those things anymore, yet our productivity and success may still suffer.

The Sands of Time and Neurons

There’s nothing wrong with social media, doing several things at once, or being unfocused. In fact, it’s actually better to learn how to do more than one thing at a time as to save time. However, if you can’t stay focused or fail at multi-tasking, then you’re actually wasting even more time.

Therefore, you want to develop the ability to focus in both the classical sense of doing one single activity at a time, as well as the macro-ability of seeing how focused you are in your everyday life and then adjust your behavior.

One of the most critical ideas you have to understand is NEUROPLASTICITY – the dynamic process of your brain restructuring itself according to the conditioning it receives.

Neurons that fire together wire together.

Neurons that fire out of sync fail to link.

Which means that if you want to stay focused, then you have to train it like any other skill.

What Associations Are You Making

Neuroplasticity is a scary concept because it shows how your every thought and action has long-term consequences on your habits and the person you are.

What’s more, every action you take is linked to a certain stimulus or an emotional state that acts like a back and forth feedback loop. It’s a cause and effect relationship that you yourself can create with your associative behavior.

Every time you experience a certain stimulus, you’ll elicit a certain response that you’ve conditioned in your brain.

Every time you experience a certain response, you’ll start associating that response with the stimulus that triggered it.

In the everyday context of trying to stay focused it would look like this:

Every time you check your Facebook while trying to work, you’re telling your brain that you’re working time is the perfect time to get distracted by going to Facebook.

Every time you deliberately block out all distractions and close all unnecessary browser tabs just so you could do undisturbed work, you’re telling your brain that this is the time to stay focused and not get sidetracked.

All of your causally looped reactions and actions are constantly rewiring your brain and they may become the wings that can set you free or keep you unfocused.

How to Rewire Your Brain to Stay Focused

What you need to do is teach your brain how to stay focused. It’s like any other muscle in your body – the more you use it the stronger it gets.

We have to start with changing your self-identity – One of the biggest drivers of human behavior is self-identity – the person you see yourself as.

You act based on your beliefs – what you believe is possible and true – and if you believe that you’re the kind of person who loses their focus as soon as they try to work, then you’re going to reinforce that self-identity, you’re going to reinforce that pattern of neuroplasticity, and because you’ll act based on that belief, you’re going to reinforce that same belief again. Your actions create your beliefs – if you don’t think that you can stay focused because in the past you’ve failed miserably at it, then you’re not going to even try your hardest. That’s why you need to gain the experience of staying focused which is going to interrupt this feedback loop. Your beliefs create your self-identity – who do you believe yourself to be based on the actions you take and the words you use to describe yourself. If you think that you’re a procrastinator, someone who can’t stay focused, or just a lazy-ass-fck, then you’re already shooting yourself in the foot. That’s a fixed mindset way of approaching things. A person with a growth mindset would believe that they can learn anything and become whoever they want.

Focus on What Associations to Make

To get the self-identity of a focused person, you have to make it a priority for yourself – to not accept getting distracted, procrastinating, or simply dozing off into Reddit. Instead, you have to associate being focused and concentrating with something that’s positive and associate distractions with something that’s negative.

Move your mental narrative from thinking that getting distracted and losing your attention is okay to associating it with pain and re-associating staying focused with pleasure.

You literally, have to say it to yourself in your head and if you do it enough times it’ll develop a certain pattern of neuroplasticity in your head that’s going to create these associations.

The more frequently you’ve linked certain neurons together, the stronger the connection between them becomes, and the more frequently you’ll start reacting in a certain way. That’s why it’s difficult to break habits, stop addictions or to build new pathways if you’ve done something for years.

Be Careful What You Reward Yourself With

That’s the biggest reason why the average 21st-century person has lost their ability to focus on one thing at a time.

Social media, technology, and gadgets are all designed to keep you hooked and on their platforms. They literally have artificial intelligence trying to keep you on their sites as long as possible. Every time you go there they reward you with something – a funny video, someone likes your picture, you get a text message – they’re all lighting up the same reward pathway in your brain as drugs do.

Your brain is associating getting distracted and looking at cat videos with something pleasurable – something to look forward to because it lights up dopamine. Dopamine is the anticipatory reward neurotransmitter that motivates you to repeat the same actions in the future.

Therefore, you have to develop a proactive relationship with your technology. Instead of being the one who’s triggered or much rather baited into going on social media, you have to go there on your own terms – when you’ve done the work you know you need to do.

How to Stay Focused With Your Technology:

Keep your smartphone in airplane mode during the night and the first few hours of the day. If the first thing you do after waking up is checking Instagram then you’re literally telling your brain that you want to get triggered and that you’re a reactive person who needs someone else to tell you what to do.

If the first thing you do after waking up is checking Instagram then you’re literally telling your brain that you want to get triggered and that you’re a reactive person who needs someone else to tell you what to do. Turn off all post notifications on your smartphone. Their default setting is turned on and you’ll start getting these red lights and popping sounds every time you get a message or something. That’s going to keep you in reactive mode but it’ll also mess up your dopamine receptors. You become addicted to it. Even though the notification or the message itself isn’t important, you expect them to be something good and novel when in reality it’s just that same old shit. Instead, go to your settings and turn them all off.

Their default setting is turned on and you’ll start getting these red lights and popping sounds every time you get a message or something. That’s going to keep you in reactive mode but it’ll also mess up your dopamine receptors. You become addicted to it. Even though the notification or the message itself isn’t important, you expect them to be something good and novel when in reality it’s just that same old shit. Instead, go to your settings and turn them all off. Don’t check email more than 1-3 times per day. Checking email is almost as bad. It’s another form of reactive behavior. Most of the time it’s just procrastination because you want to get triggered.

Checking email is almost as bad. It’s another form of reactive behavior. Most of the time it’s just procrastination because you want to get triggered. Limit your social media consumption. Don’t stay online all day long because you’ll set yourself up for failure. Who knows when another popup pops up or some crazy tweetstorm goes off?

How to Stay Focused at Work

Focus on task relevancy. If you’re working, studying, or reading, then close every other window that’s irrelevant to the task at hand. Not only are they a potential source of some blings and popups but they’ll also distract you.

If you’re working, studying, or reading, then close every other window that’s irrelevant to the task at hand. Not only are they a potential source of some blings and popups but they’ll also distract you. Limit multi-tasking. You might be able to do certain activities more than once at a time, like walking and listening to audiobooks, talking and typing, or eating and thinking, but your efficiency in all of them will be drastically reduced. You’ll be much better off by blazing through one single thing at a time and then moving onto the next task rather than trying to juggle them all together.

You might be able to do certain activities more than once at a time, like walking and listening to audiobooks, talking and typing, or eating and thinking, but your efficiency in all of them will be drastically reduced. You’ll be much better off by blazing through one single thing at a time and then moving onto the next task rather than trying to juggle them all together. Focus on Deep Work. Some people use the Pomodoro technique of focusing 20 minutes and having a 10-minute break but I don’t think it’s that effective. You can get a lot of work done in 20 minutes but how focused do you think you’ll be after the first break? I say that you’ll enter the zone only after the first 15 minutes because the first 10 minutes are you just doodling around and trying to concentrate. Only after the first 30 minutes of uninterrupted work do you really enter into this Jedi-like concentration in which you’re really focused and productive. That’s why you have to push through the initial barriers of resistance and focus on doing deep work that lasts about 1-2 hours at least.

How to Play Jedi Mind Tricks With Your Mind

Making your brain more focused is a skill that can be developed. If you’re struggling with this, then it’s going to be more difficult but it’s possible.

The key to overriding old patterns and writing new ones is to weaken the current bonds and strengthening new ones by going through sheer amounts of repetitions.

Reps, reps, reps of staying focused, of guiding your attention back to the task, and concentrating on the things that your brain thinks are important. The more you catch yourself doing it, the more habitual it becomes.

Practicing meditation, mindful breathing, or simply paying attention to a single thing at a time are all ways of improving your focus.

In essence, it’s simply playing Jedi mind tricks with your mind.

You make the intention of staying focused on the thing you’re about to do

You eliminate all potential distractions and disturbances that could interrupt you

You start doing the thing in a focused manner

Every time you notice yourself getting distracted you simply acknowledge it, take a small breath, and guide your attention back to the task

Instead of trying to force it and focus so hard that your brain starts to hurt, you have to make it easier for yourself by hacking away the unessential and focusing only on the vital few.

Focus is a Habit

It’s a habit, it’s a routine, it’s a system of being and doing.

If you don’t know how to organize your day, you won’t be as effective at organizing your mind, and if you have an unorganized mind, then you won’t be as effective with your day either.

That’s why good routines and habits are so useful for increasing your productivity, managing your energy, reducing stress and improving your happiness.

Everyone can restructure their neural networks and everyone can change their habits. However, the degree of how well and how fast you’ll be able to do it depends on how deep of a hole you’ve dug yourself in.

If you want to strengthen the habit of focusing and doing deep work, then check out my morning routine course on Udemy. It’s packed with Jedi Mind Tricks and strategies for doing your greatest work.

Stay Empowered

Siim