Why It's Hard To Focus (And What To Do About It)

Join us today for a discussion on the challenges of maintaining focus in today's world. In this video, we'll delve into the complexities surrounding the difficulty of directing and sustaining our attention, offering practical solutions to enhance focus.

The struggle to concentrate our minds amidst various distractions is a prevalent issue. Our conversation aims to dissect this challenge, acknowledging the obstacles that hinder our ability to maintain focus.

▼ Timestamps ▼
────────────
00:08 - Why our minds remain scattered
00:48 - The pursuit of efficiency
02:20 - We allow the mind to remain greedy
03:03 - What leads to a scattered mind
04:00 - Prioritization and online dating
05:20 - How we end up getting little done
06:00 - Taking a step away from efficiency
06:57 - Moments when you are not burdened
08:34 - How can we fix this?
09:06 - The ek tatva abhyasa technique
10:30 - Being able to give things up
────────────

DISCLAIMER

Healthy Gamer is an online community and resource platform for gamers and their families. It does not provide medical services or professional counseling, and it is not a substitute for professional medical care. Our coaches are peer supporters, not professionally trained experts, and they cannot provide medical service. If you or a loved one are experiencing an emergency, please call your nation's emergency telephone number.

All guests of Healthy Gamer are informed of the public, non-medical nature of the content and have expressly agreed to share their story.

#healthygamergg #mentalhealth #focus

[ruki]

As someone with ADHD, I fell into the efficiency trap: I remember that I used to tell my groupmates that 'best case scenario I can get this done in a day", until someone reminded me 'you're never best case scenario, dude'.

[Valdyr_Hrafn]

as someone with ADHD and ASD, I am way too obsessed with being efficient. But I live happiest, and to the fullest when I take my time and do what is most important in that moment.

[desireswithhope]

Practicing ek tatva abhyas(one state focus practice)

1- no mobile in bathroom or toilet
2- eating without listening or watching from device
3-staying as silent as realistically possible while eating
4-gymming without music or audiobook
5- walking in nature or anywhere without earphone or listening music
6-working without distraction of music, internet (if possible) or social media
7-giving full attention to your loved one with no distraction of tv, phone etc (Ofcourse where it’s needed)
8-enjoying music or song without multitasking

There could be many others. But I couldn’t think of any. You guys can add more if needed.

[totoplopp]

When drK said “while ur eating a meal don’t do anything else”, I was eating breakfast, setting up my study space, chugging tea and planning my day all while watching this……

[akuwardmoments]

My takeaway:

Efficiency can cause more problems than solutions. This is because pursuing efficiency may require multitasking, or parallel processing. Unfortunately the result can cause you to feel overwhelmed. You aren't focused, you're spread thin, and exhausted.

Instead, let's prioritise, so we can hone in on one task. This way, we can organize our time to get tasks done with focus and intention. Then, we can quickly shift into the next task. This is a flow state. One at a time, with high efficiency per task.

Ek tatva abhyasa teaches to focus on one thing at a time. Ek, one. Tatva, reality. Abhyasa, practise. IMO knowing the meaning of the individual words and their components takes away the fog and helps you see the significance of the idea. This helps to hone mindfulness, find flow states, set boundaries, and manage burnout.

A solution I have started to make use of is called the Eisenhower matrix. The quadrants are by importance and by urgency. That which is urgent and important, do immediately. That which is important and not urgent, decide its time of action. That which is urgent and not important, delegate or avoid. That which is not urgent and not important, delete or avoid.

I'm about 3 months into my PhD, and this has helped me considerably.

[Noelciaaa]

What has helped me a lot was learning that the beginning of a focused work bout usually is really hard. That it's normal. The guest 5-15 mins can be downright agonising, yes. You may get very self-negative thoughts, frightening ones, feel anger, sorrow, extreme anxiety even, all kinds of things.

But the thing is... It passes, it really does. In most cases, it just takes keeping at it until that beginning phase is over. Then, you begin to actually focus, get into the flow and feel much better, be happy you're doing all this, sometimes you hit a flow state so good, you don't want to ever stop! But then after about an hour, you begin to struggle again - that's the end phase. And that is alright. The whole focused work bout is usually 1, 5 hour. Some people can stretch it to 2 hours for some it's 1 hour.

After it's done, do something else. Physical exercise/work is best when combined with something that resets your mind, like meditation, NSDR, a short nap works too, just as simply having a snack and staring out the window. The point is to let your mind process things, don't overwhelm it with more information, don't watch videos, don't even read. Or else you'll cause yourself fatigue through failed recovery.

After that break, you can begin another focused work bout. It really is like physical exercise, you need rest periods, you have to allow your brain to just p much "do nothing" in between these. That's when it processes the previous work bout, it makes you way more effective, creative, bright in the long run.

But you've gotta brace yourself for the pain of the beginning phase. It's really fine, you are making progress by sticking to it, the pain is an indication that your brain is rewiring.

[BrassyDel]

I think with ADHD it’s crucial to notice how pairing different activities makes you feel. Sometimes we pair things to prevent the default mode network from badgering us constantly, especially if we are trying to avoid something. Trying to make my brain shut up feels very different from engaging excess processing capacity with an ālambana so that I can focus the rest of my attention on something else. It’s the difference between dissociating and flow. If I notice I’m just trying to forcefully stop thoughts or feelings from popping up, it’s time to put down whatever activity I was pairing and sit with the thoughts. For me that’s also a great time to do a brain dump journal because it drains all that excess stuff that I was avoiding. If I’m engaged in my current experience or in the flow state, then I’ve paired appropriately and it feels like I took a part of my mind that was looking for something to do and gave it a satisfying task. Meditating with different ālambanas has helped me notice the difference and realize that I was almost always distracting myself to shut my brain up, or avoid the moment, not to enhance the moment.

[ClearBlueSky]

I cant believe I just had a conversation today about how listening to audiobooks while doing something else feels so distracting and not satisfying and this video comes out !!
Another day of Dr K doing a fantastic job helping us understand our minds and take control of our lives 😊

Something that also really helped me get things done is not writing down "Clean my room" as a task but calling it a project instead. Because even though my mind keeps telling me to clean my room,

Its actually cleaning the cupboard, cleaning the drawers, deciding where some clothes go, etc etc and those are the actual tasks.

[shinydefault]

The biggest myth that I feel needs to be busted is this:
Multitasking isn't the ability to do everything all at once. Its the ability to do one single task as soon as possible and then switch to the next task.
What I've personally found out after watching this video is that moments of my life where I've tried to do everything: sometimes to please myself or even others - I've found less success compared to when I've prioritised a single task and followed through to the end.
Now that I type it out it seems like common sense, but the kind of world we live in where we can pretend to do everything while not needing to apply yourself fully.
Even while typing this out I had to fend off multiple urges that could very easily derail my train of thought, goes to say how necessary is it for me to practice ek tatva abhyas in my life.
Simple yet effective method to practice it is : I've started with not listening to music when travelling to work. My mind is much more focused when I do this. Even when I decide to listen to music, I put one track on loop. Would suggest everyone to try the same if you can.
Sometimes drowning your emotions with distractions seem to be the easiest method to feel better but definitely takes a toll on you mentally.
Thanks for reading to the end.

[hestiathena]

Like many things said on this channel, this rings painfully true. I just wish I knew not only how to prioritize and let go, but to properly grieve.

Just thinking about abandoning plans, dreams, obligations, even if it would help me in the long run, not only fill me with loss, but _rage and terror, _ and I worry about expressing it because I'll feel like a toddler having a destructive tantrum.

(Doesn't help that, due to society and circumstances, I rarely feel safe about expressing big, painful emotions, even though people close to me have said I really should.)

Saved to watch again later. I'm most likely going to need it....

[melttt]

Great timing, dr. K. As someone who is studying to get in a university while has to do a lot of freelance, making sure I'm getting money enough to pay my stuff and such, things can overwhelm you pretty fast.
Your example on doing multiple things at the same time resonates so much with me, sometime I even study while i'm in the bus, than listen to this documentary while working because its important, even not being able to rest because I go immediately to socials; Another thing that I started doing is that, to do the exam I have to read like 6 books so I started listening to audiobook while in the shower... We often do that to save time, but burns us out a lot.
I'll try my best to focus and do just one thing at a time. Thank you.

[poppysuga]

I have this problem since forever. I tend to add so many things on my to-do list because i have enough time to finissh them all, but ending up getting too overwhelmed and do nothing. Or if I am not on time with the tasks I get stressed and blame myself for not being efficient enough. By watching your videos I had a period in which i was happy for doing even 5 mins of a task just to not feel awful everytime but i went back to the roots :( This video was helpful!

[Sanctor]

Male, 28. ADHD on Vyvanse.
Today I had one of my rare hyperfocus states. I made breakfast, then wrote down a checklist, in order of priority, with tasks to work through. I started smashing things out and ticking boxes. It felt AMAZING.

I realise after watching this that the difference wasn't how focused I was, or how efficient I was being. It was the fact that I was able to focus on prioritising and knocking down my tasks/dominoes one at a time!

I hope I can take this lesson on and have more days that feel this productive.

[mixocrian]

Often I feel like I am afraid to put all my eggs in one basket. It’s more comfortable to focus on about 10 things then hard commit to 1. It is a very complicated topic for me. Although committing to one thing does making it clearer to see my personal progress but at a sacrifice to a lot of other things… anyway great video dude!

[Cup_of_tea]

so I've come to this conclusion a while ago... yet, I've never found the strength to step out of my "efficiency" mindset. I think having depression definitely makes it harder but... the satisfaction of getting multiple things done at once makes me feel proud. Sometimes it is as stupid as like brushing my teeth while showering or drawing while in class, and plotting out my novel. or even now... commenting while listening to the video. Or listening to lectures, listening to music, writing my notes, and opening my essay for jotting notes down.

[potapotapotapotapotapota]

So true, the more you focus on being as productive as possible, the less you will be able to do just one thing and get really good at it. The fact is that we really don't have enough time in our days because we literally don't have enough time in the day to do the amount of things we put on our plate... so we have to prioritize. And inevitably, when we prioritize, we have to make sacrifices.

[hdodbckskskwocbriwja]

Finally, after a few years of watching in YouTube, i finally watched this video without reading comments, just full screen and active listening (focusing on one thing)

[ariavachier-lagravech.]

Interestingly enough in business being efficient meant not doing extraneous thing. As in actually giving up on something. In his management book Drucker mentioned that the best way to cut cost is to not do it at all. Most business instead of cutting the inefficient part of their operation prefer to find best way to do it without willing to give up anything which makes it harder for them to grow. Even Steve Job mentioned that deciding on what not to do is as important as deciding what should be done.

Thank you for this video Dr. K I am having hard time and feel overwhelmed a lot and I am realising that every time I did not try to be efficient I got more work done even though each works take a lot of time. Because I am focusing on that one task alone and feels in line with myself. Although even though I knew that I still have a lot of fear about not being efficient and keep ending up with same mistake over and over again. I hope I can get better from now on.

[Ran_Do]

Meanwhile there's us reading comments while watching the video.

[Insanity]

For me, my ADHD goes very well with my wind style motivation ( I don't remember the term for it, I just remember the explaination of it in an older Dr k video ) and I've learned that I perform best the more distractions I have. For example, in school, I'd be listening to the lecture, doing the classwork, listening to music/watching YouTube, and playing hearthstone, all at once. Straight A's and B's. If I had to focus on one thing at once, instant D