do you find it difficult to focus these days you are trying to work you're sitting at your table and you keep checking your phone your mind keeps wandering you keep getting distracted this was a problem that even I used to face when I was a medical student today I want to tell you something about attention which is that you are not to blame for your distractions evolution is to blame your brain has evolved at a time when new information or interesting things are rare to come by but today that's not the case interesting information is everywhere and what can separate you from another successful person is how much attention you can pay your capacity to focus is the real game Cher so today I'm going to give you five Neuroscience tricks that you can use to improve your focus hi everyone I'm Dr Sid Warrior and welcome back to my channel where we talk about neuroscience and everything if you're new to the channel welcome and if you have been here before welcome back step number one controlling your eye movements did you know that your eyes will predict where your attention is going to go even before you have decided what to pay attention on your eyes have already flicked in that direction after which your brain starts thinking about it in other words you are consciously aware of something only after your eyes have turned towards that so reverse engineering this process and controlling where your eyes are flickering to will help you improve your concentration the way to work at this is by a form of meditation which controls eye movements by gazing at a particular spot for a longer period of time you can try this using a candle flame or any spot that you find interesting just by gaining control of your eye movements and reducing the amount of flicker your attention improves step number two is warm up now warm up is something you understand very instinctively when it comes to the gym when you go to the gym you don't directly start lifting 50 kilos of weight right first you stretch you warm up it's like you're telling your body that it is time to exercise focusing and paying attention is no different so when you sit at a task allow yourself 2 minutes to calm down and tell your brain that it is now time to focus the reason this is helpful is that your brain is natural in an exploratory phase exploratory phase your brain is constantly looking everywhere to see for anything interesting or for signs of threat useful dangerous your brain is always searching but when it is time to focus your brain needs to narrow that search field so that it only pays attention to one or two things and in order to make that transition from exploratory to concentrating phase your brain needs some time so taking a deep breath is a great start when you take a deep breath your brain goes from sympathetic to parasympathetic which means that you are less excited you're less threatened and you are more focused another way of doing warm up is by consciously selecting the target of your attention your brain is automatically confused so try to study or focus in a clean environment where only one or two things are in front of you and you've consciously told yourself minute book just by saying this out mindfully increases your concentrating power Neuroscience trick number three of increasing your focus is escalating slowly and here again I will bring the metaphor of the gym back like I said when you go to the gym you won't directly live 50 kilos you will probably start off with a lighter weight and gradually build your way up towards heavier weights similarly in paying attention do not expect that you will immediately be able to pay infinite attention if you see somebody focusing for an hour that's because they once started by focusing for a minute so whatever is your current level of attention acknowledge it to yourself ATT but that doesn't mean slowly time your attention to make it last higher keeping track of how long you can pay attention before you get distracted is a good way of checking in on whether you're improving or not Point number four that you have to remember is that attention is like a tidal wave ATT waxing and veing phenomenon our brain is able to pay attention mainly because of a chemical called nor adrenaline noradrenaline is a chemical in the brain that is released from the brain stem this is a very old part of the brain and it releases noradrenaline in a pulsatile way pulsatile so because of the way that noradrenaline is released your attention also comes and goes understand that this is core biology and not your fault that you're not able to pay unlimited attention for infinite time it's okay it's okay to take a break it's okay to step back breathe rest and when your attention starts building up again you should be aware of it so that you can get back to work following this wave like pattern of working is actually healthier for you now it's important to know that wave form so for some people the waves might be every minute for some people it might be over every 10 minutes understanding your own pattern and how you change is key to paying good attention and a wave form so this brings me to my final point which is stay in flow the things that your brain pays the most attention to are the things that you enjoy doing so one of the best ways to pay attention is to do things things that you enjoy and this is not a small thing when you find that you like doing something lean into it try to incorporate more of that into your life don't dismiss it as a small hobby or a passing phase incorporate that into your life more so that it makes your brain's job easier which is why when you follow your passion or make your hobby as your career a lot of people don't think of it as job or working they actually enjoy it they find pleasure out of it and attention comes easily this is the way that you can stay in flow and naturally do what your body and your brain wants to do so these are five things that I have learned both as a medical student and as a neuroscientist on how to build your attention there are several other tricks that I haven't covered like memory management attention management uh Pomodoro techniques of time management so maybe we'll discuss about that on another day but I hope that these Five Points have been useful I want you to try these out and let me know how useful they are for you if you like this video hit that like button subscribe to the channel it makes a big difference and we will be talking a lot more on Neuroscience productivity and helping you get better cheers everyone see you in the next video bye