Focus Toolkit: Tools to Improve Your Focus & Concentration

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2022

⏱️ 108 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, I provide a list of behavioral, nutritional, and supplement-based tools you can use to improve your ability to get into a focused state to do mental or physical work. I explain science-supported strategies for transitioning into focus, maintaining focus during the work bout, and exiting the focus session, which is also critical, including decompression/defocusing tools. I explain when and how to use: binaural beats, caffeine, deliberate cold exposure, the pros and cons of working in fasted vs. fed states, and supplements and foods that enhance dopamine, epinephrine (i.e., adrenaline) and acetylcholine to promote optimal focus. Also, I explain how short behavioral practices, such as meditation and visual gaze training, will benefit your ability to focus over the long term. As deep focus is crucial to significantly improve cognitive or physical performance in any realm, this episode should be useful to anyone. By the end, you’ll have an essential toolkit of science-supported, low- to zero-cost focus and concentration strategies to select from that can be tailored to your physical and mental performance needs. For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/huberman Thesis: https://takethesis.com/huberman Supplements from Momentous https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Focus Toolkit (00:04:25) Momentous Supplements (00:05:38) Thesis, LMNT, Eight Sleep (00:09:37) The “Arrow Model” of Focus: Epinephrine, Acetylcholine & Dopamine (00:15:15) Modulation vs. Mediation, Importance of Sleep (00:18:11) Tool: Binaural Beats to Improve Concentration (00:20:54) Tool: White, Brown & Pink Noise, Transition to Focused State (00:22:55) Warm-Up for Cognitive Work, Refocusing Attention & Neuroplasticity (00:26:14) Tool: Ultradian Cycles: Warm-Up, Maintaining Focus & Deliberate Defocusing (00:31:22) How Many Daily Ultradian Cycles Can One Perform? (00:34:14) AG1 (Athletic Greens) (00:35:35) Virtusan: Mental & Physical Health Journeys (00:36:52) Tool: Fasted vs. Fed States & Focus, Prevent an Afternoon Crash, Ketosis (00:45:52) Tool: Foods to Improve Focus & Regulating Food Volume (00:47:53) Tool: Caffeine & Focused Work, Dopamine Efficacy, Alertness (00:52:55) Tool: Stress & Improved Concentration (00:55:46) Tool: Deliberate Cold Exposure & Focus, Dopamine & Epinephrine (01:00:39) Layer Focusing Tools & Design Your Own Protocols (01:01:19) Tool: Short Meditation & Improved Ability to Refocus (01:07:40) Tool: Yoga Nidra, Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) & Defocus Periods (01:12:13) Tool: Hypnosis & Focus/Deep Relaxation States (01:16:07) Optimal Time of Day to Use Specific Tools (01:16:46) Tool: Overt Visual Focus & Deliberate Gaze (01:20:42) Covert Visual Focus; Deliberate Gaze Warm-Up & Focused Work (01:24:43) Tool: Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acids (01:27:28) Tool: Creatine Monohydrate (01:29:10) Tool: Alpha-GPC & Acetylcholine, Increased Risk of Stroke? & Garlic (01:33:52) Tool: L-Tyrosine Supplements & Food (01:34:47) Combining & Choosing Focus Tools, Variability (01:36:50) ADHD Prescriptions, Training Neural Circuits, Maintenance & Reduced Dosage (01:39:19) Tool: Optimal Order Approaching Focus Tools, Prescriptions & Dependency (01:42:56) Tool: Phenylethylamine & Dopamine (01:44:50) Tool: Other Supplements to Enhance Dopamine, Epinephrine & Acetylcholine (01:46:46) Behavioral, Nutrition & Supplement Tools for Focus (01:49:12) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube Feedback, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Momentous Supplements, AG1 (Athletic Greens), Instagram, Twitter, Neural Network Newsletter Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:08.7	I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and
0:12.1	ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are discussing focus and concentration and
0:17.6	tools for improving your focus and concentration.
0:20.4	This is a topic that I've covered previously on the Huberman Lab Podcast, but in different contexts. For instance,
0:25.8	we had a very popular episode on ADHD, Attention, Deficit, Hyperactivity Disorder, which of course relates to the topic of focus and how to improve focus.
0:33.3	We've also talked a lot about dopamine motivation and drive. In fact, that's the title of your previous
0:38.6	also quite popular episode of this podcast, but never before have we had a single episode solely devoted to the tools to improve focus and concentration.
0:47.8	The rationale for recording this episode is to provide people one location where they can go and
0:52.4	quickly access the specific tools for increasing focus and concentration that are known to be the most powerful tools and the most up-to-date tools.
1:00.5	In fact, today's episode is going to include description of several peer-reviewed studies and the tools that emerge from those scientific peer-reviewed studies that point to new and
1:10.1	fortunately even brief or protocols that I've described before. So what I'm basically describing here is
1:15.0	tools that in a very short amount of time will allow you to significantly increase your focus and concentration abilities.
1:22.3	Those tools will include behavioral tools, nutrition-based tools, supplement-based tools, brain-machine interface-based tools, and for those of you that are working with physician, prescription drug tools.
1:32.9	Today's episode ought to benefit anybody, young or old or anything in between whether or not you have ADHD or not.
1:39.2	Today's episode is going to give you tools that you can apply in your daily life. Most of them are completely zero cost and those tools will allow you to tap into the neurochemistry and the neural circuits within your brain embody that peer-reviewed science has reliably shown
1:54.2	can significantly improve your focus and concentration abilities. Just to give you a little teaser of the kinds of tools that I'm going to provide you on today's episode.
2:02.2	A previous guest on the Hubertman Lab podcast was Dr. Wendy Suzuki. Dr. Suzuki is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at New York University or NYU as it's commonly referred to.
2:12.2	She's also the Dean of Arts and Sciences at NYU. Her laboratory made a very important discovery, which was that a very brief, just 12, actually 13 if you really count the intro, but 13-minute daily meditation performed for a period of about 8 weeks,
2:28.2	significantly increased people's focus and concentration abilities. The great news is you didn't need all eight weeks. It was just that's how long that you ran the study.
2:36.2	So during today's episode, I will describe that protocol in detail. I will also provide you an even brief or alternative to that protocol that you can use if, for instance, you find yourself with only three minutes or four minutes or five minutes a day to meditate.
2:49.2	The great news is there's quality peer reviewed science to support that form of meditation for improving focus and concentration and that falls under the bin of these zero cost tools that you can really use to tap into the neurochemistry and neural circuits that really allow you to take control of your cognitive abilities and improve them over time.
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