How To Fix Your Attention Span Before It’s Too Late

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1:28Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. I put out episodes four times a week to help you learn and grow and improve yourself so that you can improve your life. So if you're interested in that, hit that subscribe button. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about how to fix your attention span because human attention spans right now are absolutely terrible. Not like kind of bad, not a little bit worse than before, but I mean historically bad, the worst they have ever been.

2:01And most people in this world can't read for 10 minutes without having to check their phone. They can't watch a movie without multitasking. They can't sit in silence without feeling uncomfortable. They can't even go to the bathroom without having to burn their phone with them. And so let me say this really clearly. This isn't like a personal failure or a shot at yourself. This is a neurological consequence of the world that we currently live in. And so your brain, it didn't suddenly get worse. It got trained over the past 10, 15, 20 years, but not in a good way. And so if you want to be productive, if you want to create the life that you want, you need to fix your attention span.

2:44You need to learn how to focus, and that's what we're going to dive into today. Let's talk about real quickly our attention spans and how they are objectively shrinking. And so this isn't like, oh, I kind of feel like I have less focus. There's multiple studies I want to cover with you so you can actually understand. There was a Microsoft study that was done in 2015 that found that the average human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2015. That's shorter than a goldfish. A goldfish has a better attention span than the average human. And that was over a decade ago.

3:23Do you think it's been worse? It's probably gotten worse, right? So in the 15 years from 2015 to 2015, it got 33 % worse. Because that's before smartphones and before social media came out. And that's one of the two things that's killing our attention spans the most. Now, before people like argue over the semantics of all of this, what actually really matters is that sustained attention and the capacity for it is declining in the average human, especially because of our digital environments. Another study was done from King's College London found that heavy digital use was associated with reduced ability to maintain focus on demanding tasks and increased distractibility.

4:09So what does that all mean? It means the more that you use your phone, the harder it becomes for you to focus. It's what it comes down to. And so your brain is being trained to crave novelty. And this is based off of evidence, not opinions, okay? Your brain has one primary motivator, and that is dopamine. Dopamine is not the pleasure chemical. It is the anticipation and motivation chemical. And so every time you scroll, every time you refresh your feed, every time that you switch apps, every time that you click on something new, you get a little teeny tiny small dopamine hit. And there was a study that was done in 2019 in Nature Communications that showed that constant novelty seeking, like the scrolling and seeing new things on your scroll, rewires the reward circuits in your brain.

5:04So your brain and its reward circuits are literally being rewired when you're scrolling on your phone constantly, which then makes sustained effort and sustained focus feel harder to do and less rewarding for you. So it feels less rewarding because of the fact that just a simple, easy scroll feels more rewarding for you. So when people say like, I just can't focus anymore, or I have ADHD now. There's a lot of people that say they have ADHD and they've never been actually diagnosed with ADHD. So they're just like, oh, because I can't focus, I'm just gonna say it, right? If you've never been clinically diagnosed, I would never say that out loud.

5:42But when someone says something like, I can't focus right now, what they're really saying is, my brain has learned that novelty is more rewarding than focusing. And so that's one of the ways that people are destroying their brains. Another way is by multitasking. Like multitasking actually destroys your brain efficiency. I've heard so many people are like, I'm just such a great multitasker. And they wear like a badge of honor. And so you have to understand what you're doing is your task switching. Your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. And so you're switching from one task to another, one task to another.

6:15It might be lightning fast, but that task switching is expensive for the brain. There was a study that was done at Stanford and found out that heavy multitaskers perform worse on attention, memory, and task switching tests. So they're actually more distractible is what they found, not less distractible. And the killer of all of that is even after removing all of the distractions, the people who said that they were multitaskers, their brains stayed more scattered. And so what that means is that distraction and going from one thing to another, to another, to another, your brain just constantly bouncing all day long, rewires your baseline of focus.

6:56And so you become less and less focused over time the more that you actually multitask. And so let's talk about this because I think it's really, really important. Your attention span, it's not broken. You're not just like a, it's not like you dropped a glass and you'll never be able to put it back together. You're not broken any sort of way. It is conditioned. And anything that is conditioned can be reconditioned in the other direction. And so what you need is a neurological retraining of your brain. And so I want to actually talk to you about how to neurologically retrain your brain to be more focused, to have your attention span be higher than it currently is right now, and the actual proof of how to do it.

7:37Okay? So I only want to talk to you about proven ways to improve your attention span based off my research, right? Because I want this to be hopeful for you. I want you to feel like, oh my God, I can do this. Because the research on this is very clear. Attention is like plastic. And plastic is moldable. Your focus, even if it's terrible today, is trainable. It's kind of like a weak muscle. If you haven't been to the gym in a long time, you're going to have some weak muscles. But as long as you just keep training them and training them and training them, you will become stronger. It's the exact same thing for the focus in your brain.

8:12Your brain responds fast when you stop fighting against it and you start training based off of what your brain actually wants to train on. Okay? So the first thing that you want to make sure that you do, this is like a non-negotiable, if you want a better attention span and become better at focusing, is you need to reduce what's called cheap dopamine. And we will be right back. Hey, showing up for yourself day in and day out and doing the hard things is what creates a better life. And noon hydration helps you stay moving with the real deal. activated hydration built to support you through those moments that challenge you.

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11:49And the more that you get, the more that your baseline of motivation actually reduces. And so that's why some people have been on their phones for so long or just like, it's so hard to get up. It's because you've literally started to rewire the dopamine in your brain. And so excessive dopamine spikes reduce your baseline motivation. The more time that you spend on your phone, then less motivation you will have, right? So it will make normal, small, rewarding things feel boring for you. And this is why like little tiny, easy things that should feel rewarding feel hard, like sitting down and reading.

12:27That should feel motivating and rewarding for people when their brains are normal. But it's like, ah, even reading is so hard. Work, which once you complete something or you're progressing towards something, should feel motivating. it should give you dopamine. But it's harder to work for something when I can just check my phone and immediately get dopamine. That's why sitting in silence for so many people feels uncomfortable for them. Like sitting still can feel intolerable for some people, right? And so here's what you want to do. The first thing I would recommend, and you've probably heard me say this many times this podcast is delay checking your phone for at least 60 minutes after waking up.

13:11At least 60 minutes. Like give yourself a moment, 60 moments to just be and allow your brain to do what it needs to do and work how it needs to work in the morning before you just bombard it with dopamine and information and fear from the news and all of that type of stuff. Okay, so that's the first thing that you want to do. Second thing, stop consuming short form content as much as you possibly can. And what I mean by short form content, Instagram reels, TikTok, YouTube shorts, like the short form content is actually not good for your brain when you're doing it over and over and over again. So stop consuming short form content as much as you possibly can, especially before deep work, where you're trying to sit down and focus for 45 minutes, an hour, two hours.

14:00Another thing to do is create what's called dopamine gaps, where your brain isn't constantly being rewarded. It's not punishment. It's just you trying to get your brain back to baseline, right? It's dopamine normalization is basically what it is. It's allowing your dopamine baseline to reset to a healthy, normal level, okay? Next thing that you want to do is practice boredom. Yes, like on purpose. Actually practice boredom as if you're trying to practice pickleball and get better at it. Practice trying to get better at being bored because this part will really mess people up and they think something's wrong with it.

14:35A study that was done at the University of Central Lancashire found that boredom activates the brain's central default mode network, which is really critical for focus. So the more that you're bored, the better you become at focusing. It's better for focus. It's better for creativity. It's also better for your emotional regulation. You know somebody who's like just off the hinges with their emotions nowadays, but they're always on their phone? Well, now you figured out why. So in other words, boredom is basically where your attention span heals and gets better. And so if you eliminate boredom entirely, which is what a lot of people have done, like people act like boredom is an enemy, what you do is you eliminate your brain's ability to sustain focus and its ability to have a space to kind of heal itself.

15:24And so you want to train boredom. How do you do that? Learn to sit still without any stimulation for like five to 10 minutes. You know, take a walk without music or without your phone. Sit at a stoplight without taking your phone out and just see what that's like. Now your brain will protest. I even did it today. I pulled up to the stoplight and I was like, you know what? I'm just going to stare at the stoplight for the next 45 seconds because I felt myself want to go to my phone. Like it wanted to do it. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm the one that's in control here. Your brain will protest this whole thing.

16:00That protest is basically withdrawal. It's like an actual chemical withdrawal, like a drug addict. You want that dopamine. Nope, not going to do it. I'm going to sit here bored for a minute. Next thing that you want to do is you want to try to build your focus like a muscle. And so like you wouldn't walk into a gym and just try to deadlift 400 pounds on day one. So obviously you don't want to try to get into like instant deep focus for the next four hours. You will fail at that. And so there was a study that was done in psychological science in 2014 that found out that attention span improves incrementally with structured practice.

16:37And so you can actually practice focusing. And what you want to do is have short focus sessions because short focus sessions outperform long focus sessions. And so there's a thing that's called the focus ladder. Start with five to 10 minutes of uninterrupted focus on something, whether it's sitting down to write, whether it's sitting down to read, whether it is journaling and making sure that when you're doing any of these things that your phone is in a completely different room, then you take a short break and then you go back and do it again. So it'd be like 10 minutes of writing. And then you take a five minute break and do 10 minutes of writing.

17:12And you do it over and over again and you gradually start to increase the duration every day. You can go from 10 minutes to 12 minutes, take a five minute break, 10 minutes to 12 minutes to 15 minutes. And what it does is it trains what's called your attention endurance. And so with that, like I had, I literally had to do this when I first learned this thing called the Pomodoro technique, which is 25 minutes of work on five minutes off. I remember the first time I tried the Pomodoro technique, I could not get to 25 minutes of focus. And I was so freaking frustrated because I was like, what in the hell is wrong with my brain?

17:47Like I can't even focus for 25 minutes. So I got like 12 minutes and I was like, I'm just going to keep doing and keep doing, keep doing it. And after like a month, I finally was able to get myself to 25 minutes of focus. And then I got to 25 minutes and it started becoming easier over the next couple of months. And so I was like, well, if I'm still really focused at 25 minutes, what if I go to 30 minutes? So I did that for about a month or two. And then I went to 35 minutes and then 40 minutes and then 45 minutes. And now it's, for me, it's instead of 25 minutes on, five minutes off. I wrote about this in my book.

18:18It's 45 minutes on, 15 minutes off. And that's the Pomodoro technique I call Pomodoro Plus, where I got it from, I can't even get to 25 minutes to now it's 45 minutes on, 15 minutes off. And it shows you, like I can tell you anecdotally, I was able to improve my attention span by doing this. Okay. Another thing that really helps you as you're trying to do this and make your focus better is do single tasking. Single tasking actually starts to rewire the brain. There was a study that was done at the University of Sussex where they did MRI scans and they found out that chronic multitaskers, people that are here and they're here and they're doing 25 things at once, had reduced gray matter density in their brain.

19:01The areas that are responsible for cognitive control and emotional regulation. So clearly that's showing you that being all over the place and scattered it's not good for your brain. It's not just about like productivity. It's also about like brain structure. Like think about the health of your brain. You want to sit down and have one task in one screen, in one intention, in one pen, in one piece of paper, whatever it is that you need to do and just be focused on one thing. Your brain gets better at focusing when you make it focus on only one task. Another thing that will help you with your attention span is meditation.

19:38People think like meditation, I don't want to do meditation because it's not productive. It will make you more productive. It will make you more focused. So people think like, oh, I'm just relaxing. No, you can actually use meditation to use it like a mental rep to make your brain stronger. Harvard study was done, found that in just eight weeks of mindfulness meditation, humans were able to increase the gray matter in their prefrontal cortex and that improved their sustained attention. So meditation isn't just about like clearing the mind and floating off into wherever you want to float off into.

20:13You could do that if you want. But what it's about is it is about noticing when you're getting distracted and then not reacting to it and going back to whatever you're focusing on. You're focusing on something, you get distracted, you get back. You are focusing on something, you get distracted, you bring it back. And this is literally brain training for you. Each time that you notice the distraction, but you train your brain to go back to what you're focusing on, that's a mental rep. And that mental rep actually builds your focus. And so what I want you to actually start to focus on and get really good at is protecting your attention like it's your life is on the line.

20:50Because your attention determines what you learn. It determines what you remember. It determines your value. It determines what you become. It determines how productive you are. It determines, I mean, we all have 24 hours in the day. what matters is how productive you are with the time that you sit down to actually get something done. Your brain believes whatever you give it attention, like whatever you give attention to it must be important. So if your attention is scattered, you will feel scattered. Train your brain on what's important. Sitting down, focusing one task, being laser focused, and then expanding your focus every single time as you sit down to get a little bit longer and a little bit longer.

21:28Because you don't like fix your attention span by hardcore forcing yourself to do something. You do it by reducing your overstimulation, by reducing your screen time, by reintroducing boredom, by training your focus and training on trying to get the depth of your focus to become better. So you have to understand your attention span might be really weak at this point, but it's probably also overstimulated and undertrained. And the moment that you stop fighting your brain, you start working with it, and you start trying to become more focused and trying to expand your attention span, your attention span will come back.

22:09Your focus will come back. You will become more clear. You'll feel less scattered. You'll feel less anxious. And your mind will feel finally to a point of calm and focus that you may have never felt in your entire life. hey thanks so much for watching this video based off of what you've been watching recently youtube has gone through your algorithm and pulled up this video and it thinks that this is the one that's going to interest you the most so click that one and if you want to make sure to never miss another video click that subscribe button right there and i'll see you on the next episode so that's what i got for you for today's episode if you love this episode please share it on the instagram stories tag me in at rob dial jr r-o-b-d-i-a-l-j-r and if you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of this podcast, go to coachwithrob.com.

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