The Focus Formula Pt2: Scientific Secrets to Strengthening Concentration

Amy Brann  00:00

Do you ever feel like your attention span is shrinking by the day? If so, you’re not alone, nearly half of all adults say they’re struggling to focus more than they used to. But is this just modern life, or are we actually rewiring our brains for distraction? Maybe you’ve got a colleague who shared that they have ADHD, and you’re wondering, what does that really mean for how they work, or perhaps you’ve noticed that learning materials just keep getting shorter and snappier. Does that help us learn? Or are we just feeding the distraction loop? Today, we’re diving into the neuroscience of focus, why our brains are struggling, and most importantly, what we can do about it, from digital amnesia to mean driven distractions. We’ll explore practical research backed ways to sharpen your attention and take back control. So if you’ve ever felt pulled in 1000 directions, this episode is for you. Let’s get into it. So we are back talking about the focus formula and how we can strengthen our brains ability to pay attention and to be present in the moment. And we’re going to dive into some tips, but before that, we want to just finish off some of the challenges and some of the negative influences on our ability to pay attention. So what was our last one? Jess, that we wanted to mention on on this?

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  01:19

Oh, the last one was something that I don’t think I know anyone who cannot put their hand up with this one, but feeling overworked and not having much of a work life balance. I think there are individuals who are very good at prioritizing and achieving that balance, but the vast majority of people I come into contact with just don’t, and I mean, it’s very prevalent in in healthcare, you know, compassion fatigue and burnout, which, yes, is like a buzzword, but it’s an important one to to kind of listen out for when, when people are talking to you. And, you know, again, comes back to cortisol and that stress hormone and the effect that that has on our memory and our cognition. And you know, you can tell us more, but the structural brain changes that accompany this, you know, it’s quite worrying.

Amy Brann  02:11

It is really worrying. And as you often say, it’s insidious. It sort of creeps up on us. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time for gray matter volume in different regions of the brain to be reduced, and that means that it’s almost a daily thing that we need to pay attention to. I think it’s, it’s similar to obesity in a lot of ways, in that you don’t, you don’t, you know, go to sleep at a healthy weight and wake up at an unhealthy weight. It’s a series of choices over time, and it can be very difficult in the society we live in with availability of ultra processed foods. And time being, it’s not that time’s reduced. Throughout history, we’ve had the same number of hours in every day. So I don’t want to say the wrong thing, but it is, the pressures on our time seem to be very high, despite all of the promises of things that have been invented, reducing our time doing other things and more time for relaxation and cooking healthy meals. So yes, the impact of feeling overworked and not believing that you’ve got the balance that works for you is significant. And I don’t know that I’m aware of any like industry that is safe from it. Florists were supposed to be the happiest people. I don’t know whether any florists get burnt out? I’ve not met one, but most other professions I’ve heard of people, yeah, having having significant challenges. Okay, so did you want to say anything more on that before we switch up?

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  03:54

I mean, I was just about to say that I definitely couldn’t be a florist. And they burn out very quickly on that front. Thank you for supper here.

Amy Brann  04:05

That’s not the right fit. No. Okay, so then thinking about, what can we do if you have covered off all of those things and you’ve got your foundations in place as far as as possible, within the context, what can we do to actually strengthen our ability to pay attention. And I think the answers very much depend on where you’re starting from. So if you’ve got to a place where your ability to attend to things is depleted, then the focus initially is on starting to rebuild it and re strengthen your ability to do that, I don’t think there’s any evidence that forms of meditation, for example, a mindfulness based meditative practice has a detrimental effect on anyone. So the evidence is strong. Like I’m not mad on my. Fullness meditation, I do try to find things that I can do mindfully which have been shown to have similar benefits. But we’re going to buy regular meditative practices, even really short ones, 510, minutes. It helps to rewire the brain to increase connectivity between different regions, for example, prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, the anterior cingulate cortex. Different research has shown different regions to be strengthened, the insula, but what it does help us to do is improve our attention, because we are actually attending while doing it, and we’re inhibiting distractions, and that ability to inhibit is hugely important Yeah, for protecting our attention day to day. I mean, I don’t

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  05:50

want to be a hypocrite here, but I yeah, I haven’t practiced, you know, mindfulness meditation until kind of having my son, actually, and it’s something that, again, doesn’t need to take very long. I put on these mindful stories, mindfulness bedtime stories for my son, and they encourage him to, you know, close his eyes and take deep breaths and, you know, focus on what his body is doing, and focusing on his breathing, and again, going back to focusing on just how you’re feeling in that moment. And I have often found myself falling asleep with him because, you know, I’m doing it with him. And so I think that as much as I have felt cynical about this in the past, there’s something to be said for just having a few minutes, five minutes even to just adopt this approach?

Amy Brann  06:47

Yeah, absolutely. Can be really beneficial. And again, if the idea of it’s not resonating, then see if there’s an activity you can do that requires sustained attention and requires you to inhibit distractions. For example, playing a musical instrument, playing particular types of sport, any practice like a yoga or tai chi or Pilates, any of those kind of things, you’ll be activating the brain in a similar, not the same, but in a similar way. And you could activate the default mode network. So there would be, there would be lots of benefits to that. Another really key one that I think is, oh yeah, I think isn’t taken seriously enough is about being a detective or an auditor in our physical environment, so our eyes are scanning for what’s in our physical environment, our salience network will pick up on things that are different, new, maybe threatening to us, and until we’ve confirmed that they are not, then our brain would pay attention to that. And if we’re working in open plan offices, or if we’re working in our home, or we’re working in a coffee shop. Pretty much wherever you’re working, there are potential distractions that could be explored minimized. We know the auditory and visual distractions, if we are in a place where they’re occurring, that can increase our cognitive load every time we have to inhibit something that is effortful and that can make it harder to concentrate, it can reduce the bandwidth we’ve got. Does that mean we shouldn’t work in busy coffee shops? No, it doesn’t. You know, I love working in a coffee shop for particular types of work, for particular chunks of time. So this is not at all a caveat, a it has to be like this. Sorry, like a carte blanche. It must be like this. It’s just using the right environments for the right intentions. Potentially thinking about using the noise canceling headphones, thinking about your physical environment. Can you remove anything? Maybe you’ve left stuff around to remind yourself about things. Every time you see it, your mind will go back to it, and then the physical, your technical environment, notifications. Really think carefully whether or not we want notifications, how many tabs we want open, what we want saved on your on your desktop, all of those things, they will draw your attention and imagine if you only had one thing to focus on for an hour. Imagine how freeing that could be. If you actually had an environment set up to protect an hour of your time could

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  09:39

be different. Yeah. I mean, I definitely didn’t think it was possible. It was possible to adopt this particular tip in my workplace environment. I mean, we have less rooms than there are people at times, and so we’re often just at, you know, on hot desks. And trainees often have hot desks, so we do have shared spaces, but I always spend the first few you. Kind of minutes of my day back at work, clearing my workspace and cleaning my workspace and and and decluttering like you say, because that definitely helps me focus. So I think removing those unnecessary items again, it doesn’t have to take very long. Yeah, an easy one.

Amy Brann  10:20

Yep, an easy one, indeed. Okay, we’ve mentioned about the inactivity, but we probably didn’t talk enough about what the what the regular activity could do for us. So we know about the brain derived neurotrophic factor, which can increase our neuroplasticity. But why else is some exercise during the day, so good for us, Jess and so good for our attention.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  10:45

Well, of course, we know that any form of exercise is going to improve our blood supply to, you know, the brain, and therefore increase the levels and availability of the neurotransmitters that we so, you know, are so aware of now, dopamine and serotonin, and they’re both linked with improving focus and move mood. So if you can incorporate just even five minutes in your day to do some form of aerobic activity that will help boost your mental clarity and your focus. And you know, I remember, you can take your meetings outside. For example, I remember taking a trainee on a tutorial to our local park, and for part of it, we had a little jog, and we still managed to hold a conversation. But that little boost was enough to then for the afternoon, improve our focus and our attention. So yes, it may seem like a tricky one to incorporate in in a busy day if you have a job, which is desk based, office based, but there are ways to come, you know, get around that. And if you think about how much product, how much productivity, you’re going to then benefit from that. It this is a no brainer, really, isn’t it?

Amy Brann  11:58

It is. And what I love about what you’ve shared there is jogging. I’m imagining sort of real corporate types in their suits jogging through the parks in London. Now, may or may not happen, but the fact that you were in a park also has the attention restorative theory potential effects, which could be cleansing and and cleansing of toxins helping the brain to pay more attention in the afternoon. That change of environment often makes what you’re talking about on that walk more impactful too. So there’s lots of reasons why that will be really helpful for everyone involved. And then, yeah, heading into the afternoon slot, it’s standard advice, so much of what we’re identifying, but it’s not done, and what we need is, yeah, more people changing the norms in Organizations, yeah, to help in so many ways. Okay? Another really impactful tool is more of a psychological tool called the if then planning where there’s so many scenarios that are unpredictable, uncertain and people can stop there with just, oh, well, we’re not sure how things will pan out, and that might be the most appropriate in some situations, but in a lot of other situations actually thinking about, well, if this happens, then I’m going to do that can really preempt potential distractions, and it can improve our self control and our mental discipline so that we have already pre planned how we’re going to respond, either to distractions or to other things that just might impact our ability to pay attention. If you know, phone checking repeatedly was a challenge then having an if then plan for when a phone might be checked if you’re interrupted. You know what happens? Then, how do you? How do you protect your brain? And if then statements and thoughts also are great because you can make them in advance. The advanced decision planning means that you are not depleting your brain as much in the moment, because you’ve already wired in this thought. So it’s it’s a bit like with vaccines. It’s your second exposure which is helpful.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  14:40

And I think sharing those with with colleagues can be helpful as well, in terms of, you know if I, if I am doing this particular task, no, not to approach me. We had a very, very good GP who’s now retired, and she also was a trainer at the time when I was a trainee. And she. She had an open door policy. You know, she was so approachable, so accessible, really helpful, and she would have her her door ajar, but if it was closed, you knew that was not a time to interrupt her. Because of her open door policy. She very rarely would have her door closed unless, of course, she had a patient consult, consultation ongoing. But you knew that that that was not a time to interrupt her, and she would share that with you in your induction. So I think if you have these, what if scenarios planned out in your mind, sharing those with your colleagues could be helpful?

Amy Brann  15:33

Yeah, totally agree that transparency and ideally sort of cultural norms, especially in large organizations, you know, getting to the place where time is protected, meetings aren’t built into certain times, so you can pay attention and go deep, rather than the firefighting approach that is really quite pervasive at the moment. Linked to this is the option to train your attention. And I’m not talking about the sort of gamified stuff that’s out there, although some of those might be useful and might offer benefit across the board, but actually just practicing what you want to be able to attend to I realized, I think it was probably last year that I came to sit down to read a neuroscientific article. It was relatively straightforward, and actually, I found myself becoming distracted, sort of as I was going through it. And that was really unusual for me and knew. So what I did was I found a particularly challenging quantum physics paper. And I don’t understand the maths for quantum physics, but I understand some of the theoretical side of it, and I find it really stimulating and mind boggling, so I just challenged myself. No, right? Come on, we’re not having you not being able to read an article anymore. Amy, come on. So let’s, let’s dive into this and work our way through it. And each time I felt myself distracted, like the thoughts that popped into my head in the early stages, you know, what we’re having for dinner? Did I organize this? You know? Oh, have I forgotten to do that piece of work? Oh, I didn’t reply to that email. And it was, it was so irritating to me, but by practicing the exact skill that I wanted to be able to do without effort, that problem went again. So don’t know where it came from, but I’m going to extract it, squeeze it out of me.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  17:38

Need to buy myself a quantum physics book there.

Amy Brann  17:42

Amy, I have many I can lend you. Jesse, there’s how to teach quantum physics for your dog. I think that might

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  17:50

be the right that’s pitched absolutely fine for me.

Amy Brann  17:52

Yeah. Well, my What was she at the time? Probably my eight year old at the time, loved it. So it’s not, it’s not too out there, but it’s a good start. But those things, I think sometimes, you know, we do look to, again, fancy apps or different things to sort us out. And again, they can be useful, but also so can just practicing doing the thing that we need to do. Many people still watch full films, you know? They’ll go to the cinema, and they can sustain their attention for the whole of the film, or maybe they don’t go to the cinema, they watch it at home. But we we can, we can rebuild attention, and we can also notice where we find it easy to attend. And I mean, this has got a lot of crossovers to then, people that might experience symptoms of ADHD, certainly the people that I know and the research that I’m aware of. And I’m not an expert in this space, but from what I am aware of, a lot of people can hyper focus, so that means that they don’t have a problem with attention. Per se, the narrative that I’ve heard from several people has been but I want to be able to pay attention to and focus on some of the things that I really don’t want to be doing, and that can be a challenge, but that means then with things like watching a whole film, if our anticipation is positive and is high with regards to an activity, then we’re going to be releasing the dopamine. So that’s going to make us want to do it. Then we do it, then we get more dopamine released, and we’ve got that feedback cycle healthily set up, what do we do to get us to have that same neural cascade triggered if it’s something that we don’t yet want to do? And I know with my daughter, I tell her that in life, part of the trick, part of the challenge. Is to learn to get excited about the stuff that you don’t want to do. And you know, how do you narrate this experience to you? Because it’s not inherently good or bad. You know, some people love maths, so their self narrative when it comes to maths might be different to my self narrative when it comes to maths. You know, I’ve got friends that really don’t like the cleaning or the housework. I don’t do it all the time. And so actually, I get really excited about putting a load of washing on. I’m like, it’s dirty, and soon it will be clean. And I really, I find it quite, yeah, exciting. The same with dusting. It’s like, oh, it’s restoring order. But there’s other things that I would not be excited by at all.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  20:42

I’ve got a ton of laundry waiting Amy.

Amy Brann  20:46

I’ll jump in the car three hours off we go.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  20:53

Just popped into my mind. Amy was is delegation and putting aside or postponing the more low priority to tasks. Now I know that at times it can seem like you can’t offload to other people, like that’s your job. You have to complete all those tasks. And I have to say it’s not something that the staff necessarily relish when I start delegating, but I’ve been better at doing so even if it’s something simple, like asking somebody to print a label on a blood bottle, so I don’t have to write all the details on it, but having too many tasks and too many obligations can increase your cognitive load and therefore affect your focus. So by offloading those non essential tasks and appreciating the value of other team members and their skills and what they can offer, you’re then protecting yourself, conserving your mental energy for what actually matters and and then it helps you focus on those high, high impact or high kind of level, high priority level tasks.

Amy Brann  21:53

I completely agree, and I think part of the related problem to that is in the scenarios where we can’t delegate, for example, possibly your laundry, or, you know, any of those other types of tasks, we have to decide whether or not we’ve got a realistic list. And so much of the time, people have not. And when you sit down with them, and you look at the to do list, and you look at the time available, and you look at how long each of these things will take, and then they realize this is impossible. No human being could do this. And if you have got a load that is impossible to do, your brain has clocked that like part of the reason that you might be feeling anxious about this or wishing you could just crawl back into bed, is because your brain has clocked that you are setting yourself up for failure, and the most helpful thing you can do is look at that list and go, Okay, no, some of these things can’t happen, sorry, dirty clothes for the foreseeable future. Maybe that’s not the one that goes but there will be that is problematic, because then the brain is unconsciously probably processing that list repeatedly trying to work out a way to fix this impossible task that you’ve given it. And so then it’s it. The bandwidth is not going to be fully available for whatever you want it to do, because in the background, it’s trying to sort out this problem that you’ve created so lists of stuff that are achievable, delegating what can be delegated, de prioritizing to the point where you bin it. The other things will help to enable your brain to focus on the high impact activities. Yeah, really important. Okay, maybe our final one could be, we’ve sort of touched on it a little bit, but around gratitude and positive self talk, the we talk about a lot of negative things, and I always have slightly mixed feelings about that, because lots of these things need to be aired, need to be digested, and new plans need to be made. But also, we know research that shows that if you feel that stress, can be interpreted as a challenge, and that challenge helps to make you stronger and make you a better version of yourself, then it often is interpreted in that way, and that’s for short term stresses, not for chronic stresses, is my my caveat there, but with with Focus and with our ability to attend, we have the hardware as it were, and yes, the software may need a little bit of rewiring to upgrade if it’s been eroded in the past, which would be understandable, but we have these absolutely incredible brains that can help us to think through so much. To attend to so much in such a incredible way. The data that we pull in and then what we’re able to bring to challenges, to tasks, is really special, precious and unique at this stage, to humans. So taking a sort of a positive approach and being grateful for our brains could be a really strong frame to utilize going forward.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  25:29

More positive way to end this episode. Amy, thank you

Amy Brann  25:32

absolutely. Yeah, grateful for what, for what we’re capable of. Okay, well, if you’ve enjoyed our our tips and tricks around actually focusing and utilizing our brains more as they are capable of supporting us, then please do share this episode with a friend or a colleague who might find it helpful. It’s one of the best ways for us to grow and reach more people like you.

Dr. Jessie Gulsin  25:56

So make sure you’re following us on your preferred viewing or listening platform, so you’re the first to know when new episodes drop.