3 Habits Destroying Your Focus

What if I told you that almost everyone destroys their focus thanks to just 3 habits?

Well, you’d probably think to yourself;

“What are those habits?”

“Am I doing them?”

“How can I make sure I stop doing them?”

After all, nobody wants to ruin their focus, the most powerful skill of the modern world.

But, not to panic.

Let’s get into the habits so you know what to look out for.

Drowning Yourself In Dopamine

When you work toward your goals, your brain releases dopamine.

That dopamine feels good, keeps you focused and helps you to enjoy the work.

But scrolling social media releases a lot more dopamine.

Hence, if you wake up and scroll your phone straight away and then sit down to work, your mind craves the levels of dopamine you got from scrolling.

You’ll be distracted, struggle to focus and get nothing done, simply because your brain is looking for that massive amount of cheap dopamine you get from scrolling.

Luckily, the fix is simple.

We want our biggest dopamine hit to be from our work, so don’t go on your phone for the 2-4 hours of your day (until you’ve got all your important work done)

And the best way to ensure you don’t go on your phone for the first 2-4 hours of your day, is to not do habit number 2.

Setting Yourself Up For Distraction

When you sit down to work, where’s your phone? What tabs do you have open? Are there other people around you?

Focus is simply placing your cognitive attention on a certain thing, in this context, that thing is a task.

But if when you sit down to work, your phone is right beside you on your desk, you have 100 tabs open and you’re around a tonne of people, it suddenly becomes a lot more difficult to place your focus on the task.

There are a lot more things that your brain has to block out.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking, “Ross, this is obvious”.

It is.

But yet, you still don’t do anything about it and then wonder why you can’t focus.

So, when it’s time to work, when it’s your scheduled time for deep focus and flow;

• Put your phone in another room

• Only have the tabs you need for work open

• Get into a room alone

Limit the amount of things your brain has to block out and you do 2 things;

You use less mental energy trying to block out distractions (giving you more mental energy to focus) and you’re way less likely to get distracted and be taken out of focus.

However, both of these are useless, if you’re doing habit number 3.

Energy Crashing

Your focus is largely determined by your energy.

If you’re tired, you’re going to have less focus than if you’re full of energy and ready to conquer the world.

And when you’re really tired, you’re more likely to give in to distractions and scroll your phone when you wake up, further ruining your focus.

But what determines if you’re low energy?

The primary reason is sleep.

You need 8 hours of sleep. No excuses. No exceptions.

But there’s another reason that often goes overlooked.

And that’s food.

Yes, food.

You see, when you eat food, especially high-carb food, 2 things happen;

1. Your body has to redirect energy to the gut to digest the food, leaving less energy for focus

2. Your blood sugar levels will spike and they’ll fall, causing you to crash

Both of these result in you having no energy, no focus and wanting to go back to bed.

Now, obviously, you need to eat - but you don’t want your focus to be at the mercy of your nutrition, so what I recommend is this;

Do intermittent fasting.

This is essentially where you only eat between certain times of the day, for example 12pm and 7pm.

The reason this works so well for focus is that if you wake up early and do all your important work as soon as you wake up (which you should), you’ll get the majority of your work done before 12pm.

Meaning you’ve done the majority of your work without your focus being at the mercy of your nutrition.

Come lunch time, you can take a break, eat some food and not have to worry about any fluctuations in energy affecting your focus.

If you want to take this to the extreme, cut out carbs.

I eat a largely carnivore diet with almost 0 carbs - my energy never fluctuates and is high all day, every day, simply because my insulin and blood sugar levels aren’t being messed around by carbs.

Now, this isn’t to say carbs are bad. They’re not. This is just how I feel my best and hence, this is why I eat this way.

Do you need to do it? No.

Would it be a fun experiment? Yes.

But either way, if you really want to maximise your focus, don’t eat until after you’ve done your most important tasks for the day.

— Ross

PS: If you struggle to focus and be productive, click here to check out how to build an elite productivity system