How to focus from 0 to 100%

To be successful you need an abundance of energy, clarity, and focus. This is how I went from stimuli overload to disciplined focus.

I’m writing this as the progress I’ve achieved over the years learning cumulatively about meta-learning, health, energy, focus and psychology. While the strategies and techniques in this article can be applied to general success, I’m going to focus on “reading to learn” as the specific goal I want to get across to you, the audience. Tip #1: Beginning now, I command you to read this article in one sitting without getting distracted because you will instantly be a better reader than you were before 😉 In fact, this is an example of a neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) technique that you can use on yourself for self-discipline. Command yourself, in other words take full control.

Tip #2 Anytime while you’re reading and your mind wonders off being unaware what was the last paragraph about, re-read the paragraph again.

To make this actionable-strategy more relatable to others, here’s a little bit of a background on why I decided to write this and why more people should help themselves.

Problems

In this day and age, humans have the shortest attention span in history. Goldfish have longer attention spans than some humans https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/.

Our goal is to get into flow-state/focus state and stay there for an extended period of time. This can be incredibly difficult in modern times with stimuli overload. It’s an ongoing battle; I hate it! Phones in our palms and social media apps designed to suck our souls dry are the number one offenders. Other distractions consist of outdoor noises, television, music, games, luxury toys, cars, food, pets and parties. I am ashamed of the time spent on social media as a consumer, trying to do copy popular behavior from other posters. I used to hoard cameras, gadgets and retro items not realizing it became an addiction just to buy, buy, buy! I was properly trained by the algorithms of the evil corporations to do their bidding. Before the 2020s we had windows shopping at malls, now we have doom-scroll shopping on social media.

If you avoid it, try to be different then it’s other people that try to shame you or at least make you feel like an outsider. Did you surround yourself with the wrong people? Which do you choose?

Do you every ask yourself “What do these tangible things really give you in the long term”? I’d argue that it’s nothing besides an emotional roller-coaster. It’s short-term fun at a cost of potential long-term benefits of learning. Shopping is also a big distraction taken away from self-improvement activities. We have the “shiny toy syndrome” when we feel a need to shop for unnecessary items. It’s okay to admit it, even I have it from advertising. Advertisements beam product-ads into our retinas manipulating our brain logic. I knew about this since my teenage years but did I know the true cost? Did I understand it? Sadly, no.

The true cost is not the actual monetary value, but the lost time and opportunity cost that you could have spent self-improving. When we get too comfortable, and recently I’ve been way too comfortable, we need to make a sacrifice. Any sacrifices of any stimuli because your focus span is selectable from 0 to 100% so you have to learn to self-control and wield your attention span like a volume knob. There’s no 110% or even 200% that some gurus proclaim or when the army sergeant shouts at you “Give me 110%”. It’s just psychological.

Even after several big accomplishments, why stop? Yes, you can enjoy the comforts you earned because they are the fruits of your labor but the “road to hell is heaven and the road to heaven is hell”. Well maybe, I’m not certain but it does make some sense. In the past, my personal self-learning of software engineering has gained me lucrative jobs. My commitment to learn finance and investing has multiplied my money. It was the best time I spent which required lots of focus and more sacrifice. If you want to get higher on the ladder, you have to maintain focus while rejecting fun. When I stepped off the ladder to pursue fun dreams, it just made me realize I’m an idealist without fighting for my ideals. So I had enough money for myself and got too comfortable. When that happens, you fall off the ladder and have to accept reality.

In other words, I didn’t get what I truly wanted and had to accepted what was being offered. Even being a believer of spirituality and a Buddhist enthusiast, you cannot live in the present all the time. You have to be aware of the future because if you don’t improve mentally, physically and financially, the world can leave you behind as a spec in the dust. Don’t wait for that moment. I hope I’m not crushing your dreams and you shouldn’t get discouraged in any sense but getting a dose of reality is a step in the right direction.

Benefits

Have you guilted yourself enough before? Accept your problems and laziness in order to change. Be open to the endless possibilities in your future. Seeing positive outcomes, the benefits you can realize and the future that could be the present is truly inspiring and motivational. It’s one day or day one with small progressive steps. You will get there and you will have to do it alone; nobody is going to hold your hand but you can find assistance in a form of tools, beliefs and loans.

Your intellectual capacity is determined by time and commitment. Your confidence is determined by your intent. Rewire your brain to alter the chain of causality and get into the flow-state to increase your brain’s neuro-plasticity. Neurons that fire together, wire together. You are an adaptive human being.

Use assistive tools as training wheels. I hated reading school text books since childhood but certain books with cool caricatures of dinosaurs, ghosts, and monsters made books more appealing. I loved it when books included stickers or funny book-markers. Those were assisting me to read more. I recall the joyful moment of choosing folders for grade school. The folder covers were glossy with illustrations of exotic cars, skateboarding and early 3D-generated sci-fi environments. I assigned each one to a different grade school subject so the design made me memorize which class it was for.

Eventually, I became the reader of the most amount of books in my family. Books can be academic, fictional and non-fictional. Others can be self-help ones which are meant to make you feel better when you read them. You may not learn science or math from the self-help books but they help you get in the habit of reading. The more you read the easier it is to get into flow-state. You build-up momentum just as you do from other long-term activities. Visualize your success, speak of success and you will reap the success because doing these things you begin to re-wire your brain.

Accept the Pain

You’ll see this quote from motivational speakers such as Wiktor Miesok from The Grim Hustle and it struck a chord with me. To work is hard, but to be broke is harder. You can choose an easy life or a disciplined life. You cannot have both. Even David Goggins mentions it when he ran marathons with inured legs. Stop with the daily stimulations from social media you see on your screen. They are not real life. They are not you. Those emotion-inducing activities affect your mind like real live events because your subconscious mind can’t distinguish reality from simulation. This form of stimuli is depriving your of learning opportunities and self-improvement activites. Nobody cares how you feel and nobody cares what you watch.

Part of the pain will be working alone to educate yourself. Most people don’t like to be lonely; as human beings we were designed to be part of a tribe. However, to advance yourself and go fast, you must accept the loneliness, discipline yourself and sacrifice fun for work. Also realize that loneliness is only temporary, you don’t have to be lonely for a long time, just during your extended focus sessions.

The pain tolerance doesn’t even have to be very high but it will seem like it at the beginning because you are making psychological changes in your brain. It’s a method know as “dopamine transfer” where you condition yourself to get rewarded from your personal accomplishments instead of simulated ones like video games. I heard this concept from Charlie Morgan’s youtube channel, but I’m sure you can find it from other places. I just mention Charlie Morgan because he’s the type of speaker that’s not a motivational speaker. His advice is dry and to-the-point through making sacrifices. He tells you to help yourself not through learning self-improvement but strictly doing the work you need to do, to be where you want to be. Like what I’m doing now is not to write a self-help article but to write more and improve my writing. How am I doing so far?

Don’t quit your simulation activities cold-turkey. Do a progressive transition because it is more effective. Those neurons that are wired for pleasure won’t give up so easily. They will put a fight until you give in. Don’t give in! If you want to be 100% focused, you don’t need to be 100% lonely. You can choose the “build in public” technique where you share your progress online. This can be on posts on X, a blog, discord, or forums. It’s possible you’ll get fans along the way or even an accountability buddy if you message like-minded people on those platforms. There’s another saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone but if you want to go far, go together.” Do you have hobbies? You can’t have hobbies if you want to focus 100%. Hobbies will prevent you from re-wiring your brain for productivity.

Do you want to learn more or learn at a faster rate? Then you’ll have to earn less while in the stage of learning. To minimize your financial losses for learning purposes, commit to learning through listening such as listening to an audiobook during work down-time or reading a book during your lunch break. Try to take notes because your work will distract you from memorizing what you read. My favorite non-reading learning technique is to convert text or videos into audio files and transferring them to my phone. This allows me to learn during other activities such as cooking, jogging, and exercising. Why are scholars and professors smarter than the average person? Because they spent more of their time learning instead of working.

Understanding brain chemistry

People change for two reasons: either their minds opened up or their hearts have been broken. Knowing a bit about brain chemistry and emotional intelligence significantly helps you to start making changes in your habits. The previous section about accepting the pain is typically the threshold for people to do something different. They are forced to make a change because the pain becomes almost intolerable. In dramatic life events, understanding brain chemistry doesn’t matter. Pain was your teacher of change since you were born and kids are quick to learn from their mistakes when injured. Their bodies are also more resilient than adult bodies so making mistakes are normal.

When your comprehension of emotional intelligence is well-adapted, your self-control is higher than the average person and you can replace your reward mechanisms more easily from bad habits to good habits. Some people are well-disciplined and emotionally supported from childhood that they may never participate in bad habits such as smoking, drinking, overeating, and being lazy. I wish I was that type of person but they are far and few compared to the rest of us in the world that are driven by selfishness and egos. You can debate that some social-economical classes have privilege of always “having it good” or never experiencing harsh conditions but that just isn’t true.

After visiting many countries and meeting people from all kinds of backgrounds, everyone experiences emotional problems. Whether you are living in poverty or a mansion, majority of people behave the same being reactive vs proactive about their emotions. I will even claim that the people who have the highest emotional intelligence are considered “weird” by the masses. The impeccable self-control and cold-faced expressions are not weird, they are trained to the level that emotions are replaced with logic and planning for specific goals in life such as wealth, not happiness.

If you’re unable to control your emotions, how do you expect to have control over others? To start reaping benefits, you need dopamine detox because you’re likely to be desensitized from stimuli overload. There are more than four brain neurotransmitters but knowing the following four covers the basis to improve your learning rate:

Dopamine

Serotonin

Oxytocin

Adrenaline

Dopamine:
This is the pleasure neurotransmitter, the reward circuit, the feeling mostly easily manipulated by direct actions we can voluntarily make.

Serotonin:
This is the mood regulator, the relaxing neurotransmitter that changes your sleep, anxiety, sexuality, appetite and pain. Changes derive from the gut so what you eat and when you sleep have a great impact on your wellness and energy.

Oxytocin:
This is the love and bonding neurotransmitter. It plays a big role in relationships, loyalty and trust. The amount of empathy and compassion you have determines your connections to others. It’s beneficial for your personal growth through communities.

Adrenaline:
This neurotransmitter is your flight or fight response mechanism. It is your central nervous system and defense against stress. It can be beneficial to speed up physical activities through breathing and your heart rate. Adrenaline sharpens your decisions and reactions.

Take those neurotransmitters into consideration the next time you have a dramatic feeling, to begin to understand how they work, when the emotions start and stop for you to be able to gain control. For example, when you’re doom-scrolling on social media, you engage in a simulation in your body raising your serotonin watching funny and cute animal videos, you raise your adrenaline watching news of danger or harmful content. Those feelings are completely simulated from the screen into your subconscious mind but your brain doesn’t know if they are real or not. Your neurotransmitters fire away and your mood changes when it really doesn’t need to. These emotions are not earned by real life events from actions you took. This is why it’s important for to do “dopamine detox” and remove yourself from these simulations. Overtime your brain gets re-wired and your neurotransmitters become desensitized. Your reward mechanism gets programmed to feel good from inaction and very little work.

It is completely possible to reverse this and allow yourself to get the positive feelings from traditional work, studying and improving your well-being. The key to this success is to do it progressively and to commit 30-days to instill any permanent change to your daily routine and integrate new habits.

Environment

In the previous section, you learned about brain chemistry, neurotransmitters, and how your brain manipulates your feelings from your actions. To continue improving yourself by reducing stimuli is to have an appropriate environment that eliminates distraction.

Your environment is your #1 distraction!

Your external factors become your environment and changing it may prove to be difficult in today’s economy of difficult times. Don’t forget that changing your environment shouldn’t be too costly. The easiest choice is your home and hopefully your peaceful quiet room. If you have mixed feelings or distractions in your home other options include public libraries, cafes, public parks, and break rooms at your workplace. The location and past experiences of specific locations play a big role in the amount of distractions surrounding you. After settling in an ideal location, ensure you have a desk and a comfortable chair to work from. This determines the length of time you’re able to study/work without muscle or back aches. Preventing discomfort from poor posture is crucial for long-term benefits.

Ambiance noise can be controlled in your private room but not public places. If you must listen to something, then listen to music that doesn’t have vocals which will engage your logic and distract you. Avoid upbeat and pleasurable music which raises your dopamine because that dopamine should be earned from your work. Remember, part of re-wiring your brain is to have your reward be work’s result, not an external stimuli. Great examples of music to help focusing are classical music, nature sounds, buddhism chanting, and white noise. Whatever noise you have to deal with, don’t fight it. The average time to get into flow-state is 20 minutes so resisting urges especially during that time is important. Utilize the pomodoro 25-minute timer for assitance.

Eating

At this point you have accomplished a lot and are halfway to getting your habits and productivity improved. You’re swapping your wasteful time from stimuli to working on your goals by controlling your emotions and resisting your dopamine urges. Your progress is gaining momentum and you want to optimize the remainder of your free time. The next progression will have to be your eating habits and your diet. Not many people realize how eating affects personal productivity and what you can do about it. Given the fact that marketing and advertising of food is ever-present in western countries, we are trained from a young age to eat processed food and over-consume. This harmful behavior includes learning the “food pyramid” scam we were taught in grade school.

Why is the food pyramid considered bad? It’s because of the food portions showing carbohydrates should be eaten the most. To provide context for my answer, I’d like to tell a brief story first. In my early twenties, I began to take my health seriously so I began learning nutrition and fitness. In high school, we were fed very unhealthy food such as chicken nuggets, pizza, burgers with french fries, spaghetti and not even the tuna salads were healthy. These are the types of foods that are heavy in salts, fats, and carbohydrates with very little protein which is the key nutrient.

From those diets and recommended “food pyramid” my body experienced post-meal fatigue. Nearly every time I would get drowsy when I had to sit after lunch. I was one of those students known to fall asleep face flat on the desk. It took years, well into my twenties to find out that the culprit of my fatigue was the massive amount of carbohydrates. I first heard about it from another nutritional expert who experienced the same fatigue problem. Considering the food pyramid which recommends 5-6 portions daily of carbohydrates, who does that benefit? Certainly not you as the consumer. It benefits the food corporations who turn a big profit selling food from the low-cost ingredient of flower. It’s easy to turn a $2 bag of flour into $20. That one bag of flour produces 4 bread loafs which sell for $5 each for a profit of $18. Easy money and empty calories!

From now on we need to reduce our carb intake which takes away focus time and energy from our productivity but how? The easiest method is intermittent fasting. If you don’t desire to change your diet, you simply must reduce the quantity. Instead of falling for another big propaganda lie from media, you should skip breakfast. A healthy morning meal is not the start for a great day. If you’ve never tried intermittent fasting then you won’t know the clarity and focus you’re missing in the morning.

Let’s consider how digestion works. Anytime food is consumed, energy is being converted and your body puts in that energy to digest the food. The blood circulating in your body has to redirect some to your stomach for digestion. Why do that in the morning, when you can remain with an empty stomach and have your blood maximize allocation to the brain? This is a result of intermittent fasting, which means eating exclusively in a 7-8 hour timeframe and the remainder of the day you don’t eat. Drinking is still fine but your drinks shouldn’t can’t have calories (sugar nor fat).

What if you cannot give up carbohydrates? This is absolutely normal because many carbohydrates are made of gluten which is addictive. The keto diet is my favorite diet for health and fitness although it’s not the tastiest. Some people eat for health, others eat for happiness aka dopamine spikes. Science has proven that the keto diet strengthens the brain and prevents alzheimer’s. Check this link for yourself https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31405021/

You might say that to work hard, you have to sit dormant many hours throughout the day and sweets help you cope with that. It’s true, the lack of mobility and work-related stress induces people to eat more unhealthy foods so their stress hormone is accompanied by dopamine making the hard work more tolerable. If you’re going to have sweets, then at the minimum you should practice intermittent fasting. Perhaps you thought about replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners. Don’t! It’s not a net positive benefit. Artificial sweeteners may seem benign at first but they are more harmful than a moderate amount of sugar. While sugar can be processed normally by the gut, artificial sweeteners are not. They cause more tissue inflammation, increase your risk of diabetes and disrupt metabolism. See this list of problematic sweeteners https://draxe.com/nutrition/artificial-sweeteners/

Here’s an additional study showing negative side effects https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230017301265 Did you know sucralose was originally found through the development of a new insecticide? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3856475/

Okay you get the point right but what’s eating have to do with my ability to focus? Here’s a list:

Time spent cooking and eating too frequently can be time spent learning. Preparing meals with healthy ingredients for 1-3 days is the solution to spend time more efficiently.
Poor diet leads to fatigue, sicknesses, and lack of energy which are big long-term problems.
Food that spike your dopamine, while helping reduce stress, will lead to addiction and mood swings.
Practicing fasting regularly minimizes time spent digesting, prevents obesity, and maintains consistent energy levels.
High levels of caffeine lead to anxiety, jitters, and eventually poor sleeping habits. Minimize caffeine intake to 1 cup of coffee per day and get 7-8 hour of sleep.

The very word “disease” means a state of unhappiness – “dis-ease.”

5th Generation warfare

The war of information, emotion and narratives. While the previous wars were fought on the field with soldiers and weapons, modern warfare is digital and it affects all of us. Social media started off beautifully as a way to keep in contact with friends and distant relatives, sharing our memories with them. In recent years, social media platforms have been engineered as a way to make us weak and control us through fear and propaganda. This is the most negative topic and I don’t want to perpetuate the sentiment. By keeping this section brief, I will provide you the solution and benefits without further dramatic narratives.

By following these principles, you can improve your focus, mental positivity and increased productivity:

Abstain:
from watching mainstream news, instagram, tiktok, and youtube. If there’s an emergency, a friend or family member will notify you.

Make the algorithm work for you:
If you must watch video reels, then follow only educational channels in the niche you are learning. Then explicitly hide the random posts in your feed by selecting “Don’t show this type of content” or “Don’t show posts from this user” from the item’s context-menu. After a few times this action is performed, the algorithm will understand.

Feed the algorithm if you’re publishing:
If it’s your business to create content and publish it, then you can apply the same tactic. Dedicate your profile to be strictly for business and not personal. Don’t combine both because you’ll end up doom-scrolling.

Remove yourself from email lists:
Emails are inevitable and you need one to do anything online. Keep one email account personal and one for business purposes. Don’t join any unimportant newsletters such as shopping deals, trip discounts, news updates, because you will regret it when your inbox fills up and you have to waste time reading through it. The best alternative method is to bookmark the content or blogs you like and visit those sites at your free will.

The take-away form this is read between the lines. Understanding the agenda behind narratives are typically political and have a net negative purpose. Who benefits from you believing what’s on social media?

Learning – The final and best chapter

This is the best information I’ve learned and discovered which has helped me on my learning journey. It is notes from years of trials and tribulations. I cover myths and false beliefs people typically have about learning anything new. “Old dogs, can’t learn new tricks!” The reason people believe this myth is because they are probably stuck in some routine after years of repetition. They state that only kids can learn a second language, not adults. Well I’m an adult and speak 6 languages and I’m still learning. This false belief can be disrupted intent, time commitment and discipline. Yes, it’s easier as a kid because kids don’t have responsibilities like grown ups. They are surrounded in educational environments and others learning the same subjects.

As an adult, you can’t eliminate your responsibilities but you’re probably working 8 hours at a day job and have free time during the weekends. That leaves plenty of time for you to learn new subjects. This is how hobbies are started so choose your hobbies wisely. The fun ones may not benefit you in the long-run. Consider what will be valuable for you to know a year or two from now. Don’t fall in the trap of societal conditioning tell you, that you can’t do it. You’re not too old, you have the capability and aptitude with the right support and guidance. If you’re unsure of how to guide yourself, start by reading books or consult with a coach.

Multi-tasking is not a practical method for productivity. It’s a distractor and only useful for activities that doesn’t require a thought-process. Don’t fall for this trap. Instead practice context-switching. The difference is with context-switching you are staying within the same subject matter and jumping between resources. It’s like being on the same vertical path but using an index to skip to linearly to additional information. An example would be reading two books on the same subject and comparing chapters to see what each author has to say on the matter. Valid reasons for doing this include:

The current information advances in a non-linear path
The topic is getting too advance too soon
Just-in-time (JIT) learning means to reference material only when needed
Each author’s experience and writing style is different

The source quality will always vary – content from a source that is popular doesn’t indicate quality. It could be so cutting-edge that very few people understand the content. A good author should be humble in his thoughts and not overly promising. A bit of exuberance is okay too.

I have unconventional ways of reading and I learned this only when I took the time to learn about more effective reading. In grade school, we were trained to just read from A to B from one book source, perhaps 2 books for certain subjects. That is just one way to read and it’s boring. Here are other ways that are more effective.

Scan read for an overview:
Read by skimming through paragraphs starting at the table of contents to be aware of all the content. If you’re new to the subject, skim through the earlier chapters until you understand nothing. If you’re familiar with the subject, skim through the chapters most useful to you. Take notes which chapters contain the information you need to learn and read them at a normal pace.

Non-sequential reading:
Use a book as reference extracting only the details you need to know at that moment in time. If it’s a pdf book then do a keyword search otherwise check the table of contents first.

Throughput vs accuracy:
You may think that the faster you read the better, but if you’re not absorbing what you just read was your time wasted? Yes so you may have to read the content twice. Once for awareness and a second time for details memorization.

Reverse reading:
Movies do this occasionally to build up suspense and curiosity. It’s like getting the reward of the book you just purchased and then figuring out the details over time. Read the final ending, then the chapter endings skimming until the beginning of the chapter followed by previous chapters.

Outdated content:
Ensure the subject matter of the book you are choosing is not outdated or replaced by newer tech before investing in learning it. Otherwise, you’re wasting time.

Re-reading:
I find it useful to re-read self-improvement books I’ve previously read and considered them valuable. If you can’t remember the benefits from the book, then it’s time to read it again.

Take breaks:
When reading, there’s no doubt that your eyes strain and get tired. Using the pomodoro technique, take breaks every 25 minutes. Close your eyes completely and cover them reducing any light source. Staring at a specific position for extended times is irregular for eye muscles. Do some eye exercises such as rotating them around, switching focus between up-close and distant objects, using moisturizing eye drops.

Slow down:
When you are reading quickly but find yourself unable to capture what you just read, you have to slow down. Scroll up line by line until you recognize the previous thought you had in your brain before your mind went off tangent. A method I use to slow down reading is to tilt your head slightly to the right or left, like a confused dog would do. This tells your brain that something is off, because you just tilted your horizon line. Our brains expect a balance and because of gravity we’re not spinning in a 360 degree environment. Now your brain has to re-focus without doing much effort.

Slowing down to any rate that makes each line comprehensible and more memorable. This is slightly better than re-reading the same content.

Here are a few supportive proverbs that I’ve learned through my own research so I wish to pass them upon to you and please commit your habit changes to a minimum of 30 days before you quit.

People change, when they hurt enough they choose to change. When they see enough, they are inspired enough. When they learn enough, they want to and when they receive enough, they are able to.

Harvard psychologists studied the correlation between happiness and criminality and concluded that the old Dutch proverb: Happy people are never wicked.

Cheerful businessmen who “looked on the bright side of things” were more successful than pessimistic businessmen.