You've probably heard of the 24-hour circadian rhythm. In nutshell, it is summarising the fact that our brain and body work according to 90-minute ultradian cycles in this 24-hour cycle.
Let's watch the legendary man talking about focus. Dr Andrew Huberman is a perfect person that you can learn about your brain and about your body more and more. He explains you the things in a scientific way with reason and result relationship. It is just a 5 minutes video. Please take your time to learn it from the professor.
What are the Focused Work and Circadian Rhythm?
And now it is my time to talk :)
Time to time, during the discussions of efficiency at work, I'm hearing many questions about keeping the focus and efficiency at top level. Of course there's no magic solution about that. But there are best practices and nice studies about how human biology works and how our brain adjust its focus settings for the matter of focus.
Let's continue to find answers on to the questions of :
How to improve focus at work?
In my general practices, I realised some differences when I do certain way of focus methods in my brain. Let's discuss about some aspect for the circadian rhytm and dive deeper about this topic.
Keep the duration of things that require focus and intensity to around 90 minutes. Although it is possible to focus and concentrate for two, maybe three hours straight, it goes against what we know about biology. In our brain many things follows the 90 minutes cycles, in example both sleep phases and wakefulness phases occur in 90-minute periods. So there's big benefit in following 90 minutes focus time for the things that require focus and intensity.
I'm generally setting up a 90 minute timer in the beginning of the focus phase. If there is nothing urgent that I need to finish in a very short time or I have not had the optimal amount of caffeine, I accept that the first 5-10 minutes of these 90 minutes are a transition to focus, a warm-up period, but I also include these 5-10 minutes in the 90 minutes. The warm-up cannot hapen with the distraction elements. Since it is the focus phase of the job you want to get it done, you must have nothing else distracting you.
In the remaining time after this warm-up, I try to focus on mental work or learning. I accept that my attention and focus will wander and regain focus during this time. A big part of the ability to focus is returning to focus when focus wanders.
I picture this as the arrow head suddenly expanding, focusing on multiple things, or focusing elsewhere in the room. The key here is to take the arrow and put it back on where we want it to be and narrow it down. This is something that is very active and requires a lot of metabolic energy. Your brain is the organ that consumes most of your metabolic energy. Most of your basal metabolic energy goes to functioning of the brain, not to any movement, heartbeat, exercise or breathing. The brain is the engine of this vehicle.
Since the process of focusing and maintaining focus is an activity that consumes a high amount of metabolic energy, it is possible for you to feel tired or exhausted after 90 minutes or even after 45 minutes.
So after your 90-minute focus session, for at least 10 minutes, but ideally 30 minutes, do what I call deliberate defocus.
During this period, do ordinary tasks that do not require your concentration. Walk around a little bit, but for example, don't look at your phone, don't scroll through the endless dopamine receptor fryers. I also mentioned 5 habits can change your life here.
Give yourself this time to relax, keep your mind idle, and not focus on anything. Mental downtime like this is crucial to your ability to focus, just like the short breaks you need to take between sets when lifting weights.
I can't focus at work
Yes, I know it is difficult because we are constantly drawn to the incredibly rich barrage of sensory information emanating from the screens of our mobile phones and other devices. But I always want to emphasize that our ability to focus depends not only on what happens during the focus cycle, but also on what happens after those focus periods. If you want to maintain and increase your ability to focus, you must enter a period of rest during which you deliberately do not focus.
And of course, the biggest rest period without this focus is sleep. It is quite logical that this deep and long period when we do not control where our mind is, even when we are having the most intense dreams, is the best restoration phase for the brain.
So, after a focus period of 90 minutes or less, stop what you are doing and do tasks that are automatic and reflexive and do not require much mental energy for at least 10 minutes, ideally 30 minutes. During this rest period, you don't have to walk in circles and stare blankly at the sky, but do so if you can. During this rest period, stay away from reading something by focusing and focusing your visual attention on a narrow area, which the best example is the mobile phone screens. Resting in this way will help you enter the next focus cycle more easily and complete this circuit more easily, and will help you do such focus periods many times during the day.
How many ultradian cycles can we do per day?
It depends on how well you sleep, eat, and train your capacity to focus. Now the paradox is that the more you practice focusing and the better you get at transitioning to and staying focused, the more unfocused rest you need. My advice to you is to do two, maybe three deeply focused, 90-minute sessions a day. Of course this can depend on your phase of integration and how experienced you are on this topic. It is exactly like muscle building. You can't go with 50 kilos of dumble for your arm muscles in the beginning of your fitness program. Therefore you should take it easy.
In other words, you should work focused for 90 minutes and then rest for 30 minutes and 90 minutes work and rest for 30 minutes, not in a row, but in the form of 90 minutes of deep work in the morning and then maybe another 90 minutes of deep work in the afternoon.
However, when I say this, many people are surprised and say “wait a minute!” How many people can live by working only 3 hours a day?”. Here I'm not talking about working just 3 hours a day. I'm talking about hard work and fully focused work. Besides this cycles you can have your low focus needed tasks and daily follow ups. One other advice from me to you is asking as less questions as possible before you try a method. Your brain always tends to create many barriers for you to not try something new. Don't fall into this laziness barrier.
The more, the more deeply you concentrate, the less of these 90-minute deep work periods you can do. If you think about physical activities, when you run a 100 km ultra marathon, the time you need to recover will be much longer than someone who runs 10 kilometers. The length of your rest period after intense work is directly proportional to how intense your work was.
At this stage of my life, I can do three intense, 90-minute work sessions a day by putting my phone away or turning it off. But unless there is something very urgent and stressful, nothing more happens than that. In between these three 90-minute deep studies, I do work that requires less focus.
Some of you can do 4 times 90-minute intense workouts a day. My advice is, try to do at least one a day. By the way, one a day, including weekends. On the weekends, I read a real book away from my phone or listen to an audiobook while walking. But I really concentrate on what I want to learn.
If you've never done this, do one 90-minute intense workout session every day for 4 weeks. Try to stay focused and not succumb to the discomfort you may feel. Then increase the number of circuits you do per day.
Now I'm not saying you should go and tell your teacher or doctor, "I can't focus on anything for more than 90 minutes." I'm talking about deep focus circuits. These are really hard things where you really force yourself to focus and refocus, sharpen the head of the arrow, point it at what you want to focus on.
I hope this article was helpful for your focus abilities. Try this techniques on your mind. And let me know how it works with you.
Please comment below your opinions about the topic.
Disclaimer : Always Consult a doctor before following my advices.
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