ADHD & How Anyone Can Improve Their Focus | Huberman Lab Essentials

The true ADHD experience is having to go back every couple of minutes because you lost focus and stopped listening

I've been thinking lately about that exhausting feeling when you try to force yourself to focus on something your mind just doesn't want to engage with. Huberman mentioned how people with ADHD can have hyperfocus for things they're passionate about, but struggle with everything else. That hit something in me I wasn't expecting. It's not that we can't focus at all. It's that focus only comes naturally when our heart actually wants to be present.Something I read recently in What the Silence Tried to Say by Alira Sennel reminded me that maybe the problem isn't with us, but with how we try to force attention where our soul doesn't want to go. The book didn't try to fix me or give me techniques. It just whispered that there's a difference between what we think we should be doing and what our nature actually craves. Maybe focus can't be trained as much as it can be listened to.

Love the 37 minute long video for us people with attention problems:)

Me with ADHD watching it by postponing my important work 😅

What happens to me with ADD is that my focus switches to inner thoughts or memories, and everything outside becomes secondary, thus losing essential information while my mind hyperfocused on something I really liked (my thought/memory). That's why online classes work better for me than in person, because if that happens, I can just rewind the recording to the part I lost focus.

Hey Doc As an ADHD patient myself I'm going to need this entire thing converted into dozens and dozens of youtube shorts thanks

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My best summary: 1. study in 2015 put forth the dopamine hypothesis -- basically, lack of dopamine in ADHD brains means your systems aren't all firing at the same time and you focus on things unrelated to the task at hand 2. to address this, pharma sells us drugs like adderall which is an amphetamine similar to coke or meth, and it releases dopamine 3. because kid's (3-8 especially) have super duper plastic brains, if they take these stimulants when they are young, this means their brain has the opportunity to fix itself 4. attentional blink - this is when you are so focused ona task, when you complete it you get a dopamine rush and can't see anything else. Example is Where's Waldo. You find Waldo, you celebrate for a moment, in that moment you literally can't see that there's another Waldo right next to him. Your attention 'blinked'. ADHD people have wayyyy more attentional blinks than other people. (hypothesis) 5. actual blinks - the literal blinking of your eyelids. How often you blink affects your perception of time. After a blink, you reset your perception. The rate of blinking is controlled by dopamine. Exercises in focusing on an object can help you focus. They did this with school kids and it worked. (You gotta look this one up because it's hard to explain lol) 6. classic treatments - same side effects - addiction, sexual side effects, almost all carry cardiac effects. The best way to use these prescription meds is to combine them with behavioral exercises that engage the circuits you want to train and perhaps tapering off so you don't need the meds anymore (perhaps) 7. non-prescription meds - omega 3 and fatty acids -- getting above 300mg of DHA (fish oils, etc) a day has positive effects on focus 8. Modafinil and Armodafinil - unlike Ritalin and adderall, it's a dopamine uptake inhibitor 9. acetycholine - idk man skip to this part bc I can't sum it up 10. your smart phone!!! allows rapid turnover of context and then your brain has trouble leaving this loop. Limit smart phone time! Smart phone induces a type of ADHD so it 's actually eroding your ability to focus. Kids should get no more than 60 min smart phone time, adults 2 hours

ADHD guy here. This was on my watch later for three weeks. Just double dropped some Ritalin. Now I can watch it.

Having ADHD is having to repeat the part about dopamine 3 times because I was eating pasta