Essentials: Tools to Improve Your Focus & Concentration

Huberman Lab

Dr. Andrew Huberman explains the neurochemical foundations of focus using an 'arrow' metaphor involving epinephrine, acetylcholine, and dopa

Key takeaways

• The 'Arrow' model: Epinephrine acts as the shaft (alertness), Acetylcholine as the arrowhead (direction/focus), and Dopamine as the driver (motivation).
• Utilize 90-minute ultradian cycles for deep work bouts to align with natural biological rhythms.

Main topics

• Neurochemistry of focus
• Ultradian cycles and work bouts

Notable quotes

What we repeat gets etched into our nervous system and becomes easier over time.

Conclusion

By combining behavioral, nutritional, and environmental tools, individ

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. Speaker 1 (0:11) I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are discussing focus and concentration and tools for improving your focus and concentration. And those tools will allow you to tap into the neurochemistry and the neural circuits within your brain and body that peer-reviewed science has reliably shown can significantly improve your focus and concentration abilities. Just to give you a little teaser of the kinds of tools that I'm going to provide you on today's episode, a previous guest on the Huberman Lab Podcast was Dr. Wendy Suzuki. Dr. Suzuki is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at New York University, or NYU as it's commonly referred to. Her laboratory made a very important discovery, which was that a very brief, just 12, actually 13, if you really count the intro, but 13-minute daily meditation performed for a period of about eight weeks. significantly increase people's focus and concentration abilities. And the great news is you didn't need all eight weeks. It was just, that's how long that you ran the study. So during today's episode, I will describe that protocol in detail. I'll also provide you an even briefer alternative to that protocol that you can use if, for instance, you find yourself with only three minutes or four minutes or five minutes a day to meditate. Because today's episode is mainly focused on tools and not so much the underlying mechanisms, I'm mainly going to focus on what to do and when and how to do it. but I just want to take about three minutes and briefly describe a model. That is a visual image that you can put in your mind that will help you incorporate the tools that I'll provide. And that generally will help you understand at a mechanistic level, how focus and concentration work. What I want you to imagine is an arrow and an arrow of course has an arrow head and it has the shaft of that arrow. The neurochemical system that really represents the shaft of that arrow, right? The straight line is epinephrine, also called adrenaline. It turns out that epinephrine slash adrenaline are released within your brain from a little location, a little cluster of neurons called locus coeruleus, but you do not need to remember that name, and from your body from the adrenal glands. And the release of epinephrine from those two locations overall increases. It increases alertness. It does not alone increase focus. Okay. So things, whether or not they're behavioral or psychological or supplements or drugs that increase epinephrine allow focus to occur. They are necessary for focus, but they are not sufficient for focus. That is they are required, but they are not enough to create focus. So we're going to need epinephrine in the equation. Now the arrow head on this. metaphorical arrowhead that represents focus and concentration, is going to be represented or related to the mechanisms of acetylcholine. And the best way to think about it is it's like a spotlight. It highlights specific neurons, nerve cells that should be active or more active, I should say, than the other neurons in the environment. If you have an arrow with a very big arrowhead that's really broad, really blunt, imagine a mile wide arrowhead, that's not very focused on any one location. It's not really pointing to any one location, is it? But with a narrow, really tightly focused arrowhead, well, that's focused on one location. So we have alertness, epinephrine, and then we have the actual direction in which our concentration and focus is placed. And that's... at least in this mental model, I'm creating acetylcholine. And then in order to have ongoing focus, we need another neurochemical. And it turns out that that third neurochemical is dopamine, a molecule often associated with pleasure and reward, but it's really the molecule of motivation. These three neurochemicals together, acetylcholine, epinephrine, and dopamine, really allow you to get focused, to focus. very precisely and in fact, increasingly precisely over time to really narrow and narrow and narrow your focus progressively within a single bout of focus and to continue to do that and to be able to do that repeatedly whenever you want. Let's jump into the tools for concentration and focus. One of the most important things to build and maintain your focus and concentration is to optimize your sleeping behavior. That is to get enough quality sleep I would say 80 % of the nights of your life. Not everyone can get optimal sleep 100 % of the nights of their life. Nobody, truly nobody achieves that. However, sleep has been shown to relate to cognitive performance, physical performance, hormone output, and so many other things. What we can reliably say is that sleep modulates just about every process in your brain and body. So assuming that you are sleeping well 80 % of the nights of your life, or at least working, on the various protocols and tools to sleep well and sufficiently long, 80 % of the nights of your life. And you are interested in additional tools that are sound-based in order to improve your ability to concentrate and focus. There are quality peer-reviewed studies supporting the idea that white noise or pink noise have been shown to not improve concentration. per se, but to improve people's ability to transition into concentrated states. There is indeed some data to support the fact that white noise, and to some extent pink noise and brown noise, can amplify the activity of neurons in the so-called prefrontal cortex, this front area, sort of the bumper behind your forehead, that is directly related to your ability to direct your own focus and remain focused on certain things. These are tools that really have been shown over and over in humans to decrease the transition time into focus. This is a really key point. A lot of people are challenged with getting into a mode of focus. None of us, however, should be expected to just sit down and drop directly into a state of focus. I think that's completely. an unfair request of ourselves. I mean, for instance, you wouldn't expect yourself to go out on the track or go out for a run and not warm up. You might jog for a few minutes or even walk before you would jog and then jog before you would run, right? I would hope you would do that. And if you're doing resistance training, I doubt that you go over and load up the bar or the machine with the maximum amount of weight that you can move and then just drop right into that. You always do a warmup. And I think it's very important to understand mental work, focus, and concentration as requiring that warmup. There's a gradual dropping into any state, whether or not that state is sleep, right? You go from sh- shallow sleep to deep sleep, and then out eventually. Focus two, you go from shallow focus to increasingly deep focus. That is in our metaphor of the arrow, it's very broad. It's pointed at a lot of things. And over time, as we drop into focus, that arrow is narrowing and narrowing and narrowing. It is not what we call a step function. It's not like you go from unfocused to focused and then you drop into your maximal focus. By understanding this dynamic, by understanding that you are going to be continually going in and out of progressively, but varying levels of focus, you will greatly release the pressure on yourself to. feel focused all the time when you want to be. So be patient with yourself and also understand that focus is an ability, that you can improve your ability to focus by engaging the neural circuits responsible for focus repeatedly over time through so-called neuroplasticity, the ability of your nervous system to change in response to experience. And that has a couple of different components, but put very simply, what we repeat gets etched into our nervous system and becomes easier over time. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors. Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct amounts, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking Element Dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of Element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I first wake up in the morning. And I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink Element Dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. I love the raspberry. I love the citrus flavor. Right now, Element has a limited edition lemonade flavor that is absolutely delicious. I hate to say that I love one more than all the others, but this lemonade flavor is right up there with my favorite other one, which is raspberry or watermelon. Again, I can't pick just one flavor. I love them all. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman, spelled drinkelement.com slash Huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with a purchase of of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim a free sample pack. A question I often get is how long should I try to focus? Well, the research literature point to the key importance of so-called ultradian cycles. You've all probably heard of circadian cycles or circadian biology. Circa the day, circadian is about 24 hour cycle. Well, our brain and body operate within that day or within each and every day, I should say, with. 90-minute ultradian cycles. So my suggestion would be anytime you're going to sit down and try and focus, you're going to try and do a focused bout of physical exercise or skill learning or musical learning, or maybe you're even just having a conversation. Maybe you're a therapist or you're attending therapy or a class. How long should it be? And the ideal duration is about 90 minutes. Everything from our sleep states or the different stages of sleep and our waking states is divided into these 90-minute cycles or so-called ultradian cycles. I acknowledge and accept the fact that the first five to 10 minutes of that 90 minutes are a transition time. It's like the warmup for focus, but I do include it in that 90 minutes. I'm often asked how many ultradian cycles one can perform throughout the day. That depends on how well you've slept, how well you are nourished, which we'll talk about in a moment. and how well