How to Focus like an Absolute Maniac (Long Term Success)

11 May

Intro

A lot of people really suck at focusing for longer than 20 minutes. In a 20 minute work or study session, even if they focus without getting distracted, they likely weren’t “locked in”. They had many temptations to do other things.

This is an epidemic you and I will no longer be part of.

But why should we improve our capacity to focus intensely for long periods of time?

The answer is money - you can better:

Learn a new skill or embody new knowledge
Get more done, at a higher quality, in less time at your job
Lock in on that side business to make more money (while still building your career)

We’ll discuss methods for long-term focus you’ve unfortunately never been taught before, as well as train our mind to fall into Flow State.

By the end of this article, you’ll know how to exponentially increase your output in both quality and quantity, without needing to increase your input.

Enjoy - let’s begin!

Energy and longevity

Can you be productive without energy?

No.

You're currently used to being half-asleep or half-present while doing work. It takes so much of your energy to keep concentration and you get drained quickly.

You would not, however, have so much trouble focusing if you had more energy, or at the very least you'd have already done research on how to address the issue. How do we get more energy to develop focus?

'Y' stands for Yoga. This is huge. You may think yoga is for stretching and don't know why it helps with focus but listen here. Yoga incentivises you to:

Get up early
Exercise in the first 5 mins of the day because all it takes is rolling a mat out on the ground - or just getting down on the carpet.
Do it daily
Work different parts of the body
Focus on breathwork (breathing slowly or controlled, through the nose)
Observe your thoughts come and go instead of latching onto them
Self love
Live healthy in other ways

Later in this Procedure we're going to look at habit-building. You'll learn how to start doing yoga everyday if you apply the method once we discuss it.

Now that you're doing some form of exercise, you're going to get hungry. Not just for any kind of food though, but for quality ones that make your body happy and mind active.

So 'E' stands for Eat well.

Nutrient-dense foods are definitely the way to go. This extract from my Quiet to Confident course lists food that's both super good for you and easy to throw into different meals.

Diet, as you know, contributes to many problems but most people overlook it or convince themselves that their diet isn't "that bad".

S is for Sleep. You don't get anything done when you're on your phone making these 3 mistakes before bed:

Eating close beforehand (less than 3 hours before)
Sleeping in too much heat (make it colder or wear less)
Not putting your phone away before the light's turned off

Yes with that third point, the phone usage 60 mins before bed isn't actually that bad. It's just the habit of turning the lights off and watching your phone or laptop in bed that's fucking you over.

James Clear of Atomic Habits states that the bed is the worst location to do this or use your devices in general, as your brain will associate the bed with things that aren't sleep:

"It became easier to quickly fall asleep when they climbed in bed. Their brains learned that sleeping—not browsing on their phones - was the only action that happened in that room.”

The worst part? Most of your friends are doing this and it's probably why they're not retaining as much of what they learn in school and have less motivation to focus on work - because they don't sleep enough or have poor quality sleep.

All of this requires an understanding of how to build habits quickly and sustainably. We'll speak about that soon where I'll summarise Atomic Habits and add my experience.

Upon implementing this advice, people I know find themselves with more energy. That means they meet the foundational, biological requirements to be focused.

After purpose and energy optimisation, you can work on strategies that specifically increase focus as the biggest, most distinct benefit.

EPS will cover the first 3 steps of this Procedure.

Energy
Purpose
Systems

Without Purpose, we have zero chance of channeling our newfound energy levels into the intended task - so - how do you find purpose?

Purpose - an overview

Having "Purpose" in life means having a reason to put in effort. At least that's my definition. Without purpose, which many young people lack, you are dependent on the guidance of parents, friends, professors, textbooks and media when forming an opinion or making a decision in life.

With a purpose, you'll get 3 things:

Know whether you give a shit about what you're currently focusing on
Know what exactly you do want to focus on
Feel more joy in the process of working (exerting meaningful, intentional effort)

And you can tell your parents, "I've found the meaning of life!"

If you're wondering, "Riley it doesn't matter if I don't give a shiz about what I'm focusing on. I need to do it for uni/work", ask yourself this:

If nobody cared whether you did or didn't pursue that goal, would you still want to pursue it?

Many would say "Yes I would still pursue it", because unfortunately we are biased in our initial career and study choices since at 15-20 years old, we're often still looking to others for answers. This actually continues much later than 20, for many, but we won't talk about that right now.

Even if you do want to pursue a path different to the one you're currently on, you'll likely be thinking right now, "yeh this is what I wanna do because x reason. I've not been doing this for 3 years for no reason Riley".

Maybe you're right and you're confident in your chosen path. A guy named Richard Thaler from the 1980s, however, would prod you deeper…

There's something called the Sunk Cost Fallacy (first conceptualised by Thaler). It's when we've delegated so many resources (time, energy, money) to something that we convince ourselves it was necessary because we can't bare the idea that it was a waste.

Luckily for you, even if you change your goal now, your resources already spent could not possibly have been a waste.

(stick with me if this section doesn't feel relevant to you, we'll continue in a second)

That time and energy wasn't a waste because this moment, right now, could not have physically happened without each moment that preceded it. You are meant to be here right now - so just take the next step with me.

Okay? Let's continue.

Quick reminder of what a "goal" is in the context of focus:

The outcome you believe will be achieved in the long term if you complete specific tasks right now.

If you don't have a goal and don't know why you need to be focusing on your current tasks, we'll talk about that in a second.

If you answered my question earlier with "yes I'd still pursue the same long term goal if nobody else cared" and you still stick by that response - that's awesome. That means you know what you really want.

If you said "no, I wouldn't pursue this same long term goal if nobody else cared" in response to my question earlier - that's also awesome. You now know that you were likely following that path because you were conditioned to value it.

Before we get into practical ways to put focus almost on auto-pilot, we need to understand how to:

Find a long-term goal and purpose
Break down that goal into "necessary" tasks

A long term goal is something you find purposeful, which means it's something you're willing to put the majority of your time, energy and money into over multiple years because it specifically matters to you.

"Necessary tasks" are high leverage tasks that when completed one or many times, can likely make the long term goal a reality even if they were the only tasks you completed.

You could, if you chose to, neglect every other lower leverage task. If a task was measured in a ratio, input to output, of 1:10 respectively, that's a high leverage task as its output is 10x the input (resources like energy) put in. The wider the ratio between input and output, the higher leverage the task.

Let's start with how to find a long-term purpose. If you feel you already have one, please read this section anyway. It will provide value. If you must, you can always skip to the next subheading, "Necessary Tasks".

How to Find a Long Term Purpose

You need to understand, first and foremost, that purpose is found within the self, not outside it. You may know people who seem to be highly focused on a goal(s), yet similar to the external "conditioning" we discussed earlier, they may have concluded that those goals are important because someone online told them they were.

A purpose is something that makes you excited to wake up in the morning and thats often still on your mind as you go to sleep. Believe it or not, you already know your purpose to some degree, although it may change and develop over time as you gain more personal life experience.

But the reason you may still feel lost, is because that purpose is buried deep within you and you need to tap into it - with questions like these:

What am I doing with my life/time right now?
For what reason do I spend my time doing those things?
What do I value the most in life?
What do I want out of the next 2 years and 10 years?
What makes those things important?
Is what I'm doing in life right now going to get me those things?
One final time: What do I truly want out of my life?
Write each of these outcomes as if it was presently true. (for example, instead of "I want to be proud of and respect myself" you write "I'm proud of myself and respect myself).
Who would live that life? What values, characteristics and behaviours would they have?
How can I embody those values, characteristics and behaviours each day?

These are the 10 Questions to Find Your Purpose, which helped me gain immense clarity 3 years ago. If you want to be an action-taker and not a procrastinator, download these questions so you can answer them at the end of this newsletter.

The more questions you ask and answer, the more clarity you get. Download above and I’ll email you the resource to get started.

It’s a Kortex template (like a note). I’d recommend hitting "Duplicate" in the top right corner once you open it, signing up to Kortex (note-taking application used by millionaires) and typing your answers there. Otherwise, write your answers to the 10 Q’s in a physical journal.

Remember, we’re speaking so much about purpose in a procedure about "focus" because it's the deep, hidden reason why many young people struggle to focus in both university and their job.

For the next section, "How to Break a Long Term Goal into Necessary Tasks", we'll use my own purpose as a test subject.

My purpose as I currently feel it to be is:

To maximise my potential by understanding life as holistically and intricately as possible, and then to impact the world by helping others do the same. As for specific people I want to help, it would be overthinkers, since I believe their mind can be impressively leveraged.

Let's go.

How to Break a Long Term Goal into Necessary Tasks

If you haven't yet downloaded the 10 Questions to Find Your Purpose, do it now.

Question 10 will basically provide the answer to this entire subheading we're on right now. However, we can go deeper.

Let’s take my purposeful goal above and write dotpoints on what might be needed to achieve it. Things like these:

Learn the basics of health, including diet, sleep, exercise
Learn how to build systems to keep these aspects of health optimised each day and begin
Learn how to identify and overcome self-sabotage
Learn how to manage time efficiently
Learn how to focus, etc until you're out of ideas.

You can braindump like this:

um yeh whatever don't think just write so I can learn psychology (the basics) and probably self-defence as it will allow me to be fearless and allow myself to be proven wrong, which should develop self-assurance and honesty, etc…

That was messy because I typed without thinking.

With this information, go to ChatGPT and feed it the prompt below:

"Here's my purpose: [insert your answer from Question 7 of the 10 Questions resource (which may be multiple dotpoints)].

Here's what I believe is required to achieve it: [insert your answers to question 10 of the 10 Questions to Find Your Purpose, as well as the dotpoints you wrote down above that may help achieve your goal].

Please come up with more ideas of what would logically be required to achieve this purposeful long term goal of mine".

If you're unhappy with its answer, ask it to give you more reasons. Or, ask it, "Those don't seem important. Why are they important to fulfil my purpose of [insert answer to question 7 again]".

Otherwise, you may need to write more detail to your Question 7 answer.

For me, the specific tasks required to achieve my goal are things like:

Writing newsletters
Doing regular exercise
Being a good person and recognising when I live up to my values
Replying to people on X
Write and live by a post on each problem I need to overcome and then write a revised version 6 months later.

Now that you know what to do, you need to know how to do it.

How to Put Focus on Auto-Pilot

As James Clear puts it, again, "You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems". What is a system though and how does it put focus on auto-pilot? A system is a structured and repetitive way of reaching an outcome. Outcomes like:

Waking up
Completing an assignment
Making a healthy breakfast

Systems put focus on auto-pilot because you don't need to think about whether to follow them - systems become a habit.

If you followed everything else in this Procedure, but didn't build a system, you wouldn't be able to focus because you'd have no clarity on what needs to be done, at what time and exactly how.

So how do you systemise focus?

For the sake of memory, let's call this the TEA Recipe:

Time - Identify when in the day you believe you could focus best. This is likely late at night or early in the morning.
Existing habit - Identify one thing you typically do every day at that time, such as brushing your teeth or simply turning off your alarm when you wake up.
Associative Habit - Create an Associative Habit that includes your intended work session in the middle.

An Associative Habit is inspired by James Clear's Habit Stacking concept which I define as "a big desirable habit made effortless by breaking it down into mini habits followed in the same order, same way, same time so that doing the first mini habit makes all the rest easy".

Let's take a look at the Associative Habit I use to sit down and network on X in the morning after yoga:

Finish yoga (I do this every morning)
Roll up yoga mat and put it away
Go to toilet
Grab drink bottle and place it on desk next to laptop
Open laptop
Search up "timer" on Google and start a 90 minute timer
Immediately go onto X (previously Twitter) and search up one of my favourite self-help creators
Reply to creator's posts and to the people who comment with whatever thoughts comes to my mind
Once timer is finished, I drink some water and then click the 90 minute timer again.
I continue writing my weekly newsletter (currently this)

Let me define "Associative". I associate rolling up and putting away my yoga mat with going to the toilet, which I associate with grabbing my drink bottle, etc. Meaning, going to the toilet quickly becomes the first thing my brain thinks of when I roll up the yoga mat. For this reason, my body soon automatically starts walking to the bathroom without me needing to think.

That's association and there's probably lots of automatic habits you've accidentally trained into your brain by doing things in the same order, same way at the same time.

It helps to add a mini habit after your main desirable habit (in this case networking), because it reinforces that main habit as a necessary part of the morning ritual.

Try and make Associative Habits that are performed as frequently as possible - like every day. If the habit is less frequent, like every week, it will take longer for your brain to build the association and therefore you'll take longer to reach that easy focus you crave.

You lack consistency not because you need 10,000 hours, but because you need 10,000 repetitions. Consistency requires a habit and a habit requires as many reps as humanly possible.

Although, your Associative Habit should only take about 3-5 reps before it starts coming easy.

Now we've discussed some great principles to focus but what about the moment? You distract yourself with games, junk food and social media scrolling. Why is that and how do we fix it?

Why you distract yourself and how to stop

Most of us struggle to stay focused on a particular task for more than 20 mins without giving into one of these habits that distract us from what feels like difficult work:

Porn
Scrolling and Netflix
Gaming

Many people think that we distract ourselves primarily because we gain more immediate pleasure from the 3 habits above than we do from the work (which has a long-term benefit) and so our brain opts to leave work and indulge instead.

But this represents a surface-level understanding of what drives unwanted behaviour; "unwanted" meaning a behaviour that feels good in the body, while our head says "hey this isn't what we're meant to be doing - stop".

We're going to break down 1 chemical mechanism taking place whenever you get distracted from what you know you need to focus on - you've likely not read about this concept before.

Trigger-Behaviour-Reward (Desire Based)

This is a concept studied in Psychology, but which I figured out before ever researching it, through experience and self-reflection.

It describes the chemical mechanism formed after your brain is exposed to something pleasurable in order to "remember" everything about it for future reference.

The brain achieves this through dopamine release.

Dopamine is "a neurotransmitter made in your brain… plays a role as a “reward center” (Cleveland Clinic, 2022). Your brain releases dopamine to reinforce pleasurable experiences. This means it can be released in anticipation of reward and not only consumption.

For example, being alone in your room is where you've previously watched pornography and gotten a dopamine release in response to, so the next time you're in your room alone, you get a dopamine release motivating you to watch it again. Perpetually reinforcing the mechanism.

The mechanism runs as follows:

Exposure to something that provides pleasure (nourishment in food or water, shelter, sex, easy and quick feeling of joy, etc)
Dopamine released by the brain to remember how to get it again in the future
Exposure (sometime in the future) to something that was involved before, during or after whatever previously provided pleasure (Associative Triggers)
Dopamine gets released to motivate you to pursue the actual pleasure
More dopamine released upon getting it to further reinforce this whole mechanism, so that you continue obtaining the pleasure (because of the benefits listed earlier like food etc).

Meaning, the next time you're exposed to an Associative Trigger, your brain will release dopamine motivating you to pursue the pleasure itself.

When you stop focusing on the task at hand and instead scroll Instagram Reels on your phone, this happens:

Trigger: Phone by your side as you're getting bored working

Behaviour: Pick up phone and go to Instagram

Reward: Dopamine from Reels

This is very much desire-based, but paradoxically it's also fear-based because you're avoiding work.

Trigger-Behaviour-Reward (Fear Based)

This side of the mechanism explains it on a more technical level. When you're trying to complete a uni assignment, it takes effort to narrow your focus and shut out all the possible distractions around you - all for very little immediate reward from the work.

That means your brain doesn't see the work as something worth releasing dopamine in response to, meaning you won't be motivated to work very hard.

This is a problem for ADHD kids in university and high school - but that's for another Procedure.

Because that uni assignment you need to complete has mostly negative connotations, your brain will try to avoid it. Avoidance. How does it do this?

Through processes I'm not fully aware of, the following occurs:

The body becomes tense
Intrusive thoughts arise telling you to do something else
Sensations arise in the body that feel uncomfortable

If you have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), you might experience these 3 things more regularly and intensely than those without OCD. That was me years ago - have worked a lot on it so I'm less compulsive now.

I'll write in the future a Peaky Procedure on "How to Turn OCD into a Massive Advantage" or something - so sign up to my mailing list if you want that.

The tension, thoughts and sensations often come with a specific Avoidant Behaviour your brain intends to have you engage in as an alternative to work. In my case, for years this was pornography. When I was younger and my social anxiety was higher, I watched porn to cope.

The likely reason I chose that as my coping mechanism was because I was a fuck-boy and slept with multiple people. I'd also had sexual experiences very young and had been exposed to pornography as early as 11 years old - a key age of brain development.

So my fear-based mechanism has been:

Trigger (working alone in my room on a task that requires mental effort)

I remember the Incognito tab that's so easy to click

Tension arises in my body, intrusive thoughts and sexual images spawn in my brain. This is my brain and body trying to push me to engage in a more pleasurable habit that avoids the effort of the work I'm supposed to be doing

Behaviour (I open a new Incognito tab and search up something sexual)

Reward (My brain gets pleasure, more than what it was getting from work. The habit's now reinforced)

The fear-based (avoidant) Trigger-Behaviour-Reward mechanism is basically a coping mechanism to deal with the pain associated with whatever work you're trying to focus on. Not quite the same as the desire-based mechanism, where you're chasing a desire purely for the sake of having it, rather than avoiding something.

Although, both desire and fear can be avoidant. If you're always seeking yummy food, you may be avoiding the fact that your social life is empty or your diet is shit. Diet being shit may sound obvious, but you may tell yourself "I just like treats" but don't see just how completely fucked your diet really is.

You might think, "this is great Riley, but how do I find out if I'm being avoidant?"

Know that you definitely are in some way.

Then follow this:

Write down what you distract yourself with during work sessions (getting up to go to the toilet, scrolling, going to get food from the cupboard, etc)
Write down the different places you sit to work (bedroom, living room, library, etc) and identify whether your distractions are different depending on the location you're trying to work.
Write down what parts of the work/study session you get distracted most often (anticipation of the work session, first 5 mins, as soon as you get bored, when you need to research, when you need to write, etc)
Write down alternative distractions (instead of scrolling, try reading or making a coffee/tea) and write down how you feel. Then write down what you get out of the distraction you automatically go to and you might find you have more clarity.

This is inspired by Charles Duhigg's "Habit Loop" concept, which inspired Trigger-Behaviour-Reward as a more modernised concept.

Now that you've reflected and know how you're being avoidant, how do you stop that?

Let go.

What does that mean?

If you've seen Fight Club with Brad Pitt, he tells a character to "LET GO" and to let the car crash to see if they will or won't die. It's a highly spiritual concept that is one of the major pillars of enlightenment. Letting go of:

Prior beliefs
Expectations
Limiting beliefs about yourself
The "perfect" outcome
Fears, including fear of death
Intrusive thoughts - letting them pass by like clouds

That last one is basically ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy).

Letting go is a lifelong practice that would basically solve all our perceived problems if people were able to do it. You don't need to become a monk, but you can make some progress in letting go of intrusive thoughts so that you can better focus.

Your mind will tell you to pick up your phone while working and you'll feel your hand automatically follow through with it.

Observe these thoughts and sensations
Say "okay" to acknowledge the thoughts
Bring your mind back to either the breath or the task at hand

Easy 3 step process right?

This is literally all it takes and can be remembered easily as "The Okay Method".

"Okay" is a neutral word. It doesn't mean you're going to accept the desires of your brain and pick up the phone, but you're saying "yeh I hear you". It allows you to hold off distraction for a few seconds, a few minutes or maybe for the entire work session.

Regardless, even a few moments of consciously noticing these things and bringing your focus back says "I have authority over my mind". You will improve with practice.

I haven't done this because I've not had ongoing accomodation, but it would be wise to write down on a piece of paper "Say Okay" and stick it on the wall in front of your working desk as a reminder.

This is the only real way to focus. Any quick tips and tricks you see will likely work only for 1 day or maximum 2 weeks and then you'll go back to square 1 and wonder "what the fuck am I doing wrong?"

But we can make letting go as a long-term practice a little bit faster - with something called the Amplification Principal.

I read a book in 2020 by Bob Proctor (now dead) called "You Were Born Rich". It taught identity-shifting, which means changing who you believe you are. I summarised his teachings into something called the Amplification Principal which basically changes who you are 1% or so every single day. Actually - every time you use the principal.

It works as follows:

Identify when your mind drifts or your hand picks up the phone (or whatever way you begin to distract yourself from work)
Say "Okay" to acknowledge it
Try to bring your mind back to the task or to your breath
Say "I'm the kind of man/woman/person who has authority over their mind".

This makes you identify with and embody to a deeper level the skill of letting go.

This makes it become easier in future, beyond repetition, to let go of these thoughts, feelings and sensations (temptations).

Conclusion

We've covered a lot:

Energy and longevity
Purpose
Breaking down a goal
Habit building (Auto-Focus)
Trigger-Behaviour-Reward avoidance mechanisms
Letting go of thoughts

I was previously going to discuss WAY more, but when I started writing this Procedure I was moving from Australia to Canada, exploring the country, getting a job and finding ongoing accomodation.

In a future newsletter we'll discuss how to focus in relation to:

Dopamine
Self-sabotage (crazy topic)
Practical ways to increase productivity

If you want to see those, join my email community and I'll send out the Procedure when it drops.

Cheers babygirl (or babyhuman),

Riley.

**Quiet to Confident in 30 Days.**

Go from Quiet to 40% higher Self Confidence in 30 Days.
This is a paid course that covers what I’ve done to overcome social anxiety, deal with OCD (imagine diagnosed overthinking) and a lack of purpose.
Massively increase your self-confidence and self-respect or your money back.

Riley Caldwell https://rileycaldwell.com