the real reason why you can't focus - and how to fix it – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.you sit down to work 15 minutes later you're checking your phone you go back to your computer another 10-minute pass and suddenly you're making coffee you come back to your mind but 20 minutes in your mind's already wandered sound familiar for years I tried everything you can think of to fix my focus but nothing actually worked because I just couldn't last more than like 15 minutes and the worst part wasn't the unfinished tasks piling up it was actually the guilt you know that like voice in your head saying "What's wrong with me?" And also the shame of watching everyone else like crush threeour deep work sessions while you can't even make it through one but then here's what I realized actually the problem wasn't really me it was the system I was trying to use the moment I stopped trying to copy other people's methods and started to track my own patterns everything actually changed for me so in this video I'm going to show you how I train my brain for hours of deep work and how you can train yours starting today and trust me it actually works okay and if you're ready to change your focus I put together the exact tracker I used to build the system it's free and it will help you start spotting your patterns and fixing your focus fast so links in the description so basically here's where it started like one day I was procrastinating on a project again as always and it hit me like I tried everything and nothing worked or nothing worked for a sustained period of time and actually I realized something brutal i had basically no idea how my own brain worked i kept like trying to fix my focus with apps timers YouTube hacks but I would never actually looked at what was really going on with me you know so I was like "Okay screw it if I can't control my brain maybe I can observe it so that I can understand it better so I almost like started to treat my focus and brain as an experiment and started to log every work session that I had it wasn't like really complicated basically what I logged in was I just written down when I started what I worked on you know whether I'm filming a video or writing a script or brainstorming or research etc etc and then how long I lasted before I basically got distracted and I also written down what triggered me to stop so was it a notification was it me wanting to go to the toilet or was it me craving coffee or something like that i've written down everything so day one was like literally a chaos and my first day looked like this 10:00 a.m i started writing a script and then 14 minutes later I checked Twitter and a few minutes later I got back to writing but then like after 15 minutes or so I got up to make coffee or something like that and when I actually realized that you know how short my focus was I was lowkey embarrassed to kind of like see that but I continued anyway and after just like 3 days I started to see patterns like I wasn't randomly distracted i was predictably distracted so what does it mean like for example certain tasks like drain mean 15 minutes and certain times of they were always garbage and it was always the same distractions like Twitter Slack YouTube they always showed up at the similar times which is quite interesting so after I realized that I actually came to conclusion that it wasn't really a discipline problem it was a pattern problem productivity culture like acts like every day is the same you know like you're going to wake up with the same energy focus willpower towards life and you're going to wake up at like the same time every single day and that's that's that's not true at least like for me and the moment I saw like my own patterns I actually stopped blaming myself because I wasn't lazy i just didn't know how my system worked this is basically the foundation of my Kaizen focus method kaizen basically means in Japanese small improvements or getting better or something like that tracking everything is the foundation of my system including my old self like we never do this you know we keep force ourselves to focus with zero self-awareness but once you stop guessing and start tracking you stop saying like "Oh I can't focus." But you start saying "Okay actually like my brain crashes at 2 p.m after two calls." That's just data okay after backtoback meetings I always crash and once you see how your focus fails you can engineer how it succeeds so once I had like few days of tracking I started noticing the real pattern behind my distractions and like this is quite interesting because it's like very personal and it differs person to person but mine was like there were three main things that consistently broke my focus okay the first one was task transition i swear to God I'm so bad at this the moment like I finished a task and didn't know what to do next like exactly I would procrastinate i would drift i would get just distracted and my notes were like full of stuff like 11:15 a.m finished writing opened YouTube i like finished it and then got distracted and then 1:40 p.m sent email checked Slack or something like that and that kind of like tiny gap the transition moment you know where you finish a task and start a new one that time was the thing that broke my momentum and the second one was energy dips so for me around like 2:30 p.m is always a disaster zone like didn't matter what I was working on whether I enjoy it or whether I hate that thing like 2:30 p.m i am distracted i'm gone and the scary part is that it was the exact same time every single day like for example Tuesday 2:27 Wednesday 2:34 Thursday 2:22 or something like that that's not an excuse like that's a system failure because I would get distracted and I would look at time and it would always around the same time so the third one is stuck points whenever like I didn't know how to move forward like let's say I came to a confusing part of a project maybe I'm doing something new that I've never done I would immediately look like for distractions not because I was bored not because I didn't care but because like sitting in uncertainty was uncomfortable as hell for me especially because I like planning i like control i like knowing the exact step that I'm going to follow and sometimes it was small stuff like for example maybe a new anime episode that I'm watching dropped or maybe my favorite YouTuber uploaded a video and boom I'm gone like for 90 minutes and these are not like regular procrastination they're actually like patterns if they're repeating so I stopped trying to like push through like the productivity bros would say and starting like building buffers around my weak points so what I basically did is for task transitions I started like pre-writing my next step like before I finished my current task I would write next thing that I'm going to do in exact way so that I wouldn't drift and for energy dips like I set actually a 2:25 p.m alarm and when it went off I would go for a walk maybe stretch or maybe get a snack or maybe drink a cup of green tea or something to break the energy crush and for stuck points I actually made a rule when I get stuck I write down exactly what I'm stuck on close the laptop and walk away that way like my break had a purpose and I could come back with a clearer mind and when I came back usually I know what to do because like I get more clarity i get a a little bit space to think about it what's wild is that like most people spend their whole life never identifying these patterns you know like we beat ourselves saying that we are lazy or we're lacking discipline even though when reality our focus is actually following a predictable biological rhythm so like my method my Kaizen focus method isn't actually about becoming a superhuman it's more about becoming super aware of your unique needs so if you're starting to realize that your distractions actually full of patterns you need to track them to fix them and that's exactly why I built my tracker to catch the invisible stuff that keeps breaking your focus before you even notice it you know after a few days you started to recognize the patterns and it's really interesting so it's free and it's the fastest way to stop guessing and start fixing your focus patterns link in description check it out so after like a couple weeks of tracking something actually clicked with me i basically nailed the surface level stuff you know like when I worked how long I lasted and what triggered the distractions etc etc but there were still days where I would do the exact same thing and still crash like it's the same routine it's the same environment but I get like different results even though I adjusted my routine accordingly so like I started asking myself like what else is affecting my focus that I'm not maybe tracking that's basically like when I realized I need to start logging the invisible variables the stuff happening outside of work that was like screwing my brain during work what does it mean so basically I started like expanding my tracking and I started to add these things first of all how much sleep I got this is an important one and then when I had caffeine and how much because I'm a little bit caffeine addict maybe and also whether I worked out and when I worked out and also whether I had carbs for breakfast and lastly if you're a woman even tracking where you are in your menstrual cycle can actually reveal patterns you didn't know that existed and like after I started to add these things to my tracker things actually got like really interesting sleep was quite like obvious to me because less sleep meant like worse focus but what surprised me was how the effects would show up like 2 days later not just the next day so let's say like if I got 5 hours of sleep on Monday Wednesday would be my worst day not Tuesday and if I would never like track this I would probably never recognize that and could not identify that sleep was the reason I wasn't able to focus and I would just tell myself that okay I'm so lazy today no it was because I lacked sleep and effects came always 2 days later i discovered that caffeine timing was like critical for me if I had coffee immediately after waking up my focus would crash hard like 90 minutes later or so but if I waited until I would been awake for an hour that crash did not happen most of the time and also breakfast like if I would have a heavy carb breakfast like let's say like fruits or cereal or something like that I would have an instant spike of energy and then crush and I would like usually have my brain fog around 11:00 a.m or so but on the days with like protein and healthy fats my energy usually stayed stable until lunch so what I would eat is usually like eggs and a protein shake protein smoothie or something like that that would work for me even just like working out different times changed a lot of things like I found out that if I do my workouts before my first walk my focus duration actually almost like doubled but also if I exercise like too intensely I would get sleepy and just like I would not be able to focus so I basically learned like two crucial things from this experiment the first one is focus isn't just like about what you are doing during work it's about the choices you make hours before you sit down it's like your entire system you know like sleep food movement energy rhythms that sets the stage for deep work it's not about discipline it's not about motivation it's not about you sitting and doing the actual work but everything actually affects your focus and I feel like most of us are completely blind to it like I was blind to it i tried to focus harder when reality I should be looking at what's happening before I open even my laptop and the second thing is like we're all different the perfect focus formula for me won't be the same as yours because we probably have like different biological clocks we probably have different hormone balances and habits and diet and stress levels etc etc and actually like a friend of mine tried my system and found out that like unlike me she focuses actually best after intense exercise and caffeine like after 2 p.m destroys her sleep while I can have like coffee at 4:5 and sleep fine so this is why like cookie cutter productivity advice fails so many people and I also did not know that you know your brain chemistry hormones metabolism they are unique to you and for women this goes even deeper because like we have menstrual cycle right so tracking across menstrual cycle can review incredible patterns like in focus energy and creativity that most systems completely ignore now I know that tracking all these variables sounds obsessive because I'm obsessed but here's the thing like you don't need to track forever you just need to track just long enough to spot your patterns like I did it intensely for about 2 weeks and after that I had enough like data to start making changes now even though I still log like my focus hours I don't really log every single detail so this isn't really about like becoming some weird productivity robot like me it's more about understanding your unique operating system so you can work with it and not against it and it's also really interesting to actually track and it's really fun or maybe it's just me being an INTJ and loving tracking every thing and analyzing but try it like I swear to God it works and honestly once I started like simplifying everything around my focus especially how I plan and organize my week it made a huge difference that's where Excal comes in who is currently sponsoring a portion of this video it's a visual workspace that lets you organize your thoughts tasks and plans in a way that actually fits how your brain works if you are a visual person think of it as a really flexible digital notebook where you can drag and drop elements around and create custom pages for different aspects of your life and the great part is that you know like when you try like a new app you have to learn a lot of things but the good thing is if you don't want to like start from scratch they've already have built like full planning systems so for like yearly goals monthly priorities weekly and daily task reviews journals etc etc so everything from your schedule to your resources can live in a place without you having to adjust to the thing and their template gallery covers like way more than work actually you got layouts for journaling travel habits even like meal prepping you can find so many different things and the interface is super visual it's really flexible and also really simple to use so if you want a better way to organize your life and keep your brain clear between deep work sessions check out Extiles using my link in description below all right so now let's get into how you actually build your day around your natural focus windows so this is basically where like everything came together for me and this is the part that is like most important part because it changes everything so after tracking all the variables I discovered something that completely blew up the wake up at 5:00 a.m product fit you can maybe see the 5:00 a.m club book there which made me always insecure because I would never able to wake up early and I realized that like my peak focus hours were from 2:00 p.m to 4:00 p.m and from 6:00 p.m to 11:00 p.m not in the morning like not even close you know when I'm in Japan because my grandpa wakes about like 3:00 4:00 a.m we have breakfast at 7 and my mom like wakes me up at like 6:55 or so so I have periods where I woke up early like for a sustained period but I would never be able to focus in the morning even if I got my sleep well like it never happened and I would always like and even though like I knew we all have different biological clocks i even made a video about it like chronotypes and stuff like that i always idolized waking up at like 5:00 a.m going for a run at 6:00 taking a cold shower having a deep work session and finishing everything before 2 3:00 p.m or something like that so that I can have the rest of the day for me but I tried it i tried it like for years i've been obsessed with this idea since I was 17 and I'm like now 24 like I've been doing this for seven years and I gave up because I never ever was able to either energize in the morning or able to sustain my focus in the morning like I always done better even in school like the exams that we had in the afternoon than in morning because in during the morning my brain is just not brainy and my whole family is like this we all are energized so much at night and in the morning we're all dead not because we're not getting enough sleep or not because we're not getting sunshine blah blah blah i tried everything okay i tried to fix my cycle i tried sunlight exposure i like I tried like uh breakfast alignment blah blah blah but it never worked and after like tracking actually my focus periods I decided to give up because like I focus much better in the afternoon like tonight that's like where I don't even need to push myself to focus because that's my like peak focus zone anyway so I stopped trying to go to bed at 10:00 p.m and actually started sleeping at like 2:00 a.m and I wake up at 10:30 so what I do right now is that I eat a light breakfast hit the gym 30 minutes or so and then take a shower eat my real breakfast and I start my work clock when my like brain is finally awake and I actually realized like the results like instantly because when I shifted actually my work sessions from 2:00 p.m till like maybe 11:00 p.m or so I was not even getting distracted most of the time like I was doing more in those focus windows than I ever did during an entire day or entire day of focusing myself to be productive at like 7 8 a.m and I understand like now I know like what some of you might be thinking that's great for you but I have a 9 toive job i can't I just can't rearrange my entire schedule which I completely get it you know not everyone has the flexibility like I do but you can still apply these principles within your constraints actually so here's what I would want you to do first use your tracking data to identify your natural focus peaks maybe they are 10:00 p.m to 12:00 p.m and 3 to 4:00 p.m or something like that then even within a structured workday like a 9 to5 you still can like block these P focus hours times on your calendar whenever possible and schedule your most important high value work during those windows and for the other hours save meetings emails and admin tasks for your natural energy dips and if you can obviously not every jobs will probably allow this but talk to your manager about flex time if your data shows you would be significantly more productive and try to create focus rituals that signal to your brain that it's time to concentrate i actually recommended this to like few people in corporate jobs who told me that their productivity and focus was like quite improved just by what they do at different times of the day even if they couldn't change when they worked whenever you are like a night owl like me an early bird or somewhere in between your brain has optimal focus windows and when you discover and honor those windows everything actually gets easier like why the hell was not I doing this earlier like why did no one tell me this this is a part no one like really talks about but I believe it's what makes my Kaizen focus method actually sustainable and that's you have to keep optimizing like not every day not obsessively but enough to stay aligned with how your life and your brain actually works because like your focus patterns you know won't stay static just because you found out your current rhythm it doesn't mean that it's going to be the same your whole life like for example during like low stress weeks I can go for long blocks with minimal breaks but maybe during a lounge or a client deadline or I'm dealing something personal in my life and I have a lot of pressure in my life my patterns actually shift and I also have ADHD too so expecting yourself to have the same pattern every single freaking day for your entire life is not realistic and if I have a lot of like stress in my life then I would probably need more rests you know because I'm like so disciplined and stuff like that i would tell myself like "Oh you're just being a weak ass." And then I would be like "No you got to push hard." And I would push and I get burned out and for women tracking across like your menstrual cycle it's actually really powerful too because like whenever you know before my period I'm so sleepy i'm so sleepy I can even get out of bed and I'm struggling to focus especially for linear work but I'm like more creative during that time and I like to also track it with my whoop and ringing even though I'm not I don't have my oring today on oring is really good for tracking menstrual cycle by the way whoop is really good for exercise sleep etc i can make actually a video about it if you guys are interested in my health devices even though I just have one right now and like I think especially women in high pressure like environments and careers we often ignore our menstrual cycle and our hormones and ups and downs and we just like act like we're a man but you have to take that in consideration too like you have to know your patterns because unfortunately nobody's going to give more breaks just because we have our period so like you know before your period you might be really sleepy and you might not have the energy that you have after your period but you shouldn't blame yourself for that it's like your biology and you have to adapt to that and that's why like method is actually called kaizen which is the Japanese concept of continuous improvement and getting better every single day my goal is not to chase some like perfect fixed version of productivity even though I struggle with focus and I struggle with procrastination maybe that's the reason why I'm so interested in stuff you know and this is not because you're lazy or you lack this you lack that so you suck or something it's just data you have not optimized for it and you just told yourself that if I keep doing this I can focus and if I can't focus that's because I'm not disciplined no that's not true you know maybe you didn't sleep well maybe you pushed caffeine too late or maybe you scheduled your beat work session in the middle of your energy dip all these kind of things like there's no one size fits all and the beauty of the system is that it's like completely personalized and adaptable to you you're not trying to force yourself into someone else's template you're basically building a system that honors how you actually function and it evolves with you because it requires data from you and also the compounding effect is crazy in my opinion like I went from barely being able to focus for 15 minutes to routinely completing 3 to four hours of deep work sessions without any issues obviously there are still times that I'm like done after a few minutes but still you know like the amount of time that it took me to let's say like a finish a video or research or something like that dropped probably like by 40 to 60% tasks that used to take me like a full day now takes a single focused afternoon and I don't think it's because like I became more disciplined or anything like that because I finally understood how to work within my brain instead of against it and blaming myself and being perfectionist about it so if you have been telling yourself that you need more discipline or I'm just I guess I'm not really good at focus or something like that you need to stop these patterns okay here's what I want you to do i want you to track next few work sessions that you have you know what time you started what you were doing and what you pulled off that's it like don't overthinking just collect the data like don't think about the sleep the diet and the exercise like I did okay first of all just track these three things and after that if you want to go deeper you can track your sleep caffeine meals workout energy and also ministration cycle like whatever variables matter to you and if you do these like for ideally for a week but even like after a few days you actually start to see some patterns and once you see those patterns you can build a system that actually works for you it's not about perfection it's about awareness and adapting to that if you want to use a system or like a tracker that I use to identify my patterns it's free it's in the description below it basically guides you how to track your focus session and how to identify patterns and what to do about it so check it out it's in the description below you don't really need to blame yourself and feel bad about how much you get distracted and procrastinate you have to build a system that works for you and for that you need more awareness and adaption so stop blaming yourself and start taking action caesar