Neuroscientist shares simple brain hack to get focused on what you're meant to be doing

We all have days where we just seem to be able to focus on things properly but for whatever reason, we're tired, distracted, or we just can't seem to get our brain in gear.

Especially if faced with a few tasks that you've been putting off for a while, it can seem hard to find the focus to finally get them done.

The siren song of our smartphones can also be difficult to get away from, with devices and apps sometimes dragging us away from important tasks that we should probably be doing instead.

Breaking through that attention-sapping cycle can be a tricky business, however, neuroscience professor Andrew Huberman has one tip which might help you to concentrate on a task that needs to be done.

Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast/ YouTube

While appearing on the Mark Bell's Power Project podcast, he said that phones were 'detrimental' when it comes to affecting people's focus as the brain follows 'the visual system'.

He describes your phone as showing you 'the equivalent of 50 television shows in 10 seconds', and the endless access to constant streams of information can impact things like your sleep schedule - as this 2022 study found.

So, the first piece of advice is try and limit your screentime.

"Put the phone away for two minutes, literally two minutes, just put it across the room or in another room, sit down, take a point on the wall." Professor Huberman says.

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"And just try and relax while maintaining visual focus for 120 seconds on location, you can blink if you want to, what you'll find is it's incredibly boring and agitated.

"Like most things you need to focus on and have a hard time focusing on just a little bit of focus training for two, three minutes."

Huberman adds that 'two to three minutes' of focus training 'every once in a while' can help you recognise when you are feeling that impulse to get up and start moving.

So if that feeling of frustration or being fidgety arises, (I sometimes feel it when I'm reading) you can to learn to push through it.

It's trying to push yourself further each time, like you're training your brain.

Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast/ YouTube

He continued: "Every once in a while will teach you to recognise when you have that impulse to get up and move what you'll find is that it carries over to a really terrific ability to read, to study to listen.

"You start to notice those internal signal there's something you need to do and you don't want to do it or you can't focus chances are you just haven't really taught your brain how to focus.

"So start with your visual focus and then let your mental focus follow that."