The first four and a half minutes is really an eye opener to me. I really wonder what my EEGs would look like, since I have inattentive ADHD, as well as Major Depression and Anxiety, all of which...
The first four and a half minutes is really an eye opener to me.
I really wonder what my EEGs would look like, since I have inattentive ADHD, as well as Major Depression and Anxiety, all of which reduce your executive functioning, your attention span, memory, etc. In fact, seeing this, I wonder if I even actually have ADHD or if it was misdiagnosed because of my environmental and internal distractions.
For those of us with short attention spans, here are some summaries of the main sections of the video:
Introduction: AiP wants to fix her focus
AiP buys a commercialized EEG machine and wears it for a few days. She notices that the readings say she only really engages and focuses for about 12% of the day. For example, while on call, she was distracted by her phone far more often. Also, when debugging the new app for the EEG machine, she accidentally spent 2 hours on Instagram. She found 3 things while researching attention and focus:
Attention and focus are two different things:
Attention is a broad term that boils down to our general awareness.
While focus is one process that controls that awareness.
Focus is a limited and exhaustible resource. You can only focus on one thing at a time, and this resource will drain as you become more in need of rest.
Focus also filters out distractions. So the more distractions, the more your focus is being wasted (like gasoline in a car stuck in mud, tires spinning in place).
Cutting out distractions vs meditation
She started eliminating distractions by modifying her phone (grayscale, replaced app icons with text, etc). But then, internal distractions started being noticed. So she plugged her chores, exercises, etc into a block schedule (which is called "brain dumping" if I understand it correctly). Now, all that was left was focusing.
Things were great for a while, but eventually she relapsed, and used her phone for 7 straight hours one day. She noticed everything was making her on edge (she was actually annoyed at her cat for wanting pets). Her friend suggested that she try meditation. For the next few days, AiP stuck to her new schedule she'd made and meditated at least once a day (she used an app called Headspace, since she didn't know how to do it on her own).
She found that meditation made her feel normal again and had improved all her performance metrics on the EEG readings (attention, engagement, excitement, stress, relaxation, and interest). She noticed she stopped experiencing periods of intense focus (us ADHDers might call our version of this "hyperfocus"), but also intense lack of focus (akin to the ADHD itself) - her attention had become more stable.
So why does meditation work?
During her research, she learned about Mindfulness Based Intervention (MBI). AKA meditation, and it's comprised of 2 things:
Open monitoring - observing your experiences in real time without reacting.
and
Focused attention - focusing on one particular thing (like your breathing).
AiP found there was a difference between the modern "pop" books/videos she was using for research vs the old religious teachings of meditation: managing distractions.
While popular books/videos advise to simply cut out distractions and build barriers to keep them at bay, the MBI approach targets the focus directly, cultivating it to be easier to command and to be resilient to distractions. So the options are either:
Restore your attention (cut out distractions)
or
Reinforce your attention (MBI / meditation).
Cutting out distractions isn't always possible since we can't always control our environment, nor our responsibilities (like being on call, or working online). Compare that method to meditation, which trains your brain to hone its ability to focus at will (btw the effects of meditation is apparently so subtle AiP said she wouldn't have noticed it did anything for her if not for the EEG data).
Conclusion
Since the external supports we use to control our focus by cutting out distractions are fragile and can break (or we either literally or metaphorically keep hitting the "snooze button" on them), we can end up back at square one.
AiP learned that our minds have the natural tendency to wander, but also that we have the power to nudge it back to where we want it to be.
It just takes a bit of mental exercise - meditation.
In the end, she decided on both consistent meditation and cutting out distractions, utilizing both old and new methods for a life of balanced, deliberate attention.
While I relied on Adderall to write all this. lol
I really love this channels content. They ask questions I’ve thought about myself and approach problems I’ve dealt with. But then they spend a week to a month on the problem from planning to...
I really love this channels content. They ask questions I’ve thought about myself and approach problems I’ve dealt with. But then they spend a week to a month on the problem from planning to execution to results. And then it’s over. And the questions don’t always really get answered and the long terms results are never updated or clarified. I can’t really expect them to totally live by all these lifestyle changes, but I would love to see how these changes pan out for people in the long therm.
I think it was you who commented on my (since-deleted) post about reclaiming my attention, suggesting meditation. I meditated for 15 minutes a day, a month straight. I experienced exactly what the...
I think it was you who commented on my (since-deleted) post about reclaiming my attention, suggesting meditation.
I meditated for 15 minutes a day, a month straight. I experienced exactly what the person in this video experienced. Thinking I'd 'fixed' my attention span, I stopped. Things are slowly regressing back to before I started meditation. It does seem to be the most important factor.
I'm struggling to find a way to make it sustainable, but it is just inescapable that I need this practice as much as I need to drink water and to eat, in order for me to live a mentally healthy life
I think that may have been me, unless there was more than one topic. In any case I'm always glad to hear that it worked for someone. This regression also happened to me when I stopped after about...
I think that may have been me, unless there was more than one topic. In any case I'm always glad to hear that it worked for someone. This regression also happened to me when I stopped after about 6 months or so, but it was much slower.
Keep doing it and once you're comfortable, try adding a longer session once in a while when you have the time. For me this was a big motivator: after about a month and a half or two months of everyday meditation I started doing group meditations with a few friends once a week where we would sit for about 40 - 45 minutes straight and I realized that this works like turning down the volume of my internal chatter for 12-24 hours. The effects of daily "normal length" meditation were merely cumulative for me, this effect of a single long meditation was immediate.
I recently found out that I have to meditate regularly in order for these longer meditation effects to work. Not meditating for months and then just jumping in and doing a 35-40 minute long meditation (even if it's every day for a week straight) does not work. At the time when I discovered it, it worked best when I did a normal length meditation in the morning and then the long one in the late afternoon - the first one kind of primed my mind and made it easier to get into the long one later.
It is surprisingly not that difficult to just sit twice as long once you get into it. The impatience that usually arises can be explicitly named and acknowledged, which makes it weaker, and then let go just like any other thoughts and feelings.
Mine didn’t involve meditation, but I also go through these spurts of being better at managing distractions followed by relapse. It feels just like when I find another ADHD hobby, when I get...
Mine didn’t involve meditation, but I also go through these spurts of being better at managing distractions followed by relapse. It feels just like when I find another ADHD hobby, when I get really excited about a topic and go all-in on it for a couple months before moving on to the next.
But I do still know a lot about my old hobbies, and they influence my life. In the same way, although I’ve failed in the short term to modulate my life, I’ve learned the signs, and I’ve become more mindful.
I don’t know how much of this I can do on my own, and it’s a big downer thinking about it. And there’s a lot of anger associated with it both towards our corporations who are exploiting our own psychologies to get us addicted, as well as towards myself for knowing that and still failing to break the cycle.
The scariest part for me is figuring out how I’ll deal with it when my kids are at the age where these technological pressures are coming from peers. It’s scary. At least most of us here can remember a time before this was our reality.
edit: oh, and the hardest part to wrap my head around is that I’m not even in super deep. On my worst days I’m only a few hours into social media or distractions of some sort. It feels like a good chunk of society have between 4-8 hours of unhealthy screen time per day. That is just nuts.
Your summary of her video lines up closely with my personal experience. I'll highlight a few relevant notes. This happened sometime between 2022 and last year for me. I made some changes to remove...
Your summary of her video lines up closely with my personal experience. I'll highlight a few relevant notes.
Things were great for a while, but eventually she relapsed, and used her phone for 7 straight hours one day.
This happened sometime between 2022 and last year for me. I made some changes to remove distractions from my life. It worked until…
I relapsed and the distraction became my focus.
I found a different distraction than the one(s) I excised.
She noticed she stopped experiencing periods of intense focus [with regular meditation]
It was either due to this or a change in my sleep habits around the same time. Previously, I kept a NEET's sleep schedule of waking up between 9 and noon, then falling asleep when my mind crashed out between 2:30–4am during my job's slow season. Now, I aim for a consistent schedule where I'm in bed well before midnight (even before 11, if I can help it).
I'm unsure whether the meditation or the regular bedtime killed my hyperfocus. I suspect the sleep has more to do with it, as I've gotten in the zone on the rare occasions I stayed up all night to finish a project. It's much easier to sit at your computer from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. and have six uninterrupted hours of flow than attempting 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It's like my nighttime brain eventually gets bored of Discord and Reddit, while my day brain keeps cycling back to those after each snack or bathroom break.
I'd go so far as to say that now that I have meditated, my hyperfocus is at its most dead when I am not continuing a regular practice (and also keeping normal people waking hours). Remembering to meditate sets me in the stage to focus.
One other sleep & meditation note. When I am meditating regularly, even under heavy exercise, I feel absolutely fine on 5.5–6 hours of sleep a night plus an afternoon nap (and some caffeine in the morning). When not meditating, I'm alert but devoid of mental energy even at 9 hours.
After watching the video, this is a wonderful and succinct representation of her points. Highly appreciated and will share it with some friends who might profit from it.
After watching the video, this is a wonderful and succinct representation of her points. Highly appreciated and will share it with some friends who might profit from it.
I love Answer in Progress and watched this video when it launched. Sabrina actually convinced me to try meditation again. I have combined/inattentive type ADHD as well and have tried meditation...
I love Answer in Progress and watched this video when it launched. Sabrina actually convinced me to try meditation again. I have combined/inattentive type ADHD as well and have tried meditation over and over at several therapist's requests, and it's always been anxiety-inducing at least and frustrating to the point of anger at the worst. I also have fibromyalgia, GAD, and chronic pain. All of those also reduce your attention span thanks to brain fog and general stress.
I'm currently looking for a meditation app that isn't subscription based that will keep me interested with the NICE needs for my ADHD.
The first four and a half minutes is really an eye opener to me.
I really wonder what my EEGs would look like, since I have inattentive ADHD, as well as Major Depression and Anxiety, all of which reduce your executive functioning, your attention span, memory, etc. In fact, seeing this, I wonder if I even actually have ADHD or if it was misdiagnosed because of my environmental and internal distractions.
For those of us with short attention spans, here are some summaries of the main sections of the video:
Introduction: AiP wants to fix her focus
AiP buys a commercialized EEG machine and wears it for a few days. She notices that the readings say she only really engages and focuses for about 12% of the day. For example, while on call, she was distracted by her phone far more often. Also, when debugging the new app for the EEG machine, she accidentally spent 2 hours on Instagram. She found 3 things while researching attention and focus:
Attention and focus are two different things:
Attention is a broad term that boils down to our general awareness.
While focus is one process that controls that awareness.
Focus is a limited and exhaustible resource. You can only focus on one thing at a time, and this resource will drain as you become more in need of rest.
Focus also filters out distractions. So the more distractions, the more your focus is being wasted (like gasoline in a car stuck in mud, tires spinning in place).
Cutting out distractions vs meditation
She started eliminating distractions by modifying her phone (grayscale, replaced app icons with text, etc). But then, internal distractions started being noticed. So she plugged her chores, exercises, etc into a block schedule (which is called "brain dumping" if I understand it correctly). Now, all that was left was focusing.
Things were great for a while, but eventually she relapsed, and used her phone for 7 straight hours one day. She noticed everything was making her on edge (she was actually annoyed at her cat for wanting pets). Her friend suggested that she try meditation. For the next few days, AiP stuck to her new schedule she'd made and meditated at least once a day (she used an app called Headspace, since she didn't know how to do it on her own).
She found that meditation made her feel normal again and had improved all her performance metrics on the EEG readings (attention, engagement, excitement, stress, relaxation, and interest). She noticed she stopped experiencing periods of intense focus (us ADHDers might call our version of this "hyperfocus"), but also intense lack of focus (akin to the ADHD itself) - her attention had become more stable.
So why does meditation work?
During her research, she learned about Mindfulness Based Intervention (MBI). AKA meditation, and it's comprised of 2 things:
and
AiP found there was a difference between the modern "pop" books/videos she was using for research vs the old religious teachings of meditation: managing distractions.
While popular books/videos advise to simply cut out distractions and build barriers to keep them at bay, the MBI approach targets the focus directly, cultivating it to be easier to command and to be resilient to distractions. So the options are either:
or
Cutting out distractions isn't always possible since we can't always control our environment, nor our responsibilities (like being on call, or working online). Compare that method to meditation, which trains your brain to hone its ability to focus at will (btw the effects of meditation is apparently so subtle AiP said she wouldn't have noticed it did anything for her if not for the EEG data).
Conclusion
Since the external supports we use to control our focus by cutting out distractions are fragile and can break (or we either literally or metaphorically keep hitting the "snooze button" on them), we can end up back at square one.
AiP learned that our minds have the natural tendency to wander, but also that we have the power to nudge it back to where we want it to be.
It just takes a bit of mental exercise - meditation.
In the end, she decided on both consistent meditation and cutting out distractions, utilizing both old and new methods for a life of balanced, deliberate attention.
While I relied on Adderall to write all this. lol
I really love this channels content. They ask questions I’ve thought about myself and approach problems I’ve dealt with. But then they spend a week to a month on the problem from planning to execution to results. And then it’s over. And the questions don’t always really get answered and the long terms results are never updated or clarified. I can’t really expect them to totally live by all these lifestyle changes, but I would love to see how these changes pan out for people in the long therm.
I think it was you who commented on my (since-deleted) post about reclaiming my attention, suggesting meditation.
I meditated for 15 minutes a day, a month straight. I experienced exactly what the person in this video experienced. Thinking I'd 'fixed' my attention span, I stopped. Things are slowly regressing back to before I started meditation. It does seem to be the most important factor.
I'm struggling to find a way to make it sustainable, but it is just inescapable that I need this practice as much as I need to drink water and to eat, in order for me to live a mentally healthy life
I think that may have been me, unless there was more than one topic. In any case I'm always glad to hear that it worked for someone. This regression also happened to me when I stopped after about 6 months or so, but it was much slower.
Keep doing it and once you're comfortable, try adding a longer session once in a while when you have the time. For me this was a big motivator: after about a month and a half or two months of everyday meditation I started doing group meditations with a few friends once a week where we would sit for about 40 - 45 minutes straight and I realized that this works like turning down the volume of my internal chatter for 12-24 hours. The effects of daily "normal length" meditation were merely cumulative for me, this effect of a single long meditation was immediate.
I recently found out that I have to meditate regularly in order for these longer meditation effects to work. Not meditating for months and then just jumping in and doing a 35-40 minute long meditation (even if it's every day for a week straight) does not work. At the time when I discovered it, it worked best when I did a normal length meditation in the morning and then the long one in the late afternoon - the first one kind of primed my mind and made it easier to get into the long one later.
It is surprisingly not that difficult to just sit twice as long once you get into it. The impatience that usually arises can be explicitly named and acknowledged, which makes it weaker, and then let go just like any other thoughts and feelings.
Mine didn’t involve meditation, but I also go through these spurts of being better at managing distractions followed by relapse. It feels just like when I find another ADHD hobby, when I get really excited about a topic and go all-in on it for a couple months before moving on to the next.
But I do still know a lot about my old hobbies, and they influence my life. In the same way, although I’ve failed in the short term to modulate my life, I’ve learned the signs, and I’ve become more mindful.
I don’t know how much of this I can do on my own, and it’s a big downer thinking about it. And there’s a lot of anger associated with it both towards our corporations who are exploiting our own psychologies to get us addicted, as well as towards myself for knowing that and still failing to break the cycle.
The scariest part for me is figuring out how I’ll deal with it when my kids are at the age where these technological pressures are coming from peers. It’s scary. At least most of us here can remember a time before this was our reality.
edit: oh, and the hardest part to wrap my head around is that I’m not even in super deep. On my worst days I’m only a few hours into social media or distractions of some sort. It feels like a good chunk of society have between 4-8 hours of unhealthy screen time per day. That is just nuts.
Your summary of her video lines up closely with my personal experience. I'll highlight a few relevant notes.
This happened sometime between 2022 and last year for me. I made some changes to remove distractions from my life. It worked until…
It was either due to this or a change in my sleep habits around the same time. Previously, I kept a NEET's sleep schedule of waking up between 9 and noon, then falling asleep when my mind crashed out between 2:30–4am during my job's slow season. Now, I aim for a consistent schedule where I'm in bed well before midnight (even before 11, if I can help it).
I'm unsure whether the meditation or the regular bedtime killed my hyperfocus. I suspect the sleep has more to do with it, as I've gotten in the zone on the rare occasions I stayed up all night to finish a project. It's much easier to sit at your computer from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. and have six uninterrupted hours of flow than attempting 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It's like my nighttime brain eventually gets bored of Discord and Reddit, while my day brain keeps cycling back to those after each snack or bathroom break.
I'd go so far as to say that now that I have meditated, my hyperfocus is at its most dead when I am not continuing a regular practice (and also keeping normal people waking hours). Remembering to meditate sets me in the stage to focus.
One other sleep & meditation note. When I am meditating regularly, even under heavy exercise, I feel absolutely fine on 5.5–6 hours of sleep a night plus an afternoon nap (and some caffeine in the morning). When not meditating, I'm alert but devoid of mental energy even at 9 hours.
After watching the video, this is a wonderful and succinct representation of her points. Highly appreciated and will share it with some friends who might profit from it.
I love Answer in Progress and watched this video when it launched. Sabrina actually convinced me to try meditation again. I have combined/inattentive type ADHD as well and have tried meditation over and over at several therapist's requests, and it's always been anxiety-inducing at least and frustrating to the point of anger at the worst. I also have fibromyalgia, GAD, and chronic pain. All of those also reduce your attention span thanks to brain fog and general stress.
I'm currently looking for a meditation app that isn't subscription based that will keep me interested with the NICE needs for my ADHD.