7 Simple Tips to Improve Daily Focus
How to Achieve Your Full Potential — Every Day
Managing your daily focus can often feel like a rollercoaster — filled with highs, lows, and unexpected turns.
Some days, you’ll feel on top of the world, effortlessly sharp and clear. On others, focusing for even three minutes can feel like a challenge. Which led me to wonder:
What can I do to take control of my daily focus?
Through a mix of books, articles, podcasts, and drawing from my own experience, I’ve uncovered seven simple tips that can profoundly transform your ability to concentrate.
While this blog particularly resonates with those familiar with the challenges of ADHD, these strategies are universally applicable for anyone seeking to improve their daily focus.
Ready to dive in?
The High-Level List (save it for later here)
- Have a low dopamine morning
- Meditate
- Write things down
- Exercise
- Reduce apps / social media
- Berocca
- Stay away from substances
Diving in
1. Have a low dopamine morning
Following advice from neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, I’ve adopted this essential tip for improving my daily focus.
People with ADHD are ‘dopamine deficient’ meaning our baseline dopamine levels are lower than that of the average person. Dopamine is our natural motivator, ie the chemical that fuels our drive to act and pursue rewards. Without enough of it, even simple tasks can feel monumental.
This explains why people with ADHD often find slow and mundane tasks especially challenging. Leading us to eat highly caloric meals, engage in risky activities, and search for ‘shiny objects’ (aka a quick hit of dopamine).
What you may not realize is with every dopamine spike, there is a crash. And with each crash, our baseline is lowered.
So — how does a peak dopamine morning impact our daily focus?
If you’re like me, mornings will often look like this:
- Wake up
- Check phone (dopamine 📈)
- Big breakfast (dopamine 📈)
- Drink coffee (dopamine 📈)
- Rush to get out the door (dopamine 📈)
- Listen to music (dopamine 📈)
By now, our brains are overloaded with dope and like any addiction, on the prowl for more. This means performing routine tasks for our jobs/lives will feel nearly impossible because they do not satisfy our craving for more.
- Focus 📉
Here are some simple tips on how to have a low-dopamine morning:
- Avoid checking your phone as long as possible (keep it in another room)
- Drink a full glass of water
- Avoid caffeine
- Avoid a highly caloric breakfast
- Read a chapter of a book (slow, engaged, accomplishment)
2. Meditate
Embracing meditation has been a game-changer for my ability to focus — a practice I turn to even when I am feeling my most distracted.
Whether you’re looking to quiet your busy mind or start your day on the right foot, meditation could be the concentration hack you’re looking for.
Meditation involves focusing the mind and becoming more aware of the present moment. Regular practice helps strengthen your brain’s prefrontal cortex and hypothalamus (linked to focus).
Starting your meditation practice can be challenging, but that is expected. Our minds are used to running a million miles per hour with more inputs in our world than ever before. But it’s important to remember:
There is no such thing as a bad meditation session.
- It can last 5 to 10 minutes
- You can close your eyes, or focus on a particular object
- You can sit in silence, or repeat an anchoring word throughout your practice
If it’s helpful, one app has completely changed my relationship with meditation. It’s called ‘Oak — Meditation & Breathing.’ It’s a simple, free, and effective app I have used for over two years and I love how little it does.
3. Write things down
Writing things down is one of my favorite tips for daily focus because it was passed down to me by someone I love dearly: my Dad.
When I first graduated from college, it felt like my life was all over the place — especially for me and my ADHD mind.
I called my Dad (who also struggles with ADHD) and asked if he had any tips and I’ll never forget his advice: “You need to write things down.”
And he meant that literally.
Despite my many years of writing papers, assignments, filling out forms, etc., he suggested a new way of writing. He told me to go on Amazon, buy a Black n’ Red Notebook, a good pen, and start writing everything down.
Amazingly, the first page in the notebook was intended for my life’s objectives, and, like magic, 4/5 of them happened within a couple of years.
Writing helps in so many ways. It…
- Enhances clarity by slowing down the endless stream of thoughts
- Boosts concentration by focusing on our processes and tasks at hand
- Improves our memory and information retention
Writing has made me noticeably more productive, thoughtful, calm, and organized — so much so that I’ve been doing it for 6 years straight.
And while where you capture your thoughts does not matter all that much, what does matter is making a habit out of it.
That’s why the Twos App is where I choose to write all my things down.
Twos’ simple system of Days, Lists, and *Things* makes it the closest experience I’ve had to writing things on paper but with the added benefit of some pretty awesome features:
- Auto-detect reminders (aka ‘Call mom tomorrow’ automatically sets a reminder for me to be notified)
- Unfinished to-do carry-over (never leave an unfinished task behind)
- The memories view reminds me of things I've written down weeks, days, months, and years ago
I use Twos for every thought, idea, to-do, dream, reminder, birthday, grocery item, meeting note, Dad joke, memory, etc., and it has yet to fail me once.
If you’re looking for a simple place to begin your habit of writing things down, Twos is for you.
4. Exercise
As my friend Fletch Barnes wisely said, “We move our bodies to slow down our minds.”
Exercise improves circulation, increasing the flow of blood, oxygen, and nutrients to the brain. The impact is overall improved brain health — including memory, problem-solving, and attention.
And for people with ADHD, exercise can be particularly beneficial. Physical activity helps us regulate our dopamine levels, which improves focus and attention, providing a natural remedy for ADHD symptoms.
Whether it be a run, walk, short calisthenic workout, or anything in between — moving your body is a great way to improve your ability to focus throughout the day.
5. Reduce Apps / Social Media
Many apps and social media are designed to give you quick dopamine hits so you crave checking them throughout the day.
Something I learned recently is how Twitter (now X) measures its “key performance” (also known as KPIs)…
This graph represents the “total seconds” users spent on X and the positive correlation that figure has with X's success.
This means X, a $44B company, often seeks ways to keep you on their platform longer — taking your focus away from healthier/better things you could be doing.
Apps can be addictive just like anything else. Sometimes it’s not enough to close them for a couple of hours.
Removing them from your home screen, logging out, or anything you can to add friction to mindless scrolling is essential for your daily focus.
6. Berocca (link to Amazon)
Berocca is the first clean, tasty, non-overwhelming supplement that improves my focus for about 1–2 hours.
It contains high levels of B and C vitamins.
B vitamins help maintain proper nerve function and are involved in neurotransmitters that regulate mood and brain function. For example, vitamin B6 is important to your brain's serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine levels, which are crucial for focus.
Vitamin C also helps improve mood, directly impacting your focus and productivity.
While Berocca can boost vitamins and minerals essential for energy and cognitive function, its effectiveness can vary from person to person.
Note: You might observe a temporary change to a bright neon yellow in urine color after taking Berocca.
7. Stay Away From Substances
From my experience with substances like sugar, alcohol, and caffeine, I’ve learned firsthand the impact they can have on focus and overall focus.
People with ADHD are particularly susceptible to a habitual relationship with substances thanks to their ability to spike dopamine levels.
Many substances disrupt the natural balance of neurotransmitters in the brain. Avoiding them will help you maintain a natural balance, which supports sustained focus and alertness.
Overall, steering clear of mood-altering substances can lead to more stable and effective brain function, which is crucial for maintaining focus.
In Closing
I hope you find these tips as beneficial as I have. Maintaining focus in the era of social media and stimulants is quite difficult, which is why we need all the help we can get.
Most importantly, don’t overwhelm yourself with change. The last thing you want to do is burn out.
Pick and choose which tips fit your needs best, try them for a couple of days, then weeks, then months, and see what sticks.
Keep these tips top of mind:
- Save this simple list
- Review it as needed
- Adapt them to your goals as you practice
And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Thank you very much for reading and have a wonderful week full of love and focus.
