How To Cure "Brain Fog" | 3 Tips for Mental Clarity

[Music] you know someone who wants to taper off caffeine I'm not doing a very good job having an espresso machine right next to my desk is very dangerous and probably a stupid idea so you know it's pretty crazy the human brain is pretty crazy it's such a fascinating machine and we barely have scratched the surface of what it's capable of but for that very reason we don't really understand it fully like why is it that some days it seems like our friend like we're full of confidence full of energy witty sharp is attack while other

days it feels like our enemy you know feels you feel with Erick you feel sluggish feels like someone just poured over a vat of molasses over your brain and it's just slowing down all the gears of your mind and on these days it seems to completely sabotage our ability to focus or remember in the short term or even the long term basically it just screws over our brain completely this dilapidated state is often referred to as brain fog and according to the internet is characterized primarily by a lack of mental clarity inability to focus and

a decreased function of working memory but why does this happen and how can we prevent it over the past couple of years I've been trying to answer this question because brain fog sucks especially if you have an important meeting or a date or you're interacting with people a lot of the time or you have to solve a problem a lot of days you can't afford to be in this state of brain fog you're presenting to the world like the worst possible version of yourself and it's annoying so in this video we're gonna go over three

powerful strategies to clear up that mental but we're gonna go over three reasons why you probably have brain fog and how to fix them how to fix them how to fix them gotta catch them all factor number one is over stimulation I think it was Tim Ferriss who said that we live in a digital environment where attention is currency all these different companies all these different websites these advertisers they want your attention because they can monetize it whenever you click on something somebody gets paid whenever you watch something somebody gets paid even on this channel

I have ads before my videos unless you have ad blocker and turned it off the case that's fine I'm not picky about it I'm making like six dollars off these videos anyways moral of the story is everybody wants your attention what this means for you is if you spend a lot of time on the internet and around screens inevitably your attention is going to be completely dispersed in a thousand different directions and if you spend a long enough time doing this you start to get used to having your attention fragmented YouTube is a perfect example

of this clickbait on YouTube is so powerful because of something called super normal stimulus I'll put a link in the description to my favorite comic on this there's actually I mean I don't read comics too often but there's actually a really really good comic on super normal stimulus what it is and how you can fix it or not fix it it's just a phenomenon it's a psychological phenomenon improvement pill has a YouTube channel called the dopamine fast or it's about a dopamine fast it talks about a having a single day where you drink nothing but

water and you and you yeah you don't you don't intake any information you can only output information this is obviously a very extreme example and if you don't live like a Shaolin monk you probably have errands to run on a Saturday so you probably don't have time to do nothing all day like a scheduled day where you do nothing but it is a really cool concept and I still think you should check the video out but what I think is a lot more practical of a solution is to practice meditation I know I talk about

meditation all the time but it's so powerful in this day and age because people can't sit still with themselves for more than five minutes and it trains you to collect this scattered focus of yours and redirect it into doing something super boring what's more boring than sitting there by yourself doing nothing and after you develop this muscle of being able to do that you can focus on conversations better you'll be able to focus on a math problem so reducing social media use bad screen time and learning how to meditate or just focusing on doing something

slower pace for an extended period of time you will train yourself to stop being so scattered so foggy so in your head and really focus in on what's in front of you it'll help with your brain fog a lot so one of the best ways to clear up that brain fog and become more present and focus and dialed in is to prevent being scattered in the first place say you have to write a paper and the deadline is one month from now you have some clear days where you could work on your paper but you

say to yourself oh it's due a month from now I can definitely do it three weeks before and then three weeks before it comes and you're like I can do it two weeks before every time you do that you're not forgetting about this deadline you're just giving it to your subconscious to worry about and the more things your subconscious has to worry about the more scattered you become just because it isn't on the front lines of your brain and the thing that you're actively thinking about all the time you're still thinking about it subconsciously you're

worrying about it and the more things you give to your subconscious to worry about the worse your brain fog gets so just get it done so you don't have to worry about it anymore and you can just focus on the task at hand so tip number one is don't procrastinate and tip number two is to write down your goals objectives and tasks say you meet a friend on the street that you haven't seen for a while and you catch up you have a great conversation and they say hey let's meet up Tuesday afternoon and let's

grab lunch and you say yeah that sounds like a great idea I'll see you then and then you depart you depart I said that archaically you depart from each other write that down schedule it in set a reminder on your phone so that you can forget about it don't give it to your subconscious to have to worry about you're just gonna be thinking Tuesday afternoon I've got a dinner dinner date Tuesday afternoon I've got a lunch date with Kevin and that makes your attention to everything else for that entire week reduced because you're just gonna

be thinking about this lunch date with Kevin you have to remember this is dumb every time that you have a task to do every time you have something scheduled you agree to something write it down set a reminder on your phone so that you can forget about it it'll free up mental RAM and it'll bring your your subconscious super you have going on it'll reduce the ingredients of that soup giving you a nice clear broth that will help your brain operate better it's so hot in here I look terrible whole take it from somebody who

has struggled through anxiety his entire life it's pretty much conquered it not having things to worry about completely reduces your exact not completely I can't diagnose you and say like oh yeah if you schedule your day your anxiety disorder will go away that's not what I'm saying I'm saying that you're doing yourself a lot of favors if you become more organized you don't procrastinate you have less things to worry about in general so tip number two is all about being on top of things okay factor number three is general health this one's not going to

be a long one there's a million videos on how to optimize your health going to sleep on time waking up at a decent hour getting enough sleep all that yada yada yada I have a million videos about sleep actually I probably only have two whatever for most people that means between seven and nine hours of sleep per night or seven and a half and eight and a half hours of sleep per night stay hydrated eat good food and exercise everybody knows these things but almost nobody does all of them correctly so if you feel like

you've tried everything to reduce brain fog and you haven't tried to optimize your health you're doing yourself a huge disservice and the biggest one of all of these probably in my experience is getting exercise there's a video from a channel called what I've learned about the cognitive benefits of exercise in this video he talks about how whenever someone talks about the benefits of exercise they talk about reduced heart disease and maybe the ability to you know not get a stroke when you're older it's all basically exercise isn't sold very well almost nobody talks about the

cognitive benefits that you receive from exercise if exercise was sold in a pill it would be the best selling pill ever if exercise was sold in a pill it would be the closest thing to NZT 48 you could possibly find I've started weightlifting five days a week over the past couple of weeks and I'm gonna continue to do so mostly because it makes me feel amazing and I'm not even talking about my bodily energy I'm talking about my mental energy I'm on the ball these days I don't know if you could tell but I'm just

like I'm sick these days I tribute a lot of that to exercise my diet hasn't changed much I've been eating more protein and I've been staying hydrated but there's something about exerting yourself every single day it's almost like your body and mind learned that you're an energetic person and it gives you all this energy for free it's amazing so that's about it guys if you take all three of these factors into account I guarantee you unless there's something seriously wrong with you and you need to see a doctor your brain fog will significantly reduce you'll

become a focused tiger ten times more attractive five times more focused three times more productive and one times more yourself and probably less friends because they'll all be jealous okay guys before you go I have relaunched my patreon by being my patron not only do you get to support the channel and help me make better idea better ideas I mean yeah their ideas videos but you help me make better videos in general all you need to be is a $1 patron to unlock my vlog but there are two more tiers of rewards if you become

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