Summary of the session: When you assign more value or stakes at something, you will focus better at it. Why? Because your limbic system is designed to put the urgent tasks in limelight, the tasks which either save you or help you grow immediately. Since your decisions are made with PFC (Pre frontal Cortex), you can trick your brain to assign value to things you want to focus at and use either of the two routes to do that: 1. Follow your natural curiosity till you find curiosity in the said subject or task. Ex: If I want to write an important project, I read a little on it and make a flow chart with coloured pens coz thats what I like doing then gradually move to the difficult parts when I am curiosity wise aroused enough. 2. Fear system: Assign more stakes to the task at hand. Here Tanmay gives a good example where he says that studying would lead to better grades which will fetch you a good job coz job is essential to survival so the brain will be tricked into focusing on studies coz that is essential to staying alive. While these hacks are useful, Dr Siddharth suggests that we cannot completely ever be in control and thats overpromising. So we must be okay with that. Towards the end an important hack was given which suggested a route to a calmer day which would be to NOT START YOUR DAY CHECKING NOTIFICATIONS. The dopamine kicks that we begin with set the baseline for the day and social media really spikes the dopamine hits. If our baseline is high we are setting ourselves for failure coz it'll be difficult to find stimulations throughout the day. So a better approach will be to start your day on a calm note. This is also because brain perceives any fall In dopamine level as sadness. Before sadness there is a phase of boredom which Dr Siddharth suggests we must get okay with because in all boredom lies creativity. A personal takeaway here is to maybe let ourselves be bored while doing something and not jump at the opportunity of being distracted quickly. So being okay with boredom is a key takeaway. So High stakes, Natural curiosity and Being Okay with Boredom are your key takeaways! Cheers!
1. Don't feel guilty about getting distracted. 2. Learn to revalue tasks by understanding we naturally shift towards survival mode and give more importance to useless things as they provide instant satisfaction. 3. Have this awareness that you will get distracted through out the day. Try to learn the triggers and the moment you got distracted, acknowledge it and get back to what you are actually suppose to do. Don't beat yourself up for getting distracted as it will create another loop of distraction. 4. Make it a habit to do daily house hold activities to kill the time which your brain is gonna use to distract you later. 5. Switch off the wifi and data before going to sleep to avoid hunting for new information and notifications whilst in bed. It should be used only for emergency calls. If possible keep your cell phone in another room. 6. When you wake up make sure to check your phone only after doing all the daily rituals like bathing, freshening up, breakfast, exercise, meditate, praying, washing the dishes, running for house hold errands to the market etc. This will ensure the dopamine levels are at bay and not continuously rising. Took me 2 days to finish watching this video with lots of distractions.
I have a question?? Do we even deserve this content for absolutely no money....? Hats Off to you guys for educating us on this high level stuff. Sincerely grateful to you all..
Another thing is that when you study in school. they make you remember particular things and I end up remebering nothing, but like this video when i am watching it just to learn something new And i have no stress to remember anything i end up remembering lot of things.
Sid, you really are amazing..!!! The part where you described surfing i.e. waiting to ride the wave and not trying to control it..!!! Just blew my mind completely... I was always trying really hard to be in control...
Okay, so you saved a lot of time because I don't know whether I would ever come up to a conclusion that "we need to be aware and just acknowledge distractions" on my own. And now I can relate with self-helf books better after knowing how brain works.
Thank you so much Dr Sid!! Your streams are so good. I have made a seperate black book to take down notes from your streams and to put in the effort to understand more about myself and what makes me tick. Am so excited about all the info i am getting. Really looking forward to the next stream !!
It would be great if these discussions are put up on audio platforms as podcasts.. since it's youtube we exclusively have to sit and watch this while if it's on audio platforms it's convenient to listen to this while doing the dishes or any other chore..
I attended my tuitions exactly after my school so I was very sleepy , so I tried to sit in the front so that I won't sleep and I got curious and class 12 was so interesting to me And now it all makes sense .
41:23 i think the thing is students are taught maths or physics by either teachers or books in a way which is not connected to what student 'needs'. e.g: a concept of matrix or differential equations is just taught as method and is not 'useful' for the brain to an extent that i can change something in my life. Or simply, my brain cannot find the use of matrix in my real life.
I faced this same problem and I found that you need to consciously place a value proposition on the topic. And look at the bigger picture , like what you are learning is a puzzle piece
Love it,, If Tanmay and abish not were here,, I would have definately ignored this gem,,, ❤️❤️ Following ur all playlist ,, *learning to learn* IAF aspirant
Thankyou Dr Sid again. This week was an out of focus week for me. So the insight was really helpful. It's like receiving answers to the unknown. I asked my therapist last week, but he didn't really give me a proper response. It would be great if I could meet you someday and have a wholesome conversation. Not to mention I am super focused while watching your content because it's like finally understanding the unknown. ❤
Just would like to add one comment to the amazing work that you are doing for the people like me. It may take some time, but if you could divide the full video into 3,4 parts like creating a playlist like Tanmay, Abheesh, etc., that would attract more people and so, more views and more subscribers.
Brain using data compression(just like delta compression algorithm that youtube uses) to avoid redundant data - apple on table wala example, too fascinating.
Andrew Huberman talks about the dopamine release factor on the process of persuing a goal and not only at achieving goal which in turn can help in neural plasticity. If you can explain how to use this process in studying as for most of us its tough...
why do we take distraction as a threat ? if the phenomenon of distraction is from a long time it could be for our own safety . Like a safety feature installed in our body which is of minimal use now. am i correct sir?
Reduce the regret of failing..take breaks that's where creativity happens and have some gratitude no need to be anxious of missing anything important you are safe/not in jungle anymore..
Hi, Just happened to watch your videos. I am teacher working in Dubai. Totally agree with your views on curiosity. In another video, you talked about mixing and matching different disciplines. That itself brings curiosity to the classroom. eg. You can bring curiosity in Math students in a geometry lesson by reading Sir Cumference and the Great of Angleland.
Great session! I had a query about delayed gratification. Does delayed gratification mean that we are consciously letting our PFC take over the limbic system?
@@Sidwarrier Thank you for the answer Sir. I really love the way you explain neuroscience ,how our behavior is affected by it and how we can hack our way into it.
This concepts are easy to understand in terms of meditation. When you are doing KapalBhati it is relatively easy to focus, slow Breathing slightly difficult to focus, just being mindful about breath slightly more difficult... Probably why easier to focus on music/sounds than just breathe in meditation.. and probably easier to focus on breath than simply nothing in particular. When it is easier I mean mind wonders less, controllable. What are your thaughts?
Can we have a stream on multitasking? From what I know, multitasking is just a construct and that the brain cannot actually multitask. But it would be great to understand from a neuroscience perspective.
This stream is amazing, I guess now it's time for people to stop looking at their phones when they wake up . Gotta reset your Dopamine target and find curiosity in every second.
Brain has 2 biases Movement bias & Novelty bias. We get distracted by Something that's moving or new. - Torch in a dark room/jungle with dangerous animals etc. - anything that's not threatening we get bored of. Non threatening apples, needs spiked/poisened apples. - Being still has no evolutionary advantage, that's why we are always trying to move. If a deer is still, it could get killed.
This is because your mind and body knows if numbers didn't come still the body find out way to live reason i.e. why we didn't focus study compared to who has everything depending on the number he gains
And how do people maintain their productivity.. like i have to study for 8 hrs and i just waste all my time using social media how to get away with it?
Start making small clips with like sub headings I want to learn about this and wat h this but at the same time it's too long instead of that I'd want to watch a few clips and get all the information that you put in the video
I am watching it in the night 2 a.m. with all lights turned off when you brought that dark room thing it scared the shit out off me I literally ran to my mother
Tshirt-able quotes/ideas from this one: Increasing productivity is a lifelong thing - Tanmay Bhatt Best part of doing anything is making a list of what to do - Sid Something around dopamine fireworks? Curiosity is the mother of attention Give in to the inability to focus, with a meditating man photo Don't control the wave, be aware of yourself, with a surfing man photo Boredom is creativity pe kuch?
I always thought that when I'm being distracted there's something wrong with me , I've watched numerous vids on how to be more concentrated . TOTAL BS It just brings down the anxiety lvl when you think that it's ohkay that you're being distracted.
Can you make a short video with all the important points so that I can refer this more freely and easily without sitting and watching the whole thing? If you dont know how to do it, you can hire someone online for such instances!👍 Use Fiverr for example.
When i study i get distracted and cook up hell off story .. and really fucking wild stories and it take lot of hours its been year for me ... I have questioned my IQ ....i was about to get it check but Corona happen ..... Cause i haven't done anything other than studying and suffer in it.. this is only thing i know i suck at .... I just get amazed how can someone become a doctor and study this... I tried all amount of force on me .. ... . ... ALL..
The value thing is not right i think ,,, I dnt value reels, i am addicted to it,,, mayb if survival is not issue then u r moving towards fun things,, u want dopamine all time,,,,😢