preface

This post is mainly focusing on my journey with my attention problems, where they stem from, how I’ve been managing them, and where I stand today. There are topics in here that may trigger some people (i.e. eating disorder & ocd) so read as you want. My story with focus and improvement has only started and is far from being over. It isn’t unique, it isn’t crazy, and it’s more common than you’d think. I’m not some sort of self-improvement guru. I am a 21 year old university student who makes youtube videos and sometimes posts to this blog. I am still struggling with focus along with a multitude of other things that I won’t make public. We all struggle, and we aren’t alone in it, no matter how much you/your brain tells you so.

also this post is kind of rant-y and will be revised. oops

last edited: 2023-05-25

my loss of focus is crushing me

For context: for my entire life I have struggled with attention problems. Whenever I am at the dinner table, my mom regularly says “hellooo. earth to lucas!” if I am eating normally but staring at an object on the table. It has been this way my entire life. I used to spend an obscene amount of time on my phone and various social medias doom-scrolling. That includes dating apps, which turned me into a shell of a man when I was using them. I felt myself almost turning into a reddit incel but pulled myself out of it before I actually believed what I was thinking. These are all distractions, and being born in 2002 gave me an infinite source of distractions. I was born in the era of YouTube being the new hip thing, the Nintendo DS being popular so you could game everywhere, and smartphones becoming a thing of the present.

my first phone.

My first phone with a plan was a Google Nexus 4 that I used until Grade 8. I got it when I was Grade 6. It came free with the plan my parents bought me and it was honestly a really good deal. However, this is where my horrible habits starting to formulate. I didn’t have my own personal iPod or phone that I could use for anything before this. I would have to share with my mom and dad in the house. Having something of my own was this new novel thing, and as a young almost-teenager, you could imagine the sort of shit I was doing on that phone. I can’t blame my parents though, since they were doing their best and I was a pesky kid. Going back though, I would have probably given myself a flipphone or something. My phone took away a lot of my attention that could have been put to good use somewhere else.

high school

Going into high school, I kept up with the same habits, only they got worse. I spent more time on discord and other social medias than my actual course content. I spent an obscene amount of time on Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, etc. It wasn’t affecting my grade at first, because it never does. Eventually you lose touch with reality and become chronically online, spending all your waking moments doing nothing but refreshing feeds, seeing what everyone else is up to. As a society, I believe a good majority of us have forgotten how to live without our phones. Even more so, we’ve forgotten how to live without constant connection and stimulation.

This is all to say that my high school experience wasn’t eventful because I didn’t make it eventful. I look back at who I was with regret and shame. I spent more time worrying about imaginary gamer points than my grades, both of which were severely hindered by a crippling anxiety of failure and a lack of nutrition. I wouldn’t eat because of how nervous I would get from meaningless trivial shit online, which would make the already crippling anxiety more crippling making me unable to eat properly. It borderline gave me an eating disorder.

High school continued and I continued to get by for the most part, pushing through what I know now as OCD and ADHD, and got decent grades. The thing is with addiction is you don’t realize it’s an addiction until it’s too late. Until something terrible has happened, and you realize that what you’re doing is unhealthy. But that doesn’t come until later since during my final year of high school, we were met with the unexpected. A pandemic.

pandemic time !

The pandemic hit me really hard—as it did for a lot of people—to say the least. I was blessed to have no obligations my final year of high school, but that set me up for failure. Going into university I lacked discipline. I lacked system. In high school I got by doing what I did, which in hindsight was terrible. I spent my first year barely scraping by, while having an EU sleeping schedule and attending zoom classes online in my bed (falling asleep a lot). I would be on discord messaging people, on snapchat snapping people, on twitter tweeting, sometimes even gaming. The point of all of this is to say that I was a degenerate. I still am in some aspects of my life, but this was purely degenerate behaviour and I don’t stand by it at all. It wasn’t until my second year that I got fully diagnosed with ADHD when I learned about proper study methods.

jvscholz

I think it’s worth mentioning here since I have been compared (rightfully so) to jvscholz, the study with me YouTuber. If I am being completely honest, I didn’t care for his study with my content in the beginning. I still don’t really. I pop into his stream sometimes to say hello, and that’s about it. I got into his channel through his tech content on the jvscholz channel, which is still my favourite of the three. I am a big tech nerd, and seeing how James organised himself along with his life was very interesting. This, along with recommendations of “The Inner Game of Tennis” within the Melee community (I know, a classic LMAO) set me on this path. If it wasn’t for Melee or James I wouldn’t be where I am today.

focus gainz

this section will contain my actual study methods and how i stay focused

Doing a time skip to the present, I was diagnosed with ADHD and OCD. I have to set up specific systems in order to get myself to study so I can catch up and succeed past my peers. That’s my goal. I want to actually succeed in life with the degree I am perusing. The big issue I have to get past is my relationship with food. I may have OCED and I am trying to work on not obsessing over food and hunger. You are most productive when you are not hungry, well rested, well hydrated, and if you live a healthy lifestyle. I do most of this for the most part, but my obsession with food is something I am seeking external help for.

I wake up at 5:30am every day, shower, make sure I am ready before 7:00am, and then I get to work for 3-6 hours depending on what I am trying to accomplish in a given day. I use a dumbphone to download a massive amount of podcasts and music to, I use an Onyx Boox Note5 for reading and taking notes, I use an InkPalm 5 to read when I am out, etc.

The point I am trying to make is: I developed a system.

Sure, I bought a lot of supplementary tech, but it isn’t required. I just really like tech. All of the devices I’ve used were bought second hand from various sources. Most of what I own is used or a hand-me-down. Local marketplaces are a wonderland sometimes (i.e. facebook marketplace, kijiji, etc). What matters most is the intention behind what you’re doing. It’s difficult in the beginning since you’re breaking a lifelong habit of checking your phone, opening discord, doom-scrolling, etc., but it’s all worth it in the end. Believe me. I am not even at the apex of my focus but learning and reading has NEVER been easier for me.

People can sit for their entire lives not thinking about this and coasting by, worrying about other meaningless shit. Whining and complaining about their terrible terrible lives and all the problems they have without taking an active role in supporting themselves. It’s frustrating for me to see people who act like there’s something wrong with them, and that they’re this unfixable mess that no one should see. This is because I was the same, and I look back and think it is cringe. It really isn’t hard.

If you want to do something, do it. Fail. Try again. Fail again. Repeat until success.

Obviously this is a gross over-simplification, but this is all to say that you can have focus too. You can develop your own systems for focusing for longer periods of time. It’s just that you don’t put in the work, you don’t give yourself ample amount of breaks, you don’t eat properly, you don’t sleep for 7-8 hours a day. You do none of this, and wonder why you feel terrible all the time; why you’re constantly failing. There are exceptions to the rule as always, but long term they will notice the impact it has on their body and health.