Improving Focus and Fixing Your Attention Span

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2025

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Rick and Forrest explore how we can improve focus and fix our attention spans in a world that is constantly trying to distract us. They discuss common reasons it’s hard to focus and three key interventions that can help most people. Rick teaches approaches from mindfulness practice, and Forrest explains how we can improve focus motivation and distress tolerance. Topics include ADHD, the role of dopamine, expanding the “Goldilocks Zone,” the practice of doing hard things, and how we can become less reliant on willpower. You can watch this episode on YouTube. Key Topics: 0:00: Introduction 5:25: Three key areas where we seek focus 9:10: Self-belief and inner turmoil 14:10: Three factors for sustaining focus 20:50: The goldilocks zone, physical health, and emotional preoccupation 24:40: Difficulties with meditation and mindfulness 32:40: Willpower vs. motivation 40:20: Quieting the mind 41:25: Decreasing the reward value of our distractions 48:35: Being present with others 54:05: ‘Going wide’, self-compassion, and other tactics for completing tasks 1:02:10: Choice and rumination 1:06:15: Recap I am now writing on Substack, check out my work there. Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors Field of Greens from Brickhouse Nutrition is a superfood powder packed with vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants. Use the code BEINGWELL at fieldofgreens.com for 20% off your first order. Head to acorns.com/beingwell or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future Zocdoc helps you find expert doctors and medical professionals that specialize in the care you need. Head to zocdoc.com/being and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Use promo code hanson at the link below to get an exclusive 60% off an annual plan at incogni.com/hanson. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/beingwell. Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BEINGWELL at https://www.oneskin.co/ Transform your health with the ZOE Science & Nutrition podcast. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts. Connect with the show: Subscribe on iTunes Follow Forrest on YouTube Follow us on Instagram Follow Forrest on Instagram Follow Rick on Facebook Follow Forrest on Facebook Visit Forrest's website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to being well. I'm Forrest Hansen. If you're new to the show,
0:10.9	thanks for listening today. And if you've listened before, welcome back. Today I'm joined as
0:15.0	usual by Dr. Rick Hansen. Rick is a clinical psychologist. He's a best-selling author and he's also
0:19.8	my dad. So, Dad, how are you doing
0:21.1	today?
0:21.9	I'm doing great for us. Really. And as usual, I just love doing this with you. Thanks for
0:27.3	letting me on your show.
0:28.5	I'm so happy to have you on the show, Dad. I mean, it's at least 20% your show as well.
0:33.8	I would say maybe even more than that. Jokes aside, today I was really looking
0:37.7	forward to talking with you about how we can improve our ability to focus. It's something that
0:41.8	I've been focusing on a lot recently and also how we can fix our attention spans. And this is a
0:47.1	real source of struggle for people these days, in large part because we've created a world
0:50.9	that is really not conducive to focusing. We can be paying attention to
0:55.6	so many different things out there all of the time, not the least of which is our phone. And at any
1:00.4	moment, your brain kind of knows that it could be watching something that's somewhere between 10
1:04.8	times and 100 times more interesting and engaging than almost anything that your caveman
1:10.1	ancestors ever saw in their entire lives.
1:13.3	And so funneling ourselves that way, funneling ourselves towards activities that we know are important and meaningful for us, but might not be as immediately rewarding, is really, really hard.
1:22.9	And one of the big tools that we have here is mindfulness and mindfulness-based practices.
1:27.2	And so part of why I wanted to talk with you about this is because those practices have been
1:31.0	just a huge part of your life and your work, everything that you've done over the last 40 years or so.
1:35.5	I love this topic.
	...

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