12 Minutes to a Better Brain: Neuroscientist Reveals the #1 Habit for Clarity & Focus

Your ability to pay attention impacts every aspect of your life—from how well you perform at work to how deeply you connect with others. Yet it’s often difficult to focus on what matters.

In Peak Mind, neuroscientist Amishi Jha suggests that this struggle to pay attention prevents your mind from functioning at its peak, resulting in poorer decisions, forgotten information, and emotional instability. She argues that practicing mindfulness can help you overcome these challenges and improve your ability to pay attention.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through Jha's key ideas, covering how attention works and impacts you, the three causes of scattered attention, and why practicing mindfulness is the most effective strategy for strengthening attention. Additionally, we'll expand upon Jha's ideas with research and advice on improving attention from psychologists and self-improvement practitioners.

Daniel Goleman argues that attention is a complex and underappreciated cognitive resource in our modern society overrun with distractions. In Focus, he explores how you can understand, strengthen, and effectively use your attention to lead a more fulfilling and productive life, as well as to connect better with others and have a positive impact on the world.

A renowned psychologist and New York Times science writer, Goleman is the author of international bestsellers on emotional intelligence and leadership. In this guide, we’ll explore his theories on how harnessing the power of inner, other, and outer focus can help you excel in everything you do. We’ll look at actionables he recommends to help, including mindfulness meditation and digital attention training games as tools to improve habits, skills, and overall success. We’ll also provide additional context to help you better understand the book’s concepts, and we’ll compare the author's insights to those of other psychology and neuroscience experts.

How can you be more productive and creative? Most of us assume that the answer lies, at least in part, in managing our time better. But in Hyperfocus, productivity expert Chris Bailey presents an alternate hypothesis: To focus in a world full of ever-increasing distractions, you must learn not just how to manage your time but also how to manage your attention.

Bailey explains why your current method of directing your attention isn’t working—like why you still feel tired no matter how many breaks you take—and then shares several strategies for managing your attention for better productivity and creativity. In this guide, we’ll compare these strategies to recommendations from neuroscientists and other productivity experts, supplementing Bailey’s ideas so that you can manage your attention in the most effective way possible.

Your ability to pay attention impacts every aspect of your life—from how well you perform at work to how deeply you connect with others. Yet it’s often difficult to focus on what matters.

In Peak Mind, neuroscientist Amishi Jha suggests that this struggle to pay attention prevents your mind from functioning at its peak, resulting in poorer decisions, forgotten information, and emotional instability. She argues that practicing mindfulness can help you overcome these challenges and improve your ability to pay attention.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through Jha's key ideas, covering how attention works and impacts you, the three causes of scattered attention, and why practicing mindfulness is the most effective strategy for strengthening attention. Additionally, we'll expand upon Jha's ideas with research and advice on improving attention from psychologists and self-improvement practitioners.

If you’ve been struggling to concentrate, journalist Johann Hari wants you to know that you’re not alone—and the struggle isn’t your fault. In Stolen Focus, Hari makes the case that we have a societal attention crisis: We’re all losing our ability to concentrate, which means we can't progress on our individual goals, and we can’t collectively confront the major challenges humanity faces.

Hari argues that our attention crisis is the result of outside forces stealing our focus, not the fact that we’re not trying hard enough to concentrate. He examines these forces, including everything from our food to the economy, and unlike other authors writing about distraction, he proposes societal solutions rather than individual tips.

In this guide, we’ll explore Hari’s evidence of an attention crisis, the seven factors causing this crisis, and his three-part solution. We’ll also share suggestions for action based on Hari’s insights, as well as explore perspectives from other authors that complement his ideas.

Daniel Goleman argues that attention is a complex and underappreciated cognitive resource in our modern society overrun with distractions. In Focus, he explores how you can understand, strengthen, and effectively use your attention to lead a more fulfilling and productive life, as well as to connect better with others and have a positive impact on the world.

A renowned psychologist and New York Times science writer, Goleman is the author of international bestsellers on emotional intelligence and leadership. In this guide, we’ll explore his theories on how harnessing the power of inner, other, and outer focus can help you excel in everything you do. We’ll look at actionables he recommends to help, including mindfulness meditation and digital attention training games as tools to improve habits, skills, and overall success. We’ll also provide additional context to help you better understand the book’s concepts, and we’ll compare the author's insights to those of other psychology and neuroscience experts.

Your ability to pay attention impacts every aspect of your life—from how well you perform at work to how deeply you connect with others. Yet it’s often difficult to focus on what matters.

In Peak Mind, neuroscientist Amishi Jha suggests that this struggle to pay attention prevents your mind from functioning at its peak, resulting in poorer decisions, forgotten information, and emotional instability. She argues that practicing mindfulness can help you overcome these challenges and improve your ability to pay attention.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through Jha's key ideas, covering how attention works and impacts you, the three causes of scattered attention, and why practicing mindfulness is the most effective strategy for strengthening attention. Additionally, we'll expand upon Jha's ideas with research and advice on improving attention from psychologists and self-improvement practitioners.

Many people frame meditation as a way to reduce stress, feel calm, or be more present—but according to the authors of The Mind Illuminated, these aren’t its main goals. Instead, they argue, meditation is primarily a way to train your mind so you can experience enlightenment: a mental state that provides freedom from suffering. By following the recommendations outlined in The Mind Illuminated, you can journey from novice meditator to enlightened meditator in 10 sequential stages.

In this guide, we’ll explore the authors’ advice for training your mind to reach enlightenment. We’ll compare their ideas about meditation to those of other experts, such as Bhante Gunaratana (Mindfulness in Plain English) and Jon Kabat-Zinn (Wherever You Go, There You Are). We’ll also supplement their insights with cultural, historical, and scientific context, and we’ll offer additional tips for meditating.

How can you be more productive and creative? Most of us assume that the answer lies, at least in part, in managing our time better. But in Hyperfocus, productivity expert Chris Bailey presents an alternate hypothesis: To focus in a world full of ever-increasing distractions, you must learn not just how to manage your time but also how to manage your attention.

Bailey explains why your current method of directing your attention isn’t working—like why you still feel tired no matter how many breaks you take—and then shares several strategies for managing your attention for better productivity and creativity. In this guide, we’ll compare these strategies to recommendations from neuroscientists and other productivity experts, supplementing Bailey’s ideas so that you can manage your attention in the most effective way possible.