✨ At a Glance:
Why your mind feels “full” yet your results stay empty — and how a simple focus ritual can help you switch from busy to high-performance productive.
🧠 The Elite Idea: Your Brain Isn’t Designed to Be Busy — It’s Designed to Focus:
A busy brain is not a productive brain.
If your days feel chaotic, reactive, and fragmented… it’s not because you’re failing.
It’s because your brain is working exactly as it’s built to work — with limitations that most high achievers ignore.
Here’s the neuroscience:
- Your prefrontal cortex (PFC) — the part responsible for decision-making, strategy, and deep thinking — is tiny, metabolically expensive, and gets drained quickly.
- Your PFC is sequential, not parallel. Meaning: multitasking is a lie.
- Tiny tasks, constant notifications, emails, Slack pings, and context switching shatter your cognitive capacity.
- Feeling “busy” gives the illusion of progress. But cognitive science shows:
your brain can be active… while producing nothing meaningful.
A powerful solution?
A repeatable focus ritual — a personal system that tells your brain:
“Now is the time to enter deep focus mode.”
This ritual becomes your entry point into full cognitive power… instead of being hijacked by tiny distractions that drain your day.
And next week — I’ll share a newly published study that genuinely scared me about how technology is destroying our ability to think. Stay tuned.
🔍 Inside My Mind: How I Reset My Focus After Weeks of Mental Chaos
The last 3–4 weeks after returning from holiday felt… messy.
My brain was everywhere.
My attention span was tiny.
I was responding to things, not creating things.
And I was avoiding the projects that mattered most.
It felt like I was doing everything and nothing at the same time.
I knew I needed a reset — a return to the basics: focus, structure, ritual.
Last week I had a short trip to Barcelona, and planes are my magical focus zone (no Wi-Fi in Europe = a blessing).
I had two 2.5-hour flights — and I dedicated them purely to deep focus.
That’s actually where this newsletter was born: I’m writing it right now on the plane back home.
Those two deep-focus blocks helped me:
- Get clarity again
- Move the needle on important work
- Create a plan for the week ahead
- And reconnect with my productive identity
My mini-retro after the week:
- Realizing my “busy but unproductive” pattern was the turning point
- The plane-focus sessions reignited momentum
- My weekly plan was good — I didn’t hit 100% of it, but I know exactly how to adjust so next week sets me up for success
- Momentum creates motivation — not the other way around
🧬 Integrate It: Your Elite Focus Ritual (Backed by Neuroscience))))
If you’re struggling with focus (like I was), here’s your path back to clarity and productivity.
1. Do your deep work in the first part of the day.
Your PFC is most energised in the morning.
Eat the frog early → win the day early.
2. Create a distraction-free environment.
No phone.
No notifications.
No tabs you don’t need.
No “quick check” of email or Slack.
3. Build your focus ritual.
Same place. Same time.
Repeat it until your brain recognizes the pattern.
- Make your favourite drink
- Put on your focus playlist
- Set the environment the same way every time
- Signal to your brain: “We focus now.”
(Time has energy. Location has memory.)
4. Plan your work smartly (this is where most people fail).
Break your big project into doable steps:
- Start with the easiest possible first step
- Work in max 45–50 min blocks
- Make each task so clear that you can sit down and start immediately
- If a task feels overwhelming → break it again
- Track your results at the end of each day and adjust
5. Try a method like Pomodoro.
Classic version:
- 25 minutes focus
- 5 minutes break
Adapt it as needed — what matters is the commitment to undistracted work.
6. If you need accountability, use body doubling.
- Hop on a 2-hour call with a friend
- Share your goals for the session
- Cameras off, mics muted, work
- Reconnect for 15 minutes before the end to check progress
Or work from a coworking space if you need energy around you.
7. Celebrate your wins.
Momentum grows when your brain receives evidence that you’re succeeding.