Transcription
Hey guys, my name is Ali Al caragi. I am a systems engineer and a post-doctoral fellow at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. And in this video, I'm going to explain to you why you cannot focus, and more importantly, what you can do about it, and how you can solve this problem, hopefully, for the rest of your life.
Now, I am someone who has ADHD. I was diagnosed at 26 years old. And even though ADHD has caused me a lot of pain, a lot of struggles, uh, it made a lot of people think I'm lazy, undisciplined. I would just, I just kind of had a negative self-image for a big portion of my life. ADHD was also the reason I was able to graduate a PhD at only 26 years old, run two companies while having a full-time job at NASA, and just being able to, uh, function in a way that a lot of people don't really understand.
So, what I really want to go ahead and do in this video is go into a bit of detail on why your brain does the things, uh, it does, especially if you're someone higher up on the ADHD spectrum. Now, again, I'm not a medical doctor. I'm not here to diagnose anyone. Although I am a doctor, I have a PhD in electrical engineering with this emphasis on systems, so I can at least walk you through from an electrical perspective what's going on inside the brain and explain to you what's going on. And then you can decide for yourself what you, uh, are able to do about it based on the recommendations in the video. Again, this is not medical advice. This is electrical engineering advice.
Okay, this is going to be the analogy we're going to be using. Okay? So, I basically broke it down into two things. Basically, just like how in a computer board, uh, there's two components. There's the hardware, there's the actual wiring, the structure of the board, just like inside your brain. Then there's also the software that runs inside the computer. And the software is basically like the thoughts, the, the software things like the beliefs, the ideas, the imaginations, the things that cannot be, like, physically traced or or traced by in the physical world.
So, I'm going to go ahead and explain to you three things. First one is the brain structure of someone with ADHD, how it differs from the other person. And then two, um, kind of the interface, like the chemicals inside the person with an ADHD versus someone who is not. And again, ADHD is not binary. It's not that you definitely have it or you definitely don't have it. ADHD is a spectrum based on how these things vary within your brain. And then last but not least, more importantly, I'm going to explain to you how you can, uh, operate better software as someone with ADHD.
So, I'm just going to go ahead and hide this part over here, um, and I'm going to go ahead and hide this part over here as well. So, let's talk first about the brain structure, right? So, people with ADHD or higher up on the ADHD spectrum, uh, they want to be productive. They want to be disciplined. They want to be not lazy. They want these things more than anyone imagines. But the problem is, they have a harder time doing it. And that's because of fundamental, uh, differences in the brain structure. Generally speaking, if you read the research papers and some of the books on ADHD, you'll, you'll quickly realize that people with ADHD, uh, have differences in their prefrontal cortex, which is the part of their brain responsible for executive function, decision-making, planning, uh, basically this is the part of the, of the brain that makes you an adult, right? That's why people with ADHD are often perceived as impulsive or childish, or people, oh, they, they get bored very easily. Um, it's because your prefrontal cortex, on average, takes longer to grow. And even when your prefrontal cortex is fully developed, it still has a harder time communicating with other parts of the brain. Same goes for the amygdala and the hippocampus. That's why you have people with ADHD are a lot more likely to be anxious, a lot more likely to be depressed, a lot more likely to have, uh, memory problems, short-term memory as well as long, long-term memory.
So, there are fundamental changes in the ADHD brain, uh, that makes humans, uh, behave the way they do. This is, again, this is a hardware problem. This is just like a fundamentally structured problem in the brain. So, the first thing someone with ADHD needs to understand is, if you're behaving in these kind of ways, nothing is wrong with you inherently. Your brain is just wired a little differently. And don't worry, there's ways for us to address that.
Which brings me to the other part, which is the, uh, hardware in the brain, right? So, I'm going to, again, remove this software part over here. Let's talk about, like, the brain chemicals, right? So, what makes an ADHD brain different from other brains? Uh, it really all comes down to, besides the, the, the fundamental structure of the brain that we have just addressed, uh, what it really comes down to is the brain chemicals, right? More importantly, the neurochemicals, the neurochemistry going on in your brain. The three famous ones are dopamine, adrenaline, and serotonin.
Now, you've probably heard these words before if you've watched, for example, uh, Andrew Huberman. He does an excellent job explaining what these, um, chemicals do inside the brain. But to give you a very brief overview and an oversimplification, I like to use to describe these molecules is that dopamine is the one associated with curiosity, uh, with basically reward, with having an incentive to do something, right? Um, and adrenaline is associated with urgency. And that's why, like, uh, having deadlines, having things that are important you cannot miss. This is why people with ADHD, uh, basically, uh, when, when it's like the last day before a deadline, if you have an essay to write or if you have a project to do for work, uh, you are able to focus in a very sharp way. That's because your adrenaline is spiking up. Obviously, there's other stuff going on. Again, this kind of an oversimplification.
And then third is serotonin. Serotonin is the molecule responsible, kind of, for happiness and feeling good. And this is something that's generally induced by social connection, right? This is why social isolation is detrimental for people with ADHD or higher up on the ADHD spectrum. If you're someone who has ADHD, like, the worst thing you can do for yourself is lock yourself up in a room, uh, and don't, don't talk to other people and not connect with other human beings. That's going to be really, really detrimental for your productivity and for your mental health.
Now, before I explain how you can go ahead and manage these things in a really good way long-term, how I do it in my personal life, I want to give a very, uh, quick, uh, addressing regarding medication, right? Uh, so, there's obviously very common medications such as, like, Ritalin or Adderall or, or other types of medication. And all they're really doing is they're just playing, uh, on these molecules, right? Um, the general idea is that what, what happens in the ADHD brain is it's not that you have less dopamine or less adrenaline or serotonin or things of that nature. The idea is that the moment dopamine is secreted in your brain, uh, it gets reabsorbed very, very quickly by the neurons, right? That's why, um, a lot of these, uh, medications, what they do is they inhibit the re-uptake of something like dopamine. And what that does is it basically keeps the molecule in your brain longer. And that way, you're able to focus on a task longer. And that's why something like Instagram or social media or, or a phone in general, uh, can be very, very addictive for someone with ADHD. People with ADHD are more likely to be addicted. Why? Because every time you go and scroll down your feed, basically your brain is going to, uh, say, "Oh, all right, we, we got over that thing that dopamine has been kind of reabsorbed. Let's, the next one, the next one, the next one." You're kind of very novelty-seeking. People with ADHD are very, very novelty-seeking. And this is a big part of it.
So, the problem is not that, uh, that you don't have these molecules in your brain. The problem is that when these molecules get, uh, produced, uh, they get reabsorbed very, very quickly. Again, it's kind of an oversimplification. But basically, the idea is if you really want to, um, improve your dopamine and adrenaline and serotonin, uh, what, what medication does, something like Adderall, for example, uh, is, is basically keeps the dopamine and adrenaline, especially in your brain longer, such that you have more, more, more curiosity and more urgency to do things, kind of artificially induced.
Now, I understand that medication is very, very important, especially for people who are really, really high up on the ADHD spectrum or like literally cannot function without it. But obviously, medication has side effects as well. So, there are natural ways that I personally do in my, in, in my day-to-day life to to overcome this problem. Um, and, uh, similar to Adderall, for example, there's the cousin of Adderall in my opinion, something like MDMA or, or Molly or ecstasy. These kind of, I don't know if you've ever seen videos of people in music festivals, but what these do is while Adderall acts more on the dopamine and and adrenaline, something like ecstasy acts more on the serotonin and it keeps serotonin longer in your brain. That's why you see people at music festivals enjoying the music and feeling euphoric and they go around and like hugging each other, right? Uh, so, basically, uh, all, all these drugs, um, what they're really doing in your brain is again, just kind of ensuring that these molecules stay in your brain longer so that you're more curious on the task at hand, and then you have more urgency to get it done, and you just feel better. So, you're again, more likely to get it done. I believe Adderall does improve serotonin levels a little bit as well.
So, now, um, before I go ahead and talk about software, what is it that you can do? Suppose you don't want to take medication, and suppose you're not, uh, trying to rely on medication because medication is still, at the end of the day, like, kind of a band-aid fix for most people. How do you address the problem at the root? And again, I'm not a medical doctor, so this is not me advising you what to do. This is me telling you what I like to do in my personal life.
So, the way I, I'm going to start with the other way around. So, the way I manage my serotonin levels and ensure that they are constantly at a proper level is very simple. It's just people, right? I just make sure that I don't isolate for a very long period of time. I make sure that I'm always around people. I call my, I call my parents every single day. I call my brother every single day. I call my sister. I call my, I call my, my friends almost, almost every single night. I call one of my friends. I make sure that I'm in touch with people. I go to my in-person job at NASA, where I have amazing people that I work with. Uh, and I remember during when I was like by myself, basically for a very, very long time, I had a much stronger tendency to be depressive and to be unproductive. So, the way, in my opinion, to cure serotonin is just people, social connection. Obviously, there's other chemicals such as oxytocin, whatnot. Again, this is not, uh, this is an oversimplification of what's going on. But do all you can to connect with people. That's basically going to take care of the serotonin aspect.
Now, the way to deal with adrenaline is to have very good deadlines and realistic deadlines, right? So, this is actually a big problem for entrepreneurship. If you're someone who wants to be an entrepreneur and you want to grow a business, but you're higher up on the ADHD spectrum, uh, there's a pro and a con. There's a, there's a big problem, uh, that you face, but then there's a big advantage. The advantage is that because you're higher up on the ADHD spectrum, you're more creative, you're more imaginative, you have an amazing vision of what you want to do, you're able to articulate your ideas, you're able to do all these things. But the problem is, because there's no like instant short-term results and there's no structure to hold you accountable to it, just like in a regular job or in school, you're never going to go start that business. You're never going to go, um, and and and and start writing your your ads so you can run them. You're never going to go make a copy, uh, for your, like, sales letter so you can run on your website. You're never going to go reach out to people, say, "Hey, I have this idea, what do you think? I'm building this thing." Um, so, the way, the only way really to address to to attack adrenaline in a very practical way is to assign deadlines in your life, and you make them realistic. Because your brain is smart. If you make the deadlines, kind of BS, artificial, no one's holding you accountable to them, then that's, that's really not going to help you much.
One way I manage it is, I remember when I started, uh, building my online course, which dives deeper into this stuff, um, I struggled a while to get, um, to make any progress on the advertising and to get people to even know about the thing that I'm building and how it can change their lives. So, what I went ahead and did is I went and I reached out to a former client of mine who was, uh, running, uh, paid ads, and I said, "Hey, um, do you want to, I'm, I'm trying to do this thing. I'm, it's going to change the world, going to help a lot of people focus better, be more productive, be achieve their entrepreneurial dreams, whatnot. Do you want to help me with this? Can you, do you want to help me with the ads?" And he said, "Yes, of course." And and what that really helped with is that I would meet with him every other week or like every week. And what that would do is it would give me deadlines, right? It would give me urgency of like, "Oh, I got to see Thomas in two days. I really got to go sit down and write my ads. I really got to do these things." And when I started spending money, then that gave me even more urgency. And and and then I had deadlines to get all these things done. So, again, the way to attack adrenaline in a kind of natural way is ensure you have deadlines that you respect. Ensure that you have accountability by people that you respect, because that's basically going to give you that little panic of like, "Oh, I got to get this thing done." Um, and sometimes with ADHD, that's the only way you can get something done.
Now, with dopamine, man, this one, I could make an entire video, uh, on this, and you can let me know in the comments if you, if you like my presentation of this stuff, if you want more in-depth, uh, uh, uh, videos about dopamine. Uh, this one is actually the most complicated and the most, there's different angles to address it, right? Very first thing is sleep, right? You have to sleep really, really well. Basically, the way I think about sleep is the, the, the less you sleep and the less quality sleep you get, the more your, kind of, amygdala takes over, and you become more of a more limbic. You become kind of more of like an instant gratification animal. The better sleep you get, the more like your thinking brain gets charged, the prefrontal cortex gets gets charged, um, then the more you're more like a rational decision, more of a rational human, uh, so sleep is absolutely, absolutely crucial.
The other thing to manage your dopamine is diet. So, if you're eating like processed foods and a lot of sugars and things like that, these things, sugar, again, is just like cocaine, is just like other drugs. Um, they act on your dopamine receptors and is going to send you in this kind of like, um, sinusoidal spiral of like feeling amazing and then crashing and feeling amazing and crashing. And it's going to make you like not be kind of consistent. Again, we're trying to make you very, very consistent. Again, this is not a diet recommendation, but what I do is I avoid processed foods as much as possible. I usually eat, uh, very high-quality meats. I eat very high-quality raw cheese. I drink things like green tea. I try to keep it very organic. Like for a dessert, I try to keep it to like fruits, vegetables, uh, dark chocolate, like very good quality dark chocolate. I try to, again, try to eat food that was eaten like a 100 years ago, right? That's kind of my filter. Is like, did this thing exist a while ago? Does it have like five, 100 ingredients in it and all sorts of oils and things in that? Answer, if, if the answer is yes, then I know that that's probably going to mess with my focus, mood, gut health, and and things of that nature.
Now, that's, uh, one thing. The other thing that you can do, which is extremely, extremely underrated, um, and there's a book about this, it's called Spark by Dr. John Ratey. I would strongly recommend you read it, uh, is you go for a five-minute run, like literally just five minutes, right? And what that does is it's going to help you focus. It's going to, it's going to help you sit down and be able to do your work. Obviously, the longer you run, the, the better. But what I've noticed is sometimes even as little as like three, four, five-minute run is literally going to, like, you, the goal is to get your heart rate like enough such that you, like your heart, your heartbeat just goes up like enough for like a few minutes. And for me personally, what that does is it gives me magical ability to focus. Even though sometimes it's short-lived, sometimes it's only like 45 minutes, sometimes only an hour, sometimes only 30 minutes, sometimes only 15 minutes. But those 15-minute, 30-minute blocks, they, they, they really add up. And as a benefit, I get to be healthier and whatnot.
And if you want to be ultra hardcore, you can do what I do, which is immediately after you go for a run, uh, you take a cold shower. Now, again, there are papers on this. You can go and look them up. Uh, there's a study where where cold water exposure was able to increase dopamine baseline levels by up to 250%, I believe, which is crazy. So, I think if you, like, imagine this, you slept really good, you did not eat processed crap, you went on a run, and you took a shower, and in the last 30 seconds or 1 minute, you switched the water to cold, man, you're going to feel like a superstar. And that's what I try to do every single morning. Obviously, I'm not, sometimes I'm not consistent with it. Sometimes I don't do it every single morning. But I'm telling you, on mornings where I start my day like this, and even if it's not the morning, even if it's an afternoon where I start my day like this, where I go for a run and then I don't go take the shower, I'm just so much more clearer. I'm just like feeling so much better about myself. And yeah, this is pretty much, uh, the hardware element.
Last but not least, I want to cover software very briefly. And software is basically, uh, composed of two things, right? There's your beliefs, what you think is true, what's going on inside your brain. This is very, very important. But then there's also systems, right? Things that you can implement in your life, such as designing your environment, uh, like having, uh, habits that you track and do things of that nature, having your, uh, computer set up in a certain way, your browsers in a certain way, and a phone in a certain way, in a certain way. And I go in depth into a lot of these things in my program. I'll put a link for it below. You don't have to get it if you don't feel like it. You can watch the rest of my videos. Um, but I really want to dive deeper into this systems concept, and I probably will do that in one of the next videos.
But basically, what I want to know about beliefs is there's one important belief that you should have in regards to ADHD is that, um, ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, right? There's no doubt that if your brain is, is there, there's like miswiring in the brain and there's different components in the brain that are not functioning properly, uh, then there's no doubt that, um, that is a disorder, right? That's not going to be good. That's going to be, there's going to be some malfunctioning. There's going to be things going wrong. But I would strongly urge you to not label it a disorder, right? And this is very important belief because I see a lot of people all the time using kind of ADHD rightfully, and most of the times, as kind of like a, "Oh, I have ADHD, so I can't do this." "Oh, I have ADHD, so I can do this." But again, ADHD, if, if you have the, if you manage it properly and if you have the right systems in place, it gives you a lot of other advantages, such as your creativity, your imagination, your curiosity. Like, there's a lot of ways in which, um, people who don't have ADHD are, are kind of at, at a disadvantage, especially in the entrepreneurial arena, right? So, I would strongly encourage you to adopt the belief that nothing is wrong with you. You, you're not disordered. You're not like, nothing is, um, inherently wrong with you. You're perfectly fine as a human being. Your brain just happens to be wired a bit differently. The, the structure of your brain looks different than other fellow human beings, uh, and that's okay because with the right, uh, systems, the right environment, the right software, the right self-talk, there's ways that you can optimize that. And I am proof of that myself because again, thanks to ADHD, I'm able to do a lot of really cool stuff that other people just do not understand how I'm able to do them, right?
But anyway, that being said, I hope you enjoyed this overview. Um, if, if you enjoy this video, again, leave a comment, say hi. Uh, I will be making more follow-up videos regarding this topic in depth. Um, and, yeah, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next video. Peace, love.