A&B #73

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Hey everyone,

Here are three popular book posts you may have missed from this week:

• 20 Amazing audiobooks that will educate and entertain you

• 25 Brilliant books that will make you a better investor

• 12 Valuable lessons from Indistractable by Nir Eyal

📚 Book Lessons:

This week's book is Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey.This book provides practical steps for managing your attention to become more productive and creative. If you enjoyed reading Indistractable by Nir Eyal, you'll love this book. Here are 3 lessons from the book:1) Close Your Mental Tabs To Increase Your Focus Think of your brain like the RAM of a computer.The more tasks it tries to do at once, the slower it gets. That's why if you want to speed it up, you need to close any unnecessary tabs or applications.Your brain works the same way. If you want to focus more of your attention on one task, you need to "close" the other areas you're thinking about. To do that, take a minute to reflect on what your brain is thinking about it. If it's a small task that can be done in under two minutes, do it now. If it's an errand you need to do later, write it down. If it's something you need to do later in the day, set a reminder on your phone to remind you in an hour or so.By closing all of these mental tabs, you'll free up your brain's attention to focus on the task at hand.2) Increase Your Focus Sleep & MeditateLet's still with the RAM analogy for a minute.One way to make your laptop run faster is to buy a better RAM component and switch it out with the slower one. Unfortunately, you can't switch out your brain for a faster one.But, you can do the second best thing–sleep and meditate.One study found that a good night's sleep can increase the size of your attentional space by over 50%. And if you're thinking about staying up late, don't. For every hour of sleep you miss, you lose about two hours of productivity the next day.Another study found that meditating for 45-minutes twice a week increased the working memory capacity of everyone who meditated by an average of more than 30%. So, if you're looking for a reason to start meditating, I'd say this is a good one.3) Distance Yourself From Distractions Your environment plays a huge role in your ability to focus.One study found that when a distraction is more than twenty seconds away from us, we're much less tempted to fall victim to it. Think about it like this, which scenario are you more likely to get distracted in:

• If your phone is right next to you while you're working or if your phone is upstairs while working you're in the downstairs home office?

To avoid falling victim to these impulsive actions, introduce a twenty-seconds delay to naturally create friction between yourself and the distraction and make it less tempting.

✅ Actionable Advice:

1) Close your mental tabs to free up your focus:

• Take a minute to reflect on what your mind keeps thinking about, then either do that task, write it down, or set a reminder to do it later.

2) Get more sleep & practice meditating:

• Getting a good night's rest can increase attention by over 50% while meditating for 45-minutes twice a week can increase it by over 30%.

3) Distance yourself from distractions:

• Make a plan to move attractive objects of attention (phone, laptop, gaming devices) about 20-seconds from your environment so you're less tempted by them.

🎧 Podcast Update:

I've been uploading more content onto YouTube, here are my 3 most popular videos:

• 5 Books To Understand Human Behavior

• Dr. Robert Glover: How To Stop Being Mr. Nice Guy

• Lessons from "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser

📖 Reading Lesson:

⭐️ Weekly Quote:Good books answer your questions.Great book question your answers.(source)

Thank you for your support everyone, I'll see you next Sunday!Read on,Alex W.