How to use blinking to control time and improve your attention and focus

[cheryl]

How to use blinking to control time and improve your attention and focus - Thriving on Overload​

There are many ways we can improve our attention and focus through simple activities and approaches.

Andrew Huberman’s excellent podcast Huberman Lab has many great insights, a lot of them packed into this more than 2 hour session on ADHD & How Anyone Can Improve Their Focus.

You can do fast, what are called spontaneous blinks and they’re always coordinated between the two eyes or you can do long blinks like when you go to sleep at night, you do one very long blink, and I’m not being facetious. When you go to sleep at night, you are shutting your eyelids and you are limiting the amount of information coming in and your perception of time starts to drift as you go into sleep. Your perception of time changes from very fast, at one moment to very slow meaning the frame rate at which you are analyzing information dreaming, etcetera, is variable when you were in sleep, sometimes it’s very fast. Meaning you experienced things in slow motion.

Sometimes it’s very fast. In waking to your experience of time can sometimes be very fast sometimes be very slow. Typically the more alert you are, the higher the frame rate, your thin slicing your experience. You’ve probably had this happen. If you’re ever very stressed and you’re waiting for something or somebody, it seems like it takes forever because your frame rate is higher you’re analyzing time more finely. Conversely, if you are very relaxed or even sleepy, you wake up and you have to think of all the things you have to do. It will seem like the world is going by very, very fast and that you are moving very slow. Time is going at the same rate, but your perception of time is what’s changed. Believe it or not.