The Brain Truth the Self-Help Industry Hopes You Never Discover

Can’t seem to concentrate? The real cause may SHOCK you!

Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash

Before we dive in, permit me to relay a short story. Many many years ago I had a wonderful and slightly eccentric Italian boss. Her English was impeccable (way better than my Italian… which extends as far as ‘ciao Bella!’ in a faintly racist fashion), she was entirely hilarious and great fun. One day we sat down together to discuss my goals for the year - that tedious task corporates love to do, labouring under the delusion that lowly workers actually have agency over what they do, rather than running around prioritising whatever mad shit the craziest senior person is shouting the loudest for.

She opened the conversation with a question:

“Where would you like to fuckus?”

As you can imagine, I was a little taken aback. What did she mean by “fuckus”? Was this a come on? Should I speak to HR? I then remembered she was the company’s HR Director… so probably not.

Growing impatient, she asked again:

“Annie, where do you think your fuckus should be this year?”

Suddenly all was clear. I’d been thrown by her accent - she was talking, of course, about focus. And ever since then - in loving tribute - I have elected whenever appropriate to pronounce this word “fuckus”. Because it makes sense spelling-wise… and it really makes me smile.

So today we’re talking about fuckus.

How’s your fuckus?

I don’t know about you, but I feel everywhere I go these days I’m being told that as humans we’re going to the dogs because our brains have been ruined by technology and we’re morphing into lazy, gibbering morons who jab at screens like monkeys in cages. And that if you struggle to fuckus this is just PROOF of how incredibly fucked up you are, and you’ll likely end up living under a bridge eating rats unless you cure yourself NOW.

There are, of course, elements of truth to this. For reasons I’ll bore you with another time, I’ve spent a great deal of time reading research and talking to experts in UK government, technology, crime prevention, regulatory bodies and charities about the impact of technology in society. And some of it is legit terrifying.

But honestly - I don’t think my inability to fuckus at times is any different to when I was a child. A time when there were no mobile phones, computers only produced that weird green flashing text, maths classes involved abacuses (abaci?!) and we ate coal for dinner.

Sure - my brain often feels cluttered and sometimes I’m constantly overwhelmed by the to-do list, leaping from one task to another without finishing, in the fear that I should be doing something else. A good conversation for me is wide-ranging, jumping from topic to topic and making weird and wonderful connections, before looping back to something we discussed an hour ago.

I’m easily distracted - particularly when doing something I take no joy from. I’ll often try and ‘time box’ tasks - and usually end up failing and stressed. I will frequently find myself doom-scrolling as a way to avoid doing something ‘proper’, then hate myself for a while. And I have a terrible habit of spotting some random chore that ‘needs’ doing when I’m about to leave the house - meaning I am constantly late for everything.

In the past, it’s never particularly worried me. I file it under “being human”.

But recently, I’ve started to worry a little.

It started when I finally admitted to myself that I am unable to fuckus solidly for 10 hours a day - despite my job requiring not only this, but peak brain perfection at all times. Obviously everyone else can - so there must be something wrong with me.

Then a friend with similar thinking patterns to me asked if I thought I had ADHD. She’d started reading up on it and reckoned she probably did. And actually - given some of her traits - she may be right.

I immediately said no. I’ve known people all my life who have ADHD - some mildly, some in extremis. And it causes them real problems at times - problems I don’t have. I managed fine at school, could sit and revise for hours, got through my exams, carved out a good corporate career, turned up and did what I needed to do. I can be very disciplined when I put my mind to it.

But then something happened. Every time I went on Instagram (to procrastinate), I kept getting served up content with titles like “What High Functioning ADHD Looks Like In 40-something Women!”, showing an attractive female demonstrating heinous symptoms such as running late (poor time management!), over-committing (poor boundaries!) and - most alarmingly of all - lying on a sofa watching television (procrastination!).

In other words - everything I do. I duly dusted off my copy of James Clear’s Atomic Habits, downloaded a bunch of other time-management titles and set about trying to cure myself.

What if…. there’s nothing wrong with you?

Then I stumbled across something that changed my life. A throwaway comment in a book I was reading.

Our brains are made to be distracted.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment. Plus you’ll probably want to look at your phone or something because of your terrible fuckus problem.

On a basic level this is because… survival. As animals we can’t afford to just ignore the world around us. We are able to fuckus for a bit - but then we have to scan the horizon in case something might be about to kill us. If you’ve ever watched bird or wild animal engaged in eating something on the ground, you’ll have witnessed this. Nibble for a moment - then check around. And repeat.

According to research by Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley, (oooh a link - that distracted you didn’t it? Should you click it? Will you come back to it? Arrrrgh, there goes your fuckus!), our brains are wired to work in short bursts of attention even at a micro level. This research shows that our attention zooms in and out as much as FOUR TIMES PER SECOND.

Not only is this normal, but it’s actually A Good Thing. For example, our ability to take in lots of information rather than filter it all out means we’re much more likely to build new connections between it all. In other words, it’s what makes us creative. It’s what drives our ideas. But it requires us to step away from constantly beasting ourselves to JUST GET THINGS DONE.

You know that thing where you go for a walk and get distracted and suddenly think of a brilliant solution to the problem you couldn’t figure out earlier? This is because you’ve activated your Default Mode Network - the state where your mind wanders and finds connections that are blocked to you when you actively fuckus. Your Default Mode Network is really fucking important - and we live in a society that tells you the opposite.

The vital importance of non-fuckus

Of course, normalising distraction and procrastination is not good for the self-help industry, the corporate machine or capitalism. If you don’t think there’s something wrong with you, you’re not going to spend any money to fix it. Much better for you to be beating yourself up for being a bit shit - maybe borderline ADHD. Then you’re easily lured into the idea that with the right training or mindset you can find the Holy Grail of perfect fuckus, all day everyday.

The corporate world also relies on you believing it’s normal to fuckus for 8 hours a day - and that you must push and push to make it so. This is - of course - bollocks. And creates shoddy work, a lot of mind games, huge quantities of burnout and a lot dicking around. I believe this is why people love pointless meetings so much. Because nobody is capable of sitting down and fuckusing all day! Everyone needs a moment to stare out of the window and - if you’re really lucky - eat a biscuit while Barbara from Finance wangs on about ‘deliverables’.

It’s also worth remembering that office culture and hours are based largely on the factory system created by Henry Ford. And assembling cars for 8 hours a day is a very different proposition to actively using your brain for 8 hours a day. I’m hoping someone realises this soon - but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Let’s normalise distraction

The truth is, not only are we built to be distracted - but it’s important for us to get distracted.

So what if we just embraced this idea? What if we look at our brain’s incredible ability to create from distraction as a good thing? What if we accepted distraction as a natural and important part of being human - rather than using it as a stick to beat ourselves with? What if we celebrated the amazing skill of our Default Mode Network rather writing it off as a problem with laziness that needs to be solved?

Sure, that means you’d have to concede you’ll only be able to fuckus well each day on a handful of tasks - rather than waiting until you are a superhuman cyborg. And you’d also have to master that most terrifying notion - that you cannot control everything through willpower alone. But this might also be a good thing - and (gasp) make you more productive.

So now I’m on a mission to tell as many people as possible that there’s actually nothing wrong with you! Of course, it goes without saying that for some people there are real and genuine problems in this area that need addressing. But for the vast majority of us - a little distractedness and procrastination is just… normal.

To give you an example, this has been my morning thus far:

• Got up, let dogs out, made coffee

• Wanted to meditate - unloaded dishwasher instead

• Remembered I’ve run out of dishwasher salt. Booked supermarket delivery and figured out weekly shop

• Took coffee to my study. Stupidly looked at phone (usually banned until I’ve done my writing for the day). Replied to some messages.

• Sat down to work on my novel. Then started to think about the hat on Vinted I’ve been eyeing up and decided to do a quick Google search to see if it’s available anywhere else.

• Wrote my allotted words for the day, all the while stopping and thinking it was shit

• Turned attention to Substack - panicked about what I’m going to write this week and looked at 6 drafts of rough ideas.

• Started padding out this one - but I’m still thinking about the other 5 and whether they’re actually be better

• Worried about whether anyone will like this one as I’ve been losing a few subscribers recently and it’s making me really paranoid

• Went down rabbit hole of “How I grew my Substack into a $2 billion business in 4 weeks!” posts

I consider myself a (reasonably) normal human.

So this week I urge you to give yourself a break next time you think you’re fucking up and being lazy. Because chances are you’re not. You’re just being human in a world where being human is increasingly packaged up as a problem you can pay to solve.

I advise a walk instead.

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Morning team! You read the whole thing - well done you! How many times did you get distracted? Zero judgement here…

I’ll be honest, I am nervous hitting publish on this as a) I’m not a psychologist b) I want to recognise some people do have problems with this topic and c) I am in now way qualified to wade into the toxic debate about over-diagnosis of ADHD.

But… when I stumble across a gem that helps me, I feel it’s my duty to share the love!

As ever, I love your thoughts and musings. Did you work this out years ago? Am I behind the times? Or have you been desperately trying to ‘sort your shit out’ for years? What have you done this morning instead of what you planned to do? Bonus points for particularly off-piste distractions…