How to Remove Brain Fog and Have Mental Clarity

1. Introduction: One of the most frustrating feelings is when you sit down to work on a project that you've been looking forward to or that you really need to get done. It's very important and this thick, just awful brain fog sets in and completely ruins the whole process. About 90% of my work is creative work and stuff that, that forces me to rely very heavily on my brain function when my mind is not working right, it's a bad day. So over the past couple years, I've become very accustomed with brain fog and I've developed a number of strategies to help get through that and to help still be productive even when that thick fog just hits you right out of nowhere. So I'm going to offer you some solutions, especially when it feels like you're trying to swim through peanut butter. And these have worked very well for me. And some of them are lifestyle and some of them were actually more like in the moment when you're experiencing brain fog. The other thing is you'll learn some things that could be causing recurring brain fog. And that's an aspect that most people are unfamiliar with. And it took me a little while to kind of dial in on that, but it helped a lot. So we're going to talk about that more towards the end of this class. So make sure you stick around for that because it's those lifestyle changes can make a big difference on your mental clarity and your mental capacity for the project portion of this class is gonna be very simple and very easy. All I want you to do is take one thing from this class that you've learned that you need to implement or eliminate and posted down in the comments and say, hey, here's what it is, here's what I'm gonna do about it and kind of move on from there. And then you can check in with other people. And other people can check in with you and say, hey, how's it going? Are you doing this thing that you said you'd be doing? Has it helped? Things like that where we're kind of building a community here. And so we're, we're working on staying connected with each other. And so by commenting down below and putting that in there, it's going to be a great way for us to be able to do that. 2. Meet the glymphatic system: Meet the lymphatic system. Now, when it comes to this, so a whole brain fog and mental clarity side of things. When I'm talking about brain fog and mostly thinking the sluggish, just lethargic just can't can't make those quick decisions as quick reactions and like not, not performing at our best. There's a lot of things that can hinder mental clarity and there's a lot of definitions for brain fog, but that's specifically what I'm thinking of. That thick kind of just can't quite get going in your day. And the cool part about all of this is most of what causes that is actually a physical, it's physical things happening inside of your brain. And if we can learn to remove the obstacles that hinder or prevent our brain and our body from doing what it naturally does, which is detoxified itself. Then we'll find a lot of solutions that are very foundational and very simple, and they're not exactly rocket science. You just kinda have to do them if you want the results. And so part of what the lymphatic system's job is, is to basically be a trash collector for your brain. It simply goes through your brain and flushes out all the bad proteins and things that, that slow your brain down. Because your brain at a very basic cellular level is just connections, electrical and chemical connections between each other and between the neurons. And so this disk lymphatic system helps everything to run smoothly and to operate well, the key is not to hinder this process because like I said, it, it does it very well on its own. But we've just kind of our lifestyle can sometimes create blockages and create things that makes this system not operate well. So let's go ahead and jump into how to remove those and what those are. 3. Sleep: Sleep. This is by far the most important thing out of everything in this video that I'm going to share with you. And again, it's not rocket science. This is simply how your body works. And so if you don't line up with that, you will suffer the repercussions of it. So let's look at what sleep does and why we need it and how much we need of it. And what happens when we don't get it. It doesn't matter if you do everything else in this video. If you don't get enough sleep, you'll lose a massive portion of your mental clarity, or at least your mental, or at least the potential for a lot more mental clarity if the lymphatic system is the garbage disposal for your brain, sleep is the enabler of that garbage disposal. It is the power behind it. It's what allows it to operate well and to operate smoothly and to get its job done. Think of a normal trash root and you decide to cut off the amount of trucks that they can use, you cut it in half? Well, they're not going to collect all the trash. And then the next week, same thing, next week, same thing. And before, you know, you have a massive buildup of all this garbage just hanging out in your brain, clogging everything up and it can't go anywhere. Getting adequate sleep is like the key function of what enables the lymphatic system to do its job. There was a research study done in Boston University where they found that inside of the brain there's this cerebral spinal fluid inside of the brainstem. And when you sleep it's kinda cool. It's like a tide I like Washington and washes out. It helps the brain get rid of all of this accumulated metabolic trash. Some of the trash that it removes is these, these potentially toxic proteins that buildup on the ends of our connections inside of our brain. And it slows down those connections so they don't, they don't fire as fast. Adequate sleep is classified as 7-8 h of sleep. If you get less than that, then you're chopping off your brain's ability to detoxify itself and you're removing half of the trash trucks. And so what happens is you get people that sleep five or 6 h a night and they're, they're cutting this process short. This detoxification period. Brain gets more and more and more buildup. And what you'll notice is that they can function pretty decent physically. Like, like you'll be tired but you'll be okay. But as soon as they tried to do any sort of problem-solving or as soon as stress is presented in their life, they just, they don't have the mental agility to handle it because they haven't given their brain this ability to clean itself. I'm really throwing around a lot of weird metaphors here. There's a fantastic book that talks about this. It's called why we sleep. And one of the things that he says that it's really stuck with me is that 6 h of sleep versus 8 h of sleep. Those last 2 h are like the equivalent of 50% of your sleep quality. And that's when your brain is classifying all and storing all of the days, memories and moments and all the learning process and all of that stuff. And if you're still not quite sure, like, hey, I feel like IF function pretty, pretty okay with 6 h of sleep or five or whatever else. Let me share some of the science with you of why this is such a big deal. Because there are, there are physical things that happen inside of your brain that research has shown over and over and over and over. And it doesn't matter what your experiences. This is simply fact. One of those things is like I said, your brain has transmitters and it's like neurons and things like that, that fire connections between each other. And when you don't get enough sleep, proteins build up on those connections, it literally slows down. They've measured this, they've measured the connection between those neurons and the speed of those connections. When you're sleep deprived, those connections take longer to go between them. So your brain is literally slowing down and literally it's literally being clogged up. And that's why that feeling of brain fog, that sluggish like you're just like, Oh, just have this wall that I just can't break through. And if I could then I'd be, you know, that feeling is literal like that. That's literally what's happening inside of your mind. And this is where subjective experience comes in because sleep is subjective, I can't compare how I feel to how you feel. And so there's no real way of cataloging. It is just I feel normal, pretty much. We tend not to notice a slow, gradual downward trend. But when I learned that this is a literal physical build-up inside of my brain. And no matter how I think I feel, if I don't get adequate sleep, it is happening and it is there no matter what studies have proven it, then it's like, okay, I should probably start doing this. So let's move out of the, maybe the nitty-gritty neurons and brain trash collectors stuff and allergies. Let's talk about something called sleep cycles per second. Sleep cycles are the periods of time where you kinda go through a wave of you're more awake at some parts, parts of the night and then you go into deep sleep and you're in a much more deep state of sleep. And you've probably experienced this when you wake up. And it just takes you ages to wake up. Like you're just you're groggy and you feel horrible for like an hour and you've also probably experienced it where you wake up and bang. I mean, you are up, you are good to go. You are, I mean, just clear mind right off the bat. What makes the difference between that is that if you wake up and you're super groggy is probably because you woke up at a period in your sleep cycle where you are at your deepest sleep, where you were very, very deepened sleep. And then when you wake up and you're just, you're boom, you're ready to go. When that happens is when you're at the point of your sleep cycle where you are most awake. This is really, really awesome because we can actually learn to wake up at the correct time. Because sleep cycles run in 90 minute increments. So the best way to do this is just subtract down from when you go to sleep and make sure that your alarm lands on a 90 minute increment of that time. So like if you don't want to worry about calculating all that stuff, There's a really cool app called sleep cycle. And what it does is it runs through your watch preferably if you have one. If not, it just uses the microphone on the on the phone. If it's next to you and it listens to you sleep and if it's through your watch, it's much more accurate, but it will notice the sleep cycles and we'll track them for you. And you set an alarm in a 30-minute time window. So you just say, Hey, I'm going to want to wake up between here and here. And it will wake you up during that period where it senses that you're at your most awake point. When I started using this, I noticed an immediate difference because I would wake up and my mind was sharp. I was clear headed. I could just like get up and go ahead. I wasn't groggy or anything. They actually show you diagrams in the app of how this all works. And you can see I'm like, I'm like awake and I start to dip down and bang. He wakes me up. So that's more of like a strategy you can use moving out of the lifestyle aspect of sleep. But all of those things combined make a massive, massive difference. And like I said, this is probably the most important part of this course. So make sure that whatever you do, this, this is the foundation. Really try to hone in on this because you spend a third of your life sleeping. So you might as well do it right. 4. Exercise: The next thing we can do to allow our lymphatic system to operate at peak performance, to detoxify our brain basically is we can exercise. Exercise is probably the second best way to boost your lymphatic system and to make sure that it is functioning at peak performance and cleaning the dirty corners of your brain pretty much if you've ever had a intense workout at the gym or a quick burst of aerobic exercise, you've probably experienced that mental clarity and the agility that, that alertness that comes with that, That's your lymphatic system ramping up and doing its job. The other really cool thing that exercise does is it releases a lot of endorphins in your brain, which has numerous benefits. One of them would be it allows you to get into flow a lot quicker. The state of mind where you kinda lose sense of time and you're just so focused in That's the flow stays really awesome. It boosts productivity, mental clarity, things like that. And endorphins make you feel awesome. Like, sign me up one book that I was reading. The author said something along the lines of if I told you that with ten or 15 min of your time every day, that you could look better, feel better, have mental clarity and better productivity and better discipline, wouldn't you do it? And it was just like, yep, that's extra. So it's kind of important. The cool thing about exercise is that there's also been extensively studied and they've found that it has a significant effect on the, the waste build-up inside of your brain. This is up to you. But one thing that I tend to do is whenever I'm working for a long period of time, when I tend to get that brain fog that I need that mental clarity back, That's usually good time for me to just stop for like 15 or 20 min, go, do a quick run, go hit the weights, do something that allows my mind to get off two off of its work and do something physical and spleen difficult, something that's strenuous, something that pushes myself. And so it has a double effect. It's taking a break, removed myself from the mental work. It's also creating a ton of blood flow to my brain because that's what exercise does. And it's also detoxifying it and cleansing it and helping remove the waste products from it. So it's like this is kind of a no-brainer and it's sucks, right? Like exercise is a difficult discipline to have most people don't do it. And I understand why is because it is very difficult to get into. And if you really, really don't enjoy exerting energy and exerting herself. It's a pain. And it's yes, it's difficult, but it is very worth it. And I went for a long period of time without it. And I'm starting to notice that that buildup has gotten stronger. And it's like, okay, well, this kind of stinks, but I'm going to have to do some very uncomfortable things. So my mind is like, I can use that 20 min to go do this or that, or that hour of this I could go I could spend on my video or whatever else. But it's like no, it's like doing this even though it's hard, even though it's gonna take some of my time, it's going to dramatically increase my mental agility for the rest of the day. And I'll be able to work faster and more efficiently. And it's going to make up for its time, like five times as much. At least if you don't like exercising, you're probably like, Okay, what is the minimum that I can get away with? So I can get these awesome benefits. I can feel great, look great and get all this anyway, get all that stuff, and still not spend an hour or 2 h at the gym every day because that's a lot. The minimum of exercise to get all of these amazing benefits is 25 min of aerobic exercise a day. Aerobic exercise is a little bit broad and can vary a lot. Um, so I would suggest playing around with a little bit. You can also get very similar results from shorter but very intense workouts with very little rest periods and just pushing yourself to the max and very quickly do a little bit of digging on that. What works best for you? Maybe a run works better. Maybe you want to go to the gym and you want to just like exhaust yourself very quickly and work very hard on certain muscle groups that can also be very effective. So this is a little bit of fluctuation in that. But again, the minimum is 25 min of aerobic exercise. I would not go much less than 20 min if you really want these results no matter what you're doing. And among the other things that I mentioned that exercise benefits us with is it's going to help you sleep better at night. You're going to be much more relaxed and have deeper sleep, which is going to compound the sleeping effectiveness and the lymphatic system, again, which is pretty awesome. Like these things kinda build on each other and they kinda compound. Exercise also has this amazing ability of reducing stress, like literally in our brains if flushes cortisol out of our bloodstreams. And a lot of people don't realize this, but that's like a huge aspect of what makes you feel so incredible. After working out. 5. Add a little risk, but not too much: A little risk, but not too much. This is something I've used a little bit more recently and it's helping me out in a number of ways. There's a few caveats to it, so I want to clarify these for you, but I've noticed that when I went to tag on a little bit of risk with whatever I'm doing, a little bit of a consequence, or the flip side of that is a reward of some kind. It tends to, it tends to focus me in a, quite a bit more. I've experienced this a lot, especially when there's something that I really want to do. Like i'll, I'll be struggling with like an edit or something throughout the day and I'm just I cannot focus. I just haven't having a hard time pushing through that block. And then maybe a friend calls me. He's like, Hey, do you want to go play tennis this evening? And I'm like, whoa, that'd be really, really fun. Yes, I would love to, but I'm only going to come if I finished my work. And it's amazing how just that one little thing bang like I focused on, I have a lot of clarity and I know what I have to do. Okay, That's really interesting. I noticed that a few times and so I started trying to consciously implement that. And a lot of people talk about this. I'm thinking specifically of Steven Kotler in his book, The Art of impossible. And in there he talks about it and he calls it the challenge skills. Sweet spot is where we do whatever we need to do to make the task a little bit outside of our comfort zone, a little bit on the edge of what we know. That way we're, we're kind of still exploring new territory, but there's also some risk to it. Like if we fail, we're not in our comfort zone unnecessarily, so we don't really know what's going to happen. So that little, little tension of risk slash reward is often enough to wake your brain up and go, Well, hey, I need to focus because there's risk here and your brain will focus incredibly well underneath that. Now this is very controversial and I've done a bit of digging on this and it feel like I understand that decently well. But the controversy is that this whole thing of I work better under pressure. And then there's tons of studies that say, no, you actually don't. You make lots of mistakes under pressure. The thing to remember here is that pressure doesn't make better or worse. It usually makes focus or fragmentation. While pressure can be a good thing, it has to be very, very cautiously applied because it can quickly turn into stress. And whenever pressure makes you stressed, usually a causes fragmentation inside of our minds that hyper alertness is actually not good because it forces, because it makes our brains fixate on only what it knows, only what's safe. And when we do that, we lose possibilities. We lose the big picture. Pressure is not good for creative work. If you're doing creative work, have a deadline, but do not place the deadlines so tight that it stresses you out. Because again, stress make your brain focus on only what it knows, which is the opposite of creativity. Creativity is pulling things out of your mind that we're not placed in there. It's creating new things based on these thousands of things of input that you've taken in. And so when you're stressed, you're not gonna be able to find these connections and all this stuff of creativity. And that's really bad. So make sure you don't do that. And so again, we hit this challenge skills sweet spot where we want it to stretch us, but we don't want it to snap us. It needs to be just outside of our comfort zone that it's a little bit risky and it pushes us, but not so much that we're overwhelmed by. This is going to vary a lot. Like it's really hard to break this down. Steven Kotler says about, it should be about 4% more than what you normally do, or 4% outside of your comfort zone, or harder than you normally go. And it's like, oh wow, that's really difficult to implement into my life. I'll let you play around with that. I just kinda wanted to provide that information for me. I've noticed that when I went to attract my time, That's one of the best ways to help, help me move forward and create that competition or that, that competitiveness. And so I'll do a mundane task and I'll record the amount of time that it took and then I'll record it the next time and then the next time. And then I can kind of compare those. And that creates just a little bit of that. Like, who can I do better than last time? For me, I use this a lot with video editing because wow, Yeah, video editing is very long and very mundane, and exhausting and brain fog is a huge component of it. So what I'll do is I'll, I'll pick an n time of how long it should probably take. And then I'll bump it up just a little bit and I'll be like, All right, this is my goal. If I mess it, it's okay, but it should be done in this amount of time. Now it gives me just enough of a push that keeps me moving and it keeps me focused when I zone out, I snapped back to your pretty quick, but yet it doesn't create such a intense level of stress if I miss, it, fragments my focus. So that's personally how I do it. And then I record my time usually of editing and how long it took for this video, in this video. And then I can kind of gauge off of that. 6. Check your diet: Let's look at another aspect of mental clarity and that is one that was not expecting. Check your diet. And I'll be honest, I was very skeptical of how much diet could affect brain function and like energy levels and just all of that stuff. I kinda had the attitude of like, I'll just power through it no matter what. And the more I've researched and the more experience I've gotten with this. That's just not entirely true because there's a really good chance that if you're not functioning at peak performance, maybe your body is trying to tell you something like that. That is a possibility. Like for me, I used to go to coffee shops to write video scripts. And I just noticed that every time I went, I just like got such a thick fog in my mind that I could not focus. I just couldn't do it. And it turns out that that much sugar and that much milk, just like absolutely do not work when it came to doing brain stuff. So follow the trends and find the patterns and things that emerged from that. It can be very difficult because there's a delay effect. You like you eat something and then 3 h later you can't focus. I mean, like what's going on. But if you just kind of mentally, you have that awareness of keeping an eye out for it. You'll begin to notice patterns and it can be really, really helpful actually, this is tests and things that you can take that would actually help illuminate some of this as well. And just basic research on what like cognitive ability for the majority of people, what slows it down. So highly processed foods usually are not good. For a lot of people that I knew milk or dairy is not great for brain work. I know for myself the things that really stand out is folate from processed foods does not convert very well in my body that I learned from tests that I took. The other thing is dairy products, especially like a lot of milk and caffeine and sugar. That mixture doesn't work. I don't know why and it's really frustrating, but I've learned this over a long period of trial and error and it's worth checking into. Definitely recommend you check into it and see and just keep an eye out for it. And the other aspect of this is that sometimes when you have that brain fog, it's because you actually need to eat something. I've noticed that a lot for myself. I burning so many calories when I am doing strictly creative work. Like it is, It's bizarre. I don't understand it, but like so after a couple of hours of intense focus, I'm just like, I feel awful and usually all I need in that is just a healthy snack. And it'll pick me write out those two aspects of that, like giving your body the fuel that it deserves and that it needs for high performance. And be aware of the things that may not quite fit. The things that don't, that don't mesh well with your biochemistry. And the other side of it is like keep an eye out for the things that maybe should work, but you just kinda notice a pattern that is just it doesn't, doesn't do the job that it's supposed to. So maybe you have to slowly kinda cut back on stuff for a trial period where you decide, Hey, I'm not going to do this or I'm not going to do that and just kinda see what happens. Track your process. 7. Nature walk: I would be completely remiss if I didn't, I bring in another aspect of mental clarity and removing brain fog. And that is a nature walk, a good walk in nature, it does a couple of things. One, it gets you out of your environment when we are really focused on something and we get brain fog with it, chances are we needed to attach. We need a break and we need something that is going to distract us or something to occupy us that doesn't overload our brain, but it takes our mind off of what we're doing. And again, a great way of doing that is, like I said earlier, exercise going for a walk, expanding your, your, your vista visually, not just inside of your mind, actually has a pretty profound effect on your creativity and things like that. And so this gives a great incubation period and kinda detachment phase. And the other really cool thing that your brain does when you take a walk in nature, specifically in nature, your brain literally releases like feel-good chemicals, endorphins and serotonin and things like that that help you relax and calm you, as well as reducing cortisol, which is stress. And I found that interesting. I was like, Okay, this has helped me a lot. But when you realize that it's actually like, kind of like scientific than you realize that it can help other people as well, because it's a natural function that your body does for me, I do this at least once a day because I'll hit a block and I'll just leave and I just go for a walk. And there's just something incredibly therapeutic about it and something incredibly like clarifying about it. It's hard to describe. But if you do a lot of creative work or knowledge work, you're probably familiar with this if you've ever done it. If you take a look at extremely prolific authors, at least some of the best of their time, were renowned for their nature walks or renowned for going into a cabin in the woods. And just like being there surrounded by that environment. And like CS Lewis was incredibly religious about his walks. Like like don't talk to him before he had as his 10:00 A.M. walk. And he attributes a lot of his ideas and success and author abilities to that very religious activity every day no matter what or another. My favorite example of this was there was a prime minister back in the 1800s. And he would, he had this strange practice. He would go out and like manually chop down trees like with an ax and it was like a whole day affair kinda thing. And he's like the busiest man in the world, right? This is very important for him. He had to clear his mind and this was the best way for him to do it. Or I believe it's Bill Gates that is very famous for his think week. He takes a notepad and a pencil and he goes out into a cabin in the woods for I think two weeks and just boom, completely detaches. And that's where a lot of the amazing ideas that they have had generated from. 8. What to expect: Now I've laid out some very intriguing things here for you to think about. Some of them lifestyle changes, some of them awareness, steering clear of certain things and some of them just enabling your body to do it. It naturally does. Now I want to, I want to clarify something as well. And that is, in my own experience is this could be different, but in my own experience, especially if there is build-up where you have neglected some of these things. It will take a few days of implementing all of this to gain that mental clarity back e.g. about two weeks ago, I had some very close friends of mine come down to my area for a little over a week, needless to say, we did not sleep very much during that period and I did not exercise really. I walked around, we went to cities and whatever else, but not a whole lot. And after that trip, after they were gone, it took me about two to three days. A very consistent activity and sleep like a lot of sleep to get back to that capacity that I was at before. So there is an aspect of this that if you have neglected these things, if there is buildup, it will take a little bit of time to get there. And when you get there, you will notice like because if you ever go back even for one day, you'll notice like for me if I if I lose a lot of sleep for one to two nights, I will wake up in the morning and I will instantly know that I will not be nearly as effective mentally in the morning and oftentimes when I wake up and I feel that I don't even try to fight it. I usually turn my alarm off and I go back to bed and asleep until whenever I need to, until I can wake up and I can I don't know. I'm so used to it that I can just tell when I'm mentally clear. For me, it's like this isn't necessarily something you can just like push through or fight. I'm gonna beat it down. Usually it just like you have to play by its rules. At least in my experience, if you try this for a day or two and you just I didn't really notice anything. Give it at least a week like probably at least a week to two weeks of at least the sleep part of it. At least try to get seven to 8 h of sleep for at least a week to two weeks before you throw that one out because that is a huge part of all of this. 9. Class Project: For the project portion of this class, as I mentioned earlier, what I would like you to do is take something that you are going to implement or something that you've been neglecting and you need to, or that you need to just cut out and put it down in the comments and right below what it was and how you plan on going about doing whatever it is. Whether you're eliminating something or implementing something, just clearly lay that out in the comments. And It's a way of our community here can kind of keep each other accountable and check in on each other and say, Hey, how's it going? Or maybe you can post updates or something like that. Hey, this worked really well for me or this one, not so much for me. I didn't really notice a benefit there. So pretty simple project, but something that is gonna be very helpful and very encouraging for others as well. One other aspect I needed to cover very quickly is that sometimes when there is mental fatigue or burnout or a lot of brain fog, especially consistently. It could be that it is a misalignment of your values and your goals that they are not quite matching. And so there's friction that's caused there between those two. And so to remove that, these other things that I mentioned in this video aren't really going to help that much because that's at a very core identity level of who you are and what you're passionate about. So if you want to understand that aspect of all of this and goals and vision and passion and dreams. Check out the class I did on goals. It's pretty long and it's very extensive, but it is incredibly detailed. And it is like everything that I have ever learned with setting goals, setting values and dreams, and pursuing them and actually creating a plan that works that allows you to actually achieve them in a very, very quick amount of time. And I give tons of examples in there of here's this goal. Let's say I'm going to do this. How would I go about this process? What is, how would I plug this into this system and get my desired outcome. So very, very effective. And I think it'll help you out in a lot of ways. I would highly recommend that course to you. Yeah. Those sort of things have changed a lot of my life and that's why I'm presenting it back to you guys. Trying to build a little bit of a community here and help encourage others along this path. And so they can kind of pick up where I'm currently at and then I have to go through my whole process. So hopefully this course helped you and hopefully some of my other courses will as well.