All protocols

Use open monitoring rather than over-focusing; access it by consciously dilating your gaze into panoramic vision to improve detection of multiple targets and reduce attentional blinks. Works immediately and can be practiced whether or not you have ADHD.

Before visual focus training or other sit-still tasks, do physical movements or allow recess-like activity to reduce the urge to move and improve subsequent ability to sit still and focus.

Reduce constant switching between streams of information, especially on smartphones, because it diminishes capacity for meaningful work. For adolescents, keep smartphone use under 60 minutes per day; for adults, about two hours per day or less is suggested as the upper limit before severe attentional deficits are likely.

Do not touch or wipe your eyes after touching other people or other surfaces, because the eyes are a primary entry point for bacteria and viruses.

2 grams; can reduce rhinitis/nasal obstruction, improve smell, improve sleep, reduce inflammatory cytokines, and reduce nasal itching. Caution for people with PKU/phenylalanine sensitivity.

If living far north in winter and lacking sufficient natural light, use a bright artificial light source in the morning.

He personally does not recommend blockers that remove a single wavelength, because they distort vision and are an overly simplistic solution.

For people whose hormone health does not do well with time-restricted feeding, eating more meals spread throughout the day, presumably smaller meals with the same caloric intake, may be more beneficial.

Caffeine in pill form does not break a fast.

Write down the things you are grateful for and then spend a moment thinking about or feeling into them. This common gratitude practice may be slightly more effective if preceded by increased autonomic arousal.

Center the practice on receiving genuine, wholehearted thanks rather than only expressing gratitude, because receiving gratitude appears especially potent for activating gratitude-related prefrontal circuits. A useful version is to recall a time when someone sincerely thanked you and focus on how it felt.

Use a desk lamp in front of you as a low-cost way to increase brightness in the workspace during early-day focused work.

If working in the middle of the night, keep light only as bright as needed to do the work in order to avoid suppressing melatonin and shifting circadian rhythm. If you must stay awake all night and are struggling to remain awake, turn on as many bright lights as possible despite the circadian tradeoff.

Wear a hat, including a baseball cap, to restrict the visual window and create a low-ceiling effect that may support focused, detailed analytic work.

Do creative, abstract, brainstorming work in a room with a higher ceiling, ideally during phase two of the day, or outdoors on a deck or patio to leverage an expansive visual environment.

Do detailed analytic work in a lower-ceiling environment, even if done later in the day.

Avoid working in environments with loud, ongoing air conditioner, heater, fan, or ventilation noise because it impairs cognition, increases fatigue/stress, and may damage the auditory system long-term.

Use pink noise only briefly, such as around 45 minutes when focus is waning; avoid extended use over an hour.

Use brown noise only briefly, such as around 45 minutes when focus is waning; avoid extended use over an hour.

Do not position your computer facing the door; face the wall instead to reduce interruption-driven distraction.

For any habit you want to adopt or re-adopt, mentally rehearse the exact sequence of steps required from start to finish; do it once or maybe twice, eyes closed if desired but not required. Also include the 10–15 minutes before the habit and the immediate events or feelings after it.

Put the habits that require the most activation energy and have the highest limbic friction into the first 0–8 hours after waking.

Once a habit becomes easy and reflexive, vary its time of day somewhat randomly to test and strengthen context independence.

After the initial 21 days, stop deliberate acquisition and assess which habits now occur automatically; do not add new habits until the current set has become reflexive and sustainable.

Immediately after catching yourself doing a bad habit, perform a different adaptive behavior right away to weaken the old habit loop through temporal mismatch. Make the replacement something positive and fairly easy to execute.

Choose play involving dynamic, multidirectional movement rather than strictly linear movement; examples include jumping, angled movement, ducking, leaping, and sports like soccer, provided you do not take them too seriously.

Choose activities that let you adopt different roles within the activity rather than rigidly linear ones, to leverage play for neuroplasticity; chess is given as one example.

Wash hands to reduce spread of germs, especially after higher-risk public exposures such as the grocery store, subway, or public playgrounds where there may be germs, pesticides, or herbicides.

Look for probiotic products with independent validation, since labels may not match contents; prefer reputable brands with stronger quality control; when possible, choose the exact probiotic used in a well-designed study for your target symptom or indication, then experiment personally to see whether it works for you.

If considering probiotics for a medical issue, consult a physician because the evidence can be difficult for non-scientists to evaluate.