3 Steps To Insane Mental Stamina

Keep your mind feeling fueled for hours on end

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” — Bruce Lee

You probably wish you could accomplish more in 24 hours than you’ve been able to lately. After a few hours working on your latest venture your eyes start glazing over and you call it quits for the day.

You aspire to more closely resemble those friends of yours, the ones who seem to have a never-ending supply of motivation and efficiency to keep themselves on track, running full speed towards their wildest dreams.

You constantly work strenuously, but you can not seem to find the line between working every waking moment and living in the moment.

You want to strive for your wildest aspirations, but you don’t want life to pass you by while you’re busy laying the bricks of your dreams down one by one.

If only there were a way to make such strategic use of your time that you could free up space for the people and passions you love the most. Here are 3 ways to build insane mental stamina that others will be in awe of.

Once you’ve built your mental stamina to a high functioning level you can harness it to do more with less.

Of course, you’ve heard that stress-reducing activities like yoga and organizing your workspace can free up your mind. However, an even better tool is the ability to train your brain to work for longer periods of time without fatigue.

Make Your Progress Visible To You

A lot of people make vision boards only to hang them up on the wall and forget they exist for any purpose aside from decoration. Although making your goals visible is helpful it's not enough to drive you towards them.

A more well-suited idea is to have the goals visible alongside your plan for reaching them. This way you’re held accountable, and you can see yourself inching forward with each small step.

For example, when I was in college I printed out my curriculum plan for the entire four years and tacked it on my tack board in my room. After every class I completed I would get the satisfaction of drawing a big black line through the course.

I was able to motivate myself and know that I did in fact have momentum towards the end goal even if it didn’t feel like it. With this method, you can visibly see when you’re 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% there.

I have used this same method in graduate school and I strongly stand by the psychological benefits of this approach to goals.

My graduate student account even lets me see a progress bar that keeps turning more and more green after each semester.

The green shows completed courses, and the highlighted white shows what is in progress. Upon completion of the semester, the white turns green. A visual like this lets you see how far you’ve come and encourages you to keep pushing forward.

This method is my favorite because every small checkmark gives you another big wave of energy.

Train Your Brain

In graduate school, it is not uncommon to have to study upwards of 8 hours on a given day. But just like an elite level athlete’s body was slowly but surely trained to perform at a certain desired level, so too can be your mind.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you probably haven’t heard about neuroplasticity. In simple terms, it is “the changeability of the nervous system.”

Essentially, there are 10 principles of neuroplasticity. One of them, most relevant to this article is called “use it an improve it.”

Essentially, the more time you spend doing one particular task or activity, the more your brain will promote your ability to perform at that thing.

But, how do you train your brain?

That is if you practice it well. This is because if you practice something wrong, your brain will learn it that way, and those wrong connections will be made stronger. A phenomenon called maladaptive neuroplasticity.

You may have heard of the Pomodoro technique. It is when you alternate your deep work with your break time in specific time blocks. Using this technique you can train for more advanced mental stamina.

For example, first, you could try 25-minute blocks of work, 15-minute break, and alternate. As you grow more accustomed to the workload you can increase to an hour of deep work with 10-minute breaks, and so on.

Before you know it, you’ll be able to work for hours on end with minimal breaks. Six years into my higher education journey I am accustomed to the overload of work, thus I can manage much more efficiently than in the beginning.

The truth is, just like working toward a six-pack, there is no simple secret or short cut, but you can get there with a cocktail of strategy and training.

Enter A Zone

This one is quite common, an oldie but a goodie. Find something in your environment that you associate with highly productive and focused work.

For example, whenever I study I play the audio of a Study With Me video on youtube. I have studied along to it so many times that right when it starts my focus enhances, I understand what I am there to do.

It could be audio, a smell, an atmosphere, etc. Find something consistent that gets you in the zone. It’s no different than athletes that have before competition rituals or students who chew the same flavor of gum when studying as when they take the test.

Final Thoughts

In a world that forces everyone to be constant consumers, you have a lot of things that call for your attention simultaneously. You can, however, rewire your brain to be as efficient as possible.

By taking these 3 easy implemented steps, placing a measurable progress tracker insight, training your brain, and finding your zone, you’ll be on your way to elite mental stamina in no time.