Reclaiming Time and Ditching Overwhelm: A Guide to Doing Less Better

I mean, I think the most important thing is really trusting yourself. I think focus is a skill. I think just like you could say, like, well, I'm not good at tennis, but if you've never tried, if you've never practiced, sure you can. You just need to get out there and practice and you need to figure out what, like, works for you. I think it's the same thing for focus. I think it's so easy for people to say, I can't focus. And even like, we based a lot of the book on neurodivergent principles and we really dove into how, I think really embracing, like, my brain works differently. But that doesn't mean you can't focus on it just means it's going to look different for you than whatever that traditional advice is. Get up at 5 in the morning, do this, do that, whatever that is. It's not that you can't do it, it's that that doesn't work for you. And so I think my advice is like, just really embrace your brain, your joy, your energy, and find what works for you. If you work best at three in the morning, great. If you work best in by blocking out one full day a week to just focus in for a full day, great. You know, like, whatever it is for you, like, embrace that and don't think like, oh, but I should be doing it this way. Hey.

Hey. It is our lucky day today on the podcast. We're speaking with an old friend, client, collaborator of mine, Megan Flatt. We have known each other for over a decade. Primarily. We were originally introduced in the online consulting space and have stayed in touch all of this time. And so it is a beautiful thing to be here with you today, introducing you to Megan Flat, or maybe you already know her. So diving into a conversation with Megan Flat, who recently wrote a book called Focused Reclaim your time, ditch overwhelm and and do less better. I am really excited for this conversation because who doesn't need to reclaim some time, ditch the overwhelm. And I am all about doing less better so we can get the results that we are going for and the results that we want, not all the other things which this focus thing is hard. In this world that we are living in today, you have a lot of opportunities, you have a lot of things that you can do and that you could spend your time on and then distractions galore because your attention is a valuable thing. So Megan is here to help us today. Megan is a business growth strategist on a mission to make entrepreneurship easier. She believes you can, yes. Have a thriving business, a community and a life. And you don't need more time. You know what you need? You need more focus, my friend. She's the founder of Focus Sessions and the author of focused. Reclaim your time, ditch overwhelm and do less better. She started Focus sessions, a science backed system to provide dedicated distraction free virtual co working to help you get your most important work done. This monthly membership helps you find your focus, create a solid plan, and stay out of overwhelm. Yes, please. Megan's favorite affirmation is you have exactly the time you need need in focus. She shows you how to find your focus, what to focus on, and how to make the time for the focus. We got to get this focus game on. I like it. Besides helping business owners focus, Megan's obsessed with lattes, post it notes and romance novels. Outside of work, you can find her focus. Turn to her husband and two kids, probably near the water in the San Francisco Bay area. And we're gonna link up in the show notes all the places that you can find Megan and her new book. But first, let' chat it up. Here comes Megan. Megan Flat, welcome to the show.

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm so honored.

Oh, it is the best hanging out with you. You know, when you like, see someone you haven't seen in a long time and it just feels perfect.

Yes, I totally do. I feel the same way.

Oh, so easy. Love conversation with you. Love hanging out. And I'm really excited to talk today about the new thing that you put into the world this year, which is your book.

Yay. I know, it's really exciting. It feels really good.

Oh, it's so good. Okay, tell us the name of it.

So it's called Focused. It's about reclaim your time, ditch overwhelm and do less better.

Do less better. Reclaim your time, ditch the overwhelm. Yes, yes, yes. How did this book come to be?

Well, yeah, so I've been a business coach for over a decade now and I've always, you know, my clientele, busy parents, you know, people that are active in their communities. They've got a lot going on. And I think so many of us, right, we went into entrepreneurship because we wanted the flexibility, we wanted the be able to balance our time with the other things that were important to us. But, but so many people in entrepreneurship, there's like joke or a meme that goes around that entrepreneurs are the only people that are willing to work 80 hours a week to keep from working 40 hours. A week? Yes. Right. But I found that the more I was working as an entrepreneur, the more I was working with my clients was that everything around entrepreneurship, all the, like, memes and conventional wisdom and everything was around, like, you have to hustle harder, you have to, you know, and even I was looking up some quotes to include in the book and I looked, you know, I just googled, like quotes on entrepreneurship. And the stuff that came up was like, entrepreneurs never sleep and like, do the hustle and entrepreneur, you know, sacrifice is important and all this stuff. And I just, I feel like, especially post Pandemic and all of these things, like, we're starting to kind of maybe push back on that a little bit and question that a little bit. And what I had been helping my clients do is, okay, you don't need more time, you need more focus. You need to know exactly what you need to be working on, where you need to be focusing your time. And instead of like getting pulled in a million different directions and kind of getting to the end of the day and feeling like, okay, I was busy all day, but what did I actually accomplish? If we can flip that and say, okay, this is the time where I need to focus, this is what I need to focus on, then we can be a lot more efficient with our time and then we can get that flexibility back. We can spend time with our families, we can volunteer in our communities, you know, all the other things that are important to us.

Oh, so good. And I feel like, I mean, knowing you for maybe a decade now.

Over, I think over. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, it's crazy. That's so cool.

I love that.

Also knowing you for this long, you've kind of always lived and prioritized your life and your business that way. Do you agree with.

Definitely, I think definitely. And, and because when, when I first started, you were one of my first business mentors. When I first started working with you, I had these little tiny kids at home. I remember being in a, in a kind of a different business program and kind of the first business program I, I had done. And there were all these people that were saying, you know, saying things like, oh, I spent eight hours today and completely redid my website. And meanwhile, you know, meanwhile I have a four month old and I was working a day job, you know, and I had like a 45 minute nap time to like, eat, you know, go to the bathroom and like run an entire business. And yet I was still saying, like, well, what's wrong with me? Like, why aren't I more productive? Why Aren't I getting more done? You know, And I just, I think I realized early on that, that it was, it wasn't about, like, what's wrong with me. It's about like getting more realistic, like getting. I've been talking a lot this week. I, I did a workshop for another group and we were talking about how to avoid burnout. There's all sorts of different definitions of burnout and great books on burnout. And. But my definition of burnout is when your expectations don't align with your reality. Right. And if we think about like even like mechanical burnout, like if you think about like your bicycle, like if your bike wheel isn't aligned with where it needs to be and you, and you keep writing it, and you keep writing it, you are going to literally burn out that wheel. You're going to burn out that gear. That's where I was. And I've had that multiple times in my business. You know, I had that with my four month old, you know, 12 years ago. And I, and I had that a couple of years ago where I was having the success that I thought that I'd been striving for. I was having the financial success. I was, you know, I was doing the thing and I just kept thinking like, okay, if I just work a little harder when I just get to here, things will get easier. And the thing was, is that I wasn't, I wasn't aligned and I was, I was burning myself out.

And if I just get to here, it will get easier. And you, you mentioned you were hitting the financial targets. Did the milestone just keep moving for you? Did it just keep, like, okay, I did that. What's next? What's next? What's next?

For sure, for sure. I think the milestones kept moving and like, there's so many different ways to, to judge success. Right?

Yeah.

So I was hitting the financial milestones, but I was also working myself to the bone. Right. So it was like I wasn't hitting the, those flexibility milestones that we had. We as entrepreneurs had kind of seek out. So. But I kept thinking like, well, if I hit this measure of success, then I'll have my time back. But what I realized and what Amber McHugh preaches is like, you got to flip that.

Tell us more about that. You've got to flip it.

Meaning, like the time piece has to come first. Like, the time is your container. And I use this, I use this analogy in the book about, and I think that people do that. We do this. And this is kind of what I was just describing a little bit too. I use this analogy in the book. Like, imagine you want to make a big pot of soup, right? And you go to the farmer's market and you get all the, like, amazing ingredients, and you've got an herb garden, and you're, you're getting all of the great herbs, and you get this huge six quart stock pot. You know, you get it out and you get it on the stove, and you're simmering things all day, and you make this, like, gorgeous soup, and then you try to put the soup into like a 1 quart Mason jar to store it, and soup goes all over the counter, right? But then what we do is we say, oh, I'm not a very good cook, right? When it's like, okay, it has nothing to do with being a good cook, you just chose the wrong container for all of your ingredients.

So dang good. I always love the metaphor. The metaphors you pull through.

I have a million of them. Right?

Yeah, that's good. The. It's so true. And we're really good at that mindset, right? Oh, I can do all these things. Yep, you sure can. But we've got to prioritize and look at what do we value, what do we really want? And you talk about, right, because there's this, this myth, and I think this is something else that sort of the time management productivity space really fosters is, you know, everybody's got the same 24 hours in a day or. Right? Oh, let's shift the productivity strategy. And certainly there are hacks to put in place. But tell us how you feel about productivity versus focus.

Yeah, well, this is my big thing is. Is again, here comes another analogy or metaphor. It's kind of like the. The wellness industry, right? It's kind of like in the wellness industry, we now know, and most of us realize that, like the, the number on the scale isn't the best or the only way to measure our health. And it's just like one metric. And so it's the same thing with your. Your output, right? Productivity is the. Is the output. Productivity is after you've put in the work, eating healthy, exercising, getting the proper amount of sleep, getting the hydration, then that number on the scale is a reflection of that work and productivity. And like the, the things that you've crossed off your list is a reflection of focus, planning, being realistic, be getting clarity, sleep, hydration, and all of those other things too. But so I always, I always tell my clients, like, if you prioritize focus, productivity will be the Byproduct, productivity will naturally follow. But, but you're going to do it in a way just like if we, if we only want that number to go down on the scale, we can do some really unhealthy things to make that happen. If you only want to produce, if that's your sole mindset, then you're going to do some unhealthy things to make that happen. And yes, the, the number on the scale can go down, the productivity can. You know, the, in the analogy, like. Right. Like we'll produce, but that's when you're going to burn out. That's when you're going to get sick. That's when you're going to start hating your, your work. That's when you're going snapping at your kids, you know, so you've got to focus on the healthy ways to run your business, to run your life, to volunteer in your community, to take care of yourself, take care of your business. And the byproduct of that is going.

To be productivity, increased productivity. I love it. Also, you know, as we think, as you were talking, I was thinking about how much there is for us to do. Like, legitimately, you have a lot of options and choices to make, and then there's just a lot to do. And then there are all these things that don't actually need to pay any attention to, but the world is just trying to. Or our attention is currency in the current economic climate. Right. The more time we spend on social media, the more time you spend on YouTube, the more time you read the news on whatever you want. Like, this is currency. So with all of these things pulling our attention, how do we bring it back to focus?

I think as entrepreneurs. Right. Or just as humans. Because I think whatever your algorithm is serving you, whatever your, you know, for me, my algorithm is serving me a lot of other business owners and. Right. So then you start thinking like, oh, maybe I should do, oh, that person's successful. They're running a webinar. Oh, wait, they're doing this. Oh wait, they're doing. I should do that. I should look. Right. We're just fed more input than our little brains can process. Right. So truly. So I think there is, and it's kind of cliche to say, but like there is some, like, you gotta kind of shut that down a little bit. Like literally and figuratively. Yeah.

How do you shut that down?

Well, I, I take social media in general. I take social media like breaks, you know, and like, like we'll fully, like, we'll delete it off my phone, we'll delete it off my, you know, and we'll will take a break. I know when I start kind of not feeling good about myself, I know the first thing that has to, the first thing it has to go because I like to use social media too as a distraction and as entertainment and you know, and to keep up on what's going on in the industry. But I definitely have to shut that down and just say like, okay, I'm going to take a break whether it's for the weekend. You know, I have one girlfriend that she deletes social media off her phone every Friday and then she puts it back on on Monday. But like she takes a break from it every weekend, you know, so whatever your thing is there. But I think that the other thing that we have to remember to kind of like shift gears to answer your question a little more specifically, is that focus again, you know, to compare it to something else. Like our brains are not designed to focus all the time. Like literally we are not designed to focus. And the research is a little bit, you know, a little bit all over the place as far as what science thinks our brains can handle. But most of the research says that we're somewhere in like the 25 minute to. The most I've ever seen is two hours. That that's how long your, your brain can focus. And so I think what, what happens is people feel like they should be able to focus all day long or like, oh, my kids are at School from 9 to 2. That's my focus time, right? And, and our brains, it's like it, it would be like telling your body, okay, you have to sprint a marathon, right? Those are different muscle fibers. Like your, your, your sprinting muscle fibers are different from your endurance muscle fibers. And it's the same with life happens. So if you have a team, if you have kids, if you've got, you know, you've got emails coming in, you have to respond to slack messages, you've got all of this other stuff happening. And so what happens is people say, okay, my workday is from 9 to 2, I need to be focused from 9am until exactly 2pm and I need to focus on this important project. I'm launching a new course in my business. And then they sit down, they're like, okay, today's the day I'm going to be focused. And then they get an email from their, you know, from their kids school and then they get a slack message from their team member, you know, oh wait, I'm hungry. I need to eat. I need to go get something to eat. And oh wait, I needed to pay that bill really quick. I better, I better pay that bill. And then all of a sudden it's 2pm and then again we're like beating ourselves up because it's 2pm I was busy all day but I didn't get that course launched. I didn't do that think, gosh, I'm so unfocused. I'm so unproductive. Right. We start beating ourselves up about it. But it's that you didn't again, you dumped the soup out on the counter. Right? Your containers were wrong. So instead like, of saying like, okay, yes, my kids are at school or my workday is from 9 to 2. So from 9 to 10, I'm giving myself from 9 to 10 to check email, to get myself organized, to get my calendar for the day to respond to Slack messages. And then I'm going to put in 90 minutes of focus time. That's what we've found in our program that focus sessions. That's what we've found is really optimal. So okay, 10am I'm going to put in 90 minutes of focus time. I'm going to put my phone in airplane mode. I'm going to put, because people will say like, oh, but I have to be more accessible to my clients. I can't turn off my, I can't turn off slack all day. Okay, yeah, but you could turn it off for 90 minutes or 60 minutes. Yeah, I'm going to turn off slack. I'm going to put my phone in airplane mode. I'm going to put my noise canceling headphones on. I'm going to, you know, shut out all the tabs that I don't need. I'm going to focus for 60 minutes or I'm going to focus for 90 minutes on that course that I'm wanting to launch. And then when that 90 minutes is up, I'm going to get up, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to get some water, I'm going to do a few yoga stretches, then I'm going to sit down, I'm going to answer the Slack messages from my team that accumulated in that 90 minutes. And I'm going to be more focused on them because I'm not trying to, you know, go between eight different, you know, multi, multitasking, which we know doesn't work. So now I'm going to answer the messages from my team, I'm going to check my email again and see that something Came in from the school. I'm going to send off that reply and then, and then I'm going to, you know, work through. We call it a clear the deck session. Right. I'm going to take 20 minutes to pay that invoice and that email that needed to go. And then it's two o'. Clock. And when I look back at my.

Day, you're feeling pretty good.

You're feeling pretty good.

Yeah. That is like good things to get done because you focused and you adjusted the container. You, you look, you aligned what you needed to get done and what you could possibly get done with the container and the space that you realistically had. You know, I think you're going to like this. I have an unfair adv advantage on this front, Megan, because I wake up and everybody's still sleeping, asleep.

I love it.

At least the majority. Not everybody.

Right.

I do work with other clients on the continent of Africa, where I am, Europe, same time zone. There's a little bit of overlap with Australia, New Zealand, but for the most part it's pretty quiet. My team is still sleeping. The majority of my clients and people in my community are sleeping. So I have some space. And people ask me, like, what are you loving most about being back in Africa? And we're in Abidjan right now in the Ivory coast. And like, it's my morning because I take my morning really not for traditionally productive work, but I meditate, I run a couple of errands, I go to the doctor's appointment if you know, that came up. I swim in the pool, I exercise, I read, I meditate again. Like, I just have this really beautiful flowing morning. Then I work. And this year I'm working really hard to shut it down by 6pm because then this is the hard part for me. Things are still going and everyone, now.

Everyone else is right.

Everybody's very alive. Yeah. It's midday. We're rolling into the second half the day US time or still morning Pacific time in California. So I'm like, okay, I have to really, like, okay, only reach out to me if you and people reach out to me. But I have to do the work too. Okay.

Okay. I gotta shut it down.

Yeah, exactly.

So I think this, I think this is so great and like, yes, okay, unfair advantage because your clock, your clock is saying something. But I think that anyone listening to this, like, I want, I want to really encourage people to really listen to their bodies and their rhythm. And I think that so, so much of productivity. So when I first launched the book, we launched it back in May. The way Amazon's algorithm works is that your ranking on Amazon is like your number of sales for that day or for that week. And so in the, in the very beginning when the book first came out, I made it to number 30 on the, you know, Amazon list of like, productivity books. 20, 27 of those 30 books were written by men.

And. Oh yeah.

And so I think it's just important to realize whether you're a man, whether you're a woman, whether you're a morning person, whether you're an evening person, whether you're a parent, whether you're not, that we have all been fed one formula for productivity for decades. And so there's that we've been told these things that if you think about, like, so much of the productivity industry is based in patriarchy, it's based in capitalism and it's based in agriculture, right? So, so this idea that like the early bird gets the worm, it was, it was put so that employers could get their workforce working on the same schedule. Like they, it was most efficient to, to harvest the fields if everyone showed up, you know, at 6:00am Right. So instead of saying it's a rule, which, I mean, they did you. Right. Instead of saying like, it's a rule to come at 6am they created a moral construct. You are a better person if you get up early and you are lazy if you want to work later. And so now that has carried with us into, like, we're no longer, or, you know, you and I are no longer like, harvesting the fields. Like, we don't need the early bird does, you know, like, we don't need to subscribe to these antiquated ideas of, or moral constructs of what productivity and work hours should be. If you are in the US if you are in the Pacific time zone and you don't want to start work until 1pm because you want to meditate, run your errands, go to the doctor and go for a swim in the pool, then great, Fantastic. In fact, you're probably going to get.

More done 100 when you, right.

When you align yourself, like, I naturally am a morning person and when I try to work in the evening, when I try to think, especially like with the summer and if, like, we've been out doing things as a family and then I'm like, oh, I'll. I'll get some stuff done at 6pm after everyone's kind of, you know, and then I'm, you know, it takes me two hours of like, while staring at a screen, I Don't get anything done. So it's really important for us to know or to know, like, hey, I need a break in the afternoon or I'm more focused after I go for a run, or I'm more focused after I, you know, take a nap. Like whatever it is for you. And even if you're being told, you know, the whole like, if you're not up by 5, that was the other entrepreneur quote. Like entrepreneurs get more done, you know, before the rest of the world wakes up or not. No, I think that when you say, like, how do we block out? I think I know for me if it's 6pm and I feel like I should be working or it's 8pm and I feel like I should be working, that's when I'm getting distracted. That's when I'm scrolling social media. That's when I'm all of a sudden like, oh, let me sort the things on my desk. It's not because I can't focus. It's because it's not the right time, it's not the right rhythm, it's not the right cycle for me.

So you've really got to listen to that. That's a good thing to watch for. Like, am I distracted by any tidying up by social. Okay, what am I really doing here? And that's when I really, I actually literally asked myself, like, wait, what are you doing? What are you doing right now? Is this intentional? No, put that down. Transition to something else. How do you like? Because I know it's just right. It's just natural, it just happens. I'm not really thinking about, okay, let me go scroll or I'll go to look for one thing on my phone and I'm. Wait a second. Down the rabbit hole. How do you catch yourself in those moments?

So I think there's, I think there's a couple things. One, I think it's so, I think it's like a physical thing. Like I will put my phone in a drawer. I will put my, you know, I will turn off notifications. I started using, you know, I bought this like six dollar kitchen timer. Actually, I have, I still have a timer that I think you gave us as a gift.

I love it.

You know, 10 years ago. But I use a physical timer. One of my friends was talking about like this concept of like a dumb phone, right? As opposed to a smartphone. Like, you know, it's like taking things off your phone that are distracting or using things like I use instead of using the timer on my phone, which then I'm interacting with my phone. You know, I use this little timer or things like that. And then I think the other thing, and this is like, I feel like so much of like we're parenting ourselves, right? So I have two kids, they're 12 and 15. And so I kind of, I kind of try to set myself like, you know, it doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for my kids to tell them, like, no screens, right? Or whatever it is, right? But it's like, okay, build in an Instagram, scroll time into your. Like, I'm going to focus for 90 minutes. Then when that timer goes off, I'm going to go refill my water bottle, I'm going to go sit, and I'm going to give myself 10 minutes to scroll Instagram or whatever it is so that, you know, or, and sometimes, like, we're using that as, like, more of like a distraction. But I find it even like, one of my clients was working, she was working her kind of, you know, 9 to 5 kind of like normal hours. And then she was doing what, what we call your most important work, right? The work that, like, moves the business forward. She was doing that in, like, the evenings and weekends because. Exactly. Kind of what you said. She's like, well, no one else needs me then. My team doesn't need me. No one's slacking me. I'm gonna do it in evenings and weekends. And so I think that's the other thing too, which that's fine. We're entrepreneurs. We can structure it the way we want. Even if it's, you know, she's like, well, I don't want my, my team that I'm paying hourly to be sitting there twiddling their thumbs waiting for an answer from me. So she basically spends. And I think a lot of us do this where you almost spend your time just like, waiting for the question on Slack, right? Waiting for the, like, I gotta, I gotta instantly reply or, or my client, right? Like, I, a value of mine is to be really available to my clients, so as soon as they email me, I want to be able to email them back. And, like, what I say to that is, we're also modeling that for our team, our clients, you know, we're modeling that. So if you are instantly replying to your team members, you're also telling them that they have to instantly reply, right? I, I, I read this book Indistractable. And one of the things that he said in there about email was if you want to, like, email, our inboxes are Overflowing. And he said, if you want to receive less emails, you have to send less.

Less emails. Yes.

Like, we, like, we have to be the change we want to see in the world. Right. If you feel like you're having to reply to emails to Slack messages all the time, you're modeling that for other people, too. And if you, if you tell your team, hey, I'm going to be focused for the next 90 minutes on a really important project, I'm not going to be able to respond to your Slack message, Please, you know, save it, write it down. I'll get back to you at 10:30. We're also modeling for our team that they can do the same thing, that they can say, hey, I'm going to shut down Slack and I'm going to put in this focus work because I'm going to be more efficient with the money that, you know, like, I'm going to, I'm going to be more efficient with this time. I'm going to get this thing done. I'm going to save all my questions or, you know, my, my, my boss wants to know something, but I'm going to reply to her in an hour and a half because I need to get this important project done.

That's so exciting.

We're modeling that.

Yeah. And we're creating the environments that we live in. So we're modeling it. We're creating it along the lines of the email. A friend of mine, I heard a friend saying, they're like, yep, work begets work. I was like, yes, it does. You do the work. There's more work behind it. There's always going to be the next thing. So, okay, when do I pause? Because the other thing that's fascinating, Megan, is what is the name of this book? Becoming Supernatural? Steven Kotler. A whole section on flow. I love the flow state research because this is what we often find. We're in that flow state. It's hard to stop the working because we're in the flow state. But he spoke of an author who said, you know what? I'm in that flow state. And it's my tendency to be like, oh, I'm just, it's just getting good, guys. I got to keep working. Oh, eat dinner without me. It'll be okay. Like, I'll catch up with you later. But no, stop the flow state. Make a note on where you are. I'm here and I'm going to pick up here when I come back tomorrow, when I come back, you know, after lunch. But take the break because you get refueled and from his, the way he works and his authorship, he's like, I come right back to it and the flow kicks off again.

Flow kicks off again. Because you train. It's. It's like consistency. Right. And I think that's the other thing that entrepreneurs do. Right. And I talk about this, like, the difference between projects and tasks. And we, and like, so we kind of look at our list and we've. It's like, launch a podcast is on our to do list. So then we're like, oh, well, I can't. I need eight hours to do that. So the next time I have 8 hours free, I'll launch my podcast. When do you ever have eight hours?

Eight hours? Yeah.

You know, so it's like, you need to break that down into the smallest unit, and then you can. You can be a lot more efficient with the time, you know, and it's like, okay, I'm gonna research microphones in 15 minutes and then the next day. And it's that consistency. And then all of a sudden, whereas if you wait. And this is kind of what happened, honestly, this is how I wrote the book.

I've been right. Oh, good. Chomping at the bit to get there. Yes.

Well, I'll jump into that in a minute. But, like, yeah, I think, like, if you, if it's like, you keep waiting for, like, not to have, like, oh, I'll wait until we get through this launch. I'll wait till my team doesn't need me. I'll wait until this kid does this. I'll wait until, like, like, we're kind of putting off our most important work. So if you break it down into the smallest possible chunk, you use focus. You say, I'm going to focus in for the next 30 minutes, the next 60 minutes, I'm going to do this one piece just like the example you were just giving. I'm going to do this one piece and then tomorrow I'm going to do piece two, and then the next day I'm going to do piece three, and the next day I'm going to do piece four. And then all of a sudden, six weeks or six months or six years, whatever the project is, later, it's done, versus I'm going to wait six years to have enough time to, like, do it in one fell swoop.

So good. And I love that you gave that range six months or six years, whatever it is.

Right.

So you. How did you use focused, your methodology to write the focused book?

Totally. Well, I was. I was my own worst client. Right. Which I think, you know, so often we are. So I actually started the book in October of 2021. I started writing it and I wrote about 10,000 words. And then it kind of got to be the holidays and you know, can November and December rolled around and it kind of dropped off a little bit. And that was 2021. And then all of 2022 went by and my team kind of kept asking like, what's going on with the book? Are we doing the book? And I was saying everything that we just said. I was like, yes, yes, yes, I'm writing a book. We just, we have to get through this lawn. And then I'm gonna get back to the book or I've gotta get my kid through this thing that they're, that they're working on. And then I'll work on the book. And then, oh, wait. Because what I was doing was I was waiting for chunks of time to magically show up on my calendar. You know, next time I have a chunk of time, then I'll work on the book. Yeah, right. And it also felt really overwhelming because it felt like write a book was like my. My to do list item, you know. So that felt really overwhelming. And then we got all the way to the end, 2022, you know, November, December, around there. Frankly, I got like kind of annoyed with myself. Like, if I'm being. I was like, this is ridiculous. I've been saying this now for a year, you know, not to mention the years like leading up to even getting the first 10,000 words written. And I was like, I'm gonna take my own advice. And so it was like November or December. And this is another big piece of advice that I have. I looked at my calendar for January and February, not like tomorrow, not next week, because it's already full. It's already full with stuff. So I looked ahead and I blocked out. I was like, I run this program. I run this program where we have 1690 minute focus sessions a week. I was like, how about I use the program to write the book on Focus? And so I signed myself up for between four and six 90 minute sessions a week for six weeks. And what that meant was I also had to say no to some things. But I just. Like we were saying, just like we were saying in a day where you say, like, okay, for the next 90 minutes, I'm not going to reply to client messages. I did it for six weeks. I didn't say I'm never going to have coffee with a friend again ever. I said for the next six weeks. I need to not go to, you know, some in person networking events. I need to cut back on some of the, you know, social things that, that I'm doing. I need to not attend as many team meetings. I needed to let my team kind of run with some things. I needed to like, get my hands out of like feeling like I needed to be involved with everything. But I knew it was for six weeks, it was January, and then it was right up until my kids have a break in the middle of February. I blocked it out on my calendar. I made a huge list. I kind of borrowed from like the fiction industry and I just, I called them scenes. So I made a huge physical to do list of all of the scenes that I needed to write for this book. And then just what you were just describing with that other person is I would just, I would look at my calendar and it would be like, oh, there's already 90 minutes blocked out today. Yes, I've got this client call. I've got this other thing. But like, oh, there's that 90 minutes. Just like it was a client call. Just like it was a doctor's appointment. And then I would sit down and I didn't really have to think about what I was writing because I would just go to my to do list and be like, oh, today I'm going to write the chapter where I talk about the soup analogy. And then I would put my noise canceling headphones on. I would trigger my brain like, okay, it's time to focus. I'd put my big over the ear noise canceling headphones on and I would just write. And I did that for six weeks and then I wrote. So I wrote the entire book in six weeks when I just put my head down and focused.

August, six weeks, finished it up, Boom. And then it was rolling out within four to five weeks after that.

Or was it a little, a little bit longer? A little bit longer? Because I will gonna. That one caveat was the other thing. I gave myself permission to write a shitty first draft. Like my life. My goal for those six weeks was words on the page. Words on the page. And literally there were points where I was writing expand more on this or you know, like where I was like writing or I would just get to the end and I'd be like, I would just put a series of X's, like xxxxxx right? Because it was like get. I knew that I could edit it. I knew I could get support editing it. So yeah, we finished. I finished draft one mid February. We launched it in mid May. So March, April. Yeah. So it took about three months to edit it, to do the developmental editing, to have me go back through, so. So it took a couple months, but, yeah. And that was the other thing, too, was kind of just once I had a deadline for, like, the book launch, then it. Then it kind of forced me to get it done. One other. One other thing around writing a book that I will say the other thing that I was doing was I kept like, oh, maybe the book should be about this, or maybe I should add this to the book. Or maybe we did, like, we did a live event that you were part of the end of 2022. And after we did this great event, I was like, oh, maybe the book should follow that outline. And it was. It was someone on my team who said, maybe that's your second book. And it was such a good reminder to me that, like, this doesn't have to be the end. All. Be all. Everything I've ever learned, everything I know in the world. It's just like, this is. This is the first book, and whether there's ever a second book or not, but this, like, giving myself the permission that I don't have to, like, take six years, because this is everything that I've ever learned in my life in this one book. It's like, let's take six weeks. Weeks. Let's get this topic out and move on.

So dang good, Megan. Keep you here all night. All night, all day. Your time. The. As we think about people stepping forward, into getting more focused.

Yes.

Final words, final recommendations. Did we miss anything? What comes to mind for you? It's like, this is the most important thing.

I mean, I think the most important thing is really trusting yourself. That I think focus is a skill. I think just, like, you could say, like, well, I'm not good at tennis. But if you've never tried, if you've never practiced or maybe you've played tennis one time and you're like, oh, I'm not good at tennis. I can't play tennis. Sure you can. You just need to get out there and practice, and you need to figure out what, like, works for you. I think it's the same thing for focus. I think it's so easy for people to say, like, oh, I'm. I can't focus, or. And even, like, we based a lot of the book on neurodivergent principles. Principles. And we really dove into how. I think, really embracing, like, my brain works differently. But that doesn't mean you can't focus. It just means it's going to look different for you than whatever that traditional advice is. Get up at 5 in the morning, do this, do that, whatever that is. Like that might not. It's not that you can't do it. It's that that doesn't work for you. And so I think my advice is like just really embrace your brain, your joy, your energy. Like really follow that and find what, find what works for you. If you work best at three in the morning, great. If you work best in, you know, by blocking out one full day a week to just kind of, you know, focus in for a full day, great. You know, like whatever it is for you, like embrace that and don't think like, oh, but I should be doing it this way.

I love it. And where do people find you? Where do people find this book?

Well, I'd love for you to head to focus-sessions.com focused book you can get. There's a link there where you can buy the book. There's also, we have a ton of bonuses. We have a whole, I don't have it in front of me. We have a whole workbook that is, that you can download that has all the exercises. It's a really hands on book. It's meant for you to just really be able to dive in and like try an exercise or, or read a case study and just really like, you don't have to read the book from COVID to cover to get something out of it. We've got a ton of bonuses. There's an audio prompt on how to find your ideal day. There's a Spotify playlist that you can play when you're focusing. There's tons of bonuses. They're all on that website. You just enter your email address. You get all those bonuses too.

So dang good. Okay, we're gonna link that up for everybody in the show. Notes. Megan, thanks for hanging out.

Thank you so much for having me. This was delightful.

Favorite. Love it. Love you.