Distraction is Costing You Your Future

I've never met anyone in my life who actually was bad at consistency. You're great at consistency. You're just consistent at the wrong things. We become consistent at distraction, at small thinking, at poor behavior, not speaking our truth, not focusing on what matters the most. The average American spends two hours on social media today. Two hours of distraction equals one work week gone per month. Consistency is just a sub level of time management. I've never met anyone in my life in 20 years of coaching people every single week at the really, the top levels of success in so many different industries, who actually was bad at consistency. So many people. I'm terrible at consistency. I'm like, no, you're great at consistency. You're just consistent at the wrong things. So we become consistent at distraction. We become consistent at small thinking. We become consistent at poor behavior. We become consistent at breaking our own boundaries, not speaking our truth, not focusing on what matters the most. We're not lacking consistency. It's just that we're really good at being consistent at the things that don't actually propel us forward. And so I often tell people, I don't need to teach you to be consistent. I need to get more consistent activities in the right bucket. You know, you got two buckets of consistency, and that's what you should really think about. It's like, okay, I got one bucket of consistency that is not furthering my career, not furthering my life, not making me feel well, you know, and then I've got the other bucket that's propelling me forward. This is my progress bucket. And we're, you know, just in different buckets. I'll give an example of how I remind myself of this just tactically, real fast. Two hours of distraction. Okay? Now the average American spends two hours on social media today. Two hours. That's just social media. That's just consuming social media. It does not count creating in social media if they are a creator in their career. Now, this is the average American. I know most of you, you're high performers, you're high achievers. That's not your jam. However, some people, maybe it's an hour of social media and it's an hour of television. There's two hours. Or maybe it's just, you know what? You ever just stare at your screen and all of a sudden you kind of blank out and two hours later you kind of come to and you notice you've opened like 74 tabs and you kind of forgot what the heck you were supposed to be doing. You know, it's like you had a purpose, you started doing something and you went down the wormhole of YouTube or clicks or Twitter or where you went. And a block of 45 minutes went away, an hour went away. So some people say, well, Brendan, you put up two hours distraction, you talk about social media, but maybe social media isn't your poison. Maybe it's just you got confused about what you were supposed to be doing that afternoon, or you had a bad call, they turned down the deal, they said no, they didn't want to work with you, buy from you, invest in, you take your loan, and all of a sudden you're just kind of like, you bummed. You got bummed, so you got distracted. Which is most people's consistency is consistency in their reactions. You get discouraged by something, you get distracted. That's a consistent pattern, right? Discouragement to distraction is one of the all time most consistent human behaviors in the modern era. Discouragement leading to distraction. Okay, so maybe it's not social media or television, maybe it's an undirected day, maybe you got discouraged. But watch what happens. And I think this is what's important because most people who tell me, Brendan, I'm lacking consistency, what they really feel like is they're lacking progress to things that matter, but they're consistent somewhere, but they're lacking progress and growth to the things that matter. And the next thing they always say, and I know you all know this, but consistency is just a sub level of time management. And so we're just not necessarily managing our time well. And let me break this down to another level that maybe it will hit for you because I tell people, oh, you lack consistency. What problem does that cause in your life? And as they start tell me what problem it causes in their life. Eventually we get to, I don't have any time. If I was more consistent, I'd have more time. If I was more consistent, I'd have more time to do the things that matter and I'd move myself forward. So watch what happens. We say, I don't have consistency, which is really a subset of time, which really means I don't have progress towards things that matter. And most people say I don't have any time, right? But remember, most people, even at work, even at work, self report. This is funny. Most people at work self report being undirected and unfocused for a hundred minutes a day on average. 100 minutes is what, you know, an hour and a half plus. So most people at work, this is across all industries. And again, this is North American data about A hundred hours or a hundred. Some 100 hours. About a hundred minutes. So about an hour and a half a day. They're just kind of lost. So let's just round it up again to my famous two hour card. Now, I'm not. I want to let you guys know this. I'm not showing you this card to teach you. This card is literally taped to the side of this computer. I had to pull it off to show you because on the other side is the result of that. So watch the math. Two hours of distraction a day. Two hours distraction is 60 hours a month. Right? 30 days in the month on average, times two hours. We're at 60 hours a month. That equals. People always get confused about what this line means. 60 hours a month is about 7.58 hour work days. 7.58 hour work days. Seven point five eight hour workdays. That's what. That's a work week. Write this down somewhere. Two hours of distraction equals one work week gone per month. I always tell people, I'm like, hey, if I could help you out and if I could get you, if I could magically give you an extra week of work every month, would you take it? They're like, yeah. I'm like, don't have two hours of distraction today. They're like, what? I say, if you want an extra work week every single month, eight hours a day. Don't have two hours of distraction a day. I just need two hours back. Remember, that's one work week a month. Well, there's 12 months in the year. That means 12 extra work weeks a year. That's three months more. Work, work. So people always like, brendan, how do you get so much done? I'm like, I work three months more a year than most people. They're like, what? I go, I'm not smarter. I just work three months more. I'm working 15 months. You're working 12. And they're like, what are you talking about? And then I run the backwards math on this. And so I just want to really set in your head today, you are consistent, but most people are consistent at distraction. And if we can just break that, it doesn't mean we have to be a workhorse. It doesn't mean we have to work tons of hours. What it means is we need to be very vigilant. Vigilant against what draws us into distraction each day. What are those little detours we keep taking? Or if you're like, but, Brandon, I'm not distracted. I'm like, okay, okay, cool, cool. Is there some way that we could aim your day, plan your day, organize your day, that we could get two hours of better optimization from you? Meaning can we in some way get rid of a dumb meeting? Can we in some way make sure your prospects you're talking to are the right prospects? Can we make sure that you worked out in the morning, Even just for 15 minutes to open up your lungs so you're in a better mood for the two hours of zoom you have to do today? So if it's not about just getting rid of distractions, can I help you optimize for two hours a day, optimize your calendar, optimize your focus, the things that you're focusing on, Even if that means for some of you, a lot of you, that means delegating a little bit to the team to get your two hours back. I just want you to recognize two hours, whether unoptimized or distracted. If we can get two hours back, we just got you 12 work weeks back. That's the game changer.