Ep139 - How To be More Focused | WHOLE MAN ACADEMY

Welcome to the Whole Man Academy podcast. We cut the bullshit and get real about building your ideal life. If you're done with settling and you've got the guts to aim higher, you're in the right place. We bring you ideas, strategies, straight talk and real stories from guys who are living life on their terms. Men who refuse to settle for mediocrity. They're here to share the raw truth about what it takes to break free from the mundane and step up your game. Why? Because the world needs strong men now more than ever. And it all starts here at the Whole Man Academy.

Okay, this is the Whole Man Academy podcast, episode 139. Back for season four. It's been great to have a break. Actually, one of the things that most people wouldn't understand when you have a podcast is how much time it takes not just to source the right guests because you get approached by people to be on there, but sometimes they, I don't know, they're not quite right for the. For the Whole Man Academy. And other times it's also finding the right guests, booking them. Sometimes people cancel, then you've got to edit them, you've got to do the thumbnails and everything. So I decided it was great to have a break whilst I was working on launching the network. So a few things to go through before we jump on. And it's just me today. Quick podcast and we've got a couple of great guests coming up. We've got. The next one is a guy who's going to talk. I mean it's a lot about personal development, all about trauma. And even if you don't realize you're affected by. I guarantee either you are or someone that you know is. So that will be coming out fairly soon. Keep an eye out for it. Also after that, I'll be speaking to Brad Burton, who was. Is. Was UK number one motivational speaker guy I connected with like 14 years ago at a whole mad Academy. No, what was it? What event? Was it? Not Whole Man Academy event was even running him. It was a personal development event in London for London Real, the big podcast. And it's taken me 14 years for us to finally have a chat and get on the pod together. But. But that's coming out afterwards as well. So that'll be a good one. But this is more of a quick update for you and also we want to talk about being more focused and I think for most guys being more focused can be a real game changer. So first of all, just a few updates for will be listening Before September when it comes out. We're launching the modern day Stoic challenge in mid. No, no, where are we in mid September? And that is 10 days, 10 challenges to help you become a better version of yourself, for want of a better phrase. So each day you'll receive an email with a challenge for the day and it help you with your morning routine, your mindset, your stoic ability to realize, how can I put it is up to you to, to take action and do your inner and outer work. The link will be below in the show notes. If you haven't, sign for the waiting list and again that will go live on September 9th. Next thing is the network. Now one of you who asked me I two or three weeks ago, who isn't in the network about how it was going and I said, you know what? We've now got 25 guys, the network. And what is that? It is a group of guys in a, let's call it a brotherhood who are helping each other build their ideal life. Because I always say for some guys it will be your fitness, it might be your finances, it might be your career, it could be relationships, whatever it is, or it could be multiple things that you want to improve. But it's hard doing it all on your own. So what we've done is created that network, those guys that will get together. We have our own private platform. We also have accountability tools and evaluation tools. We have events and we've tried to make it, you know, high value but low cost. So, you know, barrier of entry shouldn't be the price for you to join it. So if you haven't already checked that out, I, I would urge you to again, if you find that the, the lone wolf thing doesn't work for you or you just want to get around more guys that want to kind of be a success, you know, want to be rich, want to be fit, want to be strong, capable. Then again, have a look at the show notes and it is just the network and at the moment it is open, it will close membership a bit later in the year and then reopen towards the end of the year. So that is it on the network. The other thing, always asked about supplements because there's so many supplements that you can take and you get told that this one or that one will, you know, fix all your woes and what have you. There's only two that I take, which is Shilaj, which again I'll put the link below. And I even wrote a, I even wrote a book about it. I've been taking that since just before the start. Sorry, just before the end of 2023, what did I see? A huge difference in my ability or my energy levels. And you know what, I've taken supplements before and I can't honestly say whether they were working on it. Maybe they were, but I didn't feel the effects. But actually when I started taking shilogy, probably two weeks in, I started feeling effect and Emma, my partner did as well. And I think I've had it nearly every day, bar one or two since you know what we now like eight months in. So shilogy is one of the things there's a particular place I'll get it from again, I'll put the link below. Remember there's a whole man academy discount code as well. The other one is Ape Nutrition. So a guy called Josh who runs a fantastic company doing kind of men or products not just for men, but there's one called optimized Mail. And again you can read about it on the link. But that's the only two things that I have is shilogy and the Optimized Mail which seem to do me just fine. I am now now four years off 50, so I'm trying to stay in as good a shape as I can. One thing also to note before we get into the focus and I've written some notes on it to make sure I cover it properly. But remember, the news is meant to distract you, is meant to keep you fighting much yourself, picking sides, arguing with people online, all this kind of stuff, the social media news. So do your best not to get distracted by it because you'd be amazed how many guys I speak to that find themselves scrolling mindlessly. And we've all done it. You know, I've said on many a podcast, you mean to message someone or to do something on your either on your computer or your phone and 20 minutes later you're sitting there scrolling and then you stop and wonder what you, you know, even doing there in the first place. So just reminder, the news is not there to inform you. Social media is not there to entertain you. It is to keep you kind of distracted from the important things in life. Anyway, how to become more focused. Now we could do hour long podcast on this, but for me it's about the basic. So let's start with number one which is establish a routine and set clear goals. Because if you don't know what you're working on it sometimes it can be hard to have focus. So I'm a big one for creating some kind of daily schedule, you know, a consistent Daily routine helps you get focused on things at specific times of the day. So I like to block out dedicated times for work exercise, which I don't get nearly as much exercise. I'd like to, especially when I've got three kids. And I laugh here because it's relaxation primarily for me. I probably do. 80% of my time is work. You know, a bit of exercise and a small bit of relaxation. When you've got all these balls juggling, as you might know yourself, it's rare you get relaxation, but you've got to set time for it. And setting the clear and achievable goals. Again, you could talk for hours about this stuff. I've got some great books behind me on kind of setting goals. But if you break down your larger tasks into small manageable chunks, that will help you kind of achieve things step by step instead of it feeling like overwhelming. And everybody's got different tools they use, be it plan A to do list or some people got digital apps for tasks and deadlines. But I would say first is prioritize any of these by importance and urgency. Just start with that. Get the ones done that probably you don't want to do first. Don't do the ones that feel good. Do the ones that are important and urgent. Get them done first. So that was number one. Establish a routine and set clear goals. And again, you've got to build it around your, your workload. Maybe you haven't got kids, whatever, but do your best. The other one we talked about with social media is minim distractions. So if you can have a dedicated workspace, I'm lucky, I've got a nice office. I can sit in and close the door and focus. But if you can have that, that is a great way to do things. But ideally have some kind of clean desk strategy away from the tv, away from interruptions, turn your notifications off on your phone, on your computer. And if you need to, there's other apps or, you know, browser extensions, things that can stop you from being distracted. But just do the basics. I find with my phone that just putting an airplane mode for like one hour and we're coming to blocks of time in a minute. But just even if it's one hour, you can get so much done if you just focus on it instead of being distracted by other things. So that would be number two is minimize distractions and the, the importance of switching off apps and switching off notifications just for a while. And if you have to tell your family, like, please don't disturb me for a While that can be really helpful to work in chunks, number three would be practice mindfulness, like taking regular breaks. I always feel like if you just keep on working, your kind of your attention span, your creativity maybe gets lower and lower like a battery was. Actually, if you give yourself those little breaks, I know myself, if I, if I've been working for a couple of hours, if I even just go outside for a while or get out the house or whatever you can do, you come back and kind of feel refreshed. There's something called the Pomodoro technique, which I don't think I've spoken out before, but in short is working in focused intervals. So I wrote down here, for example, like 25 minutes of work, five minute break. It might be that you do 55 minutes of work and a five minute break, but it just helps you keep your like levels of concentration by giving your brain some regular rest and stops you basically from kind of, you know, mini burnout, whatever you think burnout is. But if you roll these things together, all of these little strategies can help you build those better habits. It's going to improve your productivity. Hope you be more focused, which is really important. And that could be your personal and professional life getting more done that you need to, that's important and an urgent maybe. So those are my three to you. It's establish a routine to set clear goals. Work on that first when you're ready to work, minimize distractions. And the last one is make sure you just split things up so you take regular breaks. That works for me. That's how I managed to do the podcast, the whole man Journal, the LinkedIn newsletter, have three kids, we homeschool them, do social media, do coaching, organize retreats and events. All of this stuff helps me do all of that together. So let me know if that's of any help to you. Let me know what the big distractions are for you. And again, we talk about all this in the network. We try and help guys build their ideal life with everything that we work on. So if you are interested in that at all, either just click the notes below or just send me an email and let me know because I'm more than happy to chat through these things with you, brother. So look out for the next podcast. The next two coming up are going to be excellent. And remember, the world needs strong men.