The #1 Focus Habit That Separates Winners From Losers

When you see high performers in the world, it's not because necessarily they're that much skilled or brilliant than other people. They have wrangled their focus in to recognize the disaster that comes with an hour of lost distraction a day. Now, I'm not one of those guys who's a robot. I want you to enjoy life. It's cool if you scroll through some social media or something. You just need to be aware of the cost. Not because I'm preaching it, because it's your life. When you talk about focus, there's one way to look at it. It's like, okay, what am I giving my attention to now? But there's also, what did I focus on as a mission this week? What am I focused on in developing my family this month? What am I focusing on in terms of my finances this year? And I think your focus isn't some philosophy. It's look at your last four weeks. And your last four weeks is your life right now. And that's very disconcerting. Sometimes people. No, no, no. Well, I've been on vacation. Well, no, no, no. You know, one of the kids is sick. Well, no, no, no. The economy is certain like this. But your conduct over the last four weeks demonstrates who you are. How did you show up in the difficulties of life? Where was your focal point? What were you focusing on when it was hard in the last four weeks? Did you pay attention to your health in the last four weeks? How much focus did your health get in the last four weeks? Your team. How much time did your team get in terms of your focus the last four weeks? If I parachuted into your life and we looked at your actual conduct, your actual time allocation, your actual time management of the last four weeks, what kind of person is that right now? Who's showing up? What is getting your real dedication of time right now? Because that's what life is like right now. And some people don't like when I say that short moment of time because they say, no, no, no, there's all these difficulties going on. I know, but how you're showing up in these last four weeks is a demonstration of who you become. And so every month we have to kind of recalibrate, wait. With my time and my attention and my focus, who am I really becoming? What am I really building here? And I think the opposite of that is true, too, which I know we're going to get into. But a little bit of a preview of this. I think it's really important that you all do some math with me real fast. Maybe on your napkin or in your journal somewhere. The average person is easily losing an hour to distraction every week. I'm sorry, every day? Every day. Most people did you know they're just scrolling through the Internet. The average American spends an hour a day consuming social media just on Facebook or Instagram. Not creating, by the way, not marketing your business, just consuming, scrolling through stuff. Okay, one hour a day, that's seven hours a week. If you do the math real fast with me, it's pretty clear. Well, seven hours a week. Wait a minute. That's a work day. Seven hours, that's a work day. Let's not fool ourselves. Well, you think about the given month. Wait a minute. I'm losing four work days, right? Seven hours every single week. Why last four entire work days to distraction? Well, you play this out a little bit, it doesn't take much. That means that. That would mean in two months, it's eight days gone. In three months, that means we're 12 days gone. What does that mean? Well, just extend it the whole year. It means you lost 52 work days a year. That's a month and a half. Now hold on. Just stick with me here, right? Every week you lose seven hours. We'll call that a work day. Just to round it up, 52 weeks. You lost 52 hours. 52 work days. Well, that's just one hour distraction. Take it one by one more. Two hours. That means you lost just ballparking with me here, because that's a hundred work days a year. That's over three months. So when you see high performers in the world, it's not because necessarily they're that much skilled or brilliant than other people. They have wrangled their focus in to recognize the disaster that comes with an hour of lost distraction a day. With two hours of lost distraction a day. Now, I'm not one of those guys who's a robot. I want you to enjoy life. It's cool if you scroll through some social media or something. You just need to be aware of the cost. Because if you're losing two hours a day to distraction, that equates to a hundred work days a year. Ballpark, that's three months. That means the good news for the high performers here, flip it now from the painful reality we have to face with that. Flip it and say, wait. If you focused one or two hours more than your peers, than your competitors every day, one more hours of focus every day gives you 52 more work days than your competitors a year. If you can focus two more hours, focus for Two more hours than your competitors. You got a hundred work days more than they did. Hey, maybe that's a hundred work days. That could be some vacation, some family time, some learning time, some hobby time, some passion time. I just need you to be aware of the cost. Not because I'm preaching it, because it's your life. It's your life that is the critical thing to pay attention to. And let me now put the kicker on it. The average American today watches four hours of television or online streaming, Netflix or YouTube a day. Four hours. Now your brain really starts breaking. You're like, that's the issue we have in the world right now, right? We can blame lots of other things, but at the end of the day when people are losing four hours. Now, again, I don't mind entertainment, right? I don't have my TV shows. Netflix too. I got no problem with it. I'm just aware on a consistent basis where is my focus going. And if it's going to scrolling, it's wrecking my brain, it's wrecking my mindset and wrecking my ability to produce. So when I talk about focus, I always think about these types of things. One, my life has a focus. My career has a focus, my family has a focus. Two, tell me about your last four weeks, because that's real right now. And three, on the daily, how much focus are you losing to distraction? That's not additive because every hour is costing you 52 work days a year. Once that breaks through, it's like, got it, Brendan. Got it. And that's how we can get real transformation. Because that's awareness. Recognize as a point of growth, not as a point of guilt. And we're on the right path. Hey guys, it's Brandon. I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter because I have a resource for you related to this episode and and I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way, just go to progressmo.com, click on Private Group to apply to. See, you can get into Ultra and we can take it to the next level by getting in person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progressmode.com now I want to talk about the real stuff, A distraction. Now, academics, as many of you know, I study Psychology deeply and have my entire life. Often what we learn in distraction is the reason you're distracted is because the payoff of the thing that you're paying attention to in the short, immediate term feels better, right? It's just like, oh, it's more fun to scroll on this thing than the face this difficult contract. So you have to understand distraction equals payoff. There's some payoff over there that in the moment, and it's only short term. That's why they call it. That's why everyone knows distraction is like a bad word because we know we're doing it in a short term that we should not do it in. So just think it's a short window where the payoff over here is better than something over here. So it's usually a misalignment of payoff somewhere. Now that's just about the attention science of it, right? That's about, why do people in the moment become distracted from something that maybe they know they should focus on over here. Now, let me tell you what I've learned coaching the highest performers in the world. Distraction for really successful people. For everybody who would tune in to watch something like this, you should write this equation down. Distraction equals discouragement. You're discouraged about the momentum or the opportunity or something in another area that's driving you to distraction. See, we always say, oh, those things call me. Social media distracts me. No, you drove yourself to distraction, right? When you get the kids in the, in the car in the morning and you drive them to school, you don't say, that school keeps pulling in my children. You got it. You don't blame the school that your kids got there. You drove them there. Well, social media is the school. You drove yourself to social media. Social media didn't get you. It didn't jump out of your phone and grab your hair. You drove yourself to your phone. Why did you drive yourself to the phone? Most people, as I work with higher performers, what happens is they got discouraged somewhere. And because they didn't want to deal with that discouragement, the discomforting feelings of that discouragement, they just started looking for something else. Let me give you an example. Some of you know, as a high performance coach, I coach Fortune 50, CEOs, active Olympians. I just had a major tennis star have a big thing in the media and in that person's career. Over the last two years that I was coaching them, something really fascinating was going on. They weren't showing up for practice. So the coach told me, this person's distracted. I said, they're not distracted because you wouldn't have had the successes in your life if distraction keeps stealing from you. The fact is this person was discouraged in a part of their game. They were discouraged with something that had happened in their outside life recently. And so it looked like they're distracted into other things. No, they're discouraged in an area. Let's find the point of discouragement and let me flip it for you so you can really get this and you know this to be true. When you are winning, when you're in that point of hunger and momentum, when the economy was great and you are knocking down deals, baby, you weren't as distracted in other things because you had momentum. When there's momentum and there's winning, people don't get distracted as much. When there's some losses, some things to be discouraged about, they get more distracted, at least at your all level. So I want you to recognize that if I feel like I'm distracted, what's going on somewhere else where I just feel discouraged, I'm losing momentum, I'm not getting the progress that I wanted and that just makes me feel bad. So let me take some comfort and drive myself over to here, the fridge, the alcohol cabinet, the social media. Let me drive myself over here because it's safer over here. Feels better over here. You know, there's the short term, you know, stuff that you're just, it's an easier payoff over there. It's fun to go to. And then there's a long term part which is more discouragement. Because my job as a high performance coach is to look at your performance over a period of time, right? Like your last four weeks or your last four months or your last year and a half. And I say that because I want you to let you know not all distraction is something you need to make a big deal about. Let me give an example. Parents often tell me, oh, well, you don't understand. My children always distract me. And I go, they're kids. That distraction that's going to happen, don't let that one, don't let that experience be the cause of your blame for your long term performance. Because that's just real, right? Just like it's real, your phone rings, you got to deal with something dumb. It's real you get an email and you got to deal with something you didn't want to deal with. It's real that someone walks in the room and says something. It's real that a deal gets derailed. See, distractions happen. They're not all bad. That's just life. It's literally life. What I'm trying to get your focus on is the realities of longer term focus that hurts performance. And the longer term things that hurt your performance are the things that where there's boredom or loneliness or those. But listen, even boredom is a fact of life. And lots of people have boredom, but it doesn't kill their performance. When boredom kills performance is when boredom becomes discouraging to you and you're down about it, you're bummed about it. Now we're going to hurt our long term performance. If it's hurting your long term performance. I really want you to dig that deep, look for that journal and go where? Am I discouraged? Am I discouraged in my career right now? Am I discouraged because I'm lonely? Am I discouraged because I'm bored? Am I discouraged because I'm addicted? Am I discouraged because the kids have derailed? Like there's something that is causing it? See, because not everything is negative. It's just life. When we apply discourage to it, that's when our momentum starts to die. Why? Because discouragement quickly slides into defeat. And when we are defeated, our focus becomes very myopic. When we're defeated, often our focus is just towards survival. I just got to get through the day, man. So there's no bold action that day, there's no big swings that week. And so over a period of time you see someone's performance dwindle down, they got discouraged, it dwindled into defeatism, closed the window of their focus to survival and they're not taking any swings no more. And so that's where their long term performance it just like they were here and it was a slow kind of thing. And you can really look for that. And the challenge is they again you, you, you blame something external, you're blaming the school or social media or the economy. And the importance is that you grab hold of your focus and you're doing the daily practices to keep moving towards those awards because the circumstances will change. But your conduct and your habits, your self discipline and self respect, that's what you're really building and that's going to carry you through. Even if in the short term the awards are a little less than you anticipated because there are macroeconomic things that might happen. Doesn't matter. You're still building self respect, self discipline and the habits that will carry you through. Even if a little less awards.