How To Stay Focused

How do you stay focused? Answering this question is perhaps the most important, critical thing you will ever do in your lifetime, period. So I hope it is an absolute priority for you to learn to take back your focus in life, for you to get more distinct and more clear about what your focus really is, and for you to finally decide, you know what, If I don't finally get my focus in check, if I keep wandering around distracted, if I keep looking at every new thing that pops up, if I keep trying every single new opportunity, if I keep saying yes to everything, if I keep listening to everybody's complaints, and if I keep doing whatever they ask me to do, at some point, you'll lose your life. And I don't mean that physically as in harm or death. I mean that one day you'll wake up and say, I don't feel like I've accomplished what's meaningful to me. I don't feel like I'm in a job that I care for. I don't feel like I have connection with my family or my friends. Because at some point, your focus drives everything. It drives your thoughts and your emotions, right? What you focus on is certainly, if you focus on all negative things, you're going to be negative. If you fail to focus on the things that are important, meaning your priorities, then what happens to your relationships? What happens to overall quality of your life? Focus is driving everything in your life. You got to get it back. It's not just about being productive. We'll talk about that. It's about experiencing the best quality of life. You hear this new movement called the mindfulness movement, right? About the new popularity of these conversations about presence and meditation and things like myself and my industry have been talking about for decades. Well, you hear about that. That's really just about reigning back in control of our focus in a world that's gone mad and crazy and distracted. So how are you going to get your focus back? Well, let me give you some counterintuitive ways to do it. The first thing that I need you to know in order to get your focus back is to realize that you need to make fewer decisions. Fewer decisions? Why? Well, as we know from neuroscience and we know from productivity studies, that the more decisions that we actually make, the more our brain becomes fatigued, right? The more decisions that we make, the more we utilize the glucose. That's really fueling our willpower. That's fueling our, frankly, our ability to make more decisions and higher quality decisions. Matter of fact, the more decisions that you tend to make, the less effective you're going to be over the long term because you're going to utilize your ability and your resources and your brain's power. Literally, your willpower will go out the window. So you want to minimize the number of decisions you are making. How do you do that? Well, here's some simple things. One, stop browsing. You know, I know maybe you found me because you were browsing somewhere, and I hope you make me part of your focus on your personal development, that I'm a purposeful part of your life. But I can tell you overall, browsing completely wipes out your focus and your willpower. Even all these little things you're focusing on are utilizing all your brain's resources. And over a period of time, when you stop browsing and you go back to focusing on something, guess what? You tend not to be able to focus on one thing and get things done. You start multitasking and doing lots of things, but where your work isn't really focused, nothing gets accomplished. So what happens is your brain is fatigued. Guess what happens, your brain fatigue. You find yourself sitting with a bag of potato chips. And what do you do when you have the remote control? You're just flipping randomly through things. Do you ever notice that? Meaning it's easier to become distracted the more distracted you are. Meaning the more that you aren't focusing on one thing at a time, the more problem you're gonna have later on to complete one thing at a time. And I know that makes sense, but here's this simple solution. If you missed it, stop browsing. So much. All those browsing, all those tweets that you're reading, all those news feeds that you're reading, guess what? Every time you look at them, guess what your mind has to do. It has to make a decision. Pay attention or not pay attention. And that decision is costing you focal power and resources later on, even if you don't know it. Now, some people say, well, Brendan, I study neuroscience too, but all those little things I see, those are firing off my dopamine and my vasopressin. I'm getting excited because I'm seeing all these things. My mind feels rewarded by seeing all these things, making all these decisions. And it is true. That's why it's such a frenzy and it becomes so addictive, but it also becomes so fatiguing. And if you're constantly fatiguing your brain by focusing on a million things, you'll never get your focus power back. Does that make sense? So stop making so many decisions by stop browsing things to Decide whether or not you should pay attention to them. Just stop browsing. When you do things, do them, do them. Intentional. If you're looking for something, search for that one thing. Find it, you're out. Stop clicking on all the blue links. Stop swiping all the apps and all the pictures. Do the things that are going to move you forward. Well, what should those things be? That leads us to point number two here, which is you must define your mission. You need to have a mission for what you're doing today. You need to have an intention for what your next task is going to be. What happens? Most people just kind of show up and they go, okay, well, I guess I'll do some stuff. But they have no intention whatsoever. So they end up doing too many things that mean nothing towards their mission. You should figure out what is it you desire in life and figure out the steps to get there. And start working a plan to get there and minimizing everything else, getting very clear on the mission, very clear on the mission and working the plan. Everything else, guess what? It gets a no. Until you reach that mission or until you're significantly on your way to that, you have free resources to be able to focus elsewhere. And that's what people do. They take on too many projects because they're not clear about their mission. Because I'm guessing if you're watching this, you know, you're somebody who wants to add value and make a difference in the world. So anytime someone asks you to do something, you're like, yeah, let me help you. But that might not have anything to do with the quality of life or the objective or the thing that you're trying to achieve or the service you're really intending to offer, right? And I know how hard it is because I'm so pulled myself towards causes and towards volunteerism, towards helping so many people. But guess what? If I help everybody in lots of different areas, I might not make my ultimate mission of serving the people I want to serve the most, of making my dreams come true so I could support more people, of running my business so I can support more people. Meaning it's easy to take your eye off the ball if you don't know what the ball is. And people often have never defined their mission. And if you don't have one right now for this day, if you didn't have a drive, a mission, a written down statement about what you were going to accomplish today, a checklist, a goal sheet, a time management tool that you filled out today, and you're just showing up Today and going, well, I guess I'll see what my inbox tells me to do today. And you just respond to everybody else's desires and everyone else's emails. And you're just always in reaction, always, always responding to everybody. No proactivity towards a mission that you defined yourself. You'll be lost. You'll find that because you never focused on that one thing or moving towards those several things that were your priority, that you're just lost. Because here's another thing. Focus goes out the window when we don't have progress, right? If we're not progressing towards something, our focus goes out the window. We just, we don't pay attention to anything. We don't feel good about ourselves. You want to get more focus in your life, get more progress. As you progress more, you start to get excited. You start to pay attention to things that are working, that are moving you forward, and you start to find more focus in your life. Last idea. It's so very, very, very simple. And I hope that you will practice it, I hope that you will study it, I hope that you will work it over and over and over and over again. Once you have that mission. Your job is to try this just for a little while. I know it's gonna be uncomfortable and you're gonna hate the idea, especially coming from me. And that is. I just want you to say no to everything immediately from now on, Always. Now, that goes against the grain of. A lot of people say, well, no, no, no. Life is about saying yes. Well, yeah, a lot of people said yes to everything and that's why they're miserable. I want you to say no just at first, just so you can check it against your mission. I don't want you to say yes or commit to any projects immediately anymore. That's what people do. I do want you to commit, but just give yourself like a couple hour break or a night's an evening's break. Make the decision the next day, right? If something comes up and you can do it and you're excited about it and someone asks you to do something, I just say, just say no first. It will teach you to say no. I'm going to evaluate that first. I want to put some thought to this, to see should I focus on this right now in my life, yes or no? And build some criteria for yourself. You know, if you think about the time, energy, resources and effort and sanity you're going to have to put into something, well, you should get something more out of it than you put in, right? You should be Able to draw, you know, some return on investment or future value out of it, or your own personal development or your improvement to your lifestyle from it. But if you're going to give yourself, if you're going to focus on something, make sure it's going to lead to some kind of result, even if just that result is your true passion, your true love and your true spirit in it. Otherwise it's got to get a no. And what this suggests is that we have to have a greater degree of evaluative time and evaluative criteria in our life if we're ever going to truly have focus, right? Most people, because they're just saying yes to everything and they never filter something through criteria, say yes, no, good for me, bad for me right now, wrong now, because they have no criteria, they have no basis for making the decision. They've said yes to too many things, their plate has become too full and now there's too much to focus on. So they're not even moving forward. Your job is to get back to a very simple level of life, to very simple things to focus on. To do, you know, to focus what we call essentialism or simplicity, to just make sure that you're only focusing on one or two major things at a time. And everything else, you're not allowing the distractions to suck you in. So you click all the links or do all the things that someone else says, or reply to everybody else. But you're moving your life forward, day by day, little by little, engage in things that you care about, that you love, that you enjoy, saying no to those that you do not, and move towards every single day, moment by moment, day by day, to those things that truly engage you, to those things that truly energize you and bring enthusiasm into your life. And if you can keep that type of focal power and intention, then you'll start to experience what we call the charge life. Hey guys, it's Brendan. Did you like this episode? If you did, you can do three things right now to continue your journey. First, you can subscribe right here to my channel, which I hope you will, so I can keep sending you videos on a weekly basis to change your life. Second, you can get my brand new book for free by clicking the link right here. And third, you can also go to my website, sign up for my newsletter so I can send you free offers, free products, free programs, updates on my events, new podcasts, and everything else that we don't do on this channel here. If you'd like to do that, just go ahead and click any of these buttons you see right here. Look forward to seeing you on the next video. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly, and make your difference today.