7 Ways to Stay FOCUSED at Work - #7Ways

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe. I believe in you, and I want to see that awesomeness inside you explode out into the world so you can do something crazy special. Now, to help you on your journey today, we're going to talk about 7 ways to stay focused at work. So one of the things entrepreneurs have a really hard time with is staying focused, right? We, we love dreaming, we love coming up with ideas, we love doing all sorts of different things. Something comes into our head and we want to go and chase that. We love shiny objects, and then you're not doing the thing that you're supposed to do. And so today I'm going to talk about how do you stay focused? What are my 7 ways to help you stay focused at work? So way number 1 is have a schedule and goals. I find it really helpful to know here's what I'm going to do today. Here's what's on my schedule, here are my goals for the day, here's what I want to accomplish. And every morning I load up my calendar and I say, okay, today is YouTube day. I click on the note, it reminds me of what my goals are for that day, and my goals are in general. Like, here's what I want to accomplish with my YouTube channel. Next goal, hit a million subscribers. How do I do that? What are the things I need to work on and improve? And just a reminder of here's what I need to do, because I find that what helps is you have days when you're creative and thinking and brainstorming how to improve, but most of your day should be execution. Most of your day should be doing the work of what you planned. And so I plan all these things, I don't necessarily remember everything, and so having it in my calendar really helps. I look at that in the morning and then I go and start executing against it. Now you will have some days where you just come up with this insanely great idea and you're in the flow and you're in the zone and you need to go off and do that thing. And I encourage it and I do it myself and I'll throw everything else aside to say, this is what I'm doing today. When you're in the flow, you have to stay there because you can create gold. But most of the days you're not in the flow. Most of the days you wake up like, okay, what am I doing today? And I think if you wake up with that mindset of I don't know what I'm going to do today, that may work for some people. For me, I find that having a schedule, having goals, knowing what I want to accomplish today, and having that kind of set up for me in my calendar so I don't have to think about it in the morning gives me a lot more focused work. Say, this is my YouTube day, here's what I got accomplished, let's go, let's get it done. Number 2 is start the day off right. This is a recurring theme in a lot of my videos. I think you need to have a routine that sets you up for success every single day. So it's a matter of setting goals and then following through on those goals. And what happens with a lot of people is you wake up and what happens? The alarm goes off and a lot of people hit the snooze button, right? You're hitting the snooze button. And so like the first thing you've done is you've set a goal to wake up at whatever, 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock. You set a goal, I'm gonna wake up at 7 o'clock, you hit the snooze button. The first thing you've done in the morning is let yourself down. You've set a goal, you said, ah, it's okay if I don't hit that goal, I'll do it later. So if that's what you're training yourself to do, that's the first thing you do every day is you set a goal and then you don't hit the goal and that's okay. So how's the rest of your day gonna go? You think you're gonna stay focused at work when the first thing you do is let yourself down on a goal? It's even worse, you hit the snooze and then you hit the snooze again and you hit the snooze again. It's like you've just trained into yourself that this is great, like you set a goal, it doesn't really matter if you hit the goal, nobody's paying attention, so I'll just coast. That's how most people start their day, right? It's like, get up, do the thing that you're supposed to do, stop hitting the snooze button, and set a goal for yourself in the morning to build a routine around what makes you come alive. Like if you want to be focused, then being around things that make you feel focused, like What's on the wall? What are you going to read in the morning? What video are you going to watch? What helps you get into a focused state? And then do that every morning. If hugging your cat and singing a song makes you focused, great! Like, do that every morning. That's how you start your day. Find the thing that— you've had these moments of focus. Find out what triggered it. Maybe you're watching a video before, maybe you're reading a book before. What was the thing that you were doing? Maybe you're meditating or something else. Like, I'm not judging what you have to do. Find that thing and then do that in the morning every day instead of hitting the snooze button. Start your day off focused, you're much more likely to be focused the rest of the day than if you start your day off unfocused. Number 3 is have deadlines. It's amazing how focused you can be when you have deadlines for what you're supposed to accomplish. And especially if you can commit to somebody else. Like, I will get this to you by the end of the day today. You commit to somebody else to do that, you're much more likely to follow through and probably get that thing done Then if you commit to yourself, because a lot of times we let ourselves down. Right? You say like, "I'll get that done," and then you don't get it done, and who's going to hold you accountable? It's like, "Ah, well, it's okay." It's like hitting the snooze button in the morning. Nobody's holding you accountable, and so you don't do it. So having a deadline to say, "This is what I need to get done today," you're much more likely to get it done if the goal is today. Just like if you think back to school when you were studying for exams or having to do a term paper, most of the work happens close to the end. Like, I still got 2 months, I don't need to start doing it now. You do a little bit, you do a little bit, you do a little bit, but you don't actually get really going until close to the end. I look at my next book as an example. I want it to come out December 6th. I decided when I was on my vacation that December 6th, I launched Year One Word last year, and my new book that I've been slowly kind of strumming along, making some progress with, side hustle project, I decided I wanted to come out December 6th. As soon as I set that deadline, I had to hustle because I wasn't even close to being ready. And then I got all of the things lined up so that we can be ready for December 6th. And there's still a lot more work that has to get done. But setting deadlines for things, and especially making them public, telling your fans about it, telling people who follow you on social media, telling your friends on Facebook, or committing to somebody else, say, I will get this done for you by this time, makes you much more likely to follow through, be focused, and get that work done.

Number 4, don't respond to emails first thing in the morning when you get to work. It's easy to fall into the trap of coming to work, opening up your email, checking your phone, checking your Facebook, whatever tools you use to communicate with your work colleagues, and start to deal with their problems. The problem with that is if the first thing you do is deal with other people's problems, That's how the whole day is gonna go. Realistically, most things that people ask for your help in are not so urgent that they can't wait 2 or 3 hours. And if you first in the morning, you focus on dealing with things you have to do, on dealing with your tasks, you're more capable mentally and more prepared to help others. But if you just start to respond to emails and you start to help others before you deal with your own situations, Unfortunately, you're going to live a lifestyle where you're going to be at work till 9 or 10 PM only simply because you're so exhausted dealing with other people's emergencies. They didn't have time to manage your own affairs. You can't help others until you help yourself. So if you focus on yourself first, you're going to feel more empowered to be able to help others and feel less stressed at your work. So carve out 30 minutes, an hour in your schedule and set that standard for all your work colleagues. Book off your calendar and say, for this time, I'm devoting it to myself. And if you do that, you're gonna find that your days become more manageable and you stay more organized.

Way number 5 is eliminate other distractions. So Alex talked about not answering email in the first couple hours of getting into work. That's a massive distraction for a lot of people. I would also say look at the other distractions: social media, the people around you, your cell phone notifications flying off. Look at the things that are preventing you from doing the work. Look at these juicy carrots that are popping up, right? Like a little diamond shot. Oh, I want to go and chase that thing. Ooh, I want to go chase that thing, right? Like, we have constant distractions, but it's also people in your work, like people coming up and say, hey, I want to ask you this question, or hey, how about that game last night, or this funny joke that I want to tell you. Like, if you need to focus your efforts, then you need to focus your efforts. Like, you can't reach me during the day most of the time. I'm on Facebook Messenger for my team. That's how they reach me, and they know that I'm busy. So like, reach me if there's an urgent message, you can hit me on Facebook. Otherwise, send me an email, and within 24 hours I'll get back to you. Otherwise, there's no number. I don't have a phone number. You can't reach me. You know, I have an answering machine service, so I only have the number because for some things you sign up for, you need to have a phone number for them to call. But I don't have a phone number. I don't have a phone. I will always call people using my Google service online. There's no way to reach me. There's no way to distract me from the things that I'm doing. And I'm not perfect at it. I still get distracted by some things. But by thinking about the things that are really distracting you the most, like what was the last project that you were trying to work on? You know, you set aside 90 minutes to go work on this project. Did you get the 90 minutes? Or did you get 25 minutes and you got distracted by this and distracted by that and distracted by that? Just paying attention to what is causing those distractions and then figuring out how do I eliminate these things from my life, or how do I schedule them so that I have this block of time to work uninterrupted on my project? Especially when you're doing creative work, it's really, really hard when you get distracted. When I was working on writing this book, I went to Whole Foods, I went to a café, and I spent the whole day there, and you couldn't reach me. Because if I'm writing my book and I get distracted by something, and I let my team know, I let my wife know, it's like, unless it's an absolute emergency on Tuesdays when I'm writing my book, don't message me, because I need to focus. Because just responding to a message puts me 40 minutes behind on my book, because I'm in the zone thinking about this thing, and I see this message, even if I don't answer the message, it's, what do they want? Why is, why is she calling? Why is, you know, why is there, why is that popping up? It distracts you, and so you don't do the work. And then it's like, what was I writing over here? I forgot. And you got to go back, and you don't get the work done. And so especially for me and for creative projects, if I get distracted, I don't get my work done. And so I think it's really important to eliminate the distractions that are causing those headaches in your life. Way number 6 is create a no-crisis business. This is something that I learned early on in my first business. I did not want to have crisis happening. I didn't want to always have to be responding to people immediately. And this, this really comes from you training the people around you, but also bringing in the people that you want to be around. And so I look at both my team and I look at my customers. My team— I love mentoring and guiding my team, but they also have to be able to be independent and respect boundaries. If they can't, then they're not going to be a good fit for my team. If you need constant supervision, constant— like, if you need me to be over your shoulder to make something happen, that's the only way you work, we're not going to work out well together. I'm not going to be happy and you're not going to be happy because I don't like micromanaging situations. Go work with a micromanager and everybody will be happier. For customers, some customers need, need you to be available 24/7. Some customers, there's always a crisis, there's always a problem. They're just really needy people, and that's fine, just not fine for me. I don't want to be around those kinds of customers. I'll turn away those kinds of deals. And you can often tell, like, they're, they're demanding, they're pushy, they want things immediately. And I love giving good customer service, but I also need customers who respect the way that I work and I'm gonna bring you insane value for what I do. And we have to trust this process. And if they can't get on board with that, then we don't work with them as clients. And it's fine because it won't be a great experience for me or them as well. They won't get the results that they're after either. So let them go work with somebody else who likes the neediness and likes the, the hand-holding across the street. And so trying to adopt that policy of running a no-crisis business has really, really helped me in all the businesses that I've built. And way number 7 is be around focused people. You know, if you are around people who are focused, are hardworking, are getting after their thing, you're much more likely to do it as well, right? The environment matters. It's another consistent theme that comes up in a lot of my videos. The people that you're around really matter. If you're around people who are always joking, always slacking off, always trying to find ways to cut corners, always find ways to do the minimum possible, always just talking about movies and sports and not actually doing work, you're gonna fall into that. Like, part of it's— part of you is gonna be like that, and it's just really hard to shut that thing off. Where if you're around people who are focused, productive, trying to do big things, accomplishing their mission, getting work done, you're much more likely to go off and be focused and productive as well. And so it's how do you find a space, a working environment that gives that to you? So if you're working from home, maybe you're working by yourself, but maybe you need a little bit of accompaniment. So maybe go to a coffee shop where there's people working. Maybe go to a coworking space where there's other entrepreneurs who are really hustling, they're trying to get their business going. Even for me, watching the videos, the top 10s, the mentor me's, all the videos I have on my channel, I see these people doing these great things. And as much of a focused hard worker I am, as much as I think I'm a, you know, big thinker trying to do big things for my, you know, businesses in my life, I look at some of these people, man, these guys are really focused. It's really hard work. I gotta, I got up my game. I got to stretch my comfort zone. I got to do more. I got to break some more limiting beliefs and boundaries and go off and do those things because those are the people that I hang out with, right? Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and Zuckerberg and those guys, even if I'd never met them. And so paying really close attention to the people that are around you and the information you're consuming on a regular consistent basis will have a dramatic impact on your mindset, on your belief system, and how focused you are at work. So thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Suraj asked me to. If there's a topic you'd like me to cover in a future 7 Ways video, check out the link in the description, go and cast your vote, and I might make a video for you. I'd love to know what did you think of this one though? Which rule had the biggest impact on you that you're gonna start to apply immediately somehow in your business or your life? Leave it down in the comments below. Also, did I miss an 8, 9, 10 that you want to contribute on how to stay more focused? I would love to hear from you. and I'm sure Believe Nation would too, put it down below. I also want to give a quick shout out to John D. Webster. John, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and for doing the review on your YouTube channel. I really, really appreciate the support, man, and I'm so glad you enjoyed my book. So thank you again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon. So let me give you the one, one secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy. If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that sums you up or that would be like a little beacon. Hey Believe Nation, if you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.