How to Stay Focused in Business | Master Your Mind in 12 Minutes

How can entrepreneurs stay focused? Most entrepreneurs that I know have a hard time focusing. They're terrible at focusing because we like to think about the big ideas. We like to see, you know, we have a vision for where we want the world to be. We have a vision for what we want our product or service to be, and it's frustrating and it's challenging doing all the small steps, the day-to-day grind to make that happen, right? We like being arsonists. We like lighting little fires all over the place. We don't like seeing something through a lot of times as most entrepreneurs, but here's the thing: you have to stay focused. If you want to be successful as an entrepreneur, you have to stay focused. Pick one thing. Too many entrepreneurs are running with 5 different business ideas and none of them end up being amazing. They all just struggle along and are mediocre because you can't focus. Okay, I'm going to share with you how I stay focused and what's really helped me to develop my focus muscle, because it's something that you got to really work on. It's so easy to get distracted. This, this comes as a result of a question that came from one of my YouTube viewers, uh, I Am Greater, who said, can you talk about focus? So I Am Greater on YouTube, this is for you. Here are 3 things, okay? These 3 things will help you stay focused in your business and achieve success as an entrepreneur. You ready? Number 1, Create a morning routine that serves you. Okay, I used to find that when I woke up in the morning, I didn't have a lot of motivation. Even if I had a great day yesterday and I was on fire and people were saying great things about my business and I was really helping somebody, the next morning I would wake up and feel like I had to start all over again. Like it was hard to get out of bed and hard to just get going on my work. So I started creating a morning routine that really served me. And you want something that inspires you, that gets you going, that, you know, gets your blood pumping a little bit, that makes you get up and start going to work, start doing something. When I first got started, what I was doing was I would create a PowerPoint presentation, and it would have all of the comments that people have left for me at various presentations and seminars that I was doing, and it would have emails that people left for me saying how much I impacted them and helped change their lives. Because I got complacent, you know, I got comfortable, I settled and I just wasn't motivated. So seeing those comments from people made me get up and want to do more because you want more, right? I wanted to go and help more people. And on that PowerPoint I had those comments and also had some pictures and goals for what I wanted to accomplish. So the pictures kind of represented things that I wanted to do in my life, things that I wanted to have happen to me. So it was a daily reminder that, hey, if I don't go do I don't do something today, if I don't get up and work, none of those things are going to happen and I'm not going to be able to help more people. So that helped me in the early days. Now what I do, I have a pretty strict regimen, but it's a combination of responding to you guys. So part of the best, one of the best parts of my day is in the morning I wake up, I have my lentils for breakfast, and I read the comments that come in from you guys on YouTube, on Twitter, Facebook, and I respond. And I use the morning to respond because for the most part they're really good comments. There's nobody writing in and say, "Evan, you suck, I hate you." It's all good stuff usually, and that gets me going, right? Like seeing your comments, that makes me want to make new videos. I've made like 800-something videos. You guys make me want to do more. That keeps me going. So if you have any kind of feedback coming in from your audience, fans, do that in the morning. The other thing that I do that I find really helps, I do a quick workout in the morning, and it's a combination of doing weights while I'm watching baseball highlights and news because I love baseball, and that kind of gets me going. And seeing athletes pushing themselves and, you know, striving to accomplish their goals makes me want to go and push myself harder. The next thing I'll do is a quick cardio workout where I'll watch YouTube videos of people who I respect, look up to, inspirational speeches, things that have been recommended to me by friends or by YouTube, and that kind of gets me pumped and gets me going. I'll have a shower after, and in there I'll think about what I learned, what I want to go attack on the the day. And so all of that combined takes some time, but makes sure that I'm set for the morning. So kind of to summarize what my schedule looks like, because I kind of went all over the place, I'll wake up, I'll have my breakfast, and while I do that, I'll look at the social media comments and write back to you guys. From there, I'll do a quick weight workout while watching baseball highlights, and then I'll do a cardio workout, and I will watch YouTube videos that inspire me, and then I'll go have a shower and think about everything that I've learned today and everything that I want to accomplish in a day, and by the time I come out of the shower, I'm ready to go, and I'm excited and ready to take on the day. So that's number 1, to stay focused. Create a morning routine that serves you so you can get out of bed and get to work. Okay, the second thing is chunk your time. This is one of the biggest sucks for a lot of, a lot of people. Okay, what happens? You get to work, you get to your office, you sit down in your home office, whatever it is, You start thinking of an idea and then email comes in and you get distracted, you answer that email, you forgot what you were doing and you get back into your work mode and then another email comes in and you just constantly get distracted and I find that entrepreneurs are so much in reactionary mode, always putting out fires that they're never actually proactively doing something and building their business. It's always in reaction to something else happening. You have to control your time, okay? And if you don't respect your time and put limits on it, then people are going to walk all over you. You have to put those boundaries in place. And so it starts with chunking. And what I mean by chunking is anything that you do multiple times per day— so say it's checking email— do once per day. So email once a day. You can do it. It'll change your life. Anything you do multiple times per week, do once per week. Anything you do multiple times per month, do once per month. Chunk it down, because when you're focused on those things, you're much better at those tasks. When I'm answering email, I'm much better at going through all the email quickly, handling anything that needs to be handled, than if I'm trying to do it throughout the day. When I have my videos, usually it's a Wednesday afternoon is when I do my videos. I do all my videos for the week on a Wednesday afternoon. That puts me in the mindset. I know I'm waking up, I'm doing videos, I'm focused on the video, the video gets better each time I do it. It's not like I do a video here, a video there, because the setup time is too much. Just not even just setting up the camera, but the mental setup time. Right? I have to think about what I'm going to say. I have to get in the zone, be ready for videos. The same thing happens if I'm meeting people. I meet people on a Thursday. I have my phone calls, I have my radio show, I have my face-to-face meetings, I have interviews. I always put it on a Thursday and I put them back to back to back to back to back. My Thursdays are crazy because that's my mindset going in Thursday. I wake up, I know I'm going into meeting these people because what happens typically? Okay, if you're meeting people throughout the week, half an hour before meeting comes up, you're not doing anything. If you're at your office, you're working on something, and you know a meeting's coming up in half an hour, you're, you're not actually working on anything because you know you're gonna have to stop in half an hour to go do that interview or meet that person or do that phone call. So you get distracted. But if you put them back to back to back to back to back, it works out beautifully, and you carry the momentum from one into the next. On Monday and Tuesday will be more of my admin stuff, stuff that I have to work on, just nose to the grindstone. Don't bother me, don't talk to me, I'm working hardcore. If I'm, if I'm writing, if I'm doing my newsletter, if I'm doing a proposal, if I'm doing something on my website, whatever it is, usually it's going to be Monday, Tuesday. Okay, so you chunk out your days, you chunk out your weeks, you chunk out your months, so you block time off to focus on a specific specific task. Okay, I find that helps me so much and you don't get distracted by things coming in all the time. The last thing is don't answer your phone. Okay, my phone, my phone number is not on my business card. I don't know the number to my cell phone because phone calls, unscheduled phone calls are other people's agenda for your time. Okay, when you answer the phone, when you pick it up, you get distracted. You've immediately lost whatever you're working on, right? Whatever you're working on is gone now. You get distracted by this phone call, even if it's just to see who's calling. If you don't pick it up, you get distracted. You're like, "I wonder what that person wants?" And you lose your focus. And to get back into something once you've started it and you've left, to get back in takes way too much time, right? It can take you 30, 40, 50, 60 minutes just to get back to where you were before. It's a big waste of time. So no unscheduled phone calls. Okay, my phone number is not on my website, it's not on my business card. I have my Twitter account on there, but not my phone number. I will do a lot of business over the phone, but it's gonna happen on a Thursday, and you're not calling me, interrupting my day. Now, you have to be a responsive organization, and just because I'm only checking email once a day, or if I'm only taking phone calls once a week, it doesn't mean that my organization, the people I have on my team, can't answer email and be on the phone if that's part of— if that's important to your business. But you have to get yourself out of that equation because you're just going to be running around putting out fires all day long. Here's the one exception, okay? The one exception is when you're in the state of flow. When you're in the state of flow, that's when you're feeling something. That's when you're really creative. That's when you look down and it's 9 o'clock in the morning and you look up and it's 5 o'clock in the afternoon. You have no idea where the day went because you've been so productive. You're so focused on that. You know what I'm talking about, right? You know you've been in those moments when you're in the zone, in the flow. Okay, when that happens, you have to run with it because the stuff that you're going to create when you're in that moment is gonna be way better, way more life-changing for you and for your customers than— than if you just try to force it into a certain chunk of time. Okay, creative work cannot always be forced into a certain chunk. So when it hits you, when you're feeling it, you have to run with it and you have to put off other stuff because that is so critical. Now, Don't fool yourself, okay? Don't come and tell me, "You know what, I'm really feeling these emails, I'm in the flow on my emails, so I'm gonna keep doing email even though it's past my chunk time." No, okay? Don't fool yourself. Be honest. You have to be really feeling the flow, okay? You're not in the flow doing emails. Something creative, something powerful, something important. That's how you stay focused. You got a lot out of me. Hopefully that helps. I'm passionate about this subject because if you don't stay focused, if you don't keep on track with what you're doing, you're not going to accomplish anything, right? You're not going to have the impact you're looking for. You're not going to make the money you're trying to make. You're just going to be bouncing around from one idea to another idea to another idea and never actually achieve anything. So you got to stay focused. Use those tactics to help you. So create a morning routine is number 1. Chunk your time is number 2. Don't answer the phone, no unscheduled phone calls is number 3. And the only thing that is an exception is when you're in the state of flow. I hope that helps. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me want to do more for you. And let me know what you think. Leave a comment. You have a question, leave it below. I'll make a video response. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.