Jack Canfield shares six ways to cut distractions and lock in on what matters: meditate, take breaks from your phone, schedule focus days with buffers, use time blocks instead of to-do lists, find an accountability partner, and make a vision board. A University of Washington study showed meditation sharpens focus.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Jack Canfield, and today I'd like to talk to you about how to limit distractions and stay focused on your goals. As a quick reminder, make sure to click the subscribe button and the Bell icon to get notifications when I release new videos. If your life is anything like mine, you are probably constantly faced with distractions that get in the way of your productivity. So today I want to give you six tips to limit those distractions and stay focused on achieving your goals and getting the results you want and deserve. Okay, let's get started. Number one is to meditate. If you don't meditate, I highly recommend you start. I meditate every morning. It keeps me grounded, relaxed and focused. And many times my best ideas come in my meditations. In fact, that's where I got the title Chicken Soup for the Soul. Now, according to a study done at the University of Washington, after eight weeks of mindfulness meditation, the participants in that study experienced numerous benefits. They were less reactive to negative events, allowing them to respond to events more intentionally. Their memory improved, and they were more efficient in everything they did, both at work and at home. Now, number two is to take technology breaks. Now, most of us spend way too much time sitting in front of our computers all day long. I set my alarm on my iPhone to go off every two hours to remind me to get up and take a quick walk around my property without the alarm going off to remind me. I would probably not remember to do it. In the evenings. I used to get out my iPad or my phone and play Words with Friends, my evening technology. It was fun to play, but I realized that playing this game 40 minutes a night every night added up to an 8 hour day a week that I was playing Words with Friends. Now that's the equivalent of 52 days a year, or almost two months of lost productivity. Not to mention, it's not good for your brain before bedtime. It can negatively affect your sleep patterns, which potentially creates less productivity the next day because you're tired. So taking a technology break can also mean no television, no surfing the Internet, and watching cute YouTube videos of a squirrel and a cat playing together. And for me, when I detox from the news for a month, I find I'm less judgmental, I'm happier, I'm more relaxed, and anything really happens that's important. See, someone will always tell me. My mentor, W. Clement Stone, told me when I was in my 20s to cut out one hour of TV a day. As a result, I would have 364 more hours a year to be productive. And that amounts to more than eight weeks of 40 hour work weeks to be productive. Now number three is this. It's one I learned from Dan Sullivan, the founder and president of the Strategic Coach program, and it's had a profound impact on my productivity. The tip is to schedule more focus days. A focus day is a day where you spend the majority of your time working only on activities that use your core genius and contribute directly to your bottom line results, which in most cases is increased income. Now for me, this is when I'm speaking, training, coaching, enrolling people in high end programs, developing a new product, writing a book, or appearing on a podcast, a radio, TV program, anything like that. And the goal is to spend at least any 80% of your focus day staying focused on those activities. Now, it's a good idea to let everyone know that you're not to be interrupted during your focus days unless there's a real emergency. Now, if you work at home, you may want to use a technique that I learned from my friend Alex Mendozium. Whenever he is in focus mode, he wears a red baseball cap which tells his family, do not interrupt me. Now, focus days are part of Dan Sullivan's entrepreneurial time system, which includes two other kinds of days as well as buffer days and free days. And a buffer day is where you do all the activities that you need to do, but they don't produce bottom line results necessarily. These include training and managing your staff, delegating projects, answering emails, learning new skills, running errands and things like that. And the idea is to group as many as possible of those activities into one day so that you free up more time for your focus and your free days. So you're not trying to integrate focus free and buffer days. It's not good to do that. You want to be really focused on your focus days for at least 80% of the time. Not doing buffer day activities. Now, a free day is a day from midnight to midnight with no work related activities. The importance of free days is they let you return to work refreshed and ready to go. Now tip number four is to schedule your activities rather than just making to do lists. Now to do lists are great for capturing and prioritizing the things you need to do, but if you don't incorporate that list into your calendar by scheduling specific blocks of time to work on them, there's a good chance they won't happen. Now, I schedule everything in my life, including simple tasks like getting the windows cleaned every quarter or when I'm going to answer emails or work on a writing project, call my kids, appreciate my staff, work on a project, and so on. Now typically a to do list consists of a list list of tasks that you want to accomplish during the day. Now these can be things like take out the garbage, send emails to publishers or clients and get coffee with your friend. But the problem with to do lists is they're not specific enough. Now by scheduling your time more specifically, you'll actually see how important each minute is and you'll become more realistic about how much and where your time is being spent. And maybe you're over planning and so on. Now the other problem with to do list is is that we often start by doing the easy things, but actually the less important things first, which often means we never get to the really important high payoff activities. Now number five is to have an accountability partner. An accountability partner holds you to your goals and makes sure you carry out what you say you will do. So choose an accountability partner on what your goals are and who will help you best implement them. And one thing I don't recommend is having that person be your spouse. There's too much stuff that goes on between you already. You don't want to muck it up with trying to hold each other accountable. Get very frictional. Not good. Now when you do choose a partner, start by sharing your goals and the action steps that need to be accomplished to achieve those goals with them. And then commit to a daily five minute phone call, Skype call or zoom call with them, preferably the first thing in the morning. Share with them your five most important activities for the day. The next day you have to report on how many of those you accomplished and this will keep you accountable to someone and on track. This is an especially important tool for anyone without a boss, like an entrepreneur or an independent salesperson or solo entrepreneurs, anyone who works alone. Now number six is to create a vision board. You've heard me talk about vision boards before, but it's really important. A vision board will have the mental images of what you want in life or in your business. I want you to dream big. Then find the pictures, the words and the phrases that represent your dreams and goals and tape or glue them onto a large poster board and place it where you'll see it every day. This will keep your subconscious mind focused on your goals and will accelerate the speed at which you will reach them. I'd love to hear your thoughts after watching this video. What other tips do you have that help you limit distractions? And if you feel inspired share those, please leave a comment below with your answer. We'd love to hear from you, and I love to read what you have to say. And if a bunch of you do, we can all learn from each other. So thanks for watching. And remember, if you want something in life to change for the better, you have to change for the better first. Now, if you found this video helpful, make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one. And for some additional resources on staying focused on your goals, please make sure to visit my website@jackcampfield.com thanks for watching.
