Ep. 33: The Real Reason You Can't Focus

Most people think that failure is the thing that's keeping them stuck, but it is not. What's actually keeping you stuck is distraction. It's doing 10 different things at once, switching tabs in your brain every 15 minutes. And you think that just because you're doing something, you're progressing. Failure is not the enemy. Failure is actually information. It tells you what didn't work so you can stop doing it and do what does work. But distraction. Distraction just keeps you in motion without ever letting you arrive anywhere. So today I wanna talk about what's really getting in the way of the life and the impact that you say you want. And spoiler, it's not because you're not working hard enough. It's that you're working hard on too many things. Welcome back to Built for Impact. I am Jake Burhans, and this is the podcast where inner peace meets high performance and where building your dream life starts from the inside out. If you are new here, the work we do on this show is rooted in the BUILD Framework, all about reprogramming the inner patterns, beliefs, and nervous system responses that run your life so you can build from peace instead of pressure. Today's episode is one core idea: focus. Is the new discipline. We've been living in this hustle culture age where you gotta grind harder and do the things and push and go, go, go, go, go. People are burnt out by that, obviously. I believe it's focus is a new discipline. Can you be disciplined enough to be focused on what you're doing? Because like I said in the, in the opening part there is that you don't need to work harder. You just need to stop working hard on so many things. If you just focus on one thing and put all your energy and attention and effort into that one thing, you would gain the progress that you're looking for with a fraction of the effort because all of your attention and energy is going into that one thing. So we're going to slow down a little bit here and look at why we can't focus, why distraction feels so safe, and what it's actually costing us. So let's get into it. First thing, we're scared of the wrong thing. Okay. We've been taught to be afraid of failure. Okay, because, well, really it's because we tie our identity to failure. Like if we fail, you know, we got a bad grade or we didn't make the sports team or we didn't get the job that we wanted, that means we were a, we are a failure as a person. So that's the first thing we need to do. We need to detach our identity from what we do and that'll make you less afraid of failure. But failure is how you learn. That is how you actually get to success. In the book Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, he talks about your path towards the outcome you want, success, whatever you want to call it. Self-guided missile gets launched and basically it gets to its destination through negative feedback, meaning it'll get too far off to the right. It'll get a little indicator, beep beep beep, too far off, go back to the left, a little too far off to the left, beep beep beep, back to the right, beep beep beep. And it keeps kind of groping its way all the way there, going back and forth and getting those failure points until it reaches the destination. We accomplish things in the same manner. Whenever we fail at something or it doesn't go the way we wanted it to, it's information about what didn't work. That's amazing. Okay, so that didn't work. What does work? And you can just keep trying unlimited times. People forget that you can have unlimited tries, but we get in our own head about what failure is. Failure actually tells you something. Distraction tells you nothing. It really makes you feel like you're being more productive than you actually are, which is why it's so sinister, right? You can spend a few years failing fast and learning a ton, or you can spend that same few years just staying busy and actually learning nothing. So we treat failure like this boogeyman. Meanwhile, distraction is the one that's really robbing us of all of our results that we're looking for. Second thing here, there's too much information and our system knows it. We're, we're not built for this volume of input. We got social media, we got the internet. There's a thousand different people saying a thousand different things. We gotta focus on one source of information, one source of input, and do the thing until you get that result. So if you're trying to grow social media, or you're trying to grow a business, focus on one teacher who's done it. Take that advice and do that advice until you get the results. Do not get distracted. Stay laser focused on that thing. When we are so distracted and overstimulated, it really does put our nervous system into this constant scanning, right? It's like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? Do I need to do this? Do I need to do that? It's like completely overwhelming. So really focusing in on the information that you want to follow and the and the mentor that you want to follow until you get the results and really just ruthlessly cutting out everything else is going to, not only are you going to feel better, but you're going to get the results quicker. And it's almost like a sense of relief when you're just like, okay, I'm just focusing on this. I don't even care about anything else. Just focusing on this. That's all I got to focus on. Takes off so much pressure and anxiety. It's like all I'm focusing right, like right now, all I'm focusing on is TikTok, right? Outside of my normal responsibilities, I'm just focusing on TikTok. I'm calling it the 30-Day Laser Focus Challenge. For the next 30 days, I want to see how many results I can get if I just focus on growing my TikTok for 30 days. Obviously, I have my responsibilities I have to do, but outside of that, only TikTok. Not consuming any other information. I'm just thinking about scripts, applying them, studying the TikTok platform, and that is it. So when we talk about built for impact, I want us to subtract, not add, right? The instinct is like, okay, let's add more strategies, more content, more side projects, more inputs, all this stuff. Real progress and impact is going to come from subtracting out the things until one has your full attention and presence. Even me, I do post across all platforms, but I have assistants who are doing that other posting. So it takes me maybe an hour a week to, you know, put the posts on for Facebook and LinkedIn, all that stuff. But outside of that, I'm not putting any energy and attention to it all week long. All I'm going to be doing is TikTok. And I have been doing that, but I've been like doing some DMing on, on LinkedIn and Facebook. I'm like, I am too distracted. Too much. Focus on one thing. One thing. That's like the One Thing by Gary Keller, but it is so true. Because then you put all of your energy and attention to that one thing and you actually get results. So it's not about doing more. It's about doing the one thing all the way. If you want to be built for impact, you have to build something and you can't build something while you're also building 5 other somethings. Okay. So at first it feels like this loss, but then it feels like the oxygen that literally fuels everything. Like, oh my gosh, I'm actually getting the traction that I want to get because I'm focusing. So I wanna shift this culture that we live in from a hustle culture to a focus culture. Let's be disciplined in our focus, less disciplined with our pushing and grinding and da da da da, all that stuff that makes us stressed out. Let's just be disciplined in our focus, disciplined in our focus. So over this week, I want you to ask yourself if you actually let yourself focus on one thing for the next 30 days, what's the biggest thing that you need to do right now that's gonna make a difference in your life? Or in your business and focus on that one thing for the next 30 days. Cut everything else out. Do your basic responsibilities that you have to do, but outside of that, any free time learning or space that you have, focus on building that one single thing and just see how much you can get done in 30 days. I'm excited to begin doing this and I'm sure you're gonna surprise yourself as well. So I'll do a check-in as well in, uh, in 4 weeks when I've done this to see where I'm at. I was at like 2,070 followers on TikTok when I'm starting this, so we'll see. Where we're at at the end of the 30 days of just focusing on TikTok and going TikTok Live. But yeah, it's gonna be good. So if you got any value out of this episode, share it with someone else who's just been running themselves thin trying to do everything. Okay. If you haven't yet hit notifications and subscribe to the podcast, you could do that. Built for Impact Community is live. That is where you're gonna be able to integrate, tap into the weekly calls Tuesday at 5:30. We're going over a lesson, answering questions live, and also some other free materials in there for you to be able to. Integrate this work at a deeper level. All right, I'll see you next week, folks. Till next time, all the peace, all the power.