Episode 30: Why Focus Isn't Your Problem

Welcome to the Create youe Laptop Life podcast, where entrepreneurs all around the world come to learn how to market and grow their online business right from their laptops, wherever they are. We don't have traditional nine to five jobs and we don't want them because financial and lifestyle security and freedom is too important to us. We know the world is changing for the better and that the freelance and entrepreneur economy is the cleaner, greener, smarter way to work for both families and businesses. My name is Julie, and this podcast will teach you everything you need to know about creating and growing your laptop life. Hey. Hey. This is Julie. It has been a long time since I've done a podcast. I hate that I'm not consistent, but here I am. I just got back from 10x with Russell Brunson. Craziness. We are getting ready for funnel hacking live. More craziness. And I thought, you know what, I just have got to do a podcast on this topic that I started talking about actually about a week ago and I meant to record a podcast and didn't. And it's called why Focus. Focus isn't really your problem. So I'm going to just dive right in. So I think I get asked about productivity at least five times a day from my digital insiders. These are my clients in my high end mastermind. And the question is usually framed like, but how do you stay focused? How do you manage social media and a business and all the things without missing a beat? And so I don't want to exaggerate, of course, but honestly, guys, I have yet to see anyone who can produce at the same capacity that I can. So. So I think that if there were something that I could become the best in the world at this stuff, focus and concentration and capacity, I could actually, like, win that. Really? Really and truly. So whenever people ask me about focus and productivity, they expect me to say things like, well, I batch my time 100% of the time, or I use a timer, or I have all kinds of distraction app blockers to prevent me from scrolling the newsfeed, or I turn my notifications off. I stick to my plans. I use supplements and enormous amounts of caffeine. And the truth is, I do none of it. None of it. I don't even drink coffee, you guys. I just drink tea. I do drink a lot of tea, but still, it's like an entire pot of tea is like the equivalent of like one cup of coffee or something. And I have no distraction apps. All my notifications are on. I don't even know what I'd do at the time. Or if I had one. So what the heck? How am I pulling all of this off? So I need to write a book on productivity, but that's been really slow going. So what I've been doing is emailing my list a chapter, right? One at a time. And so I did this. And I've been trying to write a chapter and then record a podcast because I know some people prefer to listen. So I did one on the paper whiteboard. You probably remember that podcast. I also have it as a blog post. So this one is also a blog post already. If you go to my blog@julisstoyan.com, you'll see it. All right, so let's talk about focus. Focus is not your problem, okay? If you are struggling to get stuff done and you think it's because you need more focus and concentration, it's not true. I'm going to show you why. But before I do, let's just talk about what focus is like a non official definition, right? Focus is a superpower that pushes all the productive momentum you have onto one activity or task at a time. So we know multitasking isn't really a thing, right? Our brain just will toggle quickly back and forth between whatever tasks we're doing. So right now, when I was going to 10x, right, it was 5:00am, I was at the airport, I was drinking tea. I was writing this actual post that I'm talking to you about right now. So I was doing three tasks, but my brain could really only focus on one at a time. So if I were to observe myself in the airport, what actually happened was every two minutes, I would take my focus off my writing. I'd put my focus onto my tea and I'd take a sip. Then I'd move my focus again onto the clock to see, is it time to board? No, not yet. Then I would move my focus probably to the dude snoring next to me and then back to my screen again. And that would all happen in the course of a few minutes, right? But I've moved my focus like four times, about once a minute. So imagine that focus is like this little red laser light. And so whatever the light hits, it creates a hole. So you're using this laser to like drill holes in the wall, right? Hole one goes great, hole two goes great. But then your dog like runs into the room chasing a cat. All of a sudden you lose your focus and then you focus onto the dog or the cat. So the laser moves to the floor and now there's a hole in the floor. So what was the problem in that moment? Did you really need more focus? No, you didn't. No, you didn't. You didn't need a deeper hole, right? It wasn't about your focus, it was about the movement of it. So in other words, we could say it's the act of refocusing. Because if you had been able to refocus your attention back onto the wall when the dog ran in, you would have no hole in the floor. So many people who are trying to be more productive, they try to improve their concentration and focus thinking that's going to make them able to get more done, but it doesn't really solve the problem. Just think about this. Like, how annoying is it when you have like only let's say two hours, right? And you have to build a presentation, you have to share it with 10,000 people and you go into your office, but all you can seem to focus on is how dirty your office is, right? You've got great concentration and great focus on the dirt in your office. That is completely unhelpful, right? Do you have a focus problem? No. Your focus is on the wrong thing. It's the movement of the focus, not the concentration itself. Okay? So if I were to boil down the number one thing that contributes to my productivity, it's that I've exercised the muscle of refocusing. It's not an easy one to strengthen because it requires a lot of practice and also risk. Because in order to get better at refocus, you have to refocus. And that can cause some pretty bad rabbit trails. Right? For example, could you write a chapter of a book, pop off of your screen, go on Facebook and come back without having to struggle to re enter? Because I can. And it's not just about Facebook. It's really with anything. If I'm toggling from Trello to voxer to slack to Facebook to kids to husband to writing, from project to project to project, literally hundreds of times per day, every day I'm refocusing. So that's not to say that I don't have dedicated times of creativity or where I close down other activities and I keep my focus pointed in one direction for a long period of time. I have talked about that in the past and I'll talk about it more in the future. I do do that. Right. That does happen usually in the wee hours of the morning. It's great for things like designing courses, book writing, and other super heavy brain power tasks. But there are still weeks and weeks that Go by that, for whatever reason, I don't get that time to myself, and I still have to produce at an insane level. So. So I have to figure out how to maximize, like the small batches of time through the power of refocus. All right, so how do we do it? I'm going to give you three tips, okay? Three tips to start on the practice of refocus. Number one, when you start to do something, sitting down to do something, identify what the end goal is. So, for example, I'm going to record a podcast or I'm going to write an email or whatever that becomes your bullseye. That is literally your default setting. If you were a machine, that is the default, okay, so it's the default setting of your focus. Really say it out loud so that your brain and your body and everything all agree that you are going to sit down and whatever it happens to be, write an email. Okay? That's. Step number one is just to identify the goal when you sit down. Number two, every time your attention is caught on something, whether it's the phone, another tab on your desktop, a notification, the need to drink, kids recognize that even if you don't entertain it, right? Even if you ignore the kid when they come in the room, or you ignore the notification on your phone or tab, your focus was moved anyway, right? It just was like, and this is normal, you're not weird. So just recognize, oh, look, my focus was moved, right? That's it. That's what I want you to do. Just step number two is just notice it. Step number three is once you see it, once you notice it, then you can make a conscious choice, right? Because once it becomes a part of our conscious thinking and our awareness, now we have the power to either entertain it or return to our default setting, our bullseye, and go back to what we were doing. So the question which I'm not going to answer in this podcast today because it's just going to be too long, the question is how to determine when to engage, right? Or when to return to default setting. Okay, so that's really like if you just do those three things first, right? Identify your end goal. Identify your default setting. Number two, recognize. Bring to your conscious mind the recognition when your focus is moved because it's going to happen. It's going to happen 8,000 times in an hour, and that's normal and okay. And we shouldn't fight human nature. And number three, once it is brought into the conscious awareness, now you have that power of choice, conscious choice, where you can say, I'm either going to entertain that distraction or I'm going to go back to default. Okay. If you don't do that, then what happens is all of this just stays in the subconscious. Right? And it really, you know, we're often powerless to our subconscious unless we can leverage our conscious mind to help redirect. Okay. So the job here is not really how to avoid distraction. It's how to create the rules that you'll use to determine the movement of your focus when it gets jostled around. So as you can see, if I like proclaim myself a productivity expert and then I tell you all to go practice, refocus, I might be laughed, like right off the stage because what productivity specialist would tell you to entertain a distraction for the sake of practice? But I kinda am. Alright, so here's just like a practical example of how somebody was asking, like, how do you appear to look like you're on Facebook all day and yet you get so much done? So if we don't talk about the wee morning hour creative hours, we just take that and pretend that that doesn't exist for a while. I have my Facebook tab open on another browser all day long. And so it's safe to say probably every 10 minutes when I'm writing or whatever I'm doing, my focus will get moved to that tab and I'll see the little to see how many notifications are at the top. Right? My focus gets moved every few minutes. So I have this game that I play with myself. So this is more about the rules that I told you I would talk about later. When that notification number gets to 10, I get to check it. So if it's at a 2, like right now I'm looking at it, it's at a 2. It just turned to 4. Right? My focus has moved for one second. I recognize it, but then I refocus back to my default, right back to my writing. Whatever I was doing. If I see it at a 10, I will allow my brain to go wander. And to be just honest, it's very difficult to focus for enormous amounts of time anyway. So I will wander over there, I will answer them, and then I'll come back to my default. And to be fair, a lot of my networking and visibility is on Facebook. So even though it's Facebook, it's also kind of where I have nurtured my business and my followers. So it's not completely unrealistic to say that I should go beyond Facebook because that's where my people are. Okay, so I know what you're all thinking, just keep the tab off your browser, Julie, and then you won't be tempted to check it. And I call complete bullshit on this. Like my phone is right next to me all the time. Even if my phone is on silent and my Facebook tab is nowhere to be found, I will find my mind wandering every couple minutes looking for a distraction. I will find a distraction. My brain just will. And eventually I'll just cave and open it up anyway. And it'll take all that much more time because it's nowhere. It's not on my browser, right? And this really, guys, doesn't have anything to do with Facebook. It's just an example. If you remove Facebook entirely, there are other things that are going to pull us all away, right? Even if we have notifications off app blockers deployed. Because the reality is if we're not trained in the art of refocus, we'll just follow our distractions and they will come all the time. Laundry, phone call, mail, tv, dog, whatever it happens to be. The brain's need to be distracted is not going to go away. And the more you try to artificially resist what is natural to human nature, the more time and energy you're going to spend fighting against something that you'll never win anyway. I mean, at best, if you spend a lot of time, like a lot of time practicing focused meditation, right, you might be able to get your brain to stay on one hard task for like an hour if you're really good. But most of us will probably have at least 10 to 15 attention grabbing distractions in some form in a 60 minute work session. So we can like beat ourselves up and fight against a very distractible world, go off, live in the woods, have no Internet, or we can just practice the art of refocus so that when distractions come, they move through us rather than pull us. There's a really big difference, right? So I've been able to Write for approximately 90 minutes in the early morning hours and I think probably I can say I get distracted five or six times. But my refocus is super fierce and usually only lasts 30 to 60 seconds before I'm back to bullseye, right? As the day wears on and things happen, people wake up and need my attention. My return to bullseye is not as strong and my distractions are a lot more frequent. So anyway, it'll take practice. My homework for you is to really just do those first three tips, right? Identify your end goal when you sit down. Recognize the distraction or the focus being moved when it happens. And then create that conscious choice to either entertain it or return to Bullseye. Even just those three things, even if I haven't really taught you how to create rules for yourself about when to entertain, that will make a huge difference. So I hope this is helpful. If you guys like this kind of stuff, please please please leave a review on my podcast. It helps so much with ranking. Share the podcast. If you tag me on Instagram, I will definitely give you a shout out in my Insta story. So hope you guys have a great day. Appreciate you all. If you're ready to create, grow, scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today. Sam.