How to Gain Laser Focus In a World of Distraction

So, Sam, the next thing I want to talk about is focus. Now I know for me personally, like, focus has always been one of those things where it's a constant struggle and I'm always getting like improving upon it. But like, how did you get to the point where you can do 12 hour days and just sit there and focus without getting interrupted, without having things to stress distract you and really get what you have to do on your war map done for the day?

That's taken me a long time to figure that out because I struggled with it for a long time. And the thing is, people try to focus and it's always really hard to try and do something, to try and actually just do it. It's not as simple as that. And so what I find works best is if you take focus and you turn it upside down. So you look at what is the opposite of focus. And the opposite of focus is distraction. So if you don't do distraction, then you're doing focus. So the best way I find is to turn focus upside down and then look at every distraction that you have in your whole life, everywhere. Every time you catch yourself getting distracted, like, take note of what it is, and then you just have to start getting rid of all of them. So, you know, I've, I found it very hard to focus and I would always get distracted. But then I started and I thought it was, oh, it's my fault, I can't focus. But no one can focus when there's all of these distractions everywhere. So you have to get rid of them all. And so I just try and get rid of every single thing that can be a distraction. And then what happens naturally is I just find myself focusing. So it's kind of like a counterintuitive way to look at it. But you know, it's like if I go to work in the morning, I, you know, I don't check email before I start work. I don't check Facebook. In fact, I pretty much don't even have a Facebook. I don't have a Snapchat, I don't have like an Instagram. I don't have any of these things. And then on my phone I have about three. I think I've got four apps. And even though I only have four apps, I still turn my phone on airplane mode and put it in my desk drawer and close the drawer. Because even if I can see my phone in my peripheral vision, even if it is on airplane mode, it's still a distraction because still my brain's kind of like getting an itch to kind of go over here and check it. So your brain is always like scanning your whole vision and anything that can trigger a distraction. It is. Even if you have a lot of self control, it's still like stealing the focus away. So you've just got to try and get rid of everything. Like even down to in the morning. Like, what clothes do you wear? You know, I just started wearing like the same thing pretty much every single day. Just like the same shoes. I've got like four pairs of like the same shorts. I've got like ten T shirts which are all the same brand and same size. And you know, just that's another thing to do because that's less distraction again because you don't have to think like what am I going to wear? And another huge one was like getting rid of chores, like, you know, getting rid of having to clean the house, having a cleaner, that's another huge thing. And then getting rid of having to cook, like getting a chef in to do all of that. Then they do all the dishes and everything as well. You know, it's to really focus like at a hundred percent. Well, I've never even achieved that, so I don't know what that's like. So to focus, like at your best, you have to get rid of everything that isn't focus. Yeah.

I mean I think most people would be even happy with 80%. Like even if you could just focus 80% of the day.

That's like, I still don't even think I do that.

Right. I don't think I do either. Like, but that would be probably about as good as you can, I would assume.

We don't know how good we can get, like just to look at like the best people in the world at their things. They've focused on that thing more than any, more than anyone else. It's like Michael Jordan's focused on basketball more than anyone else. And then, and you know, you hear stories about like people like Kobe Bryant and stuff. When all of the his teammates were out partying, like buying Lamborghinis and drinking and all of this stuff, he would just be at home watching basketball DVDs, just watch, studying games. You know, the best people of all time in their different crafts. They haven't gotten distracted. Like even when they're making a lot of money, they don't care about the money. They're still focused on the game.

Got it.

So how do you weigh your decision then? When you bring something that can remove a distraction in your life, say a cleaner, like how do you value your time and the cleaner's time in order to know, yeah, I need to get a cleaner because an hour spent doing this makes my business go a certain direction as opposed to me cleaning and having that break of focus.

I think if you're making like 50 grand a year, pretty much, you should ever clean it, because that's one of the lowest value things that you can do if you can, you know, is cleaning. Because other people are willing to do that for almost nothing. So I think even if you're making like 50 grand a year, you should ever clean it.

Got it.

And how's that work for you guys? Do you have someone that comes over like once a week, every day?

Twice a week?

Twice a week. And now the benefit of having a cleaner, is it not just the actual time that you spent cleaning or thinking about it, but is it more to do with, like, if the apartment were to be dirty when you came home and you would just constantly be thinking about that even if it wasn't cleaning, is it more that time sucked or is it the actual cleaning?

It's everything to do with it. It's not just the cleaning, it's thinking about the cleaning and everything. Once someone's taking care of it, you can just let it go. It no longer occupies any space in your brain.

Got it?

If something's dirty, don't even keep. Just keep walking because it won't be like in a day.

Right?

So that's more of the methodology is like, eliminate the things that even you even start thinking about, even if you're not actively doing the cleaning is a.

The cleaner is a good example for people if they're already making money. But it's not going to work for people who are, you know, just getting started, right? Because it, you know, they. Their money is really valuable to them and time is more abundant. You start to get cleaners and shifts and things like this when time is more scarce than money. So you know, when you're starting out, you've got all this abundance of time but not much money. And when you develop more, you've got all of this money but no time. So you start trading time for money. But in the beginning you're trying, you're trading your time for money. You see what I mean? It flips over. But, you know, so maybe the things we have to pay other people for, they don't. They don't really come into it early on in the equation. Paying people to get time back is like, when you're making money in the beginning, it's more about cutting anything out of your life that isn't necessary or doesn't contribute towards your goal. So you got to, like, come up with your goals. Where do you want to be in one year, three or five years, whatever. If, if anything doesn't feed any of those, get rid of it.

Yeah. So like you said at the very beginning, when people are starting, oftentimes they have maybe more time than they even know to do with it, because they have. They've gone through that audit of their life and found so many distractions that if they were just to simply take those off the table, they might not even know what to fill it up with. Business activities. So it's really just getting to that point where you no longer have enough time for business activities in your life. And then at what point besides, like, the external things, when do you decide to hire, like, an employee for the first time or an assistant for the first time? Like, what, what did you have to get to before you realized that was a good.

It's really as soon as you're, you know, you got to be profitable first of all, and you're doing things which, like, aren't moving the. It's like not making the boat go faster. That's like a good, like, analogy for it. So, like, you know, let's say you've got a boat. There's like, maintenance things that you got to do to the boat to make it keep going, right? Like change the gas, the oil, whatever, but it doesn't. None of those things make it go faster. And so often what happens is you're just. If all you're doing is maintaining the boat, well, it'll keep going, but it's never going to go faster. So you want to always think, like, of tasks in two categories. Does it make the boat go faster or does it just maintain it? And if it maintains it, give it to someone else. And if it makes it go faster, you should be doing that. But often what happens with entrepreneurs is their whole day, their whole life gets sucked up by things that don't make the boat go any faster. And then they're just stuck on a, like a perpetual wheel which never ends because they're wondering why their business isn't getting better and they don't have any time. And nothing's going to change if nothing's improving the business.

Got it?

That makes sense. And when you sit down and you find those blocks of time that you can really focus, how often do you typically go before you take a break? Can you go three hours? Can you Go five hours. Can you go a whole day without getting up? Like, what, what's that look like to you? And when do you start to get into the groove? Like, can you even achieve focus in less than 10 minutes or 20 minutes?

No. Like, there's depths of it. Like you can't get into your absolute peak focus until you've gone through the gears to get up into that zone and to get into that zone. For most people, it will take three hours to really get there. And so really focusing, you don't decide whether you're going to focus or not on like a little task. Really. You decide if you're going to focus for a day or not. So like you can really divide days into two categories. One is like busy work and then the other one is like the deep work. And if you're, if it's busy work, well, you're going to be focusing on like 15 to 30 minute tasks, right? One at a time, just. And you want to group all of those things together and say like two days a week and then the other three days you want to dedicate those to just focusing on like some key projects which require a huge amount of time.

Got it. So for you, what's that look like? Is it like writing or.

Well, let's say I've got to make content for like my programs. Some of those videos are like two hours long. They might have 300 slides in them and require a lot of research. Each of those videos on average takes me about 15 hours to make from the start to the end. So I would just say I'd wake, I'd plan like the night before. I'd say, tomorrow I'm gonna make this video. I wake up in the morning and I make that video. Takes the whole day. But you can't do anything else. Can't touch email, can't touch your phone, can't talk to a friend, can't do anything. Just that it's all you were doing. And then, you know, obviously you can't do that forever because all of this chaos builds up everywhere else. And so when you're doing it, you have to get good and you have to get disciplined at just letting chaos happen. So as you start just once, you decide to just neglect everything else in the world and just go all in on one thing. Your email inbox piles up different bills, like need to get paid. Some different person has their little crisis or issue or whatever. People text you, people might try and call you, leave voice messages. All of these different things start happening. But you just have to block them out and not think about them at all. You just have to go all in on this and then let that stuff pile up. And then you might go into deep focus for, like, two or three days, then do that on the last day of the week or whatever. Then you're just doing busy work all day, replying to email, paying bills, you know, calling different people or handling things like that.

Got it?

But what people try and do is mix the deep, concentrated work with the distraction work, and that doesn't work. It doesn't work at all.

And what do you think about? So you schedule that. But I know that sleep also plays a role into it for you too, because you track your sleep now. And how do you know, like, if it's. If it's time to audible from what you had planned for the day? Like, let's say you didn't get a good night's sleep, or do you still try to power through it? Some people would say, like, yeah, you just gotta hustle through. You're gonna be tired. Like, just do it. Even if the work quality isn't there. Where do you. How do you feel about that, and where do you draw the line?

Well, you know, you always have some nights where you don't have, like, best sleep, whatever. And the best thing to always do is just finish the day, give it, like, your absolute best. And typically it's fine. Like, you know, people can work longer without sleep than what they think. It is important to have, like, a certain amount, but it's all. Every now and then. You're also supposed to not have that much sleep. Like, if you think back into the, you know, early days of, like, when humans were alive, they would have had to go, like, hunting, like, different animals for, like, two nights straight, you know, so they were up for, like, 48 hours. You don't have the time to think, I'm just gonna let this animal go because I need to get my eight hours. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's what it's like. Like, you want to try and get your eight hours every night, but sometimes business requires you. You got to hunt an animal.

Right.

Have you ever had, like, an aha moment in a time of, like, sleep deprivation, where you've been staying up, like, all night or just, I didn't get much sleep at all?

Yeah, I mean, I've had both. I've had aha moments, and I've had making dumb mistakes because I'm too tired. Like, it's. One isn't the answer. It's. You've got to just try and have sleep. Like, it's silly to deprive yourself of it purposefully. But you've also got to know that sometimes you're not going to be able to. But you got to just go two days sometimes, like without anything. Pretty much most entrepreneurs I know, like, they've gone. They've gone like two days before without sleep. Like, it happens.

Yeah.

You just do what's necessary in that time of need.

Mm.

Got it.

Now, as far as like, schedule, does that play any role in focus? Like the fact that you have a schedule every single day, it's the same time, or are you able to achieve the same levels of focus even without that?

So the key to like, the key to scheduling is to remove the decision fatigue of like, what should I do? Because most people spend most of their brain energy every day deciding what to do. And that's silly. Like, you should be spending most of your brain power doing the thing instead of deciding what to do. Thing to do. So you want to schedule. Really? Your, like, you want to schedule tomorrow today? So what I do every day at 8pm or 9pm is schedule out tomorrow. And I write down all the things I want to do tomorrow and then I will schedule them in. And it's pretty much I plan out every half hour from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. And sometimes you can do that. You can schedule every 30 minutes. But sometimes the project might be like a deep work thing, like just making one video. My to do list for that day might literally be just make this video and that's it. It depends on the type of work. Sometimes your to do list is just to just do this one thing and sometimes it's to do a whole bunch of different things.

Got it.

But the key is you have to do it the night before because when you go to sleep, your brain is doing all of this stuff while you're asleep. Like, you've. I don't know if you've noticed before, but you. Have you ever, like, woken up in the middle of the night and you're thinking about something like Facebook ads or like spreadsheets? Mine, I always think about spreadsheets and trying to consolidate different things. And so your brain's like working while you're asleep and it's actually like getting further towards its goal while it's asleep. So if you set what you're going to do tomorrow and then go to sleep, you've already pretty much figured out what you're going to do subconsciously, and it Makes it much easier to do. It's kind of like if you say I have to wake up for this flight in the morning and it's really on your mind when you go to sleep. You go to sleep, bam, you're just up.

That happens to me all the time.

That's that same thing. Like that same thing when you say I have to be up by this time. If you set your to do list the night before it does, you achieve the same thing.

Got it.

And at what point do you know if, let's say, the day just doesn't go as expected and you're getting towards the end of the day and you haven't achieved everything that you wanted to in that specific time frame, let's say like 9pm you're supposed to be done, do you continue to push to get those things done or do you regroup in that time period and replan those things out for the next day or the next week? Or how does that look?

It depends whether the thing has to be done or not. Like if it's mission critical, right?

Yeah, maybe that's a better question, is how do you prioritize your tasks? Do you put the most important ones at the beginning of the day or at the end, or does it matter?

I'll put the most important ones first every day. They come right at the start. And I'll always be working on the most important thing now. But sometimes you get started on a task and it's not done by the end of the day and it didn't go as you planned. Like that happens all the time. Plans always change. So, you know, at the end of that day, the decision to keep going and stay up late or just to go to sleep on time and then wake up the next day, it totally depends the urgency of the thing. So, like, I'll give you an example. If our, let's say our merchant account and billing system goes down, right, that means no revenue can come into my business. It's just stuck. If I had the ability to fix that thing by staying up late, then I would stay up late and I wouldn't care about throwing my routine out of whack because that's like mission critical. If we don't do that for a day, we lose like a serious amount of money because every day counts. And you know that that's really important. But if I'm making a video and it's not, I haven't left it until the absolute last minute, then it's fine if it goes over, it's better just to get the, you know, the proper night's sleep, you've got to really evaluate these things. I mean, most of the time, if you've got a schedule and you're working on things and you haven't been irresponsible and left them to the last minute, most of the time, things can wait. And that's the key, is to work on things early. Because then if they don't go to plan, it's all right if it goes another day.

Got it.

So going back to kind of what we talked about at the very beginning of the video is like, no one can focus at 100%. And you said even that you're still working on it. What are ways that you're trying right now to improve your ability to focus? Or things you've experimented with that you've tried to improve your ability to focus?

So it's just starving. The key is to starve distraction and starve compulsions. So the things that break people's focus is compulsions and habits and distractions. And once you've done these things a lot, a big one, which everyone has, is just pulling their phone out of their pocket, unlocking it and checking it. And there's probably a few apps which they check in sequence. There's probably, like, email, then it might be Facebook, then it might be Instagram, then it might just. They'll even have a sequence, right? And so their brain is just trained. Every time they do that, it goes like a synapse fires. Bam. Goes through the different, like, nodes in the brain, and it burns like a cable, like, in your brain every time you do that, and the more times you're doing it, the cable is getting thicker, thicker, thicker. That means that whenever the brain fires that piece of electricity, it's just going to go, like, down that path because it's the path of least resistance. Like, those are all the things that people are fighting when they're trying to focus, because let's say they're focusing on one task, then they've just got this urge which just comes out of nowhere, to pull their phone out and look at it, right? Or they're focusing on this and then they've got this urge to check their email. And sometimes these things will happen and the person's done it before. They even catch themself doing it because it's that ingrained into their. Into, like, their brain. And so really what everyone's got to work on is starving the distraction and feeding the focus. Because you can't fuel focus without starving distraction. It's Actually, it's more like you don't get good at focus. You get good at starving distraction and you, you getting rid of all of your compulsions. Like some people, they've, you know, they've got to have a smoke or they've got to check the news, or they've got to check their phone or they've got to text someone or they have to, you know, grab something to eat or they have to go get a coffee. Right. All of these things which you can feel like bubble up inside you in the middle of things. You got to get good at catching the feeling and being like, oh, this is what I want to do. But nope, just back in. And then it just keeps happening. And you have to be pretty self aware to catch it in the first place. Because most people feel it and then they're doing it.

Yeah.

Then they don't even know how that happens. They just were doing it.

Right.

And so you've got to be able to catch it. You've got to be able to catch it before it happens and then have the discipline not to act on it. And then you'll notice the more focused you get, like, the better you get at it. You start noticing even thoughts. So forget about like compulsions and habits and actions. You'll be focusing on something and then you might just think about something when you're like 12 years old and you're just like, what the hell? And then you're just like straight back in. But you, you get good at even catching every little thought and you're just like, this is weird. Like you just back in. Then another weird one back in. And then the more you, the more you get good at just noticing the thing and then just shutting it off and giving it no thought, no respect, nothing. Like most people identify with their thoughts as important things. Like, oh, I thought it, it must be what I should do. Or I thought it, oh, I should look into this. Or I thought this. Thoughts don't mean anything. They're just like you, you are a better to like not associate with your thoughts. Like just let them starve to death. Because the more you let them starve and the less you entertain them, they just start fading off. They like, it's like imaginary friends. It's exactly the same concept. But you know, children have imaginary fans who they play with.

Right.

Once they stop doing it as frequently, the friend dies and then they just, it's gone.

Yeah.

And it all a thought is, is an imaginary friend. So you've just got to starve them out.

That's really interesting. So it sounds like you can recognize those pretty well in your own life now, but for someone just starting, it's probably pretty hard now that they know they might start seeing it. But did you ever do anything like journaling, like sitting down there and every time you got distracted, like write down what it was just so you could kind of get a sense of like what was distracting you on it on a daily basis or do you find that they would.

I mean, most people know.

Most people just know.

Most people know and they don't want to get rid of them because they're attached. Like, you know, imagine if someone's like, oh man, I want to focus and I'm alright, give me your phone. I was alright, first I'm going to get rid of Instagram, then Snapchat, then Facebook and then all of these things. The person is going to be almost in tears. A lot of people would be in tears. Some people might say their life, you just ruined their life.

Yeah, that's, that's true. That's typically what like teenagers tell their parents when they take their phone away. Yeah, yeah.

But like the smartest, most successful people in the world don't use their phones. There was an article you showed me the other day, Jeff Bezos, he doesn't check his phone at all. Pretty much never. So like, you know, there's, and there's movie directors too. Like, I think it's Christopher Nolan. He like doesn't even have a phone at all.

That's interesting.

Doesn't have one. And most of the pro businessmen I know will never answer it. And if you do call it, it'll just go straight to voicemail and even the voicemail just say, I don't use my phone. So like, you know, they really good businessmen and really good people in any field, they've, they block out the distractions.