Sean Buttner explains how to reclaim focus in an age of constant distraction. He recommends blocking one to two uninterrupted hours daily for single tasks, which he says boosts productivity, deepens relationships, and improves health. Treating focus as sacred and protecting it with clear boundaries is the foundation.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to start your day. Great. Start your day with a coach. I am your certified high performance coach, Sean Butner. And today we're talking about focus. Because in today's world, we have our focus pulled in a hundred different ways. And if we don't manage it right, we're not going to reach our next level of productivity, of success, of performance, of all the things we talk about in high performance. So let's go. All right, now, if you've ever been at a job where you have some project work or there's something you're working on and you have co workers that'll show up unexpectedly, or you have fires you have to fight, you know, something breaks, something requires your immediate attention, causes you to drop everything. Or maybe you have kids that need to get on to zoom school still, or news or social media or any of the other distractions that compete for a focus. You know that it's really, can be chaotic, right? You can do a lot of things. You can feel like you're not actually getting ahead or you're not making meaningful progress towards the things that you want. And so what if we could better direct our focus and reach our goals quicker and handle distractions better? Because also, you know, before smartphones, we had to physically be in the right place for distractions, like coworkers, tv, music, socialization, you know, phone calls and the like. You had to be physically by the phone, physically in front of the TV or the record player in order to allow that distraction to happen. And now you carry all of that stuff around in your pocket. And so, you know, you can watch hours and hours and hours of TV on the commute if you're taking the train or something. Don't do that while you're driving. I hope, you know, you could, you know, be called at all hours of the night from your place of work, because they can reach you now, you know. And so with all these different things going on, how can we help mitigate the cost of trying to manage all these new avenues of grabbing our attention? First, we need to believe in our ability to focus. And that ability to focus is sacred and worth protecting. Because it's much harder now for a lot of folks to say, you know what, after five, after seven o' clock at night, the work phone is turned off. I am not reachable. You know, if something, if people are dying, you need to let me know, you know, or your doctor like that. You know, there's certain jobs where you need to be able to react quickly if something big comes up. But for most of us to say, you know what, when I'm home, I'm home, I'm relaxing, I'm not thinking about work. And having that boundary, you know, all stems from that belief that the time for you to work and focus at work is that, and the time to focus at home and do what you got to do at home is also fat and sacred. So once that happens, we can shift and to really be present longer at work and at home, you know, when we can trust that our time that we focus on stuff will be interrupted, will be meaningful, will drive things forward, will give us the rejuvenation the rest we need, will give us the productivity that we need. If we can trust when we sit down to focus, we can give it our all and then move on to the next thing and be cool. When we have that trust, that's when the productivity gains will happen. And ultimately when we focus, we plan for the interrupted time, you know, we can have more time with our family, with our friends, working on our careers, working on our health, our rest, reflection, you know, and just living fully. So in high performance, you know, we talk a lot about block time and basically this is just scheduling one task for an hour at a time and to complete it so that you can move on to the next task, next thing of the day, right? So what would happen in your life if you could schedule one to two hours a day to completely focus on what was important to you? Could you imagine how much more appreciative your family would be for one hour of interrupted time to play with the kids, to have a conversation with your spouse, or an hour to just walk around or work out every day? How would your body be different if you, you were consistently for one hour of time each day moving, you know, what would it feel like if you could reach that, that feeling of being in flow where you're engaged and time melts away and you're enjoying the time and it's challenging you, you know, how if you had more of that in your life, how much happier would you feel? You know, and really this is all to say that it's as Easy as scheduling 1 to 2 hour, 1 hour blocks each day for yourself, for your family, for your career, to really make a huge difference, you know, because focus is a superpower everyone can develop and if we can focus on fewer activities that we can work uninterrupted on for one hour, we can reach that next level of connection of happiness, productivity and, and excitement for life. So that's the blog, video and newsletter video for today. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Comment below or reply to the email that you get this through. Let me know what you think about it. And until next week, go forth with more joy, personal growth and impact in your communities. This is Sean Bodnar saying, I'll see you next week. Take care.
