90 Minute Live Webinar To Master Focus & Productivity And Eliminate All Distraction

Everyone, it's so beautiful to see everyone trickling in right now. So welcome to our special event with Nerial. Welcome. We're going to be talking about some exciting topics today, especially the the topic of all topics which is how do you gain back one hour every single day? And the reason I brought near y' all to speak on this is because Nir, this handsome gentleman that you're seeing right now in the video in the window pane just below me, is one of the key experts in the world on not just focus, but on habit formation. And so I see we are approaching about 925 people. 927. So we're probably going to top over 1,000 participants in this live webinar. And I want you to know we are live. Nir is. Is that. It's not a recording of him. He is live here with you. So since we are live, I'd love to do this. Guys, Nir hasn't been in a mindvalley live event for a while. So I wanted you to just give him an idea of where you're from. If you've read any of his books, please mention it in the chat. And maybe you might also want to introduce yourself. Just say my name is so and so and I'm from. And then state your city. So I see, I see Zara from London, Edulka from Brazil. Hello Antonio from Panama. Hello. Sunaina from London. Lisa from New York City. Sonam Solanki. Nice to see you again. Hi. Naila Khan. I also see lots of names I recognize. Mohan Subramaniam from Malaysia, Tiffany from Los Angeles, Pat from Toronto, Canada. Ana from Canada, Susan from Philadelphia, Jian from Indiana. Welcome. It's so nice to see all of you guys. Oh, Cricky from Tenerife, Patricia from Mexico. So this is a really, really diverse audience, right? Nir, tell us about you. Where are you right now and where are you originally from?

So I am right now calling in from Singapore. So here it's 10pm at night, but this is normally my bedtime. But it's incredibly important for me to be with you here today. This is a subject that I'm so passionate about because it has absolutely changed my life in so many ways. So I really wanted to come here today and help share my research over the past 10 years on the psychology of focus and distraction.

Absolutely. And why this topic is so important to Mindvalley is as follows. Sometime around Covid, I did a survey to the entire list and I asked people what are the biggest things we can help you with and the two biggest things that came up. Now keep in mind, of all the variety of personal growth topics out there, the two biggest things that came up from a vote of you guys was this. I need better focus and I need to overcome overwhelm. Focus and overwhelm with number one and number two. And we're going to tackle both of these head on today because both are connected. If you are unable to focus, you are more likely to feel overwhelmed in your life. But what many people don't understand is that focus isn't something that superhuman that you are born with. It is a trainable, learnable skill and it's actually one of the most important skills because we live today in a world of perpetual distraction. Even from the time I started this webinar to now, four minutes of it's where I am right now in Italy. It's 4pm it's been three minutes since I started talking. I perceived two notifications on my phone. We are constantly barraged with distraction and so it makes it harder for us to focus on what we need to get done. But if you can focus relentlessly on what you need to get done, what you find is that not only can you make better decisions because there's a cost to swapping between tasks, but you finish your work through faster. And this is where the magic happens. While focus is important, the after effect of focus is really where the magic lies. And that after effect is you gain back an hour a day. When you gain back an hour a day, you skyrocket your productivity. When you gain back an hour a day, there's less pressure on you, so your creativity goes up. When you gain back an hour a day, there's less stress and anxiety because you don't have to worry about working overtime or missing dinner with your family. When you gain back an hour a day, you have more time for personal growth. When you gain back an hour a day, you have more energy levels because you can use that hour to go to the gym, to nap if you need to, to maybe spend some time learning or watching a YouTube tutorial that can make you better at your job. When you gain back an hour a day, you have an extra hour a day to focus on your goals, maybe creating a multiple stream of income, maybe figuring out how to grow in your career. When you gain an hour a day, you're given more time to finish your work faster. Thus you have more time off. Thus you have more time to discover all the beauty in the world. Today I'm running this from Rimini, Italy I spend a great deal of my time working on the road, but not because I have to be on the road. Yesterday I was driving through San Marino. I wanted to experience the a new country. So I had the freedom to get, get my work done in the morning and get that work done so fast that I had five hours to drive up to the country of San Marino, explore and check out the beautiful heritage castles and UNESCO Old Town there, and then come back, have an incredible dinner with friends, get seven and a half hours of sleep, wake up and start work again. But I can do that because I've gained way more than an hour a day. And the final thing is time is money. If you can master time, you also master money. So you may think that what you're here for today is basically how to develop your focus, but no, no, no. You are gaining so much more. You are gaining health, you're gaining freedom, you're gaining the opportunity to discover the world, you're gaining more money. But it all starts with giving you that laser focus. Now we're going to, I asked Nur, I told her that you guys are an extremely advanced audience and he's going to, he's going to give you tons of tips and ideas. So we're going to straight into it. But some of you may want to go deeper. And at the end of it, I'll tell you guys how you can take part in our 30 day Focus Challenge. If you're a Mindvalley member, it's completely free. But it's a 30 day focus challenge because we want to add incredible value to, to all our members. Right? And if you're not a member, guess what? We'll tell you how you can participate as well for a very, very, very low cost. You're going to find that the cost is so negligible, it's just an absolute. Yes. But now, while the man about of the hour is here, Neriyau, I'll let you take it away.

Thanks so much, Vishen. It's great to be here with everyone and thank you so much for joining. I'm going to go ahead and bring up on screen here the presentation. Can you see that? Okay, Vishen?

Yes, Nur, it's perfect. You're good to go.

Terrific, Terrific. Well, welcome everyone. I want to tell you where I started my own journey around this topic of focus and distraction and why I think becoming indistractable is the skill of the century. So for me, it all started a few years ago when my daughter and I had a beautiful day plan. We had this Perfect Daddy daughter afternoon plan where we had this activity book of various things that dads and daughters could do together. And I remember in this activity book we had this one specific challenge. And the challenge was to ask each other this question. If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I remember that question verbatim. But I can't tell you what my daughter said because in that moment, sorry, there's just this one thing that I had to do on my phone. And by the time I looked up from my device, she was gone. Because she'd taken the very clear message that I was sending that whatever was on my phone was more important than she was. And she left the room to go play with some toy outside. And that's when I realized I had to reassess my own relationship with. With distraction and focus. And if I'm really honest with you all, it didn't just happen with my daughter. It would happen when I was saying to myself, okay, today is going to be the day that I'm going to exercise. Today I'm going to eat right. But I didn't. And I wouldn't. I would say, oh, today is the day I'm going to work on this big project and get that thing done at work that I've been delaying and procrastinating on. And yet, 20, 30, 45 minutes later, I still wasn't doing the thing I said I had to do. So if you asked me today, what superpower do I think is most critical? What is the skill of the century? It is the power to be indistractable because there is no facet of your life that is not affected by your ability to harness your attention and control your time. If you don't control your time and attention, you do not control your life. And so what I want to do in the next few minutes is just give you a very high level overview of the over 10 years of research that I put into this topic and to dive deeper into why is it that we get distracted. I want to take you back 2,500 years to the story of how Plato, the Greek philosopher, had this term akrasia. In the Greek, it's the tendency to act against our better interests. And knowing that people have been struggling with distraction for at least the past 2,500 years is very revealing because it tells us that, you know what, it's not just our devices. It can't just be Facebook and our iPhones and all these devices that are causing distraction. That's what we tend to blame. But I would argue that when you dig deeper into the psychology of distraction, what you learn is that distraction is much more interesting, actually much more revealing than just blaming our technology, and much more empowering than I think most people believe that there's a lot that we can do. In fact, anyone with the techniques I'm about to share with you can become indistractable. So let's start with what is distraction? You know, distraction is one of these words that many of us toss around, but to me, at least, I didn't really understand what the word even meant. And so the best way to understand what distraction is is to make sure you understand what distraction is not, right? So ask yourself for a minute, what is the opposite of distraction? Maybe put it in the comments here in the chat function. What's the opposite of distraction? Now, most people will tell you the opposite of distraction is focus, but that's not exactly right. Right. Even though we say that, we say we don't want to be distracted, we want to be focused, I would argue that is not actually the opposite of distraction. The antonym of distraction is traction. Traction and distraction. I would argue that these two words are opposites. And in fact, we know this is the case because if you look at the origin of both words, traction and distraction, they both come from the same Latin root, trahare, which means to pull. And you also see that both these words end in the same six letters. A, C, T, I, O. And that spells action, reminding us that distraction is not something that happens to us, but rather it is an action that we ourselves take. And I would argue that the difference between traction and distraction is one word, and that one word is intent.

Intent.

As Dorothy Parker said, the time you plan to waste is not wasted time. So traction is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do with your time, your attention, in your life, anything that is accordance with your values, that helps move you towards becoming the kind of person you want to become, that is an act of traction. And if what you want to do with your time and attention is play video games or go on Netflix or scroll social media, that's fine. There's nothing wrong about that stuff. We have to stop moralizing and medicalizing those behaviors and looking as though it's fine to do that stuff. And don't let anybody tell you otherwise. If that's what you want to do with your time and attention, fine, do it. But do it according to your schedule and your values, not someone else's, certainly not the tech companies. Conversely, distraction is Any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do, further away from your goals, further away from your values, further away from becoming the kind of person you want to become. Those are acts of distraction. And this is the most dangerous time of distraction is the distraction that you don't even realize is happening. Let me give you a scenario. For years I would sit down on my desk at work and I would look at my to do list. By the way, we can talk about later why to do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity. We'll get to that in a minute if you'd like. And I would sit down on my desk and I'd say, okay, I've got this big important project I need to work on. I've got this thing that I've been delaying on. I'm not going to procrastinate. Here I go. I'm going to get started right now. But first let me check some email, right? Let me just scroll that Slack channel. Let me just check the news real quick. These are all things I have to do in my day. This is part of my work related tasks. And what I didn't realize is that is the most dangerous, the most pernicious form of distraction is the distraction that tricks you into prioritizing the urgent and the easy work at the expense of the hard and important work you have to do to move your life and career forward. So just because it's a work related task doesn't mean it's a distraction. That's the most deadly, the most dangerous form of distraction is a distraction that you don't even realize is happening because you think it's a work related task. But if it's not what you said you were going to do, do with your time and attention, it is by definition a distraction. Okay, so we've got traction, we've got distraction. Let's talk about what prompts us to take these actions here. We have our triggers. The first kind of trigger is called an external trigger. An external trigger is something in our environment, a ping, a ding, a ring, something in our outside environment that tells us what to do next. And this is kind of the usual suspects. You know, it's our phones, it's our computers, it's our kids, it's all this stuff outside of us that tells us what to do. But this is very important. Studies find that only 10% of the time that we get distracted, 10% of the time is it because of an external trigger. Think about that for a minute. As much as People blame stuff outside themselves. That only accounts for 10% of the distraction. So where does the other 90% come from? Turns out the other 90% of the time that we get distracted. We get distracted not by what's happening outside of us, but it turns out we're getting distracted by what's happening outside inside of us. These are called internal triggers. What are internal triggers? Internal triggers are uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape. Boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. These are the fundamental things that distract us. 90% of the time that we get distracted, we get distracted because these uncomfortable sensations. Listen, folks, I don't care if it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, it doesn't matter. You are always going to get distracted by something unless you master those internal triggers, or they will become your master. So what we have to do is to understand that discomfort that we are trying to escape, or we're always going to get distracted by one thing or another. So what do we do? How do we solve this problem? Well, there's only two big solutions. We can either fix the source of the problem, right? Fix whatever is causing us this emotional discomfort, or. Or we learn to cope with it. Because what we now know is that all human behavior is spurred by one thing. We used to think that human behavior, that motivation, was about avoiding pleasure and. Sorry, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, right? Carrots and sticks. That's what we used to think. Sigmund Freud said this. Jeremy Bentham said this. Turns out, neurologically, it ain't true that in fact, everything we do is not for the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, but in fact, everything we do, we do for only one reason, and that is the desire to escape discomfort. Everything we do is about the desire to escape discomfort. Even the desire to feel good, wanting, craving, lusting, is psychologically destabilizing, which must therefore mean that time management is pain management. I'll say it again. Time management is pain management. I would add to that. Weight management is pain management. Money management is pain management. Because all human behavior is a form of pain management. So what do we do about this? I really wanted to give you guys just a taste of some of the techniques that you would learn in this challenge that I'm so excited to run in the next few days here. I'm going to give you some quick hits, some things that you can start doing immediately. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The first thing that we can do is to note the sensation that psychologists tell us by simply being able to write down that sensation. This is an amazing first step to start getting control over that sensation. Now, what want to do next is to get curious, not contemptuous. You see, many people, as soon as they get distracted, they think there's something wrong with them. They start blaming themselves. They start assigning labels. I'm no good at time management or whatever the case might be. And that is deadly. That is not what you want to do. What you want to do instead is to learn to get curious about that sensation so that you can surf the urge. Surfing the urge acknowledges that these uncomfortable sensations are like waves. They crest and then they subside. So if you can be a surfer on a surfboard surfing that sensation, what you will do is learn to build that capacity to delay gratification over time. Let me give you a technique that you can use right now, okay? Starting absolutely today, you can use this technique. This technique is called the ten minute rule. The ten minute rule says that you can give in to any distraction, anything you want, right? If it's you're on a diet and you're trying to avoid eating that chocolate cake, or maybe you're trying to stop smoking, or maybe you're just trying to to stop scrolling Instagram or Facebook or whatever it is on the Internet that you find distracting, maybe you're trying to delay doing those things or cut them out of your life altogether. So what I want you to do, next time that you feel like you're about to get distracted and you really want to focus on something else, what I want you to do is to tell yourself that you can give in to that distraction. No problem. You can give into that distraction. But not right now. What you don't want to tell yourself is no. We know that abstinence oftentimes backfires. It elicits what we call psychological reactance. So instead of telling yourself no, you want to tell yourself not yet. So many times, actually, almost every day when I'm doing my writing. You know, I've been a professional author now for 10 years. I've written two bestsellers, thousands of articles, and many times, most of the time when I'm writing, all I want to do is check email or scroll something or search for something on Google. But instead what I do is I set my phone and I say, I'm going to set a timer for 10 minutes. I put my phone down, I take a deep breath, and now I have.

A choice to make.

I can either get back to the task at hand. In my case, it's writing for your case. It Might be something else. Or I can just surf that urge, right? I just surf that sensation. I teach you in the course a series of different mantras and practices that you can use to overcome that sensation. So I'll give you, for example, my personal mantra. Every time that I find myself looking to for distraction, I'm trying to escape that emotional discomfort. Here's what I tell myself. I tell myself, this is what it feels like to get better. This is what it feels like to get better. And simply repeating that mantra that it's okay to feel discomfort, that that's part of time management is pain management. And accepting that discomfort is part of the growth process. This is an amazing technique that what you will find is if you can just use this technique to delay that, that discomfort for just 10 minutes, Del, that, that distraction, whatever it might be for just 10 minutes. What you will find is by the time those 10 minutes are up, you'll be right back to the task at hand. Right? And so over time, you're going to go from 10 minutes to 12 minutes, maybe 15 minutes. And you're building your agency, you're building your muscle that you really can delay gratification just a little bit to become more and more indistractable over time. Again, there's over a dozen different techniques that we can go through. This is just the very, very tip of the iceberg. For the sake of time, though, let's move on to the next step to becoming indistractable, which is making. Okay, so now I'm about to tell you a hard truth, folks, that you cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. I'm going to say that again. Write it down. We know that when you write things down, they're more likely to be remembered. You cannot call something a distraction unless you know what it is distracting you from. So one of the things that we're going to do in our 30 day challenge is to make sure that you start time boxing your day. Because again, how can you say you got distracted if you don't know what you got distracted from? So part of being a grown up today is scheduling your time. If you're maybe a child or retired, okay, fine. You don't have to schedule your time. If you feel like your life is perfect and you're able to accomplish everything to your utmost and full potential, don't listen to this advice. But if you're like I used to be, where you know you're capable of more, if you want to get that hour that Vishen was talking about earlier, if you want to get that hour a day, heck, you can get multiple hours back per day by simply learning to schedule your time. And I know this sounds intimidating. A lot of people say, oh, I can't do that. I've got kids, I've got bosses. Listen, I have heard every single excuse that you could possibly think of. And I'm telling you, this technique will change your life. Now, you have to do it properly. If you do it in the incorrect way, it is going to backfire. You have to do it based on your values. And so we have several exercises in the course to show you exactly how to do this, to make it foolproof. I promise you, it will absolutely change your life by making time for traction. What you're doing is planning the time, not the output. You see, so many of us, we become fooled by this tyranny of the to do list. To do lists are one of the worst things you can do for your personal productivity because to do lists are simply measures of output. Right? To do list is what you want to get done, but you can't have output without input. If you went to a baker, okay, let's say it's your kid's birthday party and you just go to your baker and say, hey, I need a hundred cupcakes. Okay, well, the baker's going to say, okay, I need sugar, I need salt, I need flour, I need butter. He's going to ask. He's going to have a register of all the things that he needs to input in order to get the output to make you your cupcakes. So what's our input? When it comes to the kind of work we do, it's just two things. If you're a knowledge worker, your two inputs are your time and your attention.

That's it.

So that's what really matters. So I want you to stop measuring yourself by how many cute little boxes you check off. That is not the most important metric. The best metric is, did you do what you said you were going to do without distraction? That's it.

That's it.

For as long as you said you would. Did you do what you said you were going to do without distraction? It turns out that people who do that, people who measure themselves simply by did they do whatever it is they said they were going to do, Be with the kids, exercise, work on a project in the office, whatever the case might be, whatever it is you say you're going to do with your time, simply measuring yourself by your ability to do that without distraction. Here's the kicker. People who use this methodology are actually more effective. They actually get more done than the to do list devotees. So that's a very, very important tactic. We're going to teach you exactly how to do that as well. The next thing we have to do is to spend less time communicating and more time concentrating. So few people put time on their calendar to think, for God's sakes. But that's where our best work gets done. So if you're not planning time in your day to work without distraction, that's where the creative work gets done. That's where the great ideas happen. Having time in your schedule to think is incredibly important. And if you don't make that time, I promise you, what's going to happen is you're going to run real fast in the wrong direction. So I'm going to show you exactly how to make that time in your schedule in this 30 day challenge. Now, part of the reason that all this communicating that we all do takes up so much time, all these pings, dings and rings are because of these external triggers. Now, there is one profession where distraction is literally a matter of life and death. If I were to ask you what was the third leading cause of death in the United States of America before COVID Maybe put it in the chat. If you have a guess, what was the third leading cause of death in the United States before COVID I'll give you the first two. The first two? Number one was heart disease. Number two was cancer. What was the third leading cause of death? Give it a guess. Maybe Alzheimer's, Maybe gun violence, Maybe traffic accidents. Not even close. If it was a disease, the third leading cause of death would have been prescription mistakes. Believe it or not, prescription mistakes would have been the third leading cause of death in the United States of America. 400,000 people every year are affected by this problem, and it's a worldwide problem. Now, why does this problem occur? It turns out studies find that this problem occurs when doctors and nurses inside hospitals are distracted by their colleagues and they give their patients the wrong medication. Now, turns out that there is a solution to this problem. And this solution was discovered by a brave group of nurses at UCSF who found a solution to this problem that almost eliminated this problem altogether. They had an 88% reduction in the number of prescription mistakes. And guess what the solution was? The solution was not some fancy new app. It wasn't some new retraining program that cost millions of dollars. The solution was cheap plastic vests. These cheap plastic vests that these nurses wore that read across the front and back drug round in progress. Do not disturb. Now, why am I telling you this, right? I know that probably very few of you are in the healthcare profession, but I'm telling you this story because it exemplifies how we don't realize our work is affected by distraction. You see, when these nurses were making this mistake, they would come back into work the next day and their colleagues would say to them, did you know what you did to Mr. Johnson? You gave him the wrong medication. You almost killed him. And they had no idea, right? They didn't realize that they had made these mistakes while they were getting distracted. And so think about, in your own life, what kind of work could you be capable of? What could you do for your business? What could you do in your professional life if you were able to work without distraction? How many mistakes do you not even realize you're making? Or what kind of potential insights could you gain that you don't realize you're missing out on because you're not working without distraction? So how can we apply this in our own lives? Well, one thing we can do is we can exemplify this by creating screen signs, right? So in the working environment, what if we start using it on every copy of my book Indistractable. But in the course, we'll also make available this screen sign that you can print out yourself at home. And you can put this on your computer monitor to tell your colleagues that you are indistractable right now. Please come back later. But I know many of you are thinking, yeah, but I'm working from home, right? Post pandemic, what happens when I'm at home and now it's my kids or my spouse that's interrupting me, not my colleagues and my boss, what do I do then? I gotcha. This is a picture of my wife, Julie, and she is wearing what we call affectionately in our household, the concentration crown. And when my daughter was only six years old, we sat down with her and we said, okay, when mommy is wearing the concentration crown, that means she can't be interrupted. And this cost US$5 on Amazon. You search for, you know, LED crown on Amazon, you'll find it. Or just any silly hat that you might find. What this does is it interrupts the interruption. And you think, you know, because the fact of the matter is your kids don't know when need to be indistractable. So the funny thing is, not only does this work incredibly well with kids, it's also really effective with husbands as well. When I see my wife wearing the concentration crown. I know not to bother her. So what else we can do is we can hack back these external triggers through all kinds of tech tools. And we're going to share more and more with you these with you in the course as well. There are all these tools that we can use that are built into our devices or that we can install on our phones to help us become indistractable by hacking back all those external triggers. I'm going to show you how to clear all that digital clutter. How many of us have screens that look like this? I know I used to. And we know that all that visual clutter can have a really severe impact on our ability to focus and concentrate so we can clear all of it away. I'm going to show you what to do with your phone. I'm going to show you how in five minutes or less, you can make an indistractable phone. You know, we blame our devices all the time. Oh, social media. So distracting. And my pings and dings and my customers and my clients and my, my colleagues. I'm going to show you how to hack back these technologies so that they serve you as opposed to you serving them. I'm going to get you to ask this critical question and then I'm going to help you adjust these notifications so that your phone becomes a tool that helps you rather than hinders you. And I'm going to teach you how to leave these distracting devices outside of meetings so that you can get the best out of in person meetings, whether it's meetings with your colleagues or your family. You know, in my family, in my household, we have no phone zones. The kitchen table, for example, where we have breakfast, lunch and dinner, that is a no phone zone. Because when we want to be together, I want my family and I do this in meetings with my friends or colleagues. If we're going to be together, we're going to be both together in body as well as mind. Finally, we're going to hack back distraction with pacts. Now, a pact is what's called a pre commitment device. A pre commitment device is, is when we decide in advance what we will do when we know that distraction is coming. And it's actually an ancient technique that goes back over 2500 years. We know the first recorded case of someone using this technique comes to us from the story of Ulysses in the Odyssey. Now, Ulysses is this Greek hero who has to sail his ship past the island of the sirens. The sirens are these mythical creatures that sing this magical song. And any sailor who hears the siren song crashes his ship onto the shore of the Sirens island and dies. Now, Ulysses knows about this threat, so what does he do? He knows he might get distracted, so what does he do? He tells everyone in his crew to put beeswax in their ears so they can't hear the siren song. And he instructs them to bind him to the mast of the ship. And he tells them, no matter what I do, no matter what I say, do not let me go. And you know what? It works. Ulysses is able to sail his ship right past the shore of the Sirens island and return his crew safely home. Now, why do I tell you the story? Because you in this story are Ulysses, and there's lots of distracting stuff out there. And of course, it could be you there dead on the Sirens island as well. So there are things that we can do today to prevent getting distracted tomorrow. Starting with using technology to block out technology. Here are just a few tools that I use every single day. On the left hand side, this is an app called Forest and it's so simple, my daughter has been using it for years. Here's what you do. You open up your phone, and when you want to do focused work, you open up your phone, you type in how much time you want to work without distraction, you put your phone down, and if you pick up that phone, you see that cute little virtual tree. If you pick up your phone during a time when you said you were going to be indistractable, that virtual tree gets chopped down. And you don't want to be a virtual tree murderer. So it's enough to remind you, nope, that's not what I want to do with my time and attention. I want to stay focused and do the thing I said I was going to do. You can also use free tools like cold turkey on your desktop that block out certain distracting websites. While you want to be indistractable, you can also use tools like Focus Mate, which is a product I love so much I actually invested in the company. Focus Mate helps pair you with another person somewhere else in the world. If you're the kind of person like me who has trouble getting started first thing in the morning, right? I, I, I oftentimes I have big goals I want to accomplish a lot in my day. But, you know, I can get to another 10, 15 minutes. Well, no more. Now I assign a focus mate at 8am that I know another person. Sometimes they're anywhere in the world. This is a screenshot of a gentleman who is a medical school student in the Czech Republic and at 8am for me and whatever time it was where he was, we got together, okay? He was studying anatomy, I was working on this presentation. And for that 45 minute slot we work together. And just having that buddy, that focus mate that you can, that keeps you accountable into this pact is an incredibly effective technique. So again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There's all kinds of techniques that can, you can help you become indistractable to reduce distraction with these packs by using tech to block tech. And look, there's no one size fits all solution, right? Anybody who tells you there's some kind of magic solution, they don't know what they're talking about. What you've got to do is to try various different solutions. I'm going to share many of them with you in the 30 day challenge so that you can find the ones that work best for you. But I promise you, if you use these techniques in concert, you too can become indistractable. Now I want to warn you about one very important thing that you have to be careful about. One is that you have to use this tactic last, if you jump to blocking distraction with pacts too soon without learning the other three tactics first that we talked about earlier. Mastering the internal triggers, making time for traction, hacking back external triggers. If you don't learn those tactics first, you will fail. It will backfire. So you have to do this systematically. The second thing I want to warn you about is that there are some people out there that when they go off track, as we all invariably will on the path to becoming indistractable, some people have a really tough time getting back on the horse. Right? And who are those people? It turns out study's fine, that people who have a tough time getting back on track are people who lack self compassion. People who have high self compassion are much more likely to reach their long term goals. Well, how do we cultivate self compassion? One of the techniques that I'm going to teach you is to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. And so what you want to do is to make sure that you have the same compassion you offer others. You learn how to offer that compassion to yourself. So for example, if I were to tell you about what happened with my daughter, remember when I was distracted with her when we had that perfect daddy daughter day. If I told you that story, would you tell me you're. That I'm a horrible father? That I'm a terrible human being? You wouldn't say that to me if you were my Good friend. And yet, you know what? I used to say that to myself all the time. And it wasn't helpful and it wasn't true. And here's what else isn't true. This idea that everybody's distracted, that there's nothing we can do about it. The technology is hijacking our brains and I'm here to tell you that is not true. There is so much we can do to become indistractable. We can master those internal triggers. We can make time for traction. We can hack back the external triggers and we can prevent distraction with packs. Now, there's a lot more to learn. In my book Indistractable and of course, in the mindvalley course, I'm going to teach you how to raise indistractable kids. This is the most important skill we can teach our children. I'm going to teach you how to make an indistractable workplace. What if you say to yourself, yeah, I'm indistractable, but my workplace isn't right, that my boss is constantly interrupting you. I'm going to show you exactly what to do about it by step, by step, showing you every step on this journey to help you become indistractable. And the message I want to leave with you today is that we can do this. We can get the best out of these tools without letting them get the best of us. All of us can become indistractable. And with that, I would love to take your questions. There's one quick favor I'd like to ask of you if you don't mind real quick going to this URL opinion2us or if you have your phone, you can shoot that QR code and it'll take you to a very quick short question survey. There you can get all the slides we just shared for this, for this class. If you can just answer this five question survey. Would love to know what you thought of the presentation. I'm constantly tweaking it based on your feedback. And if we don't get to your questions today and you want to reach out to me personally, please feel free to Visit me@nearandfar.com you can see the URL there in, at the bottom of the slide. Near and far.com near spelled like my first name n I r and far.com and with that, let's take some questions Vision.

Hi N. Thank you for that, that presentation, guys. Thank you so much for, for staying with us. So we have two, we have 2,000 people with us now. We asked for, for you guys to put in your questions in the Q and A. And we also asked you to vote up what you think are the best questions if you can. And if you're familiar with Zoom, go ahead and open the Q and A box right now. Feel free to put in a question or to vote up the questions that really resonated with you. Okay, so the first question that I'm seeing is from Iman, and what iman says is Nir, do you have specific advice for neurodivergent individuals? And Nir, we want to spend no more than two minutes per question. Okay, sure, sure.

So the MindValley course and my years of research are not specifically tailored to neurodivergent folks. However, many people in the field do teach my work as the first step. Remember, pills don't teach skills. Okay, Pills don't teach skills. There's nothing wrong. You know, of course there's nothing to be ashamed of if you have a diagnosis of ADHD or whatever the case might be. You know, some folks do need medication. Of course, a lot more people think they have ADHD than actually do. If you don't have an actual diagnosis, you know, there's only about 3% of the population that suffers from ADHD. But what you want to do is to first make sure that you have these skills in place. Okay. Then if you find it's still not effective and maybe, you know, you're someone who does need medication, sure, that's something you want to talk about with your doctor. But the practice that I'm going to teach in Indistractable is meant for everyone. Of course, though many people who are neurodivergent have found a lot of value in it.

That's amazing. Okay. And I like what you said. Many people believe they have ADHD when they don't. Only 3% of the population has it, but a lot more people think they have it. I hear entrepreneurs bragging about it all the time. Stop. It's stupid. Like, you don't, you don't brag about having a disease. And, and it's, it's, and in fact.

It'S, it's, it's self limiting. Right. The problem is that, you know, when, first of all, you know, there's a, there's a massive debate. I don't want to get into the debate around whether it's diagnosed correctly. You know, it's, it's a funny coincidence that in America, 10% of children have it, but in Europe, only 1% of children have it. How can that be? Right? So, so there's a lot of Questions about are we over diagnosing adhd? But ADHD is real. For sure. For sure. The problem is that we kind of use it as a shorthand. Oh, I have adhd. I'm super indistractable. Well, the fact of the matter is, if you haven't had a proper diagnosis and you're limiting your capacity because you think you are incapable, you're hurting yourself. It's like Henry Ford said, whether you believe you can or you cannot, you're right. So I want to re empower people. I want you to use these tactics to see how indistractable you can actually become. And what you'll find is that you don't necessarily have a diagnosis and stop using that language unless you've actually seen a physician and gotten that kind of diagnosis so that you can be the kind of person you know you're capable of being.

So the next question is from Lillian and Carmen. Both questions are related, right? And they have to do with time boxing. So Lillian says, I time box, but I don't stick to it. And Carmen says, well, look, if I time box, I kind of feel like I'm putting myself in a cage near. How would you address these?

Yeah, absolutely. So what's interesting is that both of these comments reflect the first step, which is oftentimes what people skip over. Remember, the first step to becoming indistractable is not to make a time box calendar. Right. That's like a much later step. The first step is to master internal triggers. Remember, time management is pain management. You can use every tip and trick and life hack and app, but if you haven't first learned to master internal triggers, they will become your master. Because what's going to happen? I feel like I can't finish this task. I feel like I need to get distracted. I'm feeling like I'm not going to finish. And so what you're doing is you're trying to escape a feeling. And so that's why, again, time management is pain management. You have to learn that fundamental skill of knowing what to do with that discomfort so that you can leverage it. You can use it as rocket fuel to propel you towards traction as opposed to trying to escape it it with distraction.

Perfect. Okay, now the next question is from Marissa Jackson. And Marissa asks, if I do not have a to do list, how then do I prioritize my task?

Yeah, it's a great. That's a great question. And listen, I was a to do list devotee for years and years, and I'll tell you one of the worst things about a to do list, you know, talked about prioritization. One of the worst things about a to do list is that it has no constraint. Has no constraint. You can always add more to a to do list. So I would come home from work, work, and I'd be working my tail off all day long. And I come home from work and I'd look at my to do list and I still have a million things I didn't do. So what does that do to our psyche if day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, you didn't do what you say you're going to do? Loser. You start believing this stuff that we hear all the time. Oh, I'm no good at time management. I have a short attention span, blah, blah, blah. You hear all these excuses that people make. It's not that they're broken. It's that this silly time management technique doesn't work of keeping a to do list list. So a much better technique is to decide in advance how you want to spend your time. Now, it's fine to get things out of your brain and put them on.

A piece of paper.

That's not what I'm against. Right. That's, that's great. I want you to do that. But if you're not immediately transferring that to when that will happen, you're going to have the same to do list. Problem of too many things and not enough time to do it. Because timeboxing forces you to prioritize. A to do list doesn't force you to prioritize. You can always add more to it. Whereas we all have the same 24 hours in a day, right? This is very important. Many of us were so cheap with our money, right? We clip coupons, we split checks, we want a deal on everything. But when it comes to our time, give it to anyone, right? We don't budget our time. Oh, there's this crazy thing on Twitter. Did you see what happened in the news? Or that My, you know, my boss wants this, my clients want that. Just take my time, Take it, take it. And I think we should do the opposite. You see, most people are stingy with their money and generous with their time. Should be the opposite. We should be stingy with our time and generous with our money. Why? Because you can always make more money. You can always make more money, right? I don't care if you're Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos. They can't make more time. They can make more money. You can make more money. You cannot make more time. And that's why it's so important. The best way to prioritize is to look at that finite resource that we all have the same 24 hours in our day. And that's how we should prioritize based on our values.

I love that.

I love that.

And I think so many people forget that concept. Okay, now this question has gotten 47 thumbs ups, but it's posted by someone anonymously. And the question is, how do I stop procrastinating?

Yeah. So that's what becoming indestractible is all about. That's exactly what we're going to teach you. So there's no, there's no one size fits all solution. It's these four basic steps in concert. Let me tell you the hardest part about my research is knowing what to leave out. There's so much research out there, let alone all the stuff you find on the Internet. You know, the, the productivity gurus and experts. I wanted techniques that are backed by good scientific research. In my book you'll find over 30 pages of citations to peer reviewed studies. So this isn't just, you know, life hacks and tips and tricks that work for me. No, not only is everything I'm going to teach you something that I personally use in my day to day life. And let me tell you, there's no facet of my life that hasn't improved. Whether it's my physical health, my mental health, my relationships with my family, my work output. Put certainly all of these things have improved because I've become indistractable. But it's not just techniques that work for me and the hundreds of thousands of people who have used these techniques, they are also backed by peer reviewed studies. These are in scientific journals. And so that's the techniques that are in here.

Here.

So it's these four steps in concert. You master the internal triggers, right? You have to figure out what feeling is causing you to procrastinate. Procrastination is an impulse control problem. It is not a time management problem. It is an impulse control problem. It's that you don't know what to do with the boredom, anxiety, uncertainty, stress. That's the key source of the problem. That's what you're trying to escape by not doing what you said you're going to do. So I'm going to show you how to overcome those feelings so that you're not a slave to them them. That's step number one. Master internal triggers. Making time for traction. Hacking back the external triggers. Preventing distraction with packs. When you do these four Strategies in concert, you will stop procrastinating and you will become indistractable.

Beautiful. Okay, so now let's, let's, let's talk about the 30 day journey that we're going to be taking people on. Now firstly, if you're a Mindvalley member, know that there's no extra cost for this. We, we wanted to get all our members together and go on a journey to develop powerful focus and indestructibility together. Because what we find is that there's an incredible transformative effect when we take a couple of thousand students and we all commit to go on this, this training with the author holding our hand together. Now it's, it's roughly a 27 day journey. It's going to kick off pretty soon and I want to tell you how you can take part. So firstly, if you're a Mindvalley member, go ahead and type out in the chat that you're a member and maybe share for the people here who aren't members, share what you love about mindvalley membership. Okay, so go ahead and just type that out in the chat. Now I'm going to share my screen and I'm going to show you how this challenge is going to work. So while I am getting my screen sharing fixed, I seem to be having an issue with screen sharing. One second. You can see all of the notes coming into the chat. And so what I'm going to need to do is I just need to, to call on one of my team members to share their screen. Okay, give me one second. Ramya or Uzair, would you guys mind? Actually, no, let me do this. Let me make you host for a second. Okay. Okay. So now you're going to be host. I'm just going to log out and log back in so I can activate screen sharing. Okay. And in the meanwhile, Nur, maybe you can just. It'll take me two minutes. Maybe in that meanwhile you can just address this question. How do I get into a state of, of traction?

Yeah. So it starts with defining what is traction for you. You know, many people, we just kind of go through our day to day lives without actually asking ourselves what is traction? What is distraction? So that's a very, very important step. After we've mastered those internal triggers, we're going to sit down and come up with what is traction? Right. Traction isn't a state, it is an action that we are taking. Just like distraction is an action. Traction is an action. So how do we do this? This is a big problem for a lot of folks. Because they don't know where to get started, right? How do I make my timebox calendar? Let's say I'm convinced. Okay. Near you show me the research. By the way, there's thousands of peer reviewed studies showing how effective making a time box calendar is. But where do I start? The best place to start is with your values. What are values? Values are defined as attributes of the person I want to become. I'll say it again, values are defined as attributes of the person I want to become. So what I want you to do to find how to get into how to define what is traction, which by the way, you can't get distracted unless you know what it distracted you from. So it's very important you know what is traction to make that time box calendar. You're going to start with your value, starting with you. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of others. You can't make the world a better place. So what I want you to do is to look at your calendar and ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend time taking care of themselves?

Okay.

And I'm not going to tell you what to put on your calendar, right? That's up to you. So if your values include reading, learning, exercise, playing video games, doesn't matter what they are, whatever is important to you, I want you to put that time in your calendar, right? That's the first life domain that we're going to work on. The next life domain is our relationship domain. You know, part of the reason that we have a loneliness epidemic in the industrialized world is that people are not spending enough time with their most important relationships. We give our spouses and our kids and our friends whatever scraps of time are left over. And we are losing those most important relationships in our lives. We've got to make that time have a space on our schedule. So I'll show you exactly how to do that. And then finally the work domain where it comes to reactive work versus reflective work. Reactive work is all the reaction, you know, reacting to emails, reacting to notifications, reacting to emails as reacting to meetings, as opposed to also making time for that reflective work. And I'll show you exactly how to do that as well. And by doing that, by following your values, that's how you create this time box calendar.

Thank you, Nir. That's, that's extremely useful. What I want to do right now is I want to tell you guys, as we come to the end of this really quickly, I want to show you how you can take part in the challenge. So again I want to stress it is completely free to our members and you can see how our members are raving about mindvalley. There's a minority of people over here on the chat who are not members and I want to invite you to become a member because mindvalley is more than just Netflix. A lot of people think and I'll see somebody, somebody put in the chat. I love mindvalley. I've been here four years. It's like Netflix. It was. But now one of the things we have done is we've created this opportunities where thousands of students go through real time changes together and we call these challenges. So the next challenge is with Narayel and I want to show you how it works. Okay? Now if you're not a member, think about this because this can change your life. And by the way, this isn't like some. This program could be $2,000, but basically you can simply get a membership for one month. It's 79 bucks. I'm going to show you how to save on that. How to get a one month membership for 79 bucks. And you can participate in this. So what is it worth to you to win back an hour a day? If I told you that in 27 days we can train you to win back an hour a day and it's a permanent change, a permanent shift in how you think. So that hour a day isn't just for the month of April or the month of May. It's for the rest of your frickin life. Because we have transformed you. How much is that worth? Most people would say that's worth millions upon millions of dollars. Do the math. If your hourly rate is a hundred bucks, okay, and you went back an hour a day, that's $500 that you could generate with that extra time. That is per week. That's $26,000 per year. If you have maybe 50 years left in your life, that's $1.3 million. And that's assuming your hourly rate never increases. Right? It's probably going to be in the tens of millions. So that hour a day is one of the most powerful things you can gain. The power of an hour is undeniable. Now this is how we do it. So here's the best part. A lot of you think you got to go through tens of hours of training to get your mind to a level where you have this relentless focus. You don't. It's 3 hours 45 minutes as you can see here. But what we do is we take these 3 hours and 45 minutes and we micro slice them into 5 to 10 minute videos that you watch every day for 27 days. Right now each video layers on a new belief and we know our beliefs create our reality. It layers on in new habits and we know our habits make us a new person. And one by one by one, after 27 days you have mastered all of these different principles from nerve spreading social antibodies and having indestructible friendships. How to be an indestructible lover. That sounds like a fun one. How to raise indestructible kids. The power of pre commitments. Tackling office distractions. Are external triggers serving you or are you serving them? Time boxing your life time boxing your work. Hacking back social media. All of these. Now look at the length of the lesson. Six minutes, eight minutes. Eight minutes, five minutes Micro slice lessons. We found that this method of learning really, really, really makes a difference. Now you can see the difference in the stories. These are all people who have taken nurse program and you can see what, what they are saying about it. How their lives have transformed, how they have gained back hours a day. How they're getting things done that they never did before. Okay, so here's how it works. This is a challenge. It's going to kick off in a few days. I'm going to give you the date soon and all we all you're going to do as a member is you go to your mindvalley today tab. Okay? You'll see a banner here. Click the banner to join the challenge. When you click the banner you'll come to this page and then all you want to do is I'm going to exit the program and I'm going to rejoin. So you can see, okay, so I exited the program. I'm going to type in nurse name. It's going to bring up nurials program. Okay so here we, here we have nearest program. You're going to click on start program learning modes and then you're going to choose join a class. Okay? Then it'll show you the classes that you can join. And the challenge kicks off April 3rd. So this is the big one. So it literally kicks off tomorrow. You can see 759 people have joined this particular class. Okay so you want to kick off, you want to join that class and you'll be part of it. It now what will happen is you're going to get as members, you're going to get an email. It's not just going to be on our platform but you're going to get an email where you can join a telegram group. Now, let me tell you why this telegram group is so important. Firstly, if you don't have telegram, install it on your phone. And Telegram is a safe, secure notification service. And you're going to get a notification on your phone every single day to check in with you. So we have coaches who are going to ping you every day for 27 days to say, here's our lesson for the day. Have you done your lesson? That's it, right? We found that that simple notification one a day for 27 days improves by 40% your odds of completing the challenge. That's a massive, massive, massive thing. So these notifications really help. And what, what's, what's going to happen is that at the end of this 27 days, you're going to learn the habits of super performers. You're going to achieve superhuman productivity of mind, body and soul. You're going to learn how to thrive in every area of your life that matters. Now, here's what the curriculum looks like. Okay, so the program has three, has several parts. Now, the first part is mastering internal triggers. The second part is making time for traction. The third part, which is four days, is hacking back external triggers. The fourth part, four days preventing. Prevent distraction. With packs. We go into how to optimize your workplace to make it indestructible. And for those of you who are kids, how to raise indestructible children. Then we show you how to have indestructible relationships. Because when your kids are doing good, when your, when your relationships are doing good, you do, you do good too. And this is sort of how the program is broken down week by week. Okay, now all of this you can see by going to this page. I'm going to give you the page right now. Simply go to mindvalley.com forward/focus-challenge. Okay? Ramya, could you paste the pace link in the chat, please? I'll paste it there too. Okay, so I pasted the link in the chat. You can follow with me. Now, some people are asking, how do I join the telegram group? Don't worry, as a mindvalley member, you'll get an email with all of that information. Okay? All you got to do, literally all you got to do as part of mindvalley, if you're already a mindvalley member, is just log in and just join. Just join the class and let me. I want to encourage you to join. So I want to show you what you're going to learn. Now, as you go deeper the goal is, the goal of this challenge is not just focus. It's the hack back an hour a day. Well, that happened in week one. One can't promise it, but in week one, many people will see 10 to 20 minutes freed up a day. By the time you get to week four, that's when, if we do this right, you'll have an hour a day. And that hour a day will help you skyrocket your productivity, unlock new creativity, you'll have more time for personal growth. You can reduce stress and anxiety, move towards achieving your dreams, perhaps outside work. Maybe there's a new house you want to buy. Maybe you want to figure out how to open up a passive stream of income. You can boost your career, strengthen your relationships, increase energy levels by being able to work out more or even having time for a regular nap. And you can see what people have said about Nir and his program. Now again, if you're a member, my job isn't to convince you to buy this. You already own this. My job is to convince you to commit to doing it. All I'm asking you to do is to commit to 10 minutes a day for 27 days to hack back your life. Okay? Now there's a special reason we want you to join on the starting day because NUR is going to join us every week and do a special bonus call. So these calls are not going to be recorded? Well, they'll be recorded, but they'll only be available for about one week. So if you're a member and you're trying to think what quest should I do in April? This is it. At every, at the end of every week, NUR is going to come on live to answer your questions. So you can join the group of other people who are committing to this and get your questions answered. The guided experience is what we're going to be doing with you through telegram to get all our students together so you can go through the transformation. Now if you're not a member, know this. You know for $79 a month you don't just get becoming focused and indestructible, you get all our programs. Everything is unlocked for you. Every single program on mindvalley is unlocked. And if you want to become a member, we're going to give you a hundred dollar discount to get you started. So after nearest program you could go further. You might want to do Super Brain by Jim Kwik and improve your cognitive ability. You might want to do Super Reading. Based on the study of our members, at the end of three weeks, the average reading speed increase is 270% center. And so that's a pretty amazing program and it is life changing. So this is everything you're getting. And if you're a member the cost per month is going to be 79 bucks. But you can also take an annual membership and the prices range from 1, 9 9. This is for developing countries like India, Indonesia. 299 if say you are in North Africa or Eastern Europe, 399 if you're in the USA. Okay. And you can try it out for 15 days. So insurance short. Even if you find that that 199 a year is too expensive for you, you can actually go to the program for 15 days. You'll gain half of, you'll gain half the program. And at the end of 15 days you just go into your membership, click cancel and you get your money back. You don't even have to send an email. Take a picture of that QR code so you can join onto the page and sign up. I cannot wait to see you in this, this, this, this journey. It is going to be transformative for your life, life and all it takes is 10 minutes a day. We often underestimate the power of simple things. We are told, you know, you got to go through this hundred hour program to retrain your brain. But no. Great teachers, great therapists can create mammoth results in tiny slices of time because they know how to educate and that's really what this is about. Okay, so I'll see you guys there. I'm going to leave up this, this QR code, that's the URL. I'll paste it in the chat as well. And I can't wait to see you guys there. Nir, I know it's super late in Singapore so thank you so much for joining us.

Oh my pleasure. Looking forward to seeing everybody in the challenge.

Okay, thank you. Thank you Nir. And as you guys are signing up, I just want to read out some beautiful things here by other members. Edulka said, Mindvalley is one of the best investments of my life. Not only can you choose from a lot of interesting areas to develop your own, but I've already have two coaching programs and another profession as a hypnotherapist. So so many great love here for Mindvalley. Someone else said this is a must to invest in your life. Thank you for the amazing programs and appreciate you guys. So go ahead and check it out and I will see you in the becoming focused and indistractible Indestructible Indestructibility challenge. And I can't wait to hear your stories of how you transform your life after you gain back that extra hour. Thank you all. We're going to end this call here. We'll also send you an email with all the information. Bye.

Sa.