“After we met, a group of about 20 people wrote down one word that they thought accounted for their success, and Bill and I, whom we’ve only met twice, didn’t know what the other one was writing down. So we both wrote down the same word, ‘focus’.”
The sentence above is a parable of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, two of the most successful entrepreneurs of this day, writing down, without knowing each other, what caused their success; focus.
What would you do if you had 2 hours more a day? How better would your business and relationships be?
Unfortuntality, most of us wake up and grab our phone to check our clients’ mail, open the social feed and start the chain of reactivity. It causes us to feel tired and unmotived throughout the day. That’s why I’m writing this; I discovered the following;
It’s not your fault.
The app where you’re reading this, the device on which you’re reading it, and maybe even the environment where you’re reading this is all made to do one thing: keep you in.
Why? Straightforward; to make more cash. The more time you spend on these apps, the better they can convert your attention into banknotes. But most importantly, not only one app is doing this; all the apps are. And this will negatively train us.
We are being distracted. But not if we take power and use this.
Step 1: Become aware of the trigger and reaction.
If we clap at a bird, he will fly away. There’s no second in between that he gets to make a choice; get away a.s.a.p!
The fun thing is that most entrepreneurs react the same way as birds do with the stimulus; they are working on a task, and then it happens. They get an email or even just an idea. They open the chains of emails, stressing thoughts or client calls. And before they know it, they are lost again. They don’t think; they respond.
They are distracted, answering emails or even watching cat videos.
It’s not your fault; those apps have trained you to be distracted, so you start consuming instead of producing.
So the first step is that we want to become aware of the stimuli that are causing those responses. So is it the news feed, the notification, or the client calling you? What’s distracting you?
When we have clear what the triggers are, we can take control by:
Step 2: Forcing them out of our presence.
“Out of sight is out of mind”.
It’s a cliché. But cliches have a pearl of hidden wisdom. Said in our situation to become more focused: when we don’t get the trigger, we don’t give the reaction.
Get it?
So the secret is the following:
We want to control when we want to get the stimuli to enter our minds.
How does this look in a pragmatic kind of sense? With our clients, we call them the ‘social windows’.
You take control by making a choice: you decide when those stimuli can reach your focus. So is it after 9 am? Or even after 2 pm?
Now when you open up the app, you’ve chosen to get the stimuli in. In this way, you train your focus.
But we don’t have the time and mental brain power to make this choice daily.
That’s why we want to:
Step 3: Systemise and automate.
When you’ve decided which times you want to open up the ‘social window’ throughout the day, you can systemise and automate this on your devices.
Here are some practical ways to implement:
- Apple Focus times
- Mac Shutdown (app)
- Focus (desktop app)
- AppBlock (IOS)
- Freedom (IOS and Android)
We even implement with our clients one of the secrets described in our ten quick wins guide for improving focus which is the following:
Have an outlet timer on your wifi, monitors etc., to shut off when you want to start your evening routine, family time, workout or whatever you want.
How to execute and get benefits today?
I can assure you that this simple insight will change your business and relationships forever because you are more in control over where your focus goes.
And as Warren Buffet and Bill Gates wrote in a paper about what caused their successes, without knowing it from each other, the focus is intensely powerful.
Peakclub specialises in helping entrepreneurs like you make the impact they want to make by optimising their focus, attention and productivity through sleep, nutrition and quick wins.
Over the last three years, we’ve watched what over 200+ 7-figure business owners with a solid business and crazy amounts of focus are doing in their lifestyles to maintain this success.
And we found some exciting things that you won’t predict.
We’ve structured them in a sheet with the ten biggest quick wins with instant results for focus and concentration and decided to give this away for free.
