On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 3 Things To Do Before Work to Increase Focus and Productivity

Episode Date: May 31, 2019

“Some people are dreaming of success and others are waking up and making it happen.”You snooze your alarm, scarf down half of your breakfast and run out the door to make it to work on time. Sound familiar? The truth is that when we start our days like this, we are not as productive. But in this week’s episode, I give you practical tips on how to change that. 4 things you’re going to learn from this episode: How to be more productive at work? How to make mornings more purposeful? Why I wake up at 6am every day? What is decision fatigue and how can we fight it?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Take good care. Apple CEO Tim Cook starts his day at 3.45 a.m. every single day. Kevin O'Leary, the Shark Tank investor, wakes up at 5.45am every day, Richard Branson wakes up at the same time as that.

And some people are dreaming of success and others are waking up and making things happen. That's the difference. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of On Purpose. It's been incredible seeing all of you download, subscribe, rate and review the podcast. Thank you so much for being an integral contributor to this community and continuing to invest and commit to your growth and your performance. Today, we're going to talk about something that I think a lot of you been asking about,

a lot of you been worrying about, a lot of you have had challenges with. How many of you struggle with your morning routine? How many of you know that your morning routine could be more impactful? How many of you are literally waking up every day, rushing through the morning just to get to work? How many of you are at a point in your life where you

know that you could be more productive, more effective, and more creative if you knew what to do before you got to work? Today's theme is three things to do before work to increase your focus and productivity. Whatever you do for work, focus and productivity are so vital and important. None of us want to go to work and feel tired. None of us want to go to work and feel like we lack energy. And none of us want to get to the end of the day only to feel like we could have done a lot more.

What I'm going to share with you in this episode is some things that I've been working on for a long time, and tips and tricks that I know the most healthy, wealthy and wise people on the planet choose to do before they get to work so that they can improve their focus, improve their productivity, and improve their decision making, three really important factors to do with work. The morning can be a really tough time. I know how it feels. You get out of bed, you don't want to get out of bed. You force yourself to get out of bed. You've got to rush through brushing your teeth, having a shower, potentially even skipping breakfast because you're running late to be at work.

We need to change that experience because the experience you have first thing in the morning is the experience that lasts throughout the day. How many times have you had it where you have an incredible morning and you feel incredible for the rest of the day? But 90% of our experience is when we feel challenged throughout the day and then we have a challenging afternoon and a challenging evening. We need to start at the root and that root is our morning routine. For so many of us, the morning is not our favorite time and we often say things like, well, I'm not a morning person and the truth is maybe you're not a morning person,

but we all have to bring our best energy and have to feel better in the morning. So here we go with our three things to do before work to increase your focus and productivity. Take your notes, think about it carefully. A lot of this is going to be stuff that is fresh and new ideas that are hopefully going to accelerate your growth to having an incredible morning. The first thing that you have to do before work to increase your focus on productivity is this. Wake up one to two hours before your day actually starts.

You've heard the advice of waking up early before, but I think that that can be tough to understand, especially because today people work multiple jobs. I know everyone has different timelines and different schedules, but we have such a bad habit of waking up just before a lecture, a class, work, a workout. We're so used to that. Whether it's because of our time at college or university, we have this habit of waking up just before we need to be somewhere, which means you have just enough time to do everything,

which means really, you don't have enough time, which means really you don't do things properly, which means really you don't do things meaningfully and purposefully. So because everyone has different schedules, I know a lot of people work at night and a lot of you juggle three jobs. Well, if you're in that situation, this is the advice. Wake up one to two hours before your day actually starts. And that, for you may begin at just 30 minutes before or 45 minutes before, but you really want to start hitting that one hour before. The incredible thing about this is that you can start to do things slowly and completely. See, when you start the morning with speed, with a high pressure, high stress,

guess what? Your body's getting programmed to be like that for the rest of the day. You're not going into meetings at high speed, high stress. You're now having conversations at high speed, high stress. It's so important to give yourself that time cushion at the beginning of the day, because if you don't, you'll be trying to search for it throughout the day. How many times throughout the day have you been saying to yourself, I wish I had more time, I wish I could squeeze this in.

If only I had a couple of extra hours. The only time you're going to find more time is in the morning. Remember that. The only time you're going to find more time is in the morning. You will never find more time throughout the day if you don't find it in the morning. And the aim is you can now do things slowly and completely. How many times do you do things slowly and completely. How many times do you do things fast and incomplete, right?

You never end up making the bed. You rush your brushing your teeth and don't get around to everything. You eat half your breakfast. You listen to a quarter of that podcast. Whatever it is that you love doing in the morning, you miss that workout. We don't do things slowly and completely. We do them fast and incomplete, which adds to our stress and pressure. Waking up early, and again, remember, when I say waking up

early, what I mean is waking up before your day starts and your day starts at different times, is something some of the most successful people in the world do. Apple CEO Tim Cook starts his day at 3.45am every single day. Kevin O'Leary, the Shark Tank investor, wakes up at 5.45am every day, Richard Branson wakes up at the same time as that. And some people are dreaming of success and others are waking up and making things happen. That's the difference. All of the differences made in the morning. You see across the studies and the research, the most productive, effective and successful people are doing it in the morning. Yes, you may have your creative breakthrough at night. Yes, you may have your creative breakthrough at an event in the evening. That's absolutely fine,

but that doesn't need to go past a certain time when you can get a good amount of sleep. And waking up early, or waking up before your day starts, is not at the expense of good sleep. But what you'll find is that the earlier you wake up, the earlier you'll fall asleep. It's just a natural occurrence. You feel more tired naturally.

One of my favorite analogies in this regard is imagine that tomorrow you woke up with $86,400 in your bank account. Just imagine it was right there. What would you do with it? I'm sure that you'd want to spend it. Maybe you'd invest it. Maybe you'd share it.

But I'm guessing you'd do something with it. You're not going to just let it stay there. Now, imagine in this imaginary scenario, trust me, it's not going to happen just randomly tomorrow that you're going to wake up with $86,400 in your bank account. But imagine this, at the end of your day, that amount disappears, and then the next morning, you have a new fresh $86,400 deposited into your bank account.

What are you going to do with it? Are you just going to leave it there? Remember, it's going to disappear at the end of the day. Now the smartest of us, most of us, will focus on spending it, investing it, growing it, and doing something with it. Well, guess what? Just like you could have $86,400 in your bank account. Every day we have 86,400 seconds in our life account. These 86,400 seconds, 24 hours, 60 minutes in every hour are deposited into our life accounts every single day.

And most of us spend most of that time sleeping lazy or unproductive. And that comes from a number of things. I know how it feels. I've been there before too. And I still have those moments and days when I'm not being productive. Now, if your body is telling you to sleep, if your body is telling you you're tired, that's fine. We should listen to it. But not if that's become the norm, not if that's become the rule. Of course, we all get tired, we all need to feel lazy, we all need to relax and kick back. And it's important to listen to that. But if we're not feeding our bodies the right thing,

if we're not fueling our bodies with exercise, and then they're feeling that way, then the root of the situation is different. It's not enough rest, it's not enough care. Hey, it's Debbie Brown, and my podcast deeply well is a soft place to land on your wellness journey. I hold conscious conversations with leaders and radical healers and wellness and mental health around topics that are meant to expand and support you on your journey. From guided meditations to deep conversations with some of the world's most gifted experts

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Namaste. Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more productive with the Before Breakfast Podcast in each bite-sized daily episode, time management and productivity expert, Laura Vandercam, teaches you how to make the most of your time, both at work and at home. These are the practical suggestions you need to get more done with your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our bodies strong as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to Before Breakfast on the I Heart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I am Yomla and on my podcast, the R-Spot, we're having inspirational, educational, and sometimes difficult and challenging conversations about relationships. They may not have the capacity to give you what you need. And insisting means that you are abusing yourself now. You human! That means that you're crazy as hell, just like the rest of us. When a relationship breaks down, I take copious notes and I want to share them with you. Anybody with two eyes and a brain knows that too much Alfredo sauce is just no good for you. But if you're going to eat it, they're not going to stop you. So he's going to continue to give you the Alfredo sauce and put it even on your grits if you don't stop him. Listen to the R-Spot on the iHeart video app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. One of my favorite thoughts about time is time is what we want most, but what we use worst. And therefore, for those of us who want to be focused and productive, we focus on waking up one to two hours earlier before our day starts. And as the Buddha said, each morning we're born again. What we do today is what matters most. Don't worry about all the times you fail. Don't worry about all the times you've got it wrong. I want you to think about this from tomorrow. And the best way to start this process is wake up earlier just by 15 minutes every week. Every week roll back your alarm clock by 15 minutes, not every day,

but every week. So if you currently wake up at 7 a.m., try and wake up at 6.45 a.m. for the next week. Then for the week after that, try and wake up at 6.30 a.m. and so on and so forth. It's that simple. Just roll back your alarm, 15 minutes every single week. Now, I woke up at 4 a.m. three years in a row. And maybe there were a couple of days I woke up later and there were probably a few I even woke up earlier, but on average, for three years, I woke up at 4 a.m. every day when I lived as a monk. Just putting it out though, this isn't now. I don't wake up at 6am because I need more sleep. But when I was a monk and I woke up at 4am, it also meant that I wanted to sleep by 9pm or 10pm.

When we sleep earlier before midnight, we get deeper, better rest. And I know so many people who in the mood to unwind, switch on our show and our up past midnight, not because you have to be, because you end up being a lot more relaxed. And I know so many people who in the mood to unwind switch on a show and are up past midnight not because you have to be because you end up being that way just by default. None of us have to be awake after midnight if our work doesn't make us do that.

And so if we're doing it out of choice, we have to realize that we're losing out on deep, REM sleep that we can get if we sleep before midnight. And I get this, this may be totally impractical if you have young children and I totally understand that this doesn't apply to you. But for all the rest of us, start setting you alarm 15 minutes earlier every single day. It will force you to switch off that show at night too because you'll be tired. Read instead of watching that show that will put you to sleep. Don't look at your phone before bed. And if you wake up early, you'll naturally start to feel tired

earlier. Research suggests many successful people wake up well before the day begins. By doing the same, you can make time to exercise. Walk your dog, meditate, spend time with family, and get a jump start on the day before you get worn out by your other duties. That extra time you will never find in the middle or the end of the day, you will only find that time in the morning. So the first thing you need to do before work to be more focused and make better decisions and be more productive is get a head start on your day by starting your day one to two hours before it actually needs to start.

The second thing you need to do is probably one of my favorites. Start your morning that evening before. Listen to that carefully. Start your morning that evening before. See we think our morning starts when we get up. Actually your morning started the night before. You know it's more powerful than a morning routine and evening routine. An evening routine sets you up for an incredible morning. And this is one of the things we all miss out on. We have a terrible evening routine, which naturally leads to a bad morning

routine, which leads to a bad day. But by transforming our evening routine, we can have a phenomenal morning and therefore have a phenomenal day. You can actually program how you want to wake up the night before, and I want to focus on three key areas. One of the first is work. If you want to wake up in the morning and be more effective and productive and focused at work,

you can program that from the night before. Kevin O'Leary, who I spoke about earlier from Shark Tank, actually said this. Before I go to sleep, I write down three things that I have to get done the next morning before I take a call, write a text, or an email, or talk to anyone else except my family. And they can be random things like call your daughter at school and ask about whether she's done this or that or close a deal. What I found was once you get those three things done, the rest of your day becomes amazingly productive. We can program our minds to be better at work the next day by figuring out what we want to achieve the night before. When you make your to-do list, your to-be list, and you're creating that the night before,

when you wake up the next morning, you no longer have to push or force your mind to figure it all out. When it's just warming up, you already know what you need to get on with. This is what we forget. When you wake up in the morning, your mind needs time to wake up. It needs time to warm up. So therefore, when you're trying to get it to wake up and warm morning, your mind needs time to wake up. It needs time to warm up. So therefore, when you're trying to get it to wake up and warm up, you can't really push it to come up with your to-do list effectively.

But if you have that from the night before, you can get on with it straight away because you're already aware, already conscious of what actually needs to be done. Another way that you can start your morning that evening before is by deciding what to wear. As monks, we wore the same thing every single day. We had two sets of robes, one you wash, one you wear, and you keep alternating.

Now, I have a lot more clothes than that. I have a lot more bigger selection of trainers or sneakers as you call it here. I have a bigger selection of all those things. I have to be conscious about what I wear. But one of the things I've done to simplify that is first of all, I have a lot of the same thing in different colors.

That really makes it easy. I like wearing the same pair of joggers every single day, obviously not the same pair, the same type of pair, you get the point. That I wear every single day that makes it easier for me to decide what I'm comfortable in. When you're deciding what you want to wear the night before, you're removing the challenge from the morning. If you're spending your morning time deciding what to eat for breakfast, what to wear to work, and then to figure out what you're going to do and achieve at work,

you're adding so many things to your mind in the morning that it doesn't have time to wake up or warm up. You're pushing it into what is known as decision fatigue so early in the day. And I want to share some research with you that's going to blow your mind about this subject. In a study by the National Academy of Sciences, psychologists examine the factors that impact whether or not a judge approves a criminal for parole. They looked at 1,112 rulings over a 10-month period. The rulings were made

by a judge who would decide whether a criminal can be released from prison to parole. It would be natural to think that the decisions would be based on the type of crime or the laws that were broken or the demeanent behavior of the prisoner inside the courtroom. But actually, even though those were important, the research found one important thing that had a huge impact on the result. And it was quite surprising. It was the time of day the decision was being made.

Listen to this carefully. At the start of the day, the judge was likely to give a favorable ruling about 65% of the time. By the middle and end of the day, a criminal getting a favorable ruling steadily dropped to zero, right? That's zero. But then, straight after lunch,

the judge would be refueled and it would jump back to 65%. Now, I feel sorry for all of those people in between, even though they are prisoners, they've done something wrong. I feel bad for them that they necessarily did not get a fair ruling. The crazy thing is that this was true for more than 1,100 cases. And this was not affected by whether it was a murder, a rape, or a theft. Criminals got more favorable hearings

in the morning or immediately after food breaks. What is this telling us about ourselves? What can we learn from this when it comes to looking at decision for tea? Even though you don't have to sit in a hearing and decide whether someone is given break from prison to go on parole, we are affected by the time we make decisions and the amount of decisions we make. There are two factors here. The time we make decisions. If we're making decisions right after eating breakfast, a good one when we've got that extra time in the morning. If we're making decisions after lunch, when we're well grounded, when we're happier, we're going to make better,

fairer decisions. But if we're making decisions when we're rushed, when we're pushed, when we're pressured, when we're forced, we could end up making worse decisions. The second thing here is recognizing the amount of decisions made. If you're making multiple insignificant, smaller decisions every morning like what to wear, what to eat for breakfast and lunch, what time you're going to go to the gym. If you're figuring out that all of that in the morning,

what class you're going to, if you're doing that all in the morning, you are basically reducing your brain and mind's ability to make better decisions when you get to work. So if you're getting to work unfocused, and if you're getting to work and unproductive, that's because you're using all of your focus and productive on these small tasks in the start of the day. All of these things can be decided the evening before. What are you going to wear? What are you going to eat for breakfast or lunch? Where are you going to eat? what are you going to eat for breakfast or lunch, where you're going to eat, where you're going to exercise in the morning and what class you're going to take.

If you can start deciding all of that the night before, you are going to get such an incredible head start on the day and not experience decision fatigue. I want you to be saved from this decision fatigue because guess what, the more decisions you make, the harder it gets, and the more small decisions you make every day, the more of your energy is drained into those and the more energy is kept away from the bigger, more powerful decisions. This is something that we all struggle with. It's something that we all go through. It's a mistake that we're all making and it can be simplified by 15 minutes before you go to bed, by half an hour before you're

getting ready to go to bed, just focusing on what you're going to do. Actually, you can even do it at the end of your workday. Instead of rushing out at the end of your work day because you want to get home and spend more time at home, simply using the last 15 minutes or 30 minutes of your work day to plan the day after is going to mean you're more relaxed, less distracted when you get home and allowing yourself to be more focused and productive the next day. And the third and final thing that you can do before work to increase your focus and productivity, of course, would be meditation, but specifically, I want to add this for you.

Do a gratitude visualization. I don't just want you to make a list of three things you're grateful for. I don't just want you to make a list of things that you're thankful for. I want you to visualize an experience of gratitude. In one study, scientists instructed a group of people with a neuromuscular condition to keep a daily gratitude journal while another group kept a daily journal recording hassles of their days.

The first group reported being 25% happier compared to those participating in the hassle condition. According to the study, they exercised an average of 1.5 hours more and reported less physical symptoms, like headaches, shortness of breath and chest pain. It's incredible how much gratitude can totally upgrade our life. So what I want you to do, and you could do it right now, as long as you're not driving or walking, you can close your eyes. If you're driving or walking or doing anything else that requires you to have your eyes open, you can do it with your eyes open. I want you to visualize a moment that's happened in your life that you're deeply grateful for.

This could be being with family. It could be an incredible moment of achievement. It could be the feeling of being rewarded, recognized, whatever it may be. And I want you to take yourself back to that moment. I want you to visualize the sights, smell the sense, hear the sounds. I want you to take yourself back to that place in life

where you felt extremely grateful. And I want you to really embody how that felt for you. Because guess what, when we're present in a situation, we can bring it back through our memory and re-experience it. And when we re-experience it, we can re-experience those emotions and feelings of gratitude in a much deeper way. When you start your day off with gratitude, you're going to look for opportunity more than you are obstacles. When you start your day off with gratitude,

you're going to look for moments of creativity more than you are to complain. When you start your day off with gratitude, you're going to focus on growth rather than thinking that everything is pulling you down. Start your day with the visualization of how you're going to gratefully go through every situation and notice how you lead with that when you're challenged by all the things that are going to come up anyway. These are the three things I highly recommend doing before work to increase your focus

and productivity. The first one, waking up earlier than you need to, is going to help you do things slowly and completely. It's also going to give you that more amount of time you need to exercise, to set intentions to meditate, whatever you need to exercise to set intentions to meditate whatever you want to do before work. The second thing you want to do is start your morning the evening before. You can do that by doing your work the day before at work, by what you wear, figuring out that the night before what you're going to eat, and actually one more that I want to add.

You can actually do it through the words you tell yourself. If you say to yourself before you go to sleep, I'm so tired. I can't be bothered to go to work tomorrow. Ah, it's so hard. It's so tough. If you're going to sleep thinking that, you're programming yourself to wake up that way in the morning. A habit and practice that I started that has really transformed my life

is every night I go to sleep saying, I am relaxed, energized and focused. I am calm, enthusiastic and productive. When I'm repeating the words that I want to wake up with, my mind is setting an alarm for my body to wake up with that intention. We set our alarm clock the night before so that we can wake up in the morning at a particular time. In the same way, we have to set our intention the night before.

In the same way, we have to set how we feel the night before. We have to program our mind to wake up with a certain belief and a certain energy the night before. When we start our morning, the evening before, we're also able to avoid decision fatigue. We plan our days from a work, words, what we're going to wear, what we're going to eat, and our schedule perspective the night before. It saves us so much energy, so much time the next day, which you can then use for other things. And finally, a visualization of gratitude, not just thinking about it, but really experiencing that gratitude again,

so that you can really start your day feeling abundant, feeling grateful, and feeling empowered. These are the three things I wanted to leave you with. Please test these every day. Try them out. Experiment with them. Remember, these are things for you to work with. You're not going to do all three of them in one week. Please don't try that. Try just one of them for one week at a time and see how your life changes. It's an experiment.

Take notes, share your advice, share your learnings. Don't put the pressure of perfecting these things. Focus on them as something that you're going to learn and grow from. Keep sharing all your insights on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, because you've seen I've been sharing so many of them. Please, please, please subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't already, please do subscribe. If you've already subscribed, please rate and review.

And if you've subscribed, rated and review, thank you so much. Keep coming back. I'm so grateful for this community. I'm so grateful to each and every and if you've subscribed rated and review thank you so much keep coming back. I'm so grateful for this community, I'm so grateful to each and every one of you for consistently making us the number one health podcast in the world and continually being a part of a community that wants to grow and commit to a better life. If you want to be better in self work and love, you're in exactly the right place. This is on purpose. I'm Jay Shetty.

I'll see you again next week. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening through to the end of that episode. I hope you're going to share this all across social media. Let people know that you're subscribed to on purpose. Let me know. Post it. Tell me what a difference it's making in your life. I would love to see your thoughts. I can't wait for this incredibly conscious community we're creating of purposeful people. You're now a part of the tribe, a part of the squad. Thank you for being here. I can't wait to share

the next episode with you. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Nuneum. I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bon vivant, but mostly a human just trying to figure out what it's all about. And not lost is my new podcast about all those things. It's a travel show where each week I go with a friend to a new place and to really understand it, I try to get invited to a local's house for dinner, where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party, it doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to get back to you.

Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Miyaan Levan Zant and I'll be your host for the R-Spot. Each week listeners will call me live to discuss their relationship issues. Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision. What do a flirtatious gambling double agent in World War 2? Apple Podcasts or whatever you listen to podcasts. What do a flirtatious gambling double agent in World War II? An opera singer who burned down an honorary to Kittnapp her lover, and a pirate queen who walked free with all of her spoils, haven't comment. They're all real women who were left out of your history books.

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