The Mindset Mentor - 4 Ways to Enhance Focus and Improve Productivity

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. If you're out there and you love this podcast, you'd also probably love some of the other stuff that we do. So if you want to learn about how to go further with us and not just listen to podcasts, but take it off the podcast and learn a little bit more and work on yourself more, go to mindsetmentor.com to see what else we do.

Starting point is 00:00:30 Once again, mindsetmentor.com, there's a video, there's a page that tells you all about how you can work with us a little bit more. Today, I'm going to be talking about four different strategies to enhance and improve your focus and your productivity. And the reason why this is important is because we all get 24 hours in a day. And what you do in those 24 hours is really, really what matters. And one of the best ways I've heard of it,

Starting point is 00:00:53 you know, talked about, is if you look at a person who owns a business, for instance, I'm usually looking at people who own businesses and they are not not doing stuff. They're busy, they're working, they're always taking action. But really what it comes down to is don't pay attention to the amount of hours that you work. Pay attention to how much output you get from every single hour of work. Some people

Starting point is 00:01:15 can sit and they can work for eight hours, and they can get less done than people who work for two hours. And so really what it comes down to is how do we get more focused whenever we are sitting down to try to take action, and how do we improve our productivity as we're doing it as well. And so really what it comes down to is how do we get more focused whenever we are sitting down to try to take action and how do we improve our productivity as we're doing it as well. And so let's go through the strategy. Strategy number one is to get really good at mastering the art of single tasking and to really understand what single tasking is. So single tasking is the opposite of multitasking. Multitasking means that you're working on two separate things at one time. And cognitive psychology tells us that the brain does not perform well

Starting point is 00:01:52 when it's scattered among multiple tasks. Many, many studies have shown that you will have better productivity and you will create better products or create better whatever it is that you're trying to do. If you're trying to sit down and be more creative, if you're trying to create to do. If you're trying to sit down and be more creative, you're trying to create a product. If you're trying to sit there and be more productive, whatever it is, that when you focus on one thing and one thing only, you will get more done if you're focusing on that one thing versus trying

Starting point is 00:02:15 to do two things at once. And single tasking allows for much better concentration, leading to higher quality output. It also reduces the cognitive load and mental fatigue associated with constantly shifting your attention. So there was a study that was done in 2008, and it was called, Is Multitasking a Myth? And the study showed that multitasking, when somebody went and did multitasking, that the brain becomes overloaded with tasks. And in turn, there's reduced efficiency and effectiveness in performing those tasks. And the research indicated that the brain's frontal lobe becomes activated during multitasking, which is associated with a decline in cognitive performance due to the overloading of the working memory.

Starting point is 00:03:03 And so if you want to get more done, immerse yourself into one thing. There's a great book called One Thing. It completely changed my life. It made me go full on 100% in this podcast, full on 100% in the business that I have now, where I was running two businesses at one time. And I was like, I've got to focus on one thing

Starting point is 00:03:21 and one thing only, because both are not going to succeed at the way that they could. And so which one do I want? I was like, I had an Amazon business at the time. So I was like, do I want to do the Amazon business? I also had this coaching business at the time in the podcast. I was like, do I want to be known in five years from now as the guy who's doing Amazon or the guy who's trying to coach people and help people get better? And I was like, that's an easy one. And I went with what I'm doing now. And so immerse yourself into one thing.

Starting point is 00:03:50 And if you're sitting down just doing a task, bring all of your brainpower to that task. Why would you want to bring less than 100% cognitive performance to one thing that you're trying to do? So therefore you get it done faster and you also get it done better. And so what you do is you prioritize your tasks. You identify what's the most critical task for the day and then allocate your best time to be uninterrupted while you're working on this. And you use something that's called the Pomodoro Technique. And the Pomodoro Technique, which I've said so many fucking times on this podcast, is what I recommend. I recommend this to people and then I get emails and I get messages on Instagram of like people who try it and they're like, I can't believe how well it works. Pomodoro technique means 25 minutes on five minutes off and you focus on one thing and one thing only for 25 minutes. You take your phone, you put it in another room. You only focus

Starting point is 00:04:42 on one thing. You turn off your, your browser so you can't go to other websites. If you have an idea pop into your head, you can write it down on the journal next to you, but you put all of your brain power for 25 minutes into this thing. And what it does is it enhances your productivity, but it also really makes you start getting focused at something. If you're somebody who is not really good at focusing, if you're not really good at sitting down and putting your, you know, trying to get your brain on board with what you're trying to do, if you can start getting better at the Pomodoro Technique, it's stressful at first when you're trying to improve your focus. It becomes stressful, but it's stressful because

Starting point is 00:05:20 you're challenging yourself. You're getting out of your comfort zone. You're forcing yourself to grow. And so with the Pomodoro Technique, if you're scattered, if you have ADD, if you're challenging yourself. You're getting out of your comfort zone. You're forcing yourself to grow. And so with the Pomodoro technique, if you're scattered, if you have ADD, if you're all over the place, it's like, I'm going to take all of my brain. I'm going to focus it on this thing. And when my brain wants to think about something else, I'll bring it back to this thing. And when my brain wants to go somewhere else, I'll bring it back to this thing. And my brain wants to go somewhere else. And it's just literally, I'm going to train my brain to focus on this thing. And so for me, and I write about this in my book, but I write about the Pomodoro technique is 25 minutes on five minutes off. I used to struggle

Starting point is 00:05:50 to get to 25 minutes. It was like hard to get my brain to focus on one thing. And then I'd get to 25 minutes and I was like, I don't feel like that was enough time. Like I could keep going. So then I went to 30 minutes and I went to 35. And now usually when I do sessions, I call it Pomodoro plus. It was just something I made up. I usually to 30 minutes and I went to 35. And now usually when I do sessions, I call it Pomodoro Plus. It was just something I made up. I usually do 45 minutes on 10 minutes off. I don't recommend starting there. I recommend 25, five, but then eventually you can move it up to 45, 10. What that shows you is I used to struggle to get to 25. Now I can get to 45, which shows you that my focus has gotten better by simply saying, you know, no,

Starting point is 00:06:25 we're going to focus on this thing. It's like breaking a wild horse. Your brain is trying to go all over the place. No, dude, we're going to focus on this one thing. So that's strategy number one. And we will be right back. And now back to the show, which you then bring into strategy number two, which is a concept called deep work. So there's a great book. I'll summarize the entire thing for you right now. It's by Cal Newport, and it's called Deep Work. And he defines it as professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit.

Starting point is 00:07:01 It's a lot of words to just describe doing one thing for, you know, two hours straight. And so what he talks about is if you're trying to be someone who is productive, we have this arbitrary, you know, world that we grew up in that says, hey, you're supposed to work from nine o'clock until five o'clock, nine to five, nine to five, eight to five, eight to six, whatever it might be. What you want to do is you want to find a time when your brain seems like it's at its best. For me, my brain from like 11 to 1 is absolutely my best time. Before then, I'm a little bit tired. I'm a little bit creative. I usually like to get my workout in before then. From 11 to 1, you know, I had my breakfast most of the time. But from 11 to 1, it's like my brain

Starting point is 00:07:43 feels like it's working really well. I've had my coffee. I usually have a, you know, I can have a tea at that point in time. And it's like, I feel focused. After 1 o'clock, after 2 o'clock, after I've eaten lunch, it usually slows down a little bit more. I'll do my Zoom calls and catch up with my team and all that type of stuff. But my 11 to 1 is like my sacred time. And you want to protect this time as if it's sacred. So what you want to do is figure out what your time is for you. Some of you guys, it might be 5 o'clock in the morning to 7 before the kids wake up. And you can put all of your time from 5 to 7 into it. For some of you guys, you might be night owls.

Starting point is 00:08:18 It might be my best friend is 11 a.m. or 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. I'm already asleep by that time. But that's his time of deep work. But you want to find two hours every single day if you can and create a ritual around it. Like, have it be sacred. Not just like, okay, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to work. It's like, no, I'm going to sit down and create a ritual around this and do the same type of prep. Like, for me, it's I usually get a coffee or a tea, so I get some caffeine. My workspace is completely prepped.

Starting point is 00:08:45 I put on my headphones, my noise-canceling headphones. I have my most important task for the day. And if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I listen to the exact same song every single time that I work. I've been doing it for the past five years. And my brain is like literally trained like Pavlov's dogs. When this music comes on, it's time to work. And I just like click in way

Starting point is 00:09:05 faster now. And so I'll just go, okay, two hours of work, I'm going to do it. And I'll use the Pomodoro technique, 25 on, five minutes off, or 45 minutes on, 10 minutes off, boom, boom, boom. And then for two hours straight, I'm just focusing on getting the most output that I possibly can from one single task. As soon as that task is done, then I go on to the next one. from one single task. As soon as that task is done, then I go on to the next one. And so really what it comes down to is start to focus on that.

Starting point is 00:09:29 Start to try to have a sacred time where you're really just gonna, this is my, and call it your deep work time. Put in your schedules, your deep work time. And it enhances your productivity and focus. Deep work allows you to produce better results in a shorter amount of time. Better results, shorter amount of time. That's what the entire book is about. There are studies that show it.

Starting point is 00:09:48 If you want to minimize your distractions, commit to cognitive intensive tasks. And what that means is you want to sit down, get as many distractions out of the way as possible, and then focus on, I'm going to bring my whole brain to this. I'm going to drink my coffee. I'm going to put on my headphones. I'm going to listen to music without, you know, maybe it's some, some, uh, some deep trance music. Maybe it's meditation type music. Maybe it's just white noise. And it's like, I'm going to focus on this thing and it is important to me. And this is what I'm going to do right now. And you try to maximize your performance as much as you possibly can, because all too often what we're doing is we're so distracted. We got this going on and then we

Starting point is 00:10:24 get an email and then we get a text message and then we check our Instagram and, oh my gosh, this is an idea. Oh, this guy's on tour. I wonder if he's going to be coming to Austin. You start looking at other pages and you get so distracted, you're only giving like 40, 50% of your brain power to a specific task. And so here's how you do it. It's really interesting. Really super easy to do. You look at your schedule and you put in your deep work blocks. Have a dedicated specific time that you're going to do deep work every single day and treat it as like a non-negotiable appointment. And what I recommend is that you do it with the time, like I said, that you have the most energy throughout the day, when you feel like your brain

Starting point is 00:11:00 is most on it. And then what I would recommend, try not to eat for a little while before so that you don't use any of that energy towards digestion. And you're going to struggle. Embrace the struggle. You're trying to train your brain to embrace the struggle and trying to focus rather than seek distractions. All too often when people are like, oh my gosh, it's so hard for me. I'm so distracted. It's so hard for me to focus. It's because you've trained yourself your entire life to be distracted. Now you need to retrain yourself to be focused. So you're enabling your mind to get into deep work when you're doing this. And you will get better at it the more that you do it.

Starting point is 00:11:33 And you will get more done in a shorter period of time. So that's strategy number three. I'm sorry, strategy number two. Strategy number three is to optimize your environment. And so create an environment where taking action is easy and distraction is hard. So clear out your workspace. If you're talking about working on something, maybe you got to sit down and write a book. Take your phone, leave it in the kitchen, get a cup of coffee or a cup of water, put on your headphones and have nothing on your desk

Starting point is 00:11:59 except for your computer. Turn off your notifications, turn off your Wi-Fi, and just work. Like design, what does it look like for an environment to be designed for you to take action? When I was writing my book and I couldn't figure out how to get started, I was like, I have to just disappear. And so I went to Sedona by myself for a week and I went into a place where I had like a big inspiring view that was behind the place. And so I would sit outside and I would go outside of my computer and I was like, okay, I have two options. Either number one, I can journal about what I want to create in this book, or I can just start writing.

Starting point is 00:12:35 And that's it. There were no other options of things that I could do. And so it made it hard when I was at home because there were so many distractions and things going on and things I could distract myself with. When I went to Sedona, there were no distractions. There was nobody there to distract me. My phone was in the kitchen. I didn't have my Wi-Fi on. I could either journal about what I wanted to journal about or I could write on my computer. And that was it. Environmental psychology shows that physical spaces influence the way that you think, the way that you feel, and the way that you behave.

Starting point is 00:13:09 And so here's how you want to do it. You want to create a deep work environment. Find a quiet place, a comfortable place, a place that you could be undisturbed. Some people like me, like I love, you know, looking at the view at my house. We have a, you know, nature that's all behind my house, and I prefer to have that as my backdrop. I have a friend that works in his closet because it's just, there's no distractions. What do you want? I don't know. Whatever makes it easiest for you to take this action. And then you use stuff like noise-canceling headphones

Starting point is 00:13:34 to create an environment that you can get into deep concentration. You find the music that helps you get in deep concentration. You clear out your area, nothing on your desk, get rid of and control all of the visual clutter that could be around you, get everything out of the way, whatever you can, put your phone away, put a sign on your office that says you're working, put a sign on your back if you work at a cubicle, put your headphones on, and just let people know like, hey, if

Starting point is 00:14:00 you're at your office, if you're at your cubicle, don't talk to me right now. Talk to me after 1 p.m. and create an actual physical environment. And what I found is that the most consistent, I put this in my book as well, the most consistent people in the world, the ones that are consistent with taking action, are not the ones who have the most willpower. It's the people who design environments where their willpower will not be tested. It's the people who design environments where their willpower will not be tested. Me, I know that if my phone is next to me, I'm going to pick it up and check it 27 times because of the fact that I have a business and I have text messages and I have people

Starting point is 00:14:32 I got to check in and see how things are going. But if my phone is in the other room, I can't get distracted by that. And so it's like, how can I not test my willpower? You know, and think about that. If you have other people that are constantly coming in, if you have children that are coming into your room, maybe it's about talking to your spouse and be like, hey, honey, I got my two hour block, deep work. I've got to get it in. Can you make sure the kids don't come to the door? Whatever it is. And then, you know, trade off, give them a

Starting point is 00:14:57 couple hours off in the evening, whatever it might be. Do you have all of the tools that you need in your area that are within arm's reach? You don't have to go run and get it. Is there enough light? You know, the more light that's inside the room, the more that you're likely to be awake and to be focused as well. And, you know, it starts to see what works for you. Try it out. Go to a clear desk. Just put your computer on top of it. Put your headphones on. Have nothing else around you. See how that works. And then you just start having small tweaks. Change things around a little bit. You start to realize, like I also wrote about this in my book that, you know, where your eye level looks at changes how much focus you have. When your eyes are lower in the frame, like you're looking down,

Starting point is 00:15:36 it actually starts to signal to your brain to be more tired. When your eyes are looking up above the, you know, like the middle, if you can imagine the middle of your eyesight, if you look down, it makes you more tired. If you look up, it makes you more alert, those types of things. And so for me, like my workspace is literally designed. That's why I wrote my entire chapter on my book of like designing your environment, where it's like when I stand at my desk, there's a ton of light that's coming into my eyes. All of my screens, my computer screen and the secondary screen are both above the middle of my eyesight. And I've just designed it over years just to make it exactly what I want it to be. And so it's like for you, it might be the same,

Starting point is 00:16:14 it might be different, but it's about trying these things out and then trying different things as you do it. So that's strategy number three, design your environment so that making, taking action becomes easier. And then strategy number four is to batch all of your tasks. So when you look at your schedule and you see stuff that you do, batch all of it, put it all together. So for like, for me, I record, you know, today, this is the second podcast episode I've recorded. I recorded one just a little while ago. So I planned two episodes this morning together. Then I record two episodes right now. Yesterday, I planned two episodes and then I recorded two episodes and that will be my work for the week as far as the podcast goes. The rest of the week, I can work on my business, everything else that I have to do.

Starting point is 00:16:54 So if you do podcasts, do all of those at one time. If you do emails, try to see if there's a way that you can start to do all of your emails in the morning and then all of your emails in the afternoon. So you only have to do it twice instead of checking your email 145 times an hour. If you're working on a presentation, do it all in one day versus splitting it up if that helps you. And so the reason why is because when your brain is in flow on one thing, try to keep it there. And so try to batch your tasks where instead of doing, you know, one thing one day and one thing another day and one thing another day, can you get all of your week's work for, like for me, podcasts done at one time? Can you get all of your emails done for the day and the morning and then in the evening?

Starting point is 00:17:35 And what really changed my mind around emails and how it was possible not to have to check them all the time every single day was reading the four-hour work week where he described how he did it. And he designed his environment to be like, no, I want to be focused. And in order for me to be focused, I have to get away from emails. And so if I'm going to get the best work that I possibly can, well, then I need to make sure that I'm away from the emails. I'll do my emails in the morning. I'll do my emails in the afternoon. And in between those times, he literally has a autoresponder that says, I will email you back either between 9 a.m. in the mornings or after 4 p.m. And so really what it comes down to is like, anybody can be focused. Anybody can be productive. If you're making excuses as to not being, oh yeah, I've got this problem and this is wrong with me and all that

Starting point is 00:18:20 stuff. It's not the truth. You can all, everyone's got different levels of focus that they have, but every single person can improve their focus. And it comes down to, like I said, not how many hours you work every single day, but the output of what you get for every single hour that you work. And so these are the four strategies you want to use in your life to improve your productivity, to improve your focus. And that's what we got for you today's episode. So if you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So if you would share it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. It would really, really help us out in growing and trying to impact more

Starting point is 00:18:57 people's lives. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode, making sure mission makes somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - 4 Ways to Enhance Focus and Improve Productivity

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