The Mindset Mentor - 8 Tips to Master Your Focus

Episode Date: November 6, 2019

We are all so distracted nowadays! In this episode I am going to give you my 8 tips for getting rid of distractions so that you can stay focused and get more sh*t done!Screenshot you listening to the podcast and tag me in the Instagram Story @RobDialJrhttps://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/ Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode if you have not yet done so hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another episode today we're going to talk about the eight keys the eight tips that I have to distract your distractions so that you can focus and so that you can be more on point. You know, and here's the thing, distractions are inevitable. They will sometimes come into your life. They're going to happen. You know, if you're trying to get concentrated work done, there's one thing that I know is that the harder that you try to be concentrated, the more distractions are going to pop up.

But the difference between an averagely productive person and an extremely productive person is the amount of distractions that they allow to get to them. You know, I've been able to become friends with and be around some people who I've, you know, look up to and that are very successful. And the thing that I've noticed is that the people who are the most successful are the most protective of their time. Like they are very, very hard to get in front of. But you know, ultimately we get the exact amount of time every single day. So if we get the exact amount of time, we all get 24 hours, we might as well try to be as productive as we possibly can be. Makes sense, doesn't it? And as we decide to, you know, get in there and start working, we need to get rid of our distractions, get rid of our notifications, everything that we can. I read an article and there was research that was done with

300 undergraduate college students. And they found out that a 2.8 second distraction while they were in the middle of working caused their number of errors to double. Let me say that again. 2.8 second distraction, which is about how long it takes if you're working on your computer and getting stuff done to look over and look at who just text you and then go back to what you're doing. The number of errors doubled from a 2.8 second distraction. So think about that. Think about how often your phone rings in your pocket. Think about how often you look at in your pocket. Think about how often you look at that quick text message, even if you don't respond to the text message, but you just

see it. That 2.8 seconds doubles the amount of errors that you have in everything that you do. So let me give you my eight tips to distract your distractions, to get rid of your distractions. Number one, control your freaking notifications. Like this is the easiest one that everyone should do. You know, turn your cell phone on silent and flip it upside down, right? Turn off your email notifications on your computer. Turn off your messenger. If you have an iPhone and you have a MacBook computer together, turn off your messages so that the messages don't pop up in the top right-hand corner. Turn your notifications off. One thing that I can tell you is this. If you had my phone number and you sent me a text message and my phone was sitting next to me, I would not know that you sent me a text message. If you sent me an email,

if you sent me a Facebook message, any of those things, the only way that I know that I get, the only way to actually get into my phone, like to have my phone go from black to actually turning on and showing me some sort of notification is through a phone call. That's it. If it's an emergency, which is all that we really have our phones for in the first place, right? That's all we're really worried about is maybe an emergency will pop up. If that emergency pops up, guess what?

Someone can get a hold of me by sending me, not even sending me, by calling me, not sending me a notification or sending me an email or sending me a text message or those things. Anything can pop up and you have to control. Like there is not one application on my phone that sends me a notification, right? Because I want to be as productive as possible. You know, I take pride in the fact that I only work about three, maybe four hours a day. And the reason why is because I, the reason why I'm able to do that is because I don't have any notifications coming in my phone. That's the first thing. Let me tell you a few more things of how I can be, how I end up being very productive. And these are all things that I've learned that I'm just teaching you. You know, it's nobody's perfect, but I'm trying to get better and better

at it. Okay. The second thing is make times when you really need to be productive, like have it, you know, the absolute no social times, no checking Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, any of those things, delete everything that you need to, that could possibly get in your way. If you feel like you spend too much time on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, delete them from your phone if it's possible, right? Use News Feed Eradicator on your computer. You know, this is one of the biggest things for me. I was talking about this last night with some of our friends. News Feed Eradicator, for those of you guys that use Google Chrome, actually makes your news feed disappear on your computer. So when you go onto Facebook, it takes your news feed, it disappears, and it replaces it with a

motivational quote. So you can't even do the scroll on your computer, which is what's awesome. They don't make it for the phone. That'd be great if they did, but you know, it's, it's good enough. So newsfeed eradicator is great. Honestly, you really don't need your social networks, you know, all day long. It's just something to look at while you're pooping, something to look at while you're at the doctor's office, but don't use it while you're trying to actually think, get things done and try to be productive. You know, take the, take the data off, turn the data off in the middle of the day and use wifi, you know, if you have to, but turn the data off. You know, I did this one time before

where I literally for 30 days, I turned data off completely on my phone. And what I realized, and I wish I could do it again, but my entire, you know, everything that I do is based on the internet now. But when I had my last job, I turned my data off. So I had literally no data. All you could do is call me or you could send me a text message. And then the only time I could use, you know, was wifi. That's the only way I could get on. And, and it was, I remember it was one of the best things ever. I wish they could do it again, but there's absolutely no way to do things ever. I wish they could do it again, but there's absolutely no way to do it based on my business and how much is done online. But what I would say to you is make times when you really need to be productive. You have

absolutely no social times, no Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter. And you have the times that are, you know, you could say from 10 AM to 12 PM every single day. Those are my times where I absolutely have to be productive. No ands, if, Those are my times where I absolutely have to be productive. No ands, if, buts about it. I'm going to have no social times that come in. Those are the times that I have to be absolutely productive. Find out what times those are for you and have at least one or two hours of that every single day. Number three, let's talk about the Pomodoro Technique.

If you don't know what the Pomodoro Technique is, excuse me, I have episodes on it. You can go back and listen. Go to the Pomodoro Technique. But it means you work for 25 minutes of hardcore labor on just one thing, and then you take five minutes off. 25 minutes on, five minutes off. You work on one project, one project only,

and you have a notebook next to you, and you write down anything that pops into your head that has absolutely nothing to do with what you're working on. So you can do it later. So that's a simple one because you can go back and listen to my entire episode where I explain how to use the Pomodoro technique. Number four is to use headphones. If you can, while you're at work, use your headphones because it's a fact that people are less likely to come up and try to talk to you and distract you from work if you put headphones in. Even if you're not listening to anything, just put some freaking headphones in.

I do that all the time as well. You know, and it will keep you into what you're doing. For me, what I like to do is I like to listen to binarial beats. So I'll go into YouTube. You know, I work on my computer a lot. So I go into YouTube, I type in binarial beats and binarial beats focus, and I'll put sound on.

I'll put a 25 minute song song on, and I'll just listen to that and only that. And the only thing I can work on, so I take my headphones and my Pomodoro technique, I put them together. I put on my headphones, listen to a 25-minute song, and I just get one thing done and one thing only in those 25 minutes. So that's tip number four. Use your freaking headphones. Listen to music without words, whatever it is you got to do. Number five, clean up. Like, stop being so dirty. You know, a cluttered life is a cluttered mind.

You know, if you clean up around you, if you clean up your car, if you clean up your inbox, for those of you guys that have 32,000 unread emails, which I've seen before, clean up your computer desktop. Clean up your internet tabs. Start being mindful of the space around you. Get rid of crap that's in your house that you don't need anymore because a cluttered life is a cluttered mind. There's things that are in your house that are just boxes that have been sitting in rooms for a decade now. Just get rid of it. The less stuff, I believe that everything that you own owns a tiny piece of your brain. And until you get rid of those things, you can't get that piece of your brain back. And so if you have things you need to get rid of, clean it up, get rid of it, give it

to Goodwill. Actually, give it to the Salvation Army. Salvation Army is much better than Goodwill. So give it to the Salvation Army, donate it, give it to somebody, do a garage sale, whatever it is that you got to do, just get rid of some of the stuff that you have. If you're cluttered in your life, you'll be cluttered in your mind. Okay. Number six, find out when you are the most productive in the day, right? Save that time for your most important task and protect that time with your life. One of the things that, that I do is I know that from about 11 o'clock until one o'clock, my brain is firing. It is my absolute most productive time. The most important thing of my day, I always do from 11 o'clock until one o'clock. I spend those two hours hardcore into

one thing, figuring out what needs to be done, getting things done, and doing it the way it needs to be done. So find out for you. Maybe for you, it's eight o'clock in the morning. I know people that wake up at five o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, so that therefore they can have time early in the morning with their cup of coffee before the kids wake up, before, you know, there's any emails coming through before anybody else is awake. And that's their most productive time. So for you, it might be in the morning, might be from 10 to, you know, 11 to one like me, it might be, you know, might be from 10 to 11 to 1 like me. It might be midnight, whatever it is.

Figure it out and protect that time with your life and work on your most important things at that time because it's going to be different for everyone. But it requires you to do some testing. And for a lot of people, it's about two hours. What they say is it's about two hours and between two hours and four hours after waking up, you know? So it's, you know, for me, it's about five hours after I wake up or so, four and a half hours after waking up. So find out when your most productive time is and be productive in that time. Okay. Number seven, do not, I repeat, do not multitask. Multitasking actually makes you 20% less productive. Let me say that

again. Multitasking makes you 20% less productive. There's actually no such thing as multitasking. What they actually call it is task switching. It's impossible to be doing two things at once. Your brain will go from one thing to the other, even if it goes really quickly. And they found that only about 5% of people in the world are good at multi, quote unquote, you can't see my fingers right now, but I'm air quoting, multitasking, right? It makes you 20% less productive. Only 5% of people are actually good at multitasking. So stop. I beg you, stop trying to multitask because it really just should be called task switching because you can't be doing two things at once. And number eight, plan ahead for what could be a distraction and how to avoid it.

So plan ahead of what could be a distraction and how to avoid it. If you know, you know, a lot of people are like, I can't be as productive as I want to be because I have children. Okay, well plan ahead to the fact that you have children. You know, we've done these challenges before and it's 45 minutes of working out and be like, yeah, but I have kids. So I can't get my 45 minutes of working out. Cause they always come in.

I'm like, we'll plan an hour. You know, that's 15 minutes of just in case your kids come in, you know, plan an hour, 15 minutes, plan ahead for what could be a distraction. If you know, you have that the same time every single day after lunch, that coworker comes over, wants to have a freaking conversation with you, plan ahead for what could be a distraction because it's a distraction if you let it be, but you don't have to let it be. Okay. So let me go through my eight tips one more time. Number one, take control of your notifications in your life. Number two, make time for the time when you really need to be productive and have no social networks, none of that stuff, no talking to other people,

any of those things during that time. Number three, Pomodoro technique. Work for 25 minutes, take five minutes off. Number four, use your headphones. Number five, clean up the crap that's in your life so that you can clean up the crap that's in your mind. Number six, find out when your most productive time is throughout the entire day and save your most important tasks for that time and protect that freaking thing with your life. Number seven, do not multitask because multitasking doesn't even actually exist. And number eight, plan ahead for what could be a distraction and figure out how to avoid it. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you liked this episode, please do me a favor. The way that this podcast grows is if you guys share it. There has been tons, I mean probably 50 notifications a day I get of people who share

this on their Instagram stories and their Facebook stories and it's a picture of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I would love for you to do that. Send it so more people can see it because the way that this podcast grows is if you guys go out there and you share it, you know, we went from an unknown podcast with an unknown host to one of the top 100 podcasts in the entire world because of you guys sharing it. So I appreciate you sharing this with everybody. If you do me a favor, if you have YouTube, I'm not sure if you have YouTube, if you have Instagram, take a screenshot of this podcast right now, put it up on Instagram. Share that thing on Instagram, on your Instagram stories, and then tag me at it. If you don't follow me on Instagram, it's at RobDialJr,

so R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Tag me in it. I would love to see that. And I try to respond to everybody who puts it up there. There's a lot of them, so I'm getting back to some people. I'm having some conversations in the DMs. But if you would share it, I would greatly appreciate it. And I'm going to leave it the same way I leave it every single episode. Make it your mission. Make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing, amazing day.