The Mindset Mentor - The World's #1 Productivity Hack!

Episode Date: May 22, 2019

Episode 588 - We all get 24 hours in the day and what matters most is how productive we are in that time. I have one VERY simple technique that is scientifically proven to be the best productivity hack out there. Listen to this episode to learn what that hack is! 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

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world. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we come out with a short, to the point, no BS episode to help make massive changes in your mind and transform you from who you are now to who you want to be. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast starts now. Welcome to today's episode. If you have not yet done so, hit the subscribe button so that you never miss another episode. And if you're out there and you're interested in getting some more in-depth coaching, if you're ready to take your life to the next level, if you love listening to the podcast,

but you feel like you need some extra structure, some more in-depth lessons to help you get to the next level, go to coachwithrob.com slash podcast. You may be interested in my Mindset University group coaching program. There's currently about 260 people in there. And we have weekly lessons that we do every single week. We're currently in the middle of a 10 day journaling challenge where I actually teach everybody how to journal. And then over the course of 10 days, we're actually journaling together and I'm giving them a list of questions to journal through to pull and extract and to get their self-awareness better and to also grow much quicker as well. So if you're interested in learning more about my Mindset University program, go to coachwithrob.com slash podcast. You can actually look at the videos and the pages there.

It gives you all the information, everything that comes with it so that you know exactly what you're getting with it if you're interested. So once again, go to coachwithrob.com slash podcast. with it if you're interested. So once again, go to coachwithrob.com slash podcast. So today we're going to be talking about my number one key for being as productive as possible. And it's a very, very simple technique. And I'm going to share it with you today. It's called the Pomodoro technique. Now, when we're talking about the Pomodoro technique, it's extremely simple because it requires you to think about one thing in one thing only now if there's one thing that we're a hundred percent sure of now is that multitasking does not work there's studies on it and they've

actually found that multitasking makes you dumber and less productive and by dumber I mean that the quality of your work is less than if you just focus on one thing because we all get paralysis by analysis where we're trying to work on something. We're sitting here typing on our computer and then something pops up in our head. We're like, oh man, I better do that really quick. I better start working on this thing just real quick and then I'll go back to the other thing. So the key to the Pomodoro Technique is this, you spend 25 minutes doing one thing and one thing only and then you take a 5 minute break. It's as simple as that but I'll give you a few more tips to make sure that it's really, really good. So you take a 25 minute work time, you get things done and you take a 5 minute break then what happens is after that five minute break you then go back in and you do another Pomodoro technique the 25 minutes

followed by another five minutes off and you do this a maximum of four times and then after you do that four times that would be a total of two hours of either working that you got done or studying that you got done or whatever it is that you needed to get done it could even be just reading that's if you do that four times that's 30 minutes times four that's a total of two hours that you spent now you might ask yourself why would you just want to focus on one task and you focus on one task in one task only because they found that if you don't get paralysis by analysis if you don't think about anything else studies have actually shown that you are way more

productive just completing one task in one task only. So the key to it though, and what I've found really works for me, one thing that I will 100% recommend for you is every single time that you are doing something, you're trying to focus on one thing, you will 100% get ideas and things that need to be done that pop into your head. The key to that is to have right next to you a notebook or a journal or a notepad or a scrap piece of paper. So the reason why is because if you're working for 25 minutes and you're working there, say you're 10 minutes in, you go, oh man, I forgot I need to do this. You take your pen and paper that's right next to you, you write it down, and then you go right back to what you were just doing. You don't break time to go do whatever the other thing is that you're thinking about. You literally break,

you go ahead and do that real quick, and then you get it done. So you do this four times, and then you take a 20-minute break. And the reason why this works so well is because it narrows your focus. If there's one thing that this modern day and age that we struggle with, it's focus. We try to do too many things at one time. We have our phones buzzing and going off all the time. We have the notifications on them. We have people coming in to distract us, all of those things. So if you're going to do this, the key to it, if you work in an office and you're trying to get a lot of work done and you're going to actually use this is if you have a door, shut your door. Do not let anybody come in. Put a note on your door that says, I'm being productive. Don't knock.

Whatever it is that you need to do. If you're studying, say you're still in school, go to the library where nobody else can bother you so you can focus on just this one thing. Ask yourself the question, what can I do to make sure that I'm not distracted in these 25 minutes? And the reason why this works is because all your notifications are off. You have nothing else to do. You've got 25 minutes of focus that you're going to put into it, and you don't need to worry about anything else for the next 25 minutes. And what I've found is, to be completely honest with you,

is while I'm doing this, I'll get about 10 minutes of really solid work in and then something will pop in my head. And I'll go, oh man, I got to do this. And I'll look down at my timer and I'll see, oh man, I'm only 10 minutes in. All right, well here, I'll write it down real quick. Or I'll save that idea for later. Or I'll just scrap that idea and don't even worry about it. But what happens is when you have the timer with you and you're actually looking at the timer and you see how much time is left, you say, I will do that later. And it's a really big key that you can focus on is I'll do that later.

I don't need to worry about it right now. I can do that another time. So the key to it, turn all notifications off. And the key to it is this. The reason why this works so well is because studies have shown that the maximum amount of productivity that you have will usually hit by about 10 minutes into doing something, 10 to 15 minutes of doing something. So basically what happens is if you look at your productivity, there'll be a huge spike in your productivity about 10 to 15 minutes in, and then after those 10 to 15 minutes, it slowly drops. minutes, it slowly drops. So if you say, I'm going to take the next hour to really focus on something, you're going to get really productive about 10 to 15 minutes in. And for the next, you know,

all of the rest of the time of that hour, so say the next 50 minutes, it's going to slowly go down. You're going to be less productive and less productive throughout the entire time. So if you were to say, just use this, for instance, an hour and a half of dedicated work, you say, I'm going to use an hour and a half of dedicated work. I'm going to do nothing else except for this one project. Whatever it is, it's right in front of me. You're going to have one big spike of productivity and it's going to fall and lower and lower and lower up until your hour and a half is done. Here's the key with the Pomodoro technique. It spikes up and then it starts to slowly go down and then you take a

break. And what happens? You get another spike 10 to 15 minutes in, and then it lowers down. And then you get another break and you get another spike and then it lowers down. So what happens is instead of one peak of productivity within that hour and a half, if you split it up over three different sections of 25 minutes, you get one peak, it goes down, you get another peak, it goes down, and you get another peak. So you're actually three times more productive by using the Pomodoro technique over an hour and a half than you would be if you just went, I'm going to dedicate an hour and a half of my time right now. So it's super, super simple. 25 minutes on, five minutes off. 25 minutes on,

five minutes off. Now, let me give you a couple of tips that I have found work best for me because I use this literally every single day. Whenever I have an important project of something that needs to be done, my number one thing that I need to focus on for the day, this is the technique that I use. The number one key that I'll give you is this. Have a good set of headphones right next to you and use those headphones. Put them over your ears. Usually that's the international sign for don't bother me. I'm in the middle of doing something, so if you're at work and you have headphones on, usually that means don't bother me. What I like to do is I like to listen to something called brain.fm. It's a website. You can get some free audios to listen to or you can pay.

There's a subscription model as well. Brain.fm works really well. Or if you want a bunch of free stuff, go on to YouTube and you can find Binarial Beats. Binarial Beats, you have to listen to Binarial Beats in your ears because what it does is it sends two very close frequencies but a little bit different through each ear. And I've actually found that binaural beats makes you more productive. So what I do is I put my headphones on. I put my binaural beats on for literally those 25 minutes. I take my phone. I take my phone and I make sure that my phone has no notifications that can come

through. So what do I do? I put it on airplane mode. So there's absolutely no way for someone to get ahold of me for 25 minutes. And what I do is I set my timer on my phone and I put my phone right next to me. And the only thing that I have to worry about for 25 minutes is that. So I always have my headphones on. I always have my timer on and I'm always listening to some sort of music or binaural beats. Now here's the key. If you listen to some sort of music, make sure that the music that you're listening to has absolutely no words because words tend to pull your focus away from something. And a key to it is this. Once you find a song that works, keep it on repeat. This is a

really, really big key. I had no clue that this was an actual thing. So I'm either listening to binarial beats or I'm listening to a song called strobe by dead mouse. It's about 10 minutes and 25 seconds if I remember correctly. And I listened to it on repeat and I used to do this and I've done this for years and I've listened to this song for years and years and years. And I read an article not too long ago that says that when you listen to a song over and over again while doing a specific task, your brain literally draws its focus into it.

So I didn't know why I was so attracted to this song and why it was such a big thing for me to listen to this song while I was working. But when I listened to it over and over and over and over again hundreds of times, it's literally the number one song every single year that I listen to on Spotify when I get my Spotify notification at the end of the year. It's the number one song and I listen to it on repeat. And what happens is my brain goes, oh, it's time to focus.

Oh, it's time to work. Let's do this. So if you can find a song that works for you, and this is trial and error. You can try a bunch of songs on. You can listen to DJs if you want to. You can listen to brain.fm if you want to, you can go onto YouTube and find Binarial Beats if you want to. And all you have to worry about is just focusing on those. And when you find the one song that works, stick with that song because your brain will start to go, you know what? It's time to work. It's time to get things done. The only other thing that I left out that I make

sure that I do is if I'm trying to get really hardcore work done, we all know there's some work or studying or whatever it is that you do that you hate doing. For me, I always have a cup of coffee with me when I do this. So I have my cup of coffee, cup of coffee, I have my headphones, I have my one thing that I'm focused on, I have my timer on my phone with no notifications that can come through. And the last thing that I do is if I'm working on my computer, say I'm working on something that I have to work on, writing an article or something like that, and I have to be on my computer in order to do so. If I'm on Google Chrome, for instance, I will take one tab. So if I have 10 tabs that are normally up

on my Google Chrome, I will close out of all of them or minimize all of them and pull up one new window with just one tab. So literally there's not even any other tabs that could distract me. So I have my headphones, I have my notepad next to me, I have my timer, I have my one thing that I'm working on, and I work for 25 minutes with five minutes off. And then after I do this four times, usually by that time I'm done because most people usually don't even get two hours of really hardcore work in throughout an eight hour work day. But for me, I usually by that time I have everything done. I'm good to go and I don't have to worry about anything. So it's super simple.

I'm curious if you've ever used this before. If you have, make sure that you let me know because the Palmodoro Technique, studies have found, is the most productive way to get what you need to get done as quickly as possible. So that's what I got for you on this one. If you have any questions for me, make sure that you type them down below. Or I'm curious, I put out new videos all of the time. What's a topic that you want me to cover? What's something that you're interested in learning about? Let me know. And if you want more coaching, go to robdial.com. I have tons of stuff on robdial.com as well. And hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another episode. And I will see you on the next one.