Are You Focused or Distracted?

Are You Focused or Distracted?

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Welcome back to the daily mastermind. Everyone. I'm excited to talk to you a little bit today about one of the core topics that we seem to have cycling back and forth multiple times every single year.  And that topic is your attention, and the idea here that we're constantly being distracted.

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The Impact of Distractions

And I want to talk to you about that today because There's some serious impacts that are having on your mental health, but also your business, your production and your results. So here's the thing, I want to start you with a thought. And the thought is this. Where is your attention? Are you becoming distracted?

Because see what I believe that you were born to win. I believe that you were born to do some great things in your life, but you need to realize something. And I want you to listen to me. When I say this, you were born to win, but you're being programmed to lose. You were born to win, but you're being programmed to lose.

Think about that for a second. You were born with greatness. You have greatness. You can do anything. It's never too late to start living the life you're meant to live. But every single day,  You're being programmed to lose. And what do I mean by that? You're being distracted. You're being distracted with things that are not important.

They're not significant to your life. They're taking you away from your goals and dreams. They're programming your mind to view failure, distraction. Conflict, every single person, every media, every outlet, social media, it's all working overtime to get your attention. And this causes a major amount of distraction for you.

It keeps you from attaining your goals and dreams and you're letting it happen. It's no wonder. Most of us can't focus most of the time and it's no wonder that mindfulness can be such a powerful tool because we're getting so used to being distracted as a habit.  

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The Solution: Eliminating Distractions

So the solution that you have to talk about is you have to talk about how you can eliminate distractions and create a better focus for you in your life.

You've got to learn to follow one course until successful. You've got to learn to get more done in less time. But the only way you can do this, the only way you can do this is to become less distracted. So a couple years ago, I highlighted an article right out of lifehack. org. It's a website where I, get articles every once in a while.

And if you know me, you know that I, I just scan all kinds of stuff every single day.  And I remembered that and I pulled it back up. And what it did is it had a, an article on 11 ways to eliminate distraction. And yeah, some of these might be repetitive or things you've heard of before, but listen, when we're talking about attention, I want you to focus for a minute and see how many of these things you can do to help you.

Because the more focused you become, what you focus on you're going to grow and you're going to expand. So I'm going to give you these. I'm gonna try to rapid fire these for you here today. But before I get started on these elimination strategies, you've got to remind yourself that the typical American gets distracted every 11 minutes.

It takes 25 minutes just to settle into a task. So distractions are having a huge cost on your productivity, a huge cost on your ability to create your life.

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11 Ways to Eliminate Distractions

So if you want to get less distracted and you want to get more focused, Here's 11 ways to do it. First, keep your vision and your goals in front of you.

Clarifying your vision and your why in front of you will remind you to stay motivated to the task and not, wind up aimlessly scrolling social media and things. Number two,  clarify your day before you start. There's nothing worse than starting a day and letting it run you. You've got to have a plan, set your goals, set your strategies, set your schedule, so that you know exactly what you need to be working on and you're not wandering around.

Number three, reduce the chaos of your day. Chasing too many priorities means you're not getting anything done. Identify before you start your day. I like to do it at the night before. Identify your top three things. These are the wins. These are going to be your power list of what you're going to get done no matter what.

And number four would be, do these important tasks. First, get them done as soon as possible. It's Stephen Covey used to say, the big rocks. You put the big rocks in there and then you fill the rest in around it. But work on the most difficult things first. We tend to avoid the most difficult things, but a lot of times those difficult things are the most productive things we could be doing.

And so we sometimes look for distractions. Get those done first. Number five, focus on the smallest part of your work. The easiest way for you to kill your focus is to become overwhelmed with the big picture. So many of us have so much going on that we're overwhelmed that we become distracted. And we get discouraged and we start to wander off and we have ambiguity.

Create bite sized chunks and this will allow you to get more productive and when you're productive, you're going to be more focused.  Number six, we're talking about how to eliminate distractions. Number six, visualize yourself working. Visualization can be a very powerful strategy. Top athletes and and success experts talk about this.

Brendan Burchard talks about setting intention.  Setting intention with what you're doing before you do it. But visualize yourself and what it is you want to accomplish before you start doing it.  Seven, control your internal distractions. Look, you've got to find a way and ways to prepare your mind for work and focus.

You've got to train your mind. These internal distractions that pop up in your mind are taking you away from the productivity you could be doing.  For example, working at home. If you're working from home, then you're going to get all kinds of distractions or you might feel guilty about things that you should be working on.

Stay focused and eliminate that internal chatter. The 8th suggestion would be remove the external distractions. You absolutely have more control over your external distractions than you think. So eliminate them. Put your phone on silent. Get off social media. Turn the TV and the noise in the background off.

You've got to remind yourself that multitasking is a distraction in and of itself. And if you eliminate multitasking and you work on time mastery, you're going to be far more productive. You're going to be focused. You're going to be programming the success and the wins in your life instead of being programmed to lose.

The ninth suggestion that this article talks about is to skip what you don't know.  This is something I think a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners that are perfectionists do. They don't know something. So they go down this deep, look, I've done it. You go down this deep rabbit hole trying to figure out what we don't know.

And. It causes distraction and ambiguity. Focus on your unique talents. Stay focused on the things that you love and you're passionate about and delegate, delete, or eliminate the rest. Skip what you don't know. Number 10. Improve your discipline with focus practices.  One of the ways that you can truly start to focus in on your goals and creating the life you want is to understand how to train your mind to focus and become more disciplined.

There's a couple of ways you can do this. Number one. Start a meditation practice, a mindfulness practice. When you're grounded in the present moment, when you set intention, like Brennan talks about, you're going to train your mind to be more focused. Another way they've talked about, I've probably mentioned it a few times on the podcast is the Pomodoro method.

The Pomodoro method is you set a timer on tasks and you set that timer. And when it's up, whether you're done or not, you move on to the next task. It forces you to get things done in the time you need because remember time expands to the amount you give it. I've learned this lesson a long time ago. One of my mentors used to say, he started by not working on Friday and then not working on Thursday.

And what he found is that in the time that was allotted, he was still getting the same amount done. And most of us waste a lot of time on things that are not getting done. So set a timer on your tasks. And here's the final one.  And this is one I really wanted to emphasize. Manage your momentum  in order to not be distracted in order to continue to program yourself to win instead of allowing your circumstances and environment to program you to lose.

Manage your momentum because money likes speed. Momentum is a key ingredient to staying on path and on tasks. When you have momentum, it's much easier to stay consistent and disciplined. When you're consistent and disciplined, you will be focused.

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Conclusion and Final Thoughts

But the bottom line is this. Distraction is a key enemy to you getting results.

You've got to hone in on your attention. Find ways to train your mind. Create focus and keep moving. But don't allow yourself to get programmed for failure. When you allow your environment and the things around you to influence your focus,  you're being programmed to lose. And I'm telling you, you were born to win.

You are a winner. But you're being programmed to lose. So be aware of that. Be conscious of that and take control of what you're doing in your life right now. That's my message for today. I hope it gets you thinking on some key ingredients and things in your life that'll help you to create the life that you were meant to live.

And I'll put some things in the show notes, make sure you check it out. But do me a favor, share the episode. If you've learned anything, if you've gotten inspired or motivated at all, please share this episode so we can help others to be able to do just the same. And as always, I want to look forward to hearing from you.

So hit me up on the Daily Mastermind on Facebook, Instagram, or check out the show notes. You can get my personal email. I always respond to them all myself. That's the message. Have an amazing day and I'll talk with you more tomorrow.