Elite Focus: 5 Keys

You can feel it in your body when your attention gets pulled in ten directions. One minute you pick up your phone to answer a message, the next minute you’re scrolling, stressed, and somehow behind on the one thing you actually care about. We all understand what focus really is: the gateway to action. Action is how you build the life you say you want.

We share five practical strategies to maximize focus and increase productivity without turning it into “rocket science.” We start with the biggest thief of attention: your phone. We talk about why mornings matter, how reactive mode ruins your day, and the eye-opening stat that we check our phones about 186 times per day on average. Then we get into the brain side of it: task switching takes energy, and those first 4 to 6 minutes can feel like pure resistance. That’s why the five-minute method works so well for building momentum.

From there, we clean up the environment. We discuss eliminating distractions like notifications, setting boundaries with other people, and creating focus signals that protect your deep work time. We also break down why multitasking is a myth, how the cognitive switching penalty makes you slower and sloppier, and why a simple notepad brain dump can keep your mind clear, especially if you deal with ADD tendencies. We close with a recap plus an unreleased track to ride out.

If this helped, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs their focus back. What’s the one distraction you’re cutting first?

Transcript

Opening Theme About Chasing Goals

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Losing myself and finding my strength came to the conclusion that I want it all. Feeling that pressure of tryna do better. I wanna reach heights, but too scared to fall. Too scared of failure, way more scared of feeling regret. I'm not even trying, that's terrifying. I understand that chasing my goals, I bury my clocks because it takes time. I gotta go. I already know if I wanna grow, you reap what you sow. That be the case. Planting my seeds and water my base. Yeah, I make mistakes. Yeah, I know you grow in your garden, but watch for the snakes. The people that act like you're crazy, but trying this, they far away. They don't think it's possible. I think it's possible. That is just hate. They hate themselves, cause they on the shelf. While you create a life that you love.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

A life that you love. Loving the fact to improving yourself. Decided that you would not settle. Decided that you got the drive to do it. The road got bumping your foot on the pedal. You go up a level, you turn up whenever. It's time for you to go put in that work. I know my work, huh? I know it ain't gonna be easy, yeah. I know it hurt, but thing is for sure. Yeah. Until it put me in this earth. Before I ride in that hearse, I'm chasing my goals. I'm chasing my goals.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Love enough back to improving yourself. You'll put on the cutter. I'm fixing my goals.

Why Focus Creates Your Future

Key 1 Use Your Phone Less

Key 2 Expect Brain Resistance

Key 3 Remove Distractions And Boundaries

Key 4 Stop Multitasking

Key 5 Keep A Notepad Ready

Final Recap And Challenge

Share And Become A Supporter

Outro Track Miss Your Chance

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Alright, and welcome back to another episode. Thank y'all so much for being here. If you were on YouTube, go ahead and like and subscribe to my channel. Like right now. Stop what you're doing, just hit the like button. It takes you two seconds. Thank you very much. Also, if you are on a podcast platform, please um leave me a review. Please become a supporter of the show. You can choose the monthly amount. It can either be three, five, eight, or ten dollars. You can cancel at any time. But why would you ever do that? I left links in the description to do to do so. Uh, these things help me keep this thing going for y'all. But let's go ahead and jump in today. Let's talk about maximizing focus. And today's gonna be straightforward. And a lot of what I'm gonna say ain't gonna be rocket science, but still things you need to think about and apply if you want to find more focus. Because, like I always say, you the kind of person to listen to this kind of podcast. That means you got goals, that means you got things you're working on, that means you know that in order to better yourself and your life, you need to work on yourself, and that takes focus. It just does. Focus is important now more than ever, right? So I'm gonna give you five keys, five strategies to help you do this. And I start by saying this in order to get the life you want, you have to take action. And anything that gets in the way of you taking that action is getting in the way of the life you want. And we as humans, unfortunately, we real good at distracting ourselves. And distraction is the opposite of focus, right? We are literally masters at distracting ourselves with society and technology and Netflix and Hulu and the president. Things happening across the world. So much is going on, so much that's happening to distract us, not to mention family and kids. So if we can get better and limit the amount of distractions we cause to our own selves and get better at finding that focus, it'll allow us to be able to take more action and get things done, which will in the long run get us closer to getting the life we want. So let's get into it. Five keys to maximize focus. One, and this is something we all know, but it has to be said stay away from your phone as much as you possibly can. Literally, try to stay away from your phone as much as you possibly can, especially in the morning. You need to try to go for as long as you possibly can without looking at your phone in the morning, 45 minutes, an hour longer, if you can. It'll help you start your day and be proactive rather than reactive. You don't want to be in reactive mode because what happens is you feel like you have to catch up. Like you putting out all these many fires throughout the day. Just many fires you gotta put out from getting distracted by your phone. And I know I ain't the only one, right? I go to pick up my phone to respond to an email or to send a text. Next thing I know, I'm scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. Next thing I know, 20 minutes done gone by and I still haven't done any work. A lot of times, still in bed, and I didn't get my butt up. I didn't get to it. I get it. I do it. I'm working on that my damn self. I'm getting better at it, but I'm working on it. Again, those many fires, right? And I know that happens to you. And I got a fun fact for you. Guess how many times you check your phone on average every day? Take a guess. Go ahead. What's what's the number? On average, we check our phones 186 times a day. 186. And believe it or not, that number actually has gone down from last year. Last year, it was 205. So, first of all, that's crazy, right? Second of all, it ain't the same for all countries. Guess who has the highest rate? Us, America. We the ones holding down that 205 and 186. That's us. But again, the literal exact opposite of focus. And that's number, it's just way too high. And studies show that spending a large amount of time looking at your small screen on your phones causes more stress, more anxiety. Looking at your phone causes more stress and more anxiety. We have to spend less time looking at our phones. It's literally important for our health. Because let's be honest, 186 times a day, if you divide that by the hours in a day that you take away for eight hours of sleep, right? That's 186 divided by 16 hours because you sleep for eight of them. That's over 11 times per hour. Think about that. 11 times per hour. That's an addiction. Between Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and notifications and emails and blogs and games on our phones and videos, all that screen time adds up and it adds to our stress and anxiety levels. So please, please, please figure out how to spend way less time on your phone. The distraction is real. If that means you got to put your phone in another room, do that. Have a place in your house where your phone lives, and only in that room. Now, maybe, of course, not all day, but when you're trying to focus. When you have to be when you need to not be distracted. You have to do what you have to do and figure out some way to not look at your damn phone. Because 186 times, that's crazy. So that's number one, stay away from your phone as much as possible. Two, prepare your brain. So again, studies have found that your brain doesn't like switching tasks. Your brain will have a natural resistance when you switch from one thing to another. And the reason why is because it uses more energy to switch from one thing, from one task to another. If you're working on your taxes and then you start grading papers, there's going to be a resistance because your brain has to use more energy to gain that focus on a different task. And this makes sense, right? I literally go through this every day. I have to plan my day, sometimes by the hour, because I work on so many different things throughout my day. If I don't plan it out, it's hard to keep focused. Like today I wrote this episode. Uh today is uh today Friday. I wrote this on a Friday. My daily plan that day was to clean up, respond to emails, work on a grant that's due Monday, get my hair cut, go to the gym, write this episode, go to the bank, put time aside to prepare for our audition before I go in. All those things. Now, I don't know if that sounds like a lot to you, but let me tell you, to my brain, that's a lot of different things. I literally have to have it all written out. Going from one thing to the next will a lot of times not feel good to your brain. You're gonna feel resistance. So be prepared mentally. Also know this, and this is very, very important. And this is fact. For the first four to six minutes, studies show this that for the first four to six minutes, your brain is gonna resist. Your brain is gonna continue to resist this task switch. It's gonna be harder to convince your brain that you need to keep going to keep working at it. You're gonna wanna say this, you know, you're gonna wanna say, Man, I just I just do this later, right? I just I'll just finish this tomorrow. And we done all been that done that, right? You start something and you ain't really motivated to keep going, you ain't really feeling no momentum, you kind of do it with a grudge. You gotta literally force yourself, right? So one of the things you can do is to dip your toes in. Figure out a way to ease your way in that thing. Or do a soft start, right? If that means you have to do the easiest part of that task first. Or if you have to literally just go really, really slow on purpose for a few minutes and pace yourself. Your brain will need that ramp up period before you get past that four to six minute mark. Now, one of the things that really, really works for me is what I call the five-minute method. And it's simple, because look, we all grown adults, right? We can put five minutes aside to focus on one thing, right? Just five. Five, that ain't nothing. So you set your timer for five minutes, you don't do nothing else except work on that thing you need to work on. And that's it. For just five minutes. Then once the timer goes off, you wait a minute, you do five minutes again. Because again, five minutes is just five minutes. That's peanuts. And what'll happen is when you get to that five minutes, maybe not the first time, maybe the second time, but that five minutes is gonna go by fast, and you're gonna be right in the middle of trying to finish something, or right in the middle of working on something, and you're gonna want to keep going to finish that thing. And guess what that is? Guess what that is called? Momentum. You just built momentum to keep going. So that's number two. Prepare your brain, know that resistance is coming, plan what you're doing, and know that the that four to six minutes, that first four to six minutes that exists. That thing, that resistance is gonna be there. Be conscious of it. Number three, eliminate as many distractions as you can. Let me say that again. Eliminate as many distractions as you can. Again, this is something I'm literally working on in real time. But how many different types of notifications do you have on your phone? Email, Facebook, Instagram, are you on Tinder? Hinge. And I ain't go front. I was on Tinder for a little bit and Hinge, probably for like a month. And I had to delete it. I had to delete both of them. I was getting it was getting way too distracting. I saw a lot of folks I knew on there too, which was funny. I always laugh when I saw somebody I knew, but uh, you know, not laughing at them, just laughing at the fact that this is what life is, seeing my peers on dating apps. But it was so distracting for me. I'll never forget the exact moment I knew I had to delete it. I was in rehearsal, I was just understudying, so I wasn't actually on stage or nothing. But I was sitting there in the theater, in the rehearsal room, and probably a good 40 minutes went by, and I was just swiping and swiping and swiping away and sending messages and just fully just emerged in this damn dating app. And I felt myself noticing that I was on it for too long, and I kept going anyway. I literally felt like, yeah, Doc, you uh you've been at it for a good minute, ain't you? You should uh put this phone down, right? And I kept going. I literally couldn't help myself for a second. So I ended up deleting it, both of them, that day. That same day. I knew I had too many things on my plate. And these dating apps was just way too distracting. Anyway, get rid of these distracting notifications because when you have that time set aside and it's dedicated to putting in that work, these notifications will pull you away and pull you out of it. Another distraction we have, another really big one, other people. How can you let other people know that this is a time you need to be left to focus? If you're at work, what if you put on headphones? You don't even have to be listening to anything. Just by having on headphones, especially if you got the kind that go over your head, people won't really want to bother you out of respect. Do you need to put a note on your door? Right? How can you let other folks know that you cannot have distractions while you're working? Find out what those distractions are and eliminate them. How do you tell your friends or your significant other or your co-worker or your kids that hey, I need this time to focus. Figure that out, eliminate those distractions, protect that focus. That's number three. Number four, another important one stop multitasking. Just stop doing it. There are studies, multiple studies, that show that multitasking is actually worse for you. And it actually ain't even real. Multitasking is a myth. But you're better off focusing on one thing at a time. It's proving that not not only will you get however many things that you're trying to do at the same time done faster, also you'll be more efficient as well as make less mistakes because your focus ain't being pulled in multiple directions. And again, studies also show that multitasking ain't even real. It ain't real. Your brain literally just goes from one task to another. That's all your brain is doing. It's switching from one thing to another, and it can't focus on more than one thing at a time. That's science. So you literally just switching your focus back and forth, not focusing on more than one thing at a time. And this causes what is called cognitive switching penalty. Cognitive switching penalty. And this means that you lose some of the efficiency and you make mistakes and you don't do it as well. So stop with the multitasking. I know it feels like it works. Maybe you think it's better, but studies show the opposite. Do one task at a time, focus on that one thing only, and then move on to the next one when you finish that one. So that's number four. Stop multitasking. And number five, have a notepad ready by you at all times of the day and take personal notes or brain dump or jot things down, whatever you want to call it. And you have that pen and pad ready. And whenever things come up in your mind, you write them down right then and there. That's what's important. The important part, writing it down immediately, and then moving on. Write it down immediately, then move on. And move on right away. So if you're working on a website or if you're working on studying for a test and you think, oh yeah, I have to respond to that email. Write it down, move on. Or you think, you know what, I forgot to purchase this computer bag before my trip. Jot it down, move on. Or you think, I need to get sugar and put that on my grocery list. Write it down, move on. You're thinking, you know what, I can't forget this make this, I can't forget to make this payment at the end of the month. Write it down, move on. Are you getting the trend here? Don't let it pull your focus from whatever that thing that you're currently working on. And this is the one, this one is so important, especially for folks who have any level of ADD. If you have any level of ADD, then you ADD, then you know staying focused on one task is hard enough as it is. So have that pen and pad, write those ideas that pop up and get back to it. And it seems simple, right? Not just with focus, but with being productive in general, right? We like to think that everything is so complex sometimes, or that they need to be really complex for them to be effective for some reason. But you, but if you have anything floating around in your head, no matter how simple or how very important it is, they are taking up energy in your brain, and you want to leave your brain with as much energy as possible. Writing these things down will free up some of that energy. Put it on a piece of paper and then get back to being focused. And I can tell you from experience that this really, really works, especially if you have a daily plan, which I also highly, highly recommend. I can't stress enough how important it is to have a daily plan written out before you start your day. And when I have my pen and my pad, I can just add things directly to my daily plan or add it to the plan for the next day. That way I have all the things I need to get done and all the things I need to have reminders for all in one place. Writing things down is such an underrated key. It really is. Don't switch tasks in the middle of doing what you already doing. No, write down whatever that thought was and finish that task that you already working on. And that way you won't forget that thought because that's real too, right? I hate that. You be working on something and you say, oh yeah, I gotta make sure I buy air freshener. And you don't write it down, and now you're at the store trying to figure out what that thing is you're forgetting to buy. I'll be in the store just walking and walking down random aisles trying to figure out what the hell I'm forgetting to buy. But anyway, that's number five. Have a pen and pad with you, write those things down and move on. So again, these are the five keys to help you maximize that focus. One, stay away from your phone as much as you possibly can, even if you have to leave it in another room. Two, prepare your brain, plan out your day, plan out those tasks, and also don't forget to ease into it. Your brain is going to resist for the first four to six minutes. Don't let it stop you. Prepare for it, be aware that it's going to happen. Three, eliminate as many distractions as you can. The notifications, email notifications, tender. Tell your friends and family that you have to focus. Think of as many ways to eliminate as many distractions as you can. Notifications is a big one. Four, stop multitasking. Studies show you're actually being less productive and not as efficient. You're gonna make way more mistakes. Cognitive switching does exist. And five, have a pen and pad ready at all times. Write down those thoughts that pop up in your head. Don't let those thoughts pull away from your focus. Write them down and move on. Get right back to that task that you're working on. So, like I said, not rocket science at all. All things we already know. I didn't teach you nothing new today, but I guarantee if you apply all these, you will have more focus. Again, you got goals, you got things you're working on, things you're working towards. We already live in a society, in a world, in a time that's distracting as hell, right? So focus is extremely important. So that's what I got for you today. If you like this episode, please share it on your social media or share with a friend or family member who you think would uh appreciate hearing this message. You know, I know there's somebody on your timeline that needs to hear this or see this, and I thank you in advance. Also, become a supporter of the show. You can choose the monthly amount, it can be three, five, eight, or ten dollars. I put the link in the description. You can cancel at any time, but why would you ever do that? Let's get to this music, the song I got for y'all today. It's an unreleased song. I put it on here before. I'm gonna do it again. This one is called Miss Your Chance. Let's ride out.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

I suddenly became hyper-aware of my body. I don't know what music that is. That music is all they have. They want me to turn it off.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Uh and this one's my theme. I take it back to the two bowls and make this one my ring. When I disappeared, they was looking for me, but they couldn't find me like me. But I'm I'm looking tonight. Wanna see me this Joe Tang? I'm about to hit my name light. Yeah, I'm about to take this downlight. Yeah, I'm about to take this in light. Yeah, I'm about to do light. You better snap this jo ja I thought you was looking for me. I thought you was looking for me. Like I know pictures on ID, I feel like you bones to me. But the thing's a ground, you're on my face. I love when you close to me. That's how it's both to be. I need rave. I need cheese, I ain't talking about groceries. Last year was so old to me. I know they've been waiting on my new shit like poke for me. Don't worry, won't be long. Cause this one is my theme song. I take it back to the two thousands and make this with my ring time. When I disappeared, they lookin' for me. They couldn't find me like Nemo. But I'm poppin' out tonight. Wanna see me this show chains? I'm about to hit my days like Yeah. I'm about to take this shot like Yeah, I'ma take this pick like Yeah, I'm about to do me like Yeah, you better not miss your chains. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard you was lookin' for me. Here I am, you better not miss your chains. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard you was livin' for me. Here I am, you better not miss your chains. Yeah, I be so smooth wanna be. I be that dude, yo dude wanna be. I be so cool, yo cool, feel like he's my summer. You can watch me go on the high street like nudes on a beach. I'm on the wave, I'm through with the beach. Being on the wave, left you with the beach. And I'm still hot, no, I didn't drop my flame. Just had a lot of my brain, so I gotta go. Just know a lot done changed, though I am not the same, it's not even close. And I feel like I deserve it, cause practice make perfect. I know I sound like a coach, I know I'm climbing a mountain. That's how I know I'ma go. Don't make me boast. Cause this one is my theme song. My take it back to the 2000s and make this one my ring tone. I disappeared, they was looking for me, but they couldn't find me like me. But I'm all in love. I'm about to hit my bad light. Yeah, I'ma take this like Yeah, I'ma take this pig like. Yeah, I'm about to do me like Yeah, you better not miss your chain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard you was looking for me. Here I am, you better not miss your chain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard you was looking for me. Here I am, you better not miss your change.