How To Maximize Focus

Your attention is getting pulled in a hundred directions, and it’s not just annoying, it’s expensive. When we can’t focus, we don’t take action, and when we don’t take action, the life we say we want stays out of reach. We are the MOST distracted country in the world, literally. Is this keeping you from your goals and happiness? I keep it straightforward and practical: five real-world keys you can start using today to maximize focus and protect your time.

Transcript

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Motivational Music Opening

SPEAKER_00 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 made 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 it's just hate. Yet they hate themselves, cause they on the shelf. While you create a life that you love. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 worth, 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. Love enough back to improving yourself. Decided that you were not settled. Decided that you got the drive to do it to go. Got more foot on the cutter. I'm chasing my goals.

Welcome And Quick Support Ask

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Alright, and welcome back to another episode. Thank y'all so much for being here. If you are on YouTube, you know what to do. Go ahead and like and subscribe to the channel. Go ahead and do it right now. Right now, it'll take you two seconds. Also, if you want a podcast platform, please leave me a review. And uh please become a supporter of the show. Uh, I would greatly appreciate it. Any donation, they're all welcome. It helps me keep this thing going. I say think of it as buying your boy a cup of coffee. I know we spend money on things that are uh not as good for us that we spend our money on. So I'm trying to do a good thing in the world by putting this thing out there and you know nurturing my little community that I have uh built. So I thank y'all in advance. I left links in the description. It's easy to do it. Just click on it and just follow the instructions. Alright, let's go ahead and jump right back in.

Why Focus Creates Your Life

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Today we're gonna be talking about maximizing focus, and it's gonna be a straightforward episode. A lot of this stuff ain't gonna be rocket science, but it's still things you need to think about and apply if you want to become more focused. Because, like I always say, you the kind of person that listens to this kind of podcast, so 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 to do that, it takes focus. It just does. So I'm gonna give you five keys, five strategies to help you do this. And I start by saying this, and I say it often, but 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 that life you want. And we as humans, unfortunately, we are really, really good at distracting ourselves. And the opposite of a distraction is what? Focus. But we literally are masters at distracting ourselves, and unfortunately, with society and technology and Netflix and Hulu, the president, things happening across the world, it's so much going on, so much to distract us, not to mention family and kids and all of that that comes along with that. So if we can get better at better and limit the amount of times or the amount of distractions we cause to our own selves, and get better at finding that focus, it will allow us to be able to take more action and get things done, which will in the long run get us closer to the life we want. So let's get to it.

Key One Cut Phone Time

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Five keys to maximize focus. And this one is something we all know. This first one, number one, 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. That's my biggest weakness. You need to try and go for as long as you can without looking at your phone. If you can get four to five minutes in, an hour, two hours, if you could do that, it would help you start your day and be more proactive rather than reactive. You don't want to be in reactive mode because what happens is you feel like you just have to catch up, right? Like you're putting out all these small 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. 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. Or I want to look at a post that I saved online to get ideas for a post to make. Next thing I know, 20 minutes and gone by and I ain't done no work. Many fires. And I know that happens to you. And I have a fun fact for you. Guess how many times you check your phone on average every day? Take a guess. On average. Take a guess. We check our phones 144 to 205 times a day. 205, first of all, that's crazy. Second of all, it ain't the same for all countries. Guess who is the highest us, America? Our average starts at 186, not 144. 186 to 205. That is the literal exact opposite of focus, right? And studies show that spending a large time looking at your small screen on your phone, it causes more stress and anxiety. Looking at your phone causes more stress and anxiety. Plus, your brain overdoses on dopamine. And your algorithm is specifically designed to keep you scrolling. They design it to give you an infinite loop of dopamine to keep your brain chasing these many rewards, these many dopamine hits. And that leads to mental fatigue. Also, if you scroll a lot at night, it tricks your brain into staying alert. And this messes up your sleep and it spikes your anxiety. So, scrolling on your phone too much literally gives you stress and anxiety. We absolutely have to spend less time looking at our phones. It's literally important for your health. Because let's be honest, 205 times a day, that's an addiction. Between Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and notifications and emails and blogs and games on your phone. That's been me a lot lately. Games and videos, all that screen time adds up and it adds to your stress and anxiety level. So please, please figure out how to spend way less time on your phone. And I'm saying this for myself too, because I know I be scrolling way too much, especially during football season. And just in general, I can literally feel it as it's happening, right? It's hard to explain this, but it's like this conscious and subconscious feeling in the back of my head, like, yeah, I'm scrolling too long, but I ain't gonna stop yet. And I don't. I can feel it. That I need to stop, I can feel it, but a lot of times I just don't. And it affects me. I'm already having a rough year, and I don't need to be adding unnecessary stress and anxiety on top of that. Same for you. The distraction is real. If that means you need to put your phone in another room, do that. Have a place in your house where your phone lives, and only in that room. Okay, obviously, not all day. We can't do that. But when you're trying to focus, when you need to not be distracted, you gotta do whatever you have to do and figure out some way to not look at that damn phone because 205 times a day is crazy. And I think I'm gonna do a full episode on this because it literally is an addiction. We are addicted to our phones and it ain't good for us. But moving on. So that's number one. Stay away from your phone as much as you possibly can.

Key Two Prepare For Resistance

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Number two is prepare your brain. So again, studies have been 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 task to another. If you're working on your taxes and then you start, let's say, 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 definitely makes sense, right? Because I can literally go from I literally go through this damn near every day. Because I plan my 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 so hard to keep focused. Like the day I like the day I wrote this episode. My daily plan for that day was to clean up, respond to an email, respond to emails, look up some grant information, plan snippets uh for release of a music video that I'm planning on shooting. Go to the gym, write this episode, and then go to my kickball game later on that night, later on tonight. Now, I don't know if that sounds like a lot for you, but let me tell you, to my brain, that's a lot of different things. And I literally have to have all that written out. And I write it out and I plan the time of day that I'll be working on it. So make sure that you um expect that going from one thing to the next will a lot of times not feel good for your brain. You're gonna feel resistance. So be prepared mentally. Also know this that uh, and this is very important, 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. All you're gonna wanna do is just say, Man, I'm gonna just do this later. I'm gonna just do this tomorrow. I don't feel like doing this right now. So one of the things you can do is to dip your toes in. Figure out how, figure out a way to just ease into it, right? Do a soft start. If that means you have to do the easiest part of that particular task first, or if you have to literally go very slow on purpose for a few minutes and pace yourself, because your brain will need that ramp up period because um you have to get past that four to six minute mark. So that's number two. Prepare your brain, know that resistance is coming, plan out what you're gonna be doing, and know that four to six minutes, that that four to six minute thing exists, and you have to be conscious of it and aware of it and expect it.

Key Three Remove Notifications And People

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Number three is eliminate as many distractions as you can. And again, this is something I'm literally working on in real time. But how many different types of notifications did you have on your phone? Email, Facebook, Instagram, are you on Tinder? Hinge. I ain't gonna 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 leave but I had to delete both of them. It was getting way too distracting for me. And I saw a lot of folks I knew on there too, which was funny to see. I always laugh when I saw somebody I knew, not laughing at them, just laughing at the fact that this is what life is. Seeing your peers on dating apps. But anyway, it was so distracting. I'll never forget the exact moment I knew I had to delete it. I was in rehearsal, where I was just understudying, so I wasn't actually on stage or nothing, but I was sitting there, probably a good 40 minutes went by, and I was just swiping. Just 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 way too long. And I kept going anyway. I literally felt like, yeah, Dotch, you uh you've been at it for a good minute, ain't you? And I kept going. I literally couldn't help myself for a second. And I deleted them both that day. I knew I had way too many things on my plate. I couldn't have that big of a distraction that I could not even even control. Anyway, get rid of these distract notifications. Because when you have that time set aside and it's dedicated to putting in work, those notifications will pull you and pull or 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 that you need to be left to focus? Right? If you are at work, what if you put on headphones? You don't even have to be listening to anything. Just by having headphones on, especially if you got the kind that go over your head, people will be more likely to not bother you out of respect, right? Because they see you with them big ass headphones on. Or do you need to put a note on your door? Right? How can you let other people know that you can't have distractions at this time? Find out what those distractions are and eliminate them as best you can. How do you tell your friends or your significant other or your co-workers, your kids that hey, I need this time to focus? Figure that out, eliminate those distractions and protect that focus.

Key Four Stop Multitasking

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Number four, stop multitasking. And I talk about this a lot, but there are studies, multiple studies, that show that one, multitasking is not real, it is not a thing, and that multitaxing multitasking is actually worse. You're better off focusing on one thing at a time. It's proven that not only will you get those same two or three or however many things you're trying to do at one time, you will get those tasks you're working on done faster and you'll be more efficient and make less mistakes because your focus isn't being pulled in multiple directions. And like I said, studies also show that multitasking ain't even real. It ain't even real. Your brain literally just goes from one task to another and it can't focus on more than one thing at a time. So you are literally just switching your focus back and forth from one thing to another, back and forth, not at the same time. And this causes what's called a cognitive switching penalty. And this means that you lose some of that efficiency and you make mistakes and you don't do it as well. Right? So stop with the multitasking. I know it might feel like it worked, or you may think it's better, but studies show the exact opposite. Do one task at a time and then move to the next one when you finish that one. That's number

Key Five Use A Notepad

SPEAKER_00 15:08

four. 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. And that's the important part. Writing it down immediately and then moving on. Write it down immediately and then move on. And move on right away. Don't get stuck, don't get caught up there. So if you're working on your website or you're studying for a test and you think, oh yeah, I gotta respond to this email, you write it down and you keep moving. Or if you think, you know what, I need to purchase this computer bag for traveling before my trip comes up. You just jot it down and you keep moving. You say, Oh, I need to add sugar to my grocery list. You write it down. Or I can't forget to make this payment. Write it down. Do not let it pull your focus from what from whatever that thing is that you're currently working on. And this one is so important, especially for folks who got any level of ADD. If you have any level of ADD, then you know staying focused on one task is hard enough as it is, right? So have that pen and pad. Write those ideas that pop up, write them down, and get back to working. And it seems so simple, right? Not just with focus, but with being productive in general. We can think that things need to be really complex for them to be effective for some reason, but if you have anything floating around in your head, no matter how simple or 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 you get back to being focused. And I can tell you from experience that this 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 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 it all, I have all the things I need to get done all in one place, and I have little reminders for me all in one place. Writing things down, it is such an underrated strategy, an underrated key. Don't switch tasks in the middle of doing what you already doing. No, just write it down, write down whatever that thought was and finish that task you already working on. And that way you won't forget that thought, right? Because that's real too, right? I hate that. Like you'll be working on something and you say, oh yeah, I need to 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 the hell that thing was you forgot to buy. I know I ain't the only one. I'll be up in Walmart just walking around randomized trying to figure out what am I forgetting. Anyway, that's number five. Have a pen and pad with you, write those things down, and then get back to focusing.

Five Keys Recap And Closing

SPEAKER_00 17:59

So that's it. Again, these are the five keys to help you maximize that focus, and it ain't rocket science. But number 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 gonna resist for that first four to six minutes. Don't let that stop you. Prepare for it, be aware that it's gonna happen. Number three, eliminate as many distractions as you can. The notifications, the email notifications, tender. Tell your friend or your family that you gotta focus. Think of as many ways to eliminate as many distractions as you can. Notifications that those are a big one. Number four, stop multitasking. Studies show you are actually being less productive and not as efficient. You're gonna make more mistakes that way. Cognitive switching is a thing. And number 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 you away from your focus. Write them down and get right back to that task. Again, like I said, now rocket science. All things we all know. I ain't teach you nothing new today. But I guarantee if you apply all these things, you will have more focus. And again, you got goals, you got things you're working on, things that you're working towards. We already live in a society, in a world, in a time that's distracting as hell as it is. So focus is extremely important. So that's what I got for y'all today. Thank y'all so much for being here. Please support the show. I left links in the description. Uh, help your boy out, buy me a cup of coffee. Uh, it is greatly appreciated. Uh, please share this episode on your social media or with a friend or family member who you think will and will uh benefit from hearing this message. Let's go ahead and

Outro Track Stubborn

SPEAKER_00 19:49

get to this music. It's an unreleased song that I've shared on here before, but I'm gonna share it again. The song is called Stubborn. Let's ride out of the U.S. Let's watch how you talk to me if none of them still. I'm in with you, I'm linking okay to what I'm stuck, uh I'm in with you, I'm linked in okay to what I'm stuck, get on my way, um I took for the moon and the coming in the tube. I'm on the stage. So no, you can't put me in my place out of the maze. I feel it like I ain't gonna liking the taste, uh. We put you so, yeah. Planning my seeds and water my base. Play out of my ways, I'ma calm with my pain. Let me alone that's all in my stage, some in that's umbringin' and get a money. Sorry, not smaller, I'm feeling if you demand wrong. I'm catching the case. Someone that's stumbling, but I do not care about your stop in the story, go have a good day. Somebody that's stumbling. Dream chases got a nigga sleepy out days. We had way too many bad days. You can see it, I'm live my face. I'm living restin' on top of depression, but I don't say nothing. Let them keep guessing. That's what she takes for me, are you okay? I said I'm good, or you on the way. They live in the hustle in the faster, but it was my goal to pick up the pennies. Then I stole my mama, they make brains. I'm like I'm no, I'm a first plenty. I ain't wanna style, uh wanna get brain, but don't wanna climb it. That's not like yeah, uh, my only regret was missing my time. My second regret was being so stubborn. My tooth like a roll is fucking. I know when I'm on that fuck, I know when I'm a left. What time you talk to me and I'm not for the stuff. I'm in with you, I'll let you out face the wood up. I'm in with you, I'll let you updated wood and stop. Shut up when you talk to me, shut up when you talk to me. I don't wanna hear your mouth or see your face. I don't need your help in any way. Believe I will be stray. I'm putting it all on my plate, get it done in plenty ways, plenty days. I'm outdoing them, but I keep it cool. I don't need a flex, you ain't a thread. I'm humble, so all I require from you with respect. Put some my tennis, that's how I play my cards, get off my deck. Keep telling me you too closed out. I see you sound like my ex, not a dentist. I'm learning some things about me. Now I need to check, but I need some snacks. Let's talk about me later. I need some rest, I am the best. And devoted and expressing my feelings, protecting my feelings, especially when it's this time of my life and I'm working on me. And this gun is my witness. I'm working to death. Uh, let me close down. Blowin' the time, wait on me to say I'm stubborn. Look, my nigga, I'm good. I swear I don't need no ad ice. Yep, I'm aight. Watch how you talk to me if none of this. I'm in with you, comma link in OK to one. I'm in what you call it, yeah, okay. I shoot for the moon, ended up turning into a star. Now I'm out of space, yeah. So no, you can't put me in my face, yeah.