Welcome to today's episode of the Mind Set Mentor podcast, I am your host, Rob Dylon. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never, ever miss another podcast episode. Today, we're going to be talking about how to be more focused. And I'm going to teach you seven steps to staying more focused with everything that you do throughout the day, because, as we know, focus is going to dictate how much you're going to get done throughout the day.

And we live in a world that is really, really hard to stay focused in. Why? Because everything is literally at our fingertips right now and we can get people that can message us to get people who can come through. They could send us a text message. They could send us an email. They could come to our door, they could phone call me literally. We can be so distracted. And so you have to realize that distraction is basically something that we've created.

Focus is a skill that you need to work on. And before I give you the actual keys to being more focused, what I'm going to tell you is this. Think of it this way. If you have, you know, decided that you want to be a professional basketball player and you wake up every single morning and you work for 18, let's say, 16 hours a day, you see for eight hours you work for 16 hours really hard every single day at being a basketball player in six months, even if you've never picked up a basketball when you start in six months, if you work for 16 hours a day, you're going to be a really, really good basketball player.

Within six months, you're not going to be LeBron James, but you're going to be good because in six months, every single day, you put 16 hours of work in. You're really great, aren't you? And this goes with anything. But you have to realize we have basically been waking up in training ourselves to be distracted. We wake up, we go to our phone, were distracted.

We have emails, we have Instagram, we have Facebook, we have phone calls, we have text messages. We literally wake up and get distracted and we stay distracted the entire day. We are professionals being distracted. We've trained ourselves to be distracted. That's what's crazy about it. But if that's the case, can't we train ourselves to be focused? We can untrain ourselves and we can train ourselves to be focused. We can wake up and actually have the intention of being focused every single day in work at that, every single day as well.

And that's what I'm going to help you with, is how to make sure that you stay focused with everything that you do through these seven tips. Tip number one is super simple, but I'm going to give you a little extra tip on top of it to make it even better. Wake up in the morning and spend five minutes making it to do list. The way I like to do my to do list is I like to just sit in silence.

Sometimes I close my eyes as if I'm meditating and I just sit there and I just think and allow the things to come into my head. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got to call her today. Oh my gosh, I've got to get that project on. I've got to record that video. I've got to get the podcast done. Every single little teeny tiny thing I write down, there is nothing that pops in my head that I don't write down.

Laundry could pop up. I have to write it down. And I make this massive to do list knowing that I'm probably not going to get all of it done. And in fact, I don't know if I've ever in my entire life. Thirty four years completed a to do list, but that's OK because it doesn't matter about what you get, like how many things you get done. What matters is the importance of things you get done. And so I know a lot of people that were created to do list and hey, I know some of you guys listening have done this before.

You created to do list and then you go and do something that's not on the to do list and you come back to the to do list and you write it down and you cross it off. Just see how that feeling of, hey, I just did something right. Yeah, we've all done it before. Here's the key.

If it's not on the to do list, it's probably not the most important thing. And so what I would say is make your to do list. And then here's the key. Ready? You take your to do list and you circle your three most important things for that day in what you do as you figure out what is number one, you figure out what is number two and you figure out what is number three as far as what are the most important.

And what you do is you take a little three by five card, a cue card, and you write down number one, number two and number three. And what do you do? You take that and put it in your back pocket so that you have it with you all day long. Therefore, you don't have to go find your to do list. You don't have to look at your phone for your to do list because we've all done it before.

You pick up your phone to do something, 30 minutes later, you're on Instagram, you realize you've been scrolling through stuff and you're like, what the hell am I doing? I don't remember what I picked up my iPhone four in the first place. It was for the to do list. Right. And so what you do is you go old school, you get your you find out the to do list. I thought it was number one, two and three.

And then on a cue card to write down number one, number two and three and you put it in your back pocket. So you have it with you at all times. So that's tip number one to do list and a cue card. Tip number two deals with that. And what it is, is to eat the frog first. There's a book there was by Brian Tracy called Eat That Frog. And what it means is eat the frog first thing in the morning because nobody wants to eat a frog.

And so usually what that means is that the thing that you need to do the most, the thing that is of the highest importance to you today was probably also the highest importance you yesterday and the day before and the day. Four, but you've been resisting, you've been putting it off, and so what you do is you have the mindset of I'm going to eat that frog first thing in the morning, I'm going to get it done right away.

And what you do is you conquer the number one thing on your to do list first. Why do you do that? Well, psychologically, when you have that thing out of the way, it makes sure the rest of your day so much easier. Also, it's a win first thing in the morning. And when you have a win first thing in the morning, the rest of the day is so much easier. You're so much more productive. You have the I'm going to get it done attitude.

And it's a win because imagine if you just got the most important thing done every single day. And that was the only thing that you did all day long. A year from now, you're going to be much further ahead than you normally are. And the reason why is because you're not putting off the most important things. You're just getting it done. You're just executing and you've developed the psychological mindset of I'm just going to get it done because it's got to be done.

So that's what number two is, is to make sure that you eat the frog first thing in the morning, as soon as you start working, as soon as you get done showering, as soon as you're going straight into it, as soon as you show up to work, whatever it is, eat the frog. Did it done psychologically. It'll make your day so much easier. You'll feel so much more accomplished, you'll feel so much more productive, and then you'll be happier with the results at the end of the day.

So that's number two. Number three is to set your intention for the day. If you listen back to a couple episodes ago, I talked about setting an intention every single day. I like to call this like your daily mission. What is my mission for today? It could be a goal that you want and you want to hit that goal. That's your main mission for the day. It could be that you, you know, want to stay away from your phone completely.

And so maybe what you do is you put your phone inside the closet and you leave it there all day long so that you can just get stuff done. So maybe your intention is just be away from your phone so you can be productive. Maybe it could be you just want to be happier today. And so I'm going to try to bring happiness into everything that I do. I'm going to try to do things that make me happier. I'm going to try to find the positive in everything that I do, which will make me feel better and make me feel happier.

It could be, you know, maybe I want to be 100 percent present with my children today. Maybe it's a Saturday. You've got the kids school. You know, you got to finish up a couple of projects and then you got to go to soccer with them. And you're like, you know what? I just want to be fully present for my children today. That could be an intention. So what's your daily mission? Maybe it's that you've got a project that you got to complete and that's like today it is just this project.

And I'm dedicating my entire day to this. And the reason why is really good to have an intention for the day is because it makes it really easy to say yes and to say no to things. One of the problems that a lot of people have is saying no to things that they don't need to say yes to. Right. So they say yes to things, but they don't really need to say yes to it. And now they've got extra on their plate because they don't want to let somebody down or they don't want to seem like they can't do it or they don't want to make them self feel like they're not good enough.

Whatever it is, it's different for everybody. But when you have a daily mission and you're like, this is what today's mission is, this is what I'm working at and you know what it is, then it makes it way easier to say no to things which allow you to focus on today's mission. So, you know, for instance, let's say that today's mission is that you've got to you've got to complete this project for work or for school.

The project has to be complete. And then somebody comes in and says, hey, do you want to go to lunch? I loved you. Can we do it tomorrow? Because I have to get this project done. It's my mission for the day.

Let's say, like I said, that your your goal is to make sure that you are as present as possible with your children today. And, you know, you know, that's what you need to focus on. You've got soccer, then you've got softball after four your your daughter. And you've got to do these things. And then something pops up and you say, you know what, maybe tomorrow, because today is my children's day. Today I want to be the best father or the best mother that I can be.

So how about tomorrow we can work on X, Y, Z.

Do you see how that makes it easier? Makes it easier? Say yes, because then if it does line up with it, you can say yes and then it makes it easier, say no. And you don't have to feel like you're ever letting people down. All you have to do is say, hey, what about tomorrow? Because today I have to get this done. Today, my focus is this. Today, my mission is this. And people tend to understand when they see how focused you are on something.

So that's number three is to set your intention, set your daily mission. Number four is something you may have never thought of before, is to make less decisions, make less decisions. You know, when people think of Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, the guy who owns Amazon, he also owns Whole Foods. Right. He's the richest man in the world. And people think, man, I can't even imagine how much he has to do on a daily basis being worth it and how much money is like almost 200 billion dollars, whatever it is.

I read an article. It says that he tries to make no more than three decisions during the day. That's it, three decisions, and the reason why is because decision making actually takes up so much energy of the brain. And if you are trying to make decisions and putting so much energy into decision making and you have fires coming at you and maybe being in reactive mode for so long, you've got to make a decision on this. This, this, this, this that's requiring your brain to think harder, which is using more energy, which means that you're not showing up 100 percent later on in the day.

And so how can you make less decisions throughout the day? How can you set up your life to make less decisions? Something to think about? It's different for everybody. Some people might have an assistant and it's easier to make less decisions. Some people you might be a teacher at a school and it's harder for you, but there is a way for every single person listening to this to make less decisions. So the question I have for you is how can you make less decisions and spend more time executing instead of thinking?

That's one way to be really highly focused because decisions take energy.

That's number four. Number five, turn off your frickin notifications, please. It's so simple. But for some reason, people are addicted to their notifications. They're addicted to when someone like something of theirs on Instagram, they get a notification when their favorite YouTube or puts up a video, they get a notification. When, you know, they have a text message from a friend, they get a notification when they get a phone call, whatever it is, I always say, and I'm not perfect with this, but here's my recommendation.

The only way that you're going to get any sort of I'm going to get any notification that you're trying to get in touch with me on my phone is if you call me, that's it. If you send me a text message, my phone doesn't light up. If you send me an Instagram message, my phone is light up. If you like my Instagram post, my phone isn't light up. If you share my stuff on Facebook, my phone doesn't light up.

The only time if you send me an email, my phone doesn't light up. The only time where my phone lights up is when a phone call is coming through and everybody that knows me knows this. And I've got a set clear boundaries of if it's an emergency or you need to get a hold of me, just frickin call me, don't text me. But if it's something that's not important, sent me a text message, I'll see it when I pick up my phone next.

So how can you get rid of all notifications? What about notifications on your computer? Oh my God, I don't have any notifications. Literally zero notifications. Excuse me, on my computer. Zero notifications. How could you try to set up your life that way? Just have zero notifications. Imagine how much more focused you could be if you didn't have notifications ruining your life.

Right. So just remove all of them that you possibly can. Number six is to listen to binaural beats with headphones. A couple of things that are really important here. Number one, when a person's wearing headphones, people are less likely to walk up to them and interrupt them. So if you're trying to stay focused, pretty good idea. Why don't we just put on your headphones and make sure that people don't walk up to us? So that's the first thing.

The second thing is when you have headphones on, you usually don't overhear conversations. You don't hear things in other places. And so you can stay focused because there is nothing coming in auditorily into your head except for that. And that actually goes to another point of it as well. The reason why I listen to binaural beats is because it's usually just a sound, you know, or just like a humming drowning out like very calm, cool noise. All they do is I going to YouTube and I was put in focus by aerial beats.

That's it. And that's what I listen to. And what happens is there's no words to it, so therefore it doesn't. If I'm in a train of thought and then somebody starts singing and I start singing with it, it's getting me off my train of thought. And so I'm trying to listen to music that is just going to turn off my ears to the outside world and keep people from the outside world from coming in and actually starting to talk to me.

So put in binaural beats, whatever is you can do or put in piano music, whatever it is, it makes you feel good, whether it's chill music, whether it's upbeat music, whether it's EDM that has literally no singing in it, no talking in it, whatever it is completely up to you just put your headphones on. I prefer binaural beats, just worked better for me and drowned out the world. Go directly into whatever it is that you're working on and get it done.

So that's another way to stay focused and in step number seven for staying focused. This is a little bit counterintuitive. What most people might think is to work out for fifteen minutes. Here's the reason why. Let's say that I'm sitting here. I'm not very productive today. Been a slow day. I'm feeling, you know, kind of groggy. I'm not 100 percent into it. I'm not fired up today. What they actually found. Researchers found that people who worked out for fifteen minutes before completing a task actually completed the task significantly faster than those who didn't.

And the reason why is because their brain and body now have the chemicals of moving, of getting stuff done right now. After the workout, it could be fifteen minutes yoga. It could be go for a run. It could be jumping jacks it. Push ups, it's whatever get that gets that heart rate up so that you're starting to. You heard me in another podcast episode starting to feel like you're moving forward, like your body is more leaning forward versus leaning backwards, leaning forwards, getting stuff done.

And so if you feel cartilages to slow down day, I'm not into it. My brain doesn't feel into it. I'm just not fired up. Get your body moving 15 minutes and you will see that you will get things done significantly faster if you do that, because it's really hard to go from not getting anything done to getting things done.

But if you're not getting anything done and you're like, I'm going to get my heart rate up, I'm going to push myself, I'm going to start going, it's a lot easier start getting stuff done at that point. So 15 minute workout, get your blood pumping, get the chemicals running through your body, get that adrenaline going, and then start completing some tasks, start getting some things done. So those are the seven different things that I got for you to being more focused.

Number one, make it to do list every single day, every single morning, and then circle the three most important put in your back pocket and make sure that you get those done. Number two is to go for number one. First, eat that frog makes it so much easier. Number three, have a daily intention, a daily mission of what you're going to get done. Number four, make less decisions so that you don't have to use as much brainpower on decision making and you can use it on getting stuff done.

Number five, turn off all notifications from the world so that you can focus on what needs to be done throughout the day, turn off all notifications and let everybody at, you know, and everybody you love. No, the only way to get a hold of you is through a phone call. Binaural beats put on some headphones, no words. Get it done. People won't get in your way. Execute. And number seven, work out for fifteen minutes to get your body moving, to get your mind moving, to get you moving into the direction that you want to, to create the life that you need.

So that's what I got for you for today's episode.

If you love this episode, please share with someone that you know and love. Go ahead and share it on your Instagram stories for us. Tag me in it. Rob Dayal jr r obediah alj r and I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your make someone else stay better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.