Welcome to today's episode of The Mind segment to our podcast, I'm your host, Rob Dial, and if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe. And since you never missed another podcast episode, and if you want to follow along with these podcast through video and also see some of our mini documentaries, we're starting to put our go ahead and follow me on YouTube. Go to put in Rendel pretty easy. RBD Eyl, you pop up, you'll see me.

Of all the videos you start watching us, you put out three to four new videos every single week.

Today, I'm going to be giving you my seven tips to maximize your productivity and your focus and every single thing that you do. And I'm also going to give you my number one tip for productivity and focus, the thing that's helped me more than anything else. And so if you're trying to be productive, if you're trying to create the life that you want, these seven tips will help you.

One of the things I want to say before I give you the tips is this.

Do not ever say the phrase I don't have enough time.

He said, again, don't ever say you don't have enough time, I promise you that there is somebody who has been in the exact same situation as you or very similar that has been able to create the life that you want. And so if somebody else has done it, there is absolutely no reason why you can't do it as well. Don't blame it on your children and say, oh, I've got children. And that's the reason why I don't have enough time.

Don't say, oh, I've got a full time job. And that's the reason why I don't have enough time or don't say I don't have enough money. And that's the reason I don't have enough time.

Whatever it is, just admit to yourself finally that all of that shit is just an excuse and that you are going to create the life that you want to, no matter what.

Cool. Can we all agree on that? Here we go.

Instead of saying I don't have enough time, just say it's not a priority for me because that's the truth.

It's not that you don't have enough time, it's just that you haven't made that thing a priority. Just say you don't care.

Instead of saying, well, I don't have enough time to create my my dream life, just say I don't make my dream life a priority and see if that starts to shift your mindset a little bit more into creating the life that you want, because ultimately what it comes down to is intention.

And so when we go into these seven steps, realize that you have to put intention into every single thing that you do.

And if you do and you put intention into becoming better at focus and becoming better at being more productive and getting things done, you will eventually get whatever it is that you want in life guaranteed.

So let me give you my seven tips for maximizing your productivity and your focus. Number one, get some frickin headphones. And I would say don't just if you really want to tip, invest a little bit of money into a really great pair of headphones.

Don't just use your Apple headphones. You just put them in and you can still hear everything outside of it.

The ones you get for free with your iPhone actually go and invest, I don't know, 50, 100, 200, 300 dollars into a good set of headphones. I like to use the ones that I have. I don't know the exact I know the brand is Sony, but I don't know exactly which ones they are, but they are noise canceling. So literally what I do is I put on headphones, I click on the noise canceling so I can hear nothing outside of it.

And then what do I do? I put on some focused music, binaural beats and that's what I listen to.

So literally, if if a train were to go by, I probably wouldn't hear the train, which means that that's if I'm focused, if I'm in the zone of something, I want to have my headphones on so that nothing can pull me out of that focus. Why? Because, you know, you've been really focused before and then somebody tapped on the shoulder. Somebody makes a phone call to you and then you get out of it for thirty seconds and then you try to get back in.

How detrimental that can be that thirty seconds of pulling you out of focus can be. And so if you have noise canceling headphones and you're listening to binaural beats, you listen to something that has absolutely no words in it that makes it so much easier to focus.

So get a really good set of headphones. The other the reason reason why headphones are great is because people are less likely to walk up to you and steal your attention away if you have headphones on. So if you have headphones on, it makes it easier for someone to just say something to you across the room. You know, if you work in an open air area, people are going to say something over to you and steal your focus.

When you have your headphones on, they could go, Oh, yeah, I guess I'll talk to him later. Right.

So put on headphones and find music that has absolutely no words that you can just put on and listen to him.

You may have heard me say before, but I have songs that I listen to just for Focus. I have one song, one YouTube video I put in focus binaural beats on YouTube. And it's the one, if you want to use the same one, that I am focused binaural beats on YouTube and it's a little neon owl is the one that I listen to. It's like three hours long and I listen to that so much that my brain knows when this song is on.

Rob Focus's so by a good set of headphones, if they're a good set and you invest into them, it makes you more likely to take it serious and more likely to actually use the headphones and to be more serious about getting stuff done.

Second, set that I'll give you, which is my number one tip actually for being highly productive.

But this is tip number two right here is to do the Pomodoro technique. You may have heard me talk about the Pomodoro technique, but it is incredible. It has changed my life as far as getting shit done and stop multitasking.

Multitasking, actually, they have found makes you dumber. You do worse, work slower when you multitask. What you should do is what they call single tasking, doing one thing at a time. The Pomodoro technique is perfect for this. It's super simple. You do twenty five minutes of work, five minute break. But those 25 minutes of work is focused on one thing and one thing only, so you say, OK, I have task X, Y, Z in front of me.

This task has to be done today. I'm going to go for 25 minutes.

Maybe you don't finish this. Twenty five minutes, but at least you get a break and then you go back into it. Twenty five minutes on. Five minutes off. Twenty five minutes on. Five minutes off. Twenty five minutes on. Five minutes off where you focus on one task and one task only if an idea comes into your head jotted down with pen and paper.

Don't look at your phone, just have a journal next to you and write down that idea and go right back to what you're doing before. While you're doing the Pomodoro technique, put your frickin headphones on. Right, stay locked in.

You ask yourself the question like if I'm trying to be focused and I'm trying to be productive, the thought that I have in my head is I need to be locked in. What is going to assist me in being more locked in headphones that allow me to be locked in pomodoro technique that allow me to be locked in 25 minutes on five minutes off. If you want to hear me go deeper into the Pomodoro technique, just Google Rob Dial Pomodoro technique or go to YouTube and type in rob dial pomodoro technique.

I have entire lessons on just specifically how to maximize the Pomodoro technique.

So stop multitasking, start single tasking and when you single task use a pomodoro technique, that's tip number two.

Tip number three, take your to do list. If you're a to do list person you have thirty things on your to do list. Let me make your life super simple, OK.

I know when I've seen, I know because I've done this and I've talked to so many people, I've done this before. You'll make it to do list and oh my God I've got to do this thing and you go do that thing and you come back to your to do list and write that thing down on your to do list and then cross it off so you feel like you cross something off in your to this. Right. You've done this before.

We've all done before in some different way.

The easiest thing to do is this, if you want to get hyper productive and hyper focused, is productive, means doing the important things, getting the important things done that need to be done right.

Make your to do list. And then what I want you do a circle on your to do list of its twenty things. Let's say the three most important things circle, the three most important things.

Take out a three by five card and index card. Write down number one. The most important thing that's that's the hit list I need to get. If nothing else gets done today, I've got to get my most important task done. Then I write down number two and then I can write down number three, and what I do is I take that three by five card and I put it in my back pocket and I leave the to do list wherever it was.

I can leave it on my desk. I can come back to it later.

But now, instead of having 20 things that I have to focus on, which can make me feel really scattered and if I feel really scattered, I'm less likely to actually get that thing done and to do it instead of doing that, what am I going to do?

I'm going to take that list of 20 things, make it into a list of three things, and then only focus on those three things. And that's it for the day. I'm going to focus on number one, and I won't do anything else until no one is done. Once no one is done, I can cross it off. Now I can go to number two and I won't do anything else until number two is done. And then once number two is done, that I can go to number three and I won't do anything else until I get her three done.

If I just get my most important things done every single day, that's a really frickin productive day.

And I might not get the other 17 things done, but they weren't important in the first place. The three most important things were on that index card. Let's say I do happen to finish those three things. Then I can go to the rest of the to do this and figure out what's most important after that.

But what it comes down to is, is being productive versus being busy, which is what we're going to go into in the next one. So the next one is being productive versus being busy.

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If you think about it, tip number four, being productive versus being busy, a lot of times people will call themself, oh, I don't have enough time, I'm too busy doing things.

You're doing busy work. You're not doing productive work. When I say you take a list of 20 things and shorten it into three things and concentrate on those three things and only focus on those, that's called being productive.

Being busy is just taking time and focusing on doing whatever it is and, you know, just getting stuff done. So let's say, for instance, I run a business, right.

And I might have make 10 sales calls. That might be the top of my list. I might have reach out to my employee and talk to them about this. I might have, you know, make a lesson. That might be another thing that helps me.

And then also on that, I might have to do my laundry. Right. And then I go, well, doing laundry is easy. I won't get rejected. I can do laundry or at least cross something off my to do list. So then you ask yourself, is doing laundry being productive or is it being busy? It's just being busy. I'm just acting like I'm keeping myself busy doing things when in reality I'm not doing anything that actually means something for my business.

So when you look at tip number four, am I being busy? Am I being productive? One of the things that I find that holds most people back is that they think that they're being productive when in reality they're just keeping themself busy. Right. They go, oh, you know what I've got to make? For instance, I could go I got to make a podcast episode and I could go.

I'm going to I'm going to do an episode on Bing Bing, you know, being focused.

And I could spend the next ten hours actually researching, being focused or I could go I'm going to spend 20 minutes about being, you know, trying to be focused and then I'm going to start actually creating content. Right. The creating content is the most important part of what I do. So I don't need to spend ten hours focusing and figuring out how to create the best podcast episode. I need to spend 20, 30 minutes focusing, putting it together and then boom, I need to record it because recording it is the actual most important part, which is the productive side of it.

People go, Oh, you know what, I want to, you know, I want to work out more.

And then so instead of actually going to the gym, which is would be being the productive side of it, they go, you know what, I'm going I'm going to research for the next three hours the best protein. I'm going to research the best diet and all of the stuff that's important. Yes, but that's not going to move the needle. Like going to the gym will write being productive, go the gym, pick up weights, put weights down, throw them at the ceiling.

That's being productive, being busy as I'm going to spend the next few hours researching the best diet plan and researching the best protein and research and the best workouts and researching this and researching this.

Is it important in some way?

Yes, but it's one tenth of the amount of importance of actually going to the gym if you're trying to lose weight.

Makes sense. So are you being busy or are you being productive? Ask yourself this question to just cut through all of the B.S. is what I'm doing right now.

Getting me closer to or further from my goals is what I'm doing right now, getting me closer to a further from my goals.

Ask yourself that one hundred times a day, I guarantee you're going to find yourself being way more focused and way more productive of doing everything that you need to do is what I'm doing right now get me closer to or further from my goals. Simple. That's all you got to do.

So then you look and you say, OK, is researching protein for the next two hours getting me closer to or further from my goals?

It's actually going to be further from my goals.

Is going and buying new yoga pants getting me closer to or further from my goals?

Honestly, that's going to be further from my goals. Just going and doing yoga would be getting me closer to it.

So you have to realize you can either be productive or you can be busy in the way that you decipher what you're being, as you say, is what I'm doing right now.

I'm getting closer to or further from my goals. So that's tip number four. Are you being busy or being productive?

Tip number five is to find your peak hours. Everybody has peak hours. It's usually about two to four hours where you are the most focused, where you do your best work.

For me, it's from 10 a.m. to two p.m. That's my most focused peak hours.

All of the most important stuff that I do in my day is done between the hours of 10:00 into right for you. It might be the same time for you. It might be later on at night. For you, it might be earlier in the morning. Find your peak time. I know I have friends and wake up at three o'clock in the morning because they have kids, they wake up. You know, I have a friend that runs a business and he wakes up between three to four o'clock in the morning and he runs a thirty million dollar year business because he wants to be out before he must be up before his kids.

So they get as much done as you possibly can. Right. His peak hours is he likes to wake up in work as soon as he gets up. I don't like to work as soon as I wake up. So it's different for everybody. When are your peak hours? When you're three to four hours of peak time where you can really get locked in? Because that's where trying to or trying to get locked in and being focused and being productive.

If you try to have me get a lot of shit done after 7:00 p.m., it's not happening because usually throughout the day I'm working so hard that my brain is fried after 7:00 p.m. So that's just the way that I am.

But do you know the way that you are? Do you know when? Or peak hours are. Think about that. That is tip number five, tip number six is to clean up all of the shit that surrounds you, right. A cluttered, cluttered space, a cluttered mind is usually the key to it.

Now, are you going to have everything being perfect around you? Absolutely not. But if there's crap all over the place and you're trying to be productive in, you're spending 50 percent of your time rustling through things to try to find the things that you need to that's going to hold you back from being productive.

If you have crap all over your desk and you can't find what you need to in order to get stuff done that's holding you back, it's taking time away from you. So what if you were just to hire somebody to come in and tidy up your space for you? Right. Be one of the best 100 or 200 dollars you've ever spent. Is it is it beneficial to have someone if you work from home right now?

Because everything that's happening is a beneficial for you to spend one hundred and fifty bucks to have someone coming completely clean your place, to make everything more organized, to get rid of all of the crap that's on the floor, to do your dishes for you to do your your laundry for you.

Is there a benefit into paying somebody to do those things for you?

You know, is is it is it more beneficial for you to put your time into doing laundry or if you were to take the same amount of time that it took you to do all that laundry and actually put it into work, would you make more money working than you were doing laundry?

And if you would, maybe you should hire somebody, if it cost you one hundred bucks to have someone do your laundry and it takes them two hours, but you make one hundred dollars. A hundred dollars an hour. And you would say, OK, if I work about 100 hundred dollars an hour, you know, if it costs me 100 bucks to have somebody do this and in that time I can have somebody do this, I can make two hundred bucks that says, let's say on average, you make two hundred dollars an hour and it takes somebody an hour to do all of your laundry.

Right. You would make if it's 100 bucks to do all of your laundry, which I explain. So it makes no sense if it costs 100 hundred bucks in an hour for someone to do your laundry and you make about 200 dollars in an hour when you're hyper productive, that means by paying somebody one hundred dollars and you make 200 dollars that you're actually netting one hundred extra dollars. Most people don't think about this. They think, oh, I got to pay somebody and I don't want to pay somebody because I'm too cheap.

But if your net positive in the revenue that you make or the amount of money that you bring in, it's worth it for you to do that. So maybe it's worth it for someone to come in and clean your place. Maybe it's worth it for someone to do your laundry. Maybe it's worth it for someone to do your landscaping. Maybe it's worth it to outsource things so that you could be more productive at what?

At whatever it is that you do, because you only get 24 hours every single day. You receive in front of it, you're only awake for 16 of it, so how can you be more focused and more productive and outsource the things that you don't necessarily need to do? How can you clean things up? OK, and the last thing that I'll tell you is this tip number seven is to batch your tasks. What I mean by batching it, I'll give you the perfect example.

You take everything that you do. And if you do something over and over again, can you do all of those at one point in time? Like, for instance, if you wake up in the morning and you're like, you know what? I'm just going to get all my emails done first thing in the morning and later at night, and you just do all of your emails in the morning and at night, then you don't have to do emails throughout the day and you can focus on the things you need to do.

Right now, I'm recording this episode. This is a third one that we've recorded in a row. All I do is literally change my shirt. I'm not lying to you. This is a third shirt that I've been wearing in the past hour and a half. Why? Because I'm fucking batching the stuff that I'm doing right first. OK, so now I'm wearing if those you guys that aren't watching the video, I'm wearing a green shirt. The episode I did before this, which was literally recorded right before this, I was wearing a maroon shirt.

The episode I did before that, I was wearing a gray sweater that said Be a nice human right. I just recorded and made it look like it was a different day. It's the same damn day. But why do I do that? Because it's easier to batch my tasks and to get my stuff done all at once, because what do I do?

Wake up in the morning today. I planned out four episodes. Right now we're recording three episodes. Later on in this week, we'll record another three episodes.

So if I put out three episodes per week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then I have a bonus when that comes out on Thursday, I only need to record most of the time one day to get all of next week done right.

So what can you batch in your life to make you more productive? Your emails, your phone calls, your meetings write My Tuesdays are my busiest days.

Why?

Because I batch all of my coaching calls and all of my calls. You know, I've got business breakthrough, which is where I teach coaches how to build coaching businesses. I teach them how to make money and how to make six figure businesses. I do my call with them on Tuesday, then on Tuesday. I've also got my accelerator program later on, which is the advanced mindset course that I have. I do that on Tuesday as well because I know Tuesday is my coaching day so I could get my coaching brain on part of my coaching helmet and get that done on Tuesday and then I don't have to worry about it for the rest of the week.

Batching stuff will make you way more focused and way more productive.

I cannot recommend it enough. So, Bache, all of the tasks that you do, if you can batch them, so that is tip number seven.

So if we go through this again, number one, get some friggin headphones number to use a pomodoro technique. Number three, ask yourself, are you busy or are you being productive to your to do list as number three, which is fine. The three things that are most necessary for the day. Number four is are you being busy or being productive? Number five is to find your peak hours and are six is to clean up or pay someone to clean it for you.

Number seven is to batch all of your tests. You only have twenty four hours in the day. Every single person only has twenty four hours in the day.

So you have to figure out how can you get more locked in, how can you get more focused, how can you get more productive and ask yourself this question is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goals. And if you ask yourself that one hundred times a day and you focus on being productive and you focus on being focused, you will get a whole lot more shit done than everybody else.

So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share with someone that you know love. And I believe the same way I leave you every single episode, make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.