- What's up beautiful people?
It's your homegirl Ms. Shameless, all up in your building
and this video is for you!
How to stay focused 'cause guess what?
We are all distracted, you and me.
And the reason why I decided to do this video
is because a girl is trying to write.
And not only am I trying to write,
I'm trying to be a good writer.
And I just find myself constantly distracted
because of things like this, noise, life, woe is me.
So I wanted to do a video addressing
all the tips on how I stay focus
and I would love to know how you boos stay focused
in the comments below.
Let's get into this now shall we?
(upbeat music)
Step one, identify your target and or goal.
This is half the battle.
If you have no idea where you're going and you're gonna
go any and everywhere.
But when you are on a mission to get something done,
you need to know what that is.
Make that the thing that motivates you,
that gets you up early in the morning and gets you focused.
Because if it's not that important,
if you don't have a goal, and if you do have one
and it's not a real personal goal, it's kind of something
that you just chose out of thin air.
It won't motivate you to get up and do the work
that you need to do.
So find that drive and it's by being real with yourself
and being truthful and focusing in on that for now.
And then once you achieve that, guess what?
You can have a new goal or a new idea.
Ooh, if you are trying to do the most,
if you're trying to do it all, you're gonna accomplish
less or better yet you're gonna accomplish less
in a short amount of time.
If you really want to get somewhere, just pick up one thing
focus on that one thing, get where you wanna go,
and then move on.
For me, as all artists, we have a lot of different passions.
When I was in theater school, I was in theater school
five days a week, so guess what I was doing
five days a week, I was focused on acting.
I can only do this one thing on the weekends
is when I would do my little side hustle of photography.
So weekends are my time to focus on photography.
So you might have multiple passions,
but whatever you're doing, just focus on the one
Speaking of focusing on the one, identifying your goal,
once you know what that goal is, you can either think of it,
but it's super super helpful to write it down,
write it down, look at it every day,
know what you are working towards.
Then you eliminate your distractions.
I have made that super simple for you by creating
a shameless manifesto poster, and it starts off by,
it's basically contract with yourself.
I Maya Washington, hereby declare that on this 9th day
of September 2019, to abandon fear and shamelessly
live out my dreams of being a writer.
I will realize my dreams by believing in myself,
hustling hard and sacrificing.
What?
Let's list out your distractions here.
So once you know what your goal is
you know what the noise is.
If this isn't helping you towards your goal,
then it's probably pulling you away from it.
So you can do that.
That's totally fine.
We're all human beings living in expressing,
but it's easier to know what's distractions.
Drama, gossip, negativity.
All of that becomes distraction.
When you know when, where you wanna go,
your number one distraction,
I guarantee you is this damn thing.
Okay, turn this thing off or better yet, turn it on.
Airplane mode.
Delete apps if you need to, silence,
there's a do not disturb mode and not only turn it off,
put it in a different room.
If you are not in the same room as your phone,
you don't have that habit of just like, where are you?
Oh, there you are.
And then you pick it up.
That's already a distraction in itself.
So eliminate this.
If you cannot stay focused and you are so distracted,
get out of your environment that's distracting you.
Go to a library, going to the woods, go somewhere quiet
where there's not all these distractions, distracting.
And other distraction that might even trump your phone
is your excuses.
So if you find that you have excuses for everything
as to why you're not doing the work,
you know you need to, that is a distraction.
So we're not gonna blame it on my dog, my friend,
my phone, this person, that person.
It's you.
Excuses, I have so many excuses beyond pointing fingers
at other people.
Fruit flies.
That's a real problem.
It's also an excuse.
All of a sudden I need to organize my closet.
Everything becomes so organized in my home so clean
and in order.
When I have a deadline and I have to focus,
but there are dishes Maya let's do that.
Your closet needs folding let's do that.
I'll think of everything.
All of a sudden I'm tired.
My brain will trick me into thinking like trick.
Have a nap.
No.
Why can't you just tell me to do the damn job?
Naps are good, but they can also be distraction.
Netflix, HBO, Hulu, starting a new series, all distractions,
but also part of life so you know what you gonna do.
I think my biggest distraction, my biggest pleasure.
Talking on the phone.
I love talking to my friends.
Talking and being social on the phone
is my number one distraction.
Online shopping.
Why do I have a steamer for my lattes I cannot make at home?
Distraction.
Pinterest is a total distraction.
I'm trying to justify it with work.
I will lose my mind on Pinterest.
Like all of a sudden I have, I'm creating my dream home,
my dream family, like the amount of boards I have
for all these, like you know, things that whatever.
I like to think of it as creative brainstorming,
but I suppose it's a distraction.
Partying, turning up at the club.
(upbeat music)
I don't do it anymore, but I used to, do you turn up?
Whatever it is.
You can use your own self awareness to pinpoint
what's a distraction.
So take ownership.
Once you figure it out, don't pass the bucket,
just own it and make the changes you need to make.
Next prioritize your goals.
We live in the future.
Whatever time and era you're watching this,
you have a lot of goals.
You have more than one goal.
So I'm gonna ask you to prioritize your goal.
Which goal is the most essential one you need to accomplish
first and what's the one you need to accomplish last?
So create a list or whatever you need to do
to get organized.
But prioritize those goals.
Write it down.
Trust me on this scheduling, schedule your priorities,
whether it's a list, it could be on your notepad,
it could be on your phone
whatever it is that you need to do.
Write it on your mirror, read in our dry erase board.
Just write it down and look at it and make that a habit.
Give yourself time to do it.
Because I have found when you don't give yourself time
blocks, you just take forever.
Once you've identified your goal, you've eliminated
all those distractions you're going to create
good work habits.
So once you have your scheduling down, stick to it.
The mind has neurons that fire off
and the more we say yes to bad habits,
they still translate into other areas.
So it's almost like you can't skip a beat.
You have to be on 24 seven whether it's eating,
whether it's partying, whether it's doing your work.
So I'm not saying don't do it.
Just segregate the time that which you do it,
which leads me to my next point.
Create a reward-based system.
So go out and have fun, but use that as reward
for the hard work you've done.
So once you reach a goal of like, I don't know,
working out five days a week, then guess what?
Saturday's here and it's cheat day.
You can reward yourself in that way
so you're not depriving yourself of the pleasures
that life has to offer.
You're now using it as a reward and motivation
to get the work done.
Having said all of that, life is a journey.
You're gonna be distracted,
you're gonna be all over the place,
and that's what makes life really beautiful.
But when I look back now as a mature woman,
it was part of my journey.
Like life isn't as a straight line from A to B.
It's literally like, heh, heh, heh, back here, over here,
way back over there.
(laughing)
It just makes life beautiful.
And guess what?
It's for the memoir.
It's for the tell all. Some great tools
to get you inspired and in the zone.
"Deep Work."
This book is so, so good.
I used to talk about this all the time on social media,
but it essentially talks about
we live in a dawn of distractions.
Certain writers have to go and go on retreats
and isolate themselves from all the noise that cities have.
But also just segregating the time.
This is why I'm moving
because I have too much noise distractions.
But if you're gonna be on social media,
you can train your brain to do it for like a dedicated
amount of time.
Cause when you just start scrolling and see this,
the problem I have, this is such a problem.
I trained my brain to multitask.
So I'll do 1,000,001 things at once.
So can you imagine when I'm sitting down
trying to get focused and write.
My brain wants to pick up my phone.
It wants to like start filming.
I'll start doing makeup, start doing the dishes
because I've trained myself to multitask, which is good.
But then it's also like, it messed me up.
"Deep Work."
I also use this app.
Oh my God, it's so good.
It's called Habit and it's super simple.
All you do is put in the habits that you wanna develop
and you check it off.
This is my accountability partner.
I actually discourage accountability partners
because you're putting the accountability
on somebody else versus yourself.
When you're like, let's go to the gym.
No, go to the gym.
You don't have to go together.
Make this your journey and figure it out
because what happens when they drop the ball?
Then you're gonna drop the ball.
Then what?
For the life of God, just focus.
(laughing)
I say this sincerely to future Maya, past Maya
and you boos watching.
I hope you found this video helpful.
Make sure you share your tips in the comments below
and until next time, remember to do you.
Be you and stay true.
Be shameless, get focused.
Do the work.
You might as well log off right now.
After you like my video.
(laughs) (upbeat music)