- Hey there, people we're out of here.
Today, I wanna share with you a tip
that has been really meaningful for me in my life
in making sure that I am productive,
and I show up best for everyone that is inside my life.
Both myself, my family, my staff,
anyone I wanna do work with.
This is going to hopefully give you some real insight
into how you can be more conscious, more present
for those that you need to show up with,
and I look forward to your comments on it right down below.
This is the jelly bean video
and from now on will be known as the jelly bean video,
and it's about productivity.
I have had a really keen interest in productivity,
in, you know, living a life of purpose,
living a life by design
and being able to perform well at home,
(Peter chuckles) that sounds funny,
at work, live life that's important to me
and achieve my dreams, and my goals
and everything else, right?
And so along that way,
I've learned about performance productivity
and making sure that I can perform my best in all situations
(Peter laughs) that joke's not gonna go away,
it's in my head now.
So I wanna share a concept of jelly beans
and the jelly beans' concept
is something that's been really useful for me
because this has helped me to make sure that
when I'm focusing on a task,
I've got less chance of being distracted.
And when I'm looking to really show up
in the different areas of my life,
I'm doing it in a conscious and a present way
in a way that really works for me.
I want you to imagine your attention span
and your ability to manage more than one task at a time
as a big jar of jelly beans.
And that big jar of jelly beans is basically
your ability to concentrate on different tasks,
your ability to, you know, manage everything
that's on your mind.
And I know that for a business owner,
you always have a million things on your mind.
You know, the buzz is due,
I've gotta look after, you know, the kids,
if you've got kids,
I've gotta look after my children at work,
(Peter chuckles) your staff.
And so there's all these like, you know,
pressures and things that we're gonna worry about.
As well as wearing the finance hat,
the marketing hat, the sales hat,
and everything else that we have to do
to actually run a business.
And it's, no surprise
that those that run businesses are probably more likely
to, you know, be more like, you know,
kind of like the 80 days scatterbrain type mindset
or potentially have lurking mental health issues
that they're pushing to the side
by keeping busy with business.
That's just my opinion.
I don't know if that's a fact or not.
But the jelly bean concept can really help you
to solve this.
This feeling of like scatteredness
in your mind and in your thinking.
So if you imagine your mind is like a big jar of jelly beans
and every time you have an open loop,
one of the jelly beans comes out of the jar, right?
So you have an open loop, jelly bean comes out of the jar.
And until you close that loop,
the jelly bean doesn't back in the jar.
Only when you close that loop,
does the jelly bean go back in the jar.
And eventually you'll run out of jelly beans
cause you end up having like jelly beans,
sitting all over the floor.
So if you imagine you're driving down the street,
you're sitting in traffic
and you've got your phone sitting in your phone holster
in the car, right?
You've got an email that pops up on your phone
and it's from that client, you know that client
that client, right?
And maybe the subject is in all capitals
or maybe it's like, oh yeah, that project is overdue.
Or it's something that you've forgotten to do, right?
And it pops up on your phone
and you're sitting there in your car
and there is nothing that you can do
to stop thinking about that
until you actually close that loop.
That's a jelly bean out of your jar.
Now, unfortunately, when, you know,
we've got notifications on, on our phone,
when we've got emails dinging and binging,
when we've got staff
that can interrupt us with instant messages.
What that does is it means
that a lot of jelly beans end up coming out of your jar
on any normal day
because you have these open loops
being created all the time.
So the magic trick to be more productive
and to be more conscious, and present, and show up
in a much better way
is to keep the jelly beans in your jar,
by doing things like disabling notifications on your phone,
that's a really big one.
Next one is making sure that
if you've got present time with family
or you've got quality time with staff
that you put your phone down.
Mine actually stays on, do not disturb, 24 hours a day,
so phone calls don't even come through.
I only receive phone calls
if I'm literally sitting at the computer
or I've actually got a handset
that I use at home as well.
Now, what I've done is taken it to a more radical step,
and I've actually switched off all of the notifications
for all of the apps on my phone, including messenger.
I deleted Facebook from my phone.
I blocked the Facebook newsfeed on my computer
and I'll drop a link to a video below
so you can learn how to do that.
But my phone doesn't actually buzz
for anything apart from one app.
And that one app allows close friends and family
to get in touch with me when they need me,
'cause that's all I want this to be.
I wanna be in control of when I use this device
for maps when I'm driving,
or for looking up something when I'm on the go,
or for paying at a shop, right?
But in all of those actions, I'm in control,
so jelly beans are not out of my jar.
But if I'm doing a task and something,
dings or bings on my phone and I...
And it diverts my attention,
that's a jelly bean out of the jar, right?
'Cause I've got an open task
and then, oh, look, this person has added me on LinkedIn
and all of a sudden,
oh yeah, I've meant to catch up with them.
Oh, I haven't seen them in five years and blah, blah.
And, you know,
you can see automatically you're distracted
and your mind goes to somewhere else.
So keep the jelly beans in your jar by reducing things
or interruptions, or even ways of working
that allow jelly beans to come out of your jar.
And so to do that,
I want you to take a very, very disciplined approach
to working in a...
At a bit of a linear fashion.
And by that, I mean, don't try and multitask.
Multitasking doesn't exist.
The actual definition of multitasking means,
switching between two tasks quickly.
It doesn't actually mean doing two things at the same time.
So if that helps illustrate that point,
multitasking does not exist, so don't try doing it.
And if you're the kind of person that is easily distracted,
or you find yourself switching between multiple tasks,
if right now you've got two monitors on your desk,
get rid of them and go to one big monitor instead.
There's a book by Cal Newport called, "Deep work,"
and that's also got some really cool strategies
around getting into the flow of doing one task at a time.
But also if you look at, you know,
videos on YouTube about minimalism
and those kinds of concepts,
they'll really bring you in the right direction
about simplifying things
and allowing you to therefore be more effective.
And what does this all result in?
You show up better for your staff,
you show up better for yourself,
you show up better for your family.
You'll perform better
in all the ways that you wanna perform better,
but it's about, you know,
getting rid of those open loops
that get created by jelly beans.
So for you today, keep the jelly beans in your jar,
and I'm interested to know what strategies do you have
for keeping jelly beans in your jar
and removing open loops from your life.
Drop them down below.
If you haven't already joined our group
for G Suite subscribers,
then jump on the link below.
In there we have exclusive videos, live streams,
you can get access to me myself personally,
and I'll answer your questions on our Q and A calls.
This is the place where all of our customers
and community hang out
and we have lots of amazing exclusive content on G Suite.
So if you're a business owner
and you're interested in growing your business,
using technology to better support your team,
be more productive,
get better results in all areas of your life,
not just in your business,
then you wanna go and join the group.
It's free, easy to access,
right on Facebook, where you love it.
And I'll see you in there.
Jump on the link.
(upbeat music)