- This is how you improve your focus
and increase productivity.
I'm Tom Bilyeu for Goalcast.
I co-founded and built the billion dollar brand,
Quest Nutrition, starting from scratch,
with no knowledge of the food industry,
and only about $10000 in startup capital.
We grew the company by 57000%
in the first three years alone,
and Eek Magazine named us the second
fastest growing private company in America.
How did I do it?
By learning to be deadly efficient with my time,
and by staying focused long after the tasks
became really boring.
The truth is, by nature, I am really easily distracted,
and I'm absolutely horrific at time management.
When I was a kid, I was diagnosed
with hyperactivity disorder.
My whole life, I've been the kind of person
that bounced off the walls, I lacked discipline
and follow-through, quite frankly,
but what I learned is that focus
is just like a muscle.
If you train it, it gets stronger.
The question is, how on Earth do you train it?
That's what I've spent the last
20 years of my life as an entrepreneur perfecting.
It's taken my several failed businesses
and a couple of grand scale successes
to prove out these methods,
so grab something to take notes with.
All right, here are the eight training secrets
that took me from scrounging in my couch cushions
to find enough change to put gas in my car
to generating real phenomenal wealth.
Number one, start with passion.
Willpower isn't a finite resource, but motivation is,
so when you feel like you don't have
the willpower that you need, chances are,
what you're really lacking is motivation.
So you're not pursuing something that means enough to you
for you to be able to generate energy.
You wanna pursue things that give you
more energy than they take.
Now, I don't think anybody's born with a passion.
I think it's something that you build in your life.
I don't think it's something that you find.
You find something that you're interested in,
but then you're going to fan the flames
of that interest through engagement,
turn it into a fascination,
and then, through the process of gaining mastery,
you turn that fascination into a real, full-blown passion.
But ultimately, what you're trying to do
is build something in your life
that's giving you more energy than it's taking away.
That way, when it gets boring, when it gets hard,
when you find your focus slipping,
you're gonna have what you need to come back
to that thing that you know you should be focusing on.
Then you're going to push through.
So knowing that it's not really about
having the willpower to bring yourself
back around to what you should be focused on,
but rather, making sure that the thing
you're supposed to be focused on is exciting to you,
then you're gonna be able to make it.
Number two, practice grit.
And the way you're gonna practice this
is by learning to meditate.
Now, meditation may not seem like
the most logical way to practice grit,
but in reality, meditating is really just about
coming back to the breath.
Every time your thoughts wander,
you're gonna bring it back to the breath,
bring it back to the breath.
And that practice of over and over,
recentering yourself, coming back,
stopping thinking about this new distraction
and just come back to the task at hand,
which is your breath.
And by doing that, and that's how
you're gonna build that muscle.
So, not only are there other massive benefits to meditation,
including clearing your mind,
but it's also gonna allow you to practice
coming back to something over, and over, and over,
because ultimately, that's what focus is.
What am I supposed to be thinking about?
What am I supposed to be doing?
And every time your mind wanders,
because it is going to wander,
but every time it wanders,
you wanna get good at bringing it back.
All right, the second part of meditating,
clearing your head, brings us to the next thing,
which is number three, cognitive optimization,
and that's one of the other benefits of meditation is
it's going to not only give you the chance to practice
coming back to something over, and over, and over,
but it's going to lower what I call
your background radiation, your stress, your anxiety,
it's gonna go away as you meditate,
and that's absolutely critical because
if you're going to be efficient,
you've got to be cognitively optimized.
There are really three ways to do that.
Number one, get as much sleep as you need,
however much that is, get it.
I don't use an alarm.
I built a billion dollar brand not using an alarm,
so there are no excuses about how busy you are.
I work a lot, but I'm telling you right now,
I get sleep first.
Number two, hit the gym.
I wish this weren't so, because I am not a fan of the gym,
but going to the gym forces you
to stick to a routine, to go do hard things,
and most importantly, studies show that
it's the only way to fully cognitively optimize.
You've gotta get in and push your body.
It's going to help regulate the way that you think.
All right, the third thing on that
is you've gotta make sure that your diet is on point.
Again, I wish that I could just eat
a tub of licorice every day.
I love junk food in ways you can't imagine.
But it doesn't help me think clearly,
and if you're going to get done
the things you wanna get done,
if you're going to achieve your goals,
if you really want to be able to focus,
you've gotta have your diet on point.
You avoid cognitive fatigue,
you avoid things like brain fog,
it allows you to really be at your best
and think clearly.
Number four, apply the newfound grit
you've been building through meditation
and going to the gym to your work.
Just like you force yourself to go the gym
when you don't want to and you're forcing yourself
to sit there and meditate and come back to the breath,
even though I'm sure you wanna do something else,
that act of going and doing the thing
that's leading you toward your goals,
rather than whatever random thing
your mind throws up in front of you,
that gives you the discipline to see something through,
to have the ability to come back over and over.
When you start applying that to your tasks,
all of a sudden, you're gonna see that
you start working through your to-do list,
and you start actually making real progress.
All right, number five, you're gonna
have to change your identity.
None of this stuff is gonna come easily.
Sitting down, doing the work,
what Michio Kaku calls butt power,
actually sitting there and just
getting through that task list
isn't going to be easy, and a lot of times,
it's gonna be really boring, it is not gonna be fun,
you're gonna wanna go do your version of play,
whatever that is.
But in those moments, your identity is gonna save you,
'cause you're gonna take the time
to repeat to yourself what kind of person you are.
And this narrative, this thing that you tell yourself
about yourself is going to determine
what you achieve in life.
I always say there are two things that really matter.
Number one, what you repeat to yourself about yourself,
and number two, what you repeat to other people.
What do you say out loud?
Because when you tell people
what kind of person you are, what you're about,
what you do, what you're trying to build,
you create this need for congruence.
As you're telling people that you're that way,
as you're telling people how you think,
that you're pushing yourself,
that you're the kind of person that
fill in the blank, focuses, has a big mission,
is working towards it, only does
what leads you toward your goals,
whatever it is that you're repeating to yourself
and to others, you're going to create that need
to be congruent with that,
and that is hugely advantageous.
Make sure that you're taking advantage of that.
All right, number six, you've got to hold yourself
to a ridiculously high standard.
The truth is, in life, there's only one path to success,
and that is set the bar ridiculously high,
and then surpass all expectations.
You don't wanna play the part of achieving your goals,
you don't wanna pay lip service to it,
you actually want to do it, and to do that,
you've gotta hold yourself accountable to progress.
When you're holding yourself accountable to a high standard,
when your identity is tied in,
then all of a sudden, you're actually
going to be looking for those metrics
of real progress that you can identify,
and you won't be afraid to adjust course
if you're not actually making that progress,
because who you are and the way that
you feel about yourself
is tied up in all of that.
Number seven, be deadly efficient with your time.
The goal here is to be proactive, not reactive.
Most people spend all of their time being reactive.
They spend a lot of time checking their email,
taking phone calls, taking meetings,
rather than saying, this is my goal,
this is my plan to reach that goal.
Whenever I check my email, I feel
a deep and pervading sense of shame,
because when you're checking your email,
you're being very reactive,
and you're saying somebody else outside of my business
knows better how I should be spending my time than I do.
So I highly encourage you guys
to keep your email checking to an absolute minimum.
I probably reply to less than five emails a week,
and I do that because I have that list of important things.
I know at all times what I should be working on.
I don't need other people to tell me.
So, my advice to you is keep a list
of the most important things that you could be doing
at any one time to reach your goals.
I live and die by my important things list.
Number eight, and this is one of the most important things
that any of us can remember.
80% of business is knowing what not to do.
Most people are drowning in opportunity.
People think that the hard part is gonna be
to get some opportunity, for something to come along
that they're able to take advantage of
and really create some momentum off of.
The reality is, we're all standing in a room with 1000 doors
and our job is to close 999 of them.
The problem in your life isn't going to be
a lack of opportunity.
I actually think opportunities come along all the time.
The problem is knowing which ones to pursue
and which ones to say no to,
and that's what feeds back into that important things list,
which feeds back into your goals.
You have to have crystal clarity
on what your goal is and how you're going to achieve it,
and that's how you're gonna decide
which one of those 1000 doors
you're actually going to step through.
All right guys, that's it.
If you do those eight things,
you will be well on your way
to mastering the game of focus and productivity.
Again, my name is Tom Bilyeu
and you can follow me at @tombilyeu.
You can follow me there across all socials,
including YouTube.
Let me know how I can help, and until next time,
be legendary, take care.