focusing is an important part of success
in today's world with so much
information at our fingertips and
so many websites, TV shows, and social
media platforms all vying for our time
and attention the difference between being
super productive and feeling like you're
wasting your day can often come down to
your ability to block out distractions
and focus on the task at hand
And that's what the one thing teaches you how to do
And it's what i'm going to talk about today I'm
going to be covering why focus is no
important in today's world how to
refocus when the inevitable distractions
do come in the lies you've likely been
told on your own road to success. So I'm
going to start with the lies that you've
probably been told in the past and then
address how I've fixed each of them. The lies are
as follows: one a disciplined lifestyle is
necessary for success. Two everything on
your to-do list matters equally three
your willpower will always be on will
call and four multitasking makes you more
productive and the first and most
important thing to understand when it
comes to productivity is that it doesn't
have much to do with being very
motivated and disciplined person no real
it doesn't productivity has to do with
what you need to do is to form several
great habits that will allow you to
consistently get a lot done without
relying too much on motivation which as
we all know can come and go in fact
forming productive habits works a lot
like driving a car takes a lot more
energy to accelerate to high-speed than
it does to maintain whatever speed
you're going at already.
that's why your gas mileage is lower
when you accelerate 70 miles per hour in
order to merge onto the freeway than it
is when you're actually on cruise
control to stay at 70 miles an hour in
forming productive habits your
motivation is kind of like the gas in
your car going to take a bit to form
those habits but once you have them formed
your behavior becomes almost automatic and you don't
nearly as much motivation to keep the
month that's the place we want to get
now experts say that it takes on average
66 days to form a habit but it can take
anywhere from twenty one days to eight
months depending on your circumstances
so it's very important to find a way to
keep yourself motivated to form the
habit if you find yourself on a little
bit closer to that eight months side of things.
there are many different tricks people
used to keep themselves motivated but
i'm just going to talk about the two
that helped me most
the first is the one that the book
focuses on and it's aptly named the
focusing question which is as follows
what's the one thing that I can do such
that by doing it
everything else will be easier or
unnecessary the question is simple but
powerful and not only does it refocus you on what you need to be doing
whenever you get distracted but it also
forces you to do a couple of other
things first you need to focus on the
big picture whether it's getting that
promotion or starting that business or
whatever it may be and you also need to
focus on the small picture and think alright
what are the steps i need to take to reach
my big picture goal and looking back at the
question i also want you to notice the
last bit such that by doing it
everything else will be easier or
unnecessary the idea of leverage is so
crucial to productivity and you see it
used all the time for example if you're
running a business there are so many
things to do that unless your business
is very small it's quite literally
impossible to do them all
yourself this is why the business world
have assistance they help you handle
some of that administrative work to free
your time of to tackle more revenue
generating activities which leads us to
the next lie
not everything on your to-do list is
equal to do lists are a staple of time
management tools but they do have a dark
side namely they often get so long that
we begin to feel overwhelmed by the
sheer volume of tasks that we either
don't get much done or we don't get
anything it's similar to how you freeze
for a second when you're presented with
a ton of products that accomplish the
same task think about the last time you
bought something expensive for me it was
a computer to start doing these videos
i'm not sure about you but I'm not the
greatest with computers and since I was
trying to build one of my own from
scratch there were also a lot of
questions that came up a lot of
questions I started asking myself things
like well which computer parts are the
cheapest or the fastest or the highest
quality which had the most reviews are
any of the negative reviews talking about
something that matters to me is
part A compatible with part B should I go
with apple and microsoft what the heck
is an APU and so on and so forth
I eventually did come to a decision that
i'm quite happy with but it could take a
lot of time and energy and there were
other things that I had to do at the
time that I just could not get done so
what's the solution
don't create a to-do list. Create a
success list the difference is that a to-do
list can have just about anything on it
and it can become very long a success list
has 3 to 5 things on it that must help you
reach your big-picture goal that's it
3 to 5 tops
and the smaller and more specific the better
this probably means that you'll be
cutting a lot of things out but that's
good that's the point and the way that
you find what you should put on your
success list is again by asking the focusing
question from earlier what's the one
thing that I can do such that by doing
it
everything else will be easier or
unnecessary in my computer example it
turns out that i actually knew a friend
that knew someone that built computers so i
was able to go ask them and ask what
parts i would need for what i was going
to do and that made most of my research
easier in some of it even unnecessary
now having a success list is all fine
and good but my experience there were
still days that I just got up and didn't
feel like completing the task on my list
even when the focusing question was
there to help me keep going that's
because your willpower isn't always on
will call unfortunately sometimes you
have it
sometimes you don't so the second trick
that helped me is known as the three, two, one trick.
what you do whenever you're
confronted with a task that you don't
want to do is you start counting down three,
two, one as soon as you say one you get up
and you finish that task the only rules are
that task needs to be possible and you need to be
able to do it right now that's why being
specific and going very small with the
things on your success list is key
because it allows you to cross that item
off your list get the great feeling that
comes with it and quickly and ingrain this
habit into your life the last lie is
that multitasking will make you more
productive and wow this one has been
big in my generation to the point that
it even seems some companies are
encouraging you to multitask constantly
I've been told that multitasking is one
of the more valuable skills that I can
put on my resume
What? NO! Study after study after
study have consistently shown that
multitaskers aren't nearly as good at
multitasking as
they think they are and it doesn't make
anyone more productive makes you more
busy but that's not the same thing I'll leave some links in the
description below to some of the studies
on multitasking if you're interested but
so many people have covered it already that
I'm not going to spend any more time on
it I think we all know that multitasking
doesn't actually make more productive
even though we all seem to do it
sometimes I still doing from time to
time but whenever I catch myself doing
it I again trying to refocus on that one
task at hand and generally I find
myself becoming more productive so to wrap
up this video I have a challenge for
each of you. I want you to take a minute and
envision your dream life
don't limit yourself go as big as you want
to maybe you want to have enough money
to retire go live on a beach somewhere
maybe you want to travel the world
whatever it is
picture in your mind then I want you to
follow the chart on the screen and figure out
what you need to do in each time period
in order to live your life on the next level then comment down below
what is your next level like look like
I'd be interested to hear about it and lastly if you
like this content and want to see more
be sure to subscribe I've got a lot of
great stuff planned for the future but
until next time guys remember don't let
anyone stop you from taking your life to
the next level get out there and
crush it!