"Why Can't I Focus Long Enough to Finish Anything?" — Transcript

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1. 0:00If you can't sit still, ignore
2. 0:02notifications, and focus on one task for
3. 0:05eight hours straight, never expect to
4. 0:07build anything great. And as
5. 0:08uncomfortable as that is, it's also the
6. 0:10truth. Like, I I don't know a single
7. 0:13incredibly successful entrepreneur that
8. 0:15can't sit down and have hyper-focused
9. 0:17periods of time, sometimes weekends,
10. 0:19weeks at a time where they don't talk to
11. 0:21anyone, and they just hammer away. And
12. 0:23it's whether they're coding for
13. 0:24software, or they're making some insane
14. 0:26marketing campaign and all the email
15. 0:28follow-ups and all the text follow-ups
16. 0:29and and the affiliate uh you know,
17. 0:31promotions and incentives, or someone's
18. 0:32who's creating a product that they're
19. 0:34designing and they're in the shop and
20. 0:35they keep tweaking at it, or there's
21. 0:37somebody who's who's hyper-scaling a
22. 0:39company and saying, "I'm going to sit in
23. 0:4120 interviews a day for for seven days
24. 0:43straight so I can hire 20 people this
25. 0:45week because I need to get going."
26. 0:47Right? Like, if you can't sit still
27. 0:49and ignore notifications and focus for a
28. 0:52day, nothing great will get
29. 0:54accomplished. Because it's not about
30. 0:57what you want, it's about what's
31. 0:57required. And it's and whether that's
32. 1:00your best or not is irrelevant. It's
33. 1:02just there's a price tag and you got to
34. 1:03be willing to pay for it, or you don't
35. 1:05get the thing. And a lot of times it's
36. 1:07not what you want. And I I've I I spend
37. 1:09a lot of time trying to dispel the
38. 1:11concept of like, follow your passion,
39. 1:13because I think it leads more people
40. 1:14astray than it helps. Because it's very
41. 1:17easy for someone who's successful, who's
42. 1:19already delegated tons of things to only
43. 1:22then focus on their area of genius, and
44. 1:24then say, "Here from my seat, do what I
45. 1:26do." But there's a very big difference
46. 1:28between doing what someone does and
47. 1:29doing what they did to get there. And I
48. 1:32think this is what's lost in a lot of
49. 1:33the content that I see in the
50. 1:34entrepreneurial space. And to be clear,
51. 1:36whenever I'm trying to get to the next
52. 1:37level, I often have to take on things
53. 1:39that I don't know how to do, and I have
54. 1:41to learn how to do them, which means I
55. 1:42have to suck for a period of time. And
56. 1:44sucking sucks. But the thing is is you
57. 1:46have to be able to embrace that period
58. 1:47of time and say like, this is the cost
59. 1:49of greatness. And so I'll give you
60. 1:50something very tactical. So I have
61. 1:52timers in a lot of my offices, and my
62. 1:54team has adopted this, too, which is I
63. 1:57like to time block, which is essentially
64. 1:58saying how long do I think this is going
65. 2:00to take? And you can do this on a week
66. 2:02scale, you can do it on a daily level,
67. 2:03it depends on the level of project
68. 2:04you're tackling. But for me, even on the
69. 2:06most micro level, I say, "Okay, how long
70. 2:08should this take?" I'll then crank this
71. 2:11thing, boom, I think this should take 20
72. 2:12minutes, and then I hit start, and I let
73. 2:15the timer go. And if for whatever reason
74. 2:17something distracts me,
75. 2:19I pause it
76. 2:20so that I know that I didn't actually
77. 2:22work that period of time. And so what
78. 2:25happens is it will give you a very real
79. 2:27look at how long you're actually working
80. 2:29versus how long you think you're working
81. 2:30and you tell other people working and
82. 2:32you Instagram how long you're working.
83. 2:34And as I've become more efficient at
84. 2:36work, meaning my output per unit of time
85. 2:38has gone up, I've realized that there's
86. 2:40just been a significant decrease in the
87. 2:42distractions that I allow to interrupt
88. 2:44me. Again, if you want to stay focused,
89. 2:47staying focused is not like zeroing in
90. 2:50and saying, "I'm going to do it just
91. 2:51like I'm going to I'm going to I'm going
92. 2:52to just zoom in on this thing."
93. 2:55It's more that focus occurs when you
94. 2:58remove everything else. What's left is
95. 3:01focus. And so Jerry Seinfeld has this uh
96. 3:03this famous process that he talks about
97. 3:05with writing, and I think writers are
98. 3:07also wonderful people for talking to for
99. 3:08deep work because it's the nature of the
100. 3:10work they do. One of the things that he
101. 3:12did, and he has done for years for his
102. 3:14stand-up so he can script it out, is
103. 3:16that he locks himself in a room that has
104. 3:18no windows and has nothing but a yellow
105. 3:21notepad and a pen. And he tells himself
106. 3:24that he has to go in that room, and he
107. 3:25doesn't have to write, but he can't do
108. 3:27anything else.
109. 3:29And so what ends up happening is that
110. 3:30writing occurs as a default. And so
111. 3:32focus kind of works the same way. You
112. 3:35eliminate everything else by to create
113. 3:36focus. You don't try and push harder
114. 3:39while also having these disruptions. So
115. 3:41there's three easy ways that I make my
116. 3:43phone less distracting. The first is I
117. 3:45switch it to grayscale. And so grayscale
118. 3:48decreases consumption across all people
119. 3:50by 30% ish, and that's research backed.
120. 3:52Which is pretty cool. The second thing
121. 3:54is turning off all notifications across
122. 3:57all apps on your phone. Because you
123. 3:59never want your app to be dictating when
124. 4:02it's convenient for the app to disrupt
125. 4:04you. Like how ridiculous is that? But we
126. 4:06let apps have that permission. Most
127. 4:08phones and people want to push
128. 4:10notifications to you. I want to pull
129. 4:13them when it's convenient for me. The
130. 4:15third thing is other people. And so I
131. 4:18have a mode on my phone where no one can
132. 4:20get through. And when I do that, then I
133. 4:23can reach out to them when it's
134. 4:25convenient for me. Because if it's
135. 4:27actually an emergency, call 911. And if
136. 4:29it's not a true emergency, then it can
137. 4:31wait. And my team wanted to remind me
138. 4:33that I don't email. I heard in I think
139. 4:35it was like 2016 that Bill Clinton
140. 4:38didn't use email. And I was like, if
141. 4:39he's the president and he doesn't use
142. 4:41email, I can not use email. And so my
143. 4:44team doesn't contact me via email.
144. 4:46And so if you can eliminate entire
145. 4:48channels, that's also an easier way to
146. 4:51concentrate fewer flows of
147. 4:53communication.
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