 You're listening to barbell logic brought to you by barbell logic online coaching where each week We take a systematic walk through strength training and refining power of voluntary heart show Welcome to the barbell logic podcast another episode of the principles edition. I'm here. I'm a little bro Chris Reynolds Thanks for being on the show and we're here to talk really about one of your favorite topics I think this is one of the ones you've been looking forward to in the queue and that is how to pay attention or Maybe better put how to learn to ignore the rest of the bullshit that's sort of Taking up attention That's right. I think it's a I think it's one of those core skills. It's like an early core skill And I wish it were taught like in schools because I think I just think that Everybody benefits so much from learning how to do this better. Yep I think if you if you look at if you look at your kids if you have kids if you look at your kids, they They are they start really really bad at this, right? Like just the ability to focus on one thing for an extended period of time It's just not something that we're born with we've got to learn to do that. That's right but in today's world with distractions at literally every possible place every conceivable location It's even harder and most people don't Most people don't notice it. They don't realize their brain is jumping from thing to thing to thing and we're you know You're paying for those contexts, which is By basically not getting all the information that you could get And also it makes you totally exhausted. Yeah, absolutely people don't know it. Yeah, it's interesting Certainly some of this is genetic, right? Like there are some people who obviously have sort of natural dispositions towards attention deficit disorder type Thinking I I know that's not me. I would assume that you'd say the same thing That's not you but it it doesn't mean that they're that we all can't benefit From learning how to get better at this thing and so when I think about The distractions that my kids especially is when they were younger your kids are younger than my kids, you know You've you've seen the stats about how often The TV changes cameras now or angles on the TV like, you know, you'd see single shots Like I remember we not took a film class or a couple film classes in college in the the old ten commandments the with Charlton Heston Do you know that there's a scene for 30 minutes where the camera never cuts? 30 straight minutes of a single camera and now it's like literally like every two seconds every second and a half You see these camera cuts and so That has changed dramatically when I think about when I was forced to start to do this I don't know if you have the same memory as I do because you were you were you know, you're three years younger than me But it's our dad was in seminary and he would take us they would take us to chapel Where when it was big seminary, right? It was a great big room and you had guys that were going to school to be preachers Preaching often back-to-back or even back-to-back to back sermons and of course all these preachers one They they want to impress all their other preacher friends by preaching longer and more in-depth and I was five And you were two and we would have to sit in these chapel services often for like three hours And we're talking about southern Baptist in Memphis in the south like nothing exciting No exciting music no laser light shows. They weren't landing helicopters on the stage all the funds that there weren't smoke and pyrotechnics Like they have now in churches It was just old southern Baptist dudes preaching long sermons and we had to learn and there were no iPads Right and there was no cell phones to play on it was the coloring It was the kids there were books and coloring books, you know I can remember and we would take our little luck kids classics books and we would read Tom Sawyer 20,000 leagues under the sea or we'd color or whatever. I remember that was the first time we're like man three hours is a long time for five-year-old to sit through a Church service and be totally silent Yeah, I mean, I remember those really well I actually think growing up in that way act probably probably had an effect in training us to be a Time the thing that I noticed in my adult life We did a podcast on this earlier was the was the Pomodoro the Pomodoro is one of the first places where When you're working and you need to get something done You notice how what your mind's tendency is to jump around and do other stuff. Sure, right? It's like that itch to go pull up your email and see who sent you something or you know So I just got the itch just now when you said it. I was like, ooh I wonder if somebody's emailed me about the federal stimulus package or so, you know, you're like, yeah Can I wait another 20 minutes till the podcast is okay? I would you know, yeah, what what I think What what that grew into for me what is some of this is is something that I wouldn't necessarily say everybody needs to do But I think there's some interesting stuff in here Pomodoro's helped me understand That I could get way more done in a shorter period of time Which would give me more first of all it made me feel better in my day I was like look at all I got done. Yeah, I felt great I could I could stop working and I could feel good about the fact I stopped working because I did a ton of stuff That bled into a whole other area, which is you know, it's it got really popular for a while I think it's still somewhat popular And actually Barbara logic sent out a really good email recently about several ways Several things you can do for your own mental health during this. Yep Coronavirus pandemic there were a couple things in there that were really helpful to me I read 10% happier, which was one of the books that was recommended and it was fantastic And that got me on to the the world of doing a little bit of meditation And not the spooky kind not nothing nothing sure. I'm not levitating nothing you're like that Mindful stuff focused on breathing and things like that mindfulness stuff and and that work for me really clarified My brain's tendency to hop around. Yeah, and and not be able to focus on one one thing for an extended period of time And what you really learn there is The the actual thing you're doing At first at least and this is not necessarily related to meditation mostly just making sure that you're you're able to pay attention to whatever it is you're doing is To ignore everything else. Yeah, basically you have to when you're having a conversation with someone The rudest thing you can possibly do and I will I will just stand on this I don't care how how important you think you are with the exception of maybe if you're in medical profession or something If you're talking to someone and you're having conversation with them Don't look at your phone right every three minutes. Don't be texting people in the middle of that It just it it makes it to where everything about the quality of the conversation You're having with somebody else has diminished has died makes them feel unimportant I mean sure and you're not getting everything out of it for sure because you're switching gears constantly I stopped I stopped wearing my apple my My apple watch for that very reason so I thought how great is this when I first got the apple watch? Because it just give me that little tiny pulse on my wrist I was like, I don't have to pull my phone out of my pocket and see who texted me or sent me a slack message Show much worse It is that the thing about the phone is I turn the phone on do not disturb Put it my pocket if I'm having a conversation with them But I could check it 10 minutes later 15 minutes later half an hour later whatever with the watch It was constantly buzzing so I would just like, you know, it's a quick glance and you think like Oh the person I'm talking to doesn't really notice. Oh, they notice. No, they know And so I personally I haven't I don't wear it. It's it sits in my in my drawer next to my bed And I just you know, if I'm going on a run or something I want to check my heart rate or something. Maybe I'll put it on for the most part I don't wear the thing because I don't like the distractions I had a period of time there too and I man I go through ups and downs with this I am no expert on this topic. This is something we all have to constantly work on and we probably have to regularly revisit it but In the times where I have family time This would typically have been during, you know, the time after my kids would get home from school We're in weird times now and it's not necessarily the case but I would take my phone and I would put it on my bed stand in my bedroom And I wouldn't pick it up again until the kids went to bed when that happens I my kids behave better because they're getting my attention. I'm able to focus on them. I'm happier Uh, it's just so much better of an experience. However, over time it creeps back in And so it takes like these regular intervals check like, you know, is there anything so critical That I have to know in this moment Or Can I wait and and handle this information in batch? Yeah One of the things we've learned with pomodoro is a great example of this But we're way better more efficient at batch process. That's right. That's right We should always focus on one thing And then schedule time to go do whatever else like you want to surf reddit and look at all the funny things that are happening on reddit I'm not telling you just put it on the schedule. I'm just saying don't do it all day Pick a time where you're gonna spend 15 minutes surfing reddit and laughing at all the funny videos that are out there. That's fine Yeah, uh, but but all of this goes to the idea that our brains Again, this is a topic we've we've touched on before But our brains do not do two things at once. They don't we can context switch Some people can context switch faster than others But all of us are terrible at it This idea that emerged sometime in the 90s that the best workers in the world are multitaskers was totally false That's right. We now have really really good Science behind why that was totally fake. That's not a thing No one can multitask if you think you can you can't Uh, you might be able to switch gears a little faster than some people I've met people that are pretty good at this and and I'm not one of them Uh, but you are so much more efficient if you focus on one thing at a time And you choose to transition thoughtfully to something else that actually matters rather than sort of passively Go through your day checking email 6,000 times slack 6,000 times reddit a bunch of times, you know, whatever it is Yeah, it's um, you know, there's really two there's two sides of this coin One is the strategies for how to pay attention as you as you mentioned in the in uh, the introduction, but then Equally as such what you've been talking about is also the ability to ignore the other stuff, right? And they certainly work together, but they're really like they're they're two sides of the coin And so we have to figure out how can we better focus on the thing the task at hand While at the same time because it benefits number one Ignoring all the other stuff, right? And so let's I'd like to walk through a little bit of sort of practical things that we've done and some of these I don't want to I don't want to overlap the pomodoro stuff too much. There is obviously To me a pomodoro Done in the in the correct room At the right time is sort of like the perfect scenario, right? You go into a private office or a private room A library you shut the door you turn the phone off you turn the notifications off And you do the 25 minutes of undistracted work and And by the way, if you've never done that that's where you should start you should do it You should do it that way first But I think one of the things you know you said that you're not an expert at this and you're not You're not great at this But I actually think this is one of those things that you and I both from a combination of Our personality our our genetics were sort of wired to be better at focusing and getting shit done And also because of that we have then spent a lot of time trying to get even more efficient at it That I think both of us are pretty good at it better than most it's one of the things I think I'm most naturally good at is to just be able to focus and get a tremendous amount of work done in a Short period of time my my staff when I'm when I'm going that's my leadership team They're like, how did you like how how would you do that? Like how could you I'm just like I just you know When I get my mindset on like here we go It's work time Then I do it and so and I don't do that all the time and actually during the some of this quarantine I've been a little more distracted about those sort of things too Like I'm pulling up twitter and I'm reading the newest article or what or whatever, but the question is When you have less than optimal conditions, you know, you and I have traveled a lot not right now because everything's closed but Learning how to focus and get I get so much work done on an airplane Airplanes are loud. There's people everywhere The stewardesses are constantly are constantly interrupting your work And I still get tons of work done why I frequently forget All the details of what happened on the flight beyond the work. That's right Every work for me usually is reading or whatever. Maybe sometimes some of the boards I'm on or whatever I've got something to do but on the most part Yeah, it's just it's just reading and I think of the I get done with you know the whole trip And I think oh, that was a really great, uh, book I read through whatever the flight I don't know any of the details if I don't remember the airport that I walked through if I'd be connecting airport and a big portion Of that is how how well you can focus focusing on Something and ignoring everything else also does include and we have talked about this before But it includes noticing the different things that cause you distraction and finding ways to block them out. So for me Sound is number one. That's right. That's not the case for everybody. Some people It's really visual like if they see a lot of things going on out in the world It's very difficult for them to pay attention for me sound is like Sound is like happening at 20 times the the the decibels for me than it is for everybody else I'm convinced because I'll hear some little trickle of sound and I'll be like what is that? Right, and it you know, it just drives me nuts And I learned our dad was this way. He was so crazy sound sensitive through our through our childhood And on one of the fishing trips that matt and I took him on I asked that I was like, you know Wouldn't life had been a lot more fun for you if you would just walked around with earplugs on all the time Like just put your plugs in your ears and then you know rather than try to keep the world from from making noise You just keep the noise from entering your ears And he was like He said man, I really wish I would have you know done that when I was younger, right? But I I have boxes of earplugs when the world gets too loud for me. I should put your plugs in Yeah I'm the same way of noise canceling headphones and you know, actually We got dad in his last maybe 18 months or so before he had to go to hospice We got him noise canceling headphones and some of my most precious videos of our dad is Me sort of sneaking around the corner and videoing dad singing songs like singing eagle songs or or credence or something You know and he's just singing along and he has no idea that anyone else exists because he's got noise canceling headphones on They're playing the music in his ears. And so same thing for me. I'm always using those noise canceling headphones Um, I've got to block out the sound I cannot work in a room where there's a tv on and people are having conversations unless I've got Earplugs in or you know, earplugs and noise canceling headphones like we do so that that sound is a big is a big thing for me for sure I don't know if you've ever done this or not. There was I told you, you know, we There was a point in time where I could do pomodoro's so many pomodoro's it was crazy I mean, I just got to where life was pomodoro's to be perfectly honest That was not a fantastic life for me. I got a lot of work done in that time frame But I'm not sure that I did a lot of connecting with other people I did notice that if I started pomodoro's with earplugs in and I did maybe two pomodoro's with earplugs in I could take them out and then everything was still fine Interesting My brain became so attuned to what I was doing that the noise my mind was blocking noise out that way But to start with I can't I couldn't do it. Yeah, so that's another That's just a good trick to help you stay focused the other thing that I'd say is, you know The books that that you all recommended recently. I thought it's so good There's a lot that's in there around the idea of meditation mindfulness meditation and just learning how to focus that helps you learn What things are causing the distraction how to Recognize them and not let your brain trail off on them for very long So part of it is, you know, you can notice a sound and then just sort of notice it and go Wow, that was a sound But you don't have to necessarily get up and go track down the sound and and do all those kinds of things So there's a lot of good training for your brain in this idea Behind ignoring things that don't matter and focusing on things to do And meditation is definitely a big help there if that's something you're interested in Yeah, I I started using a headspace maybe 18 months ago or so and headspace is a great place to start because it's really simple It's and it's free for I don't know the first month or something You know, I mean you don't have to put a credit card on file and just test the thing out Guys got a great relaxing British voice, you know, actually I actually listened to a podcast Um, I think how I built that podcast and it was with those guys And that guy was actually one of the guys he just happened to also have like this guy Who was really into meditation and like yoga and stuff also just happened to have one of the most calming relaxing voices Of all time, but you know, I've used his stuff I've used Sam Harris's stuff before and really the the point of most of that stuff of that that sort of non Sort of non spiritual non religious meditation is about like being very mindful about what your what your thoughts are thinking about And so the idea of I'm I'm focusing on my breath. It was really what it is I mean a lot of times and and they'll allow even those good meditation apps or or, you know Ways of studying will allow the distraction will actually tell you to think about Something else for a second and let that thought come in your mind and leave And then get right back to focusing on your breath in and out count the breath Like you'll do things like that that you don't have to do after you've done it for a while in the beginning You're counting like breathe in one breathe out two breathe in three breathe out four Well, you do that for me Here's the interesting thing about headspace headspace is made to be sitting in a chair Like do it early in the morning It's supposed to kind of clear out your head and help you like be able to focus better I will fall asleep 100 of the time on headspace if I'm sitting in a cover Like maybe if I'm sitting in a dining room chair my office chair, I'd be okay, but I loved it for just even There were times when I needed I'll take a nap sometimes in the afternoon about about Two or three times a week maybe I'll take a nap in the afternoon And and often I have work to do after the nap and so the nap needs to be sort of a I need to be able to like push out all the distractions let my body rest and I work very well after sleep I I'm not one of those guys that wakes up in the morning or even after a nap groggy I wake up and I'm like, let's go. Let's time to work And so but but I do struggle sometimes to fall asleep or or you know, my brain goes nuts And so headspace was perfect for that. I'd lay in bed. I put in the noise canceling headphones I turn on headspace and five minutes in I was asleep because I'm counting my breath So it worked great. So it's but you're you're exactly right and in the same In the same manner that you learn to focus on your breath You can learn to focus on the the tps reports or whatever it is, you know, the stuff that's not that fun And know that the distractions will come and your brain will flip over to one for a second And that's okay You just sort of notice it and then you go okay, and it's fleeting. It's gone And you go back and focus on the thing that you need to focus on And I right before the coronavirus hit there was this sort of big social media thing that occurred and the sort of like the world became aware of two groups of people the people that have an inner dialogue and people that don't I don't know if you were aware of this at all Yeah, so there's like some people on the planet That have no inner dialogue that don't talk to themself Right. And so when they're silent unacceptable, they're not talking to themselves And I so for those people if there's anybody that's listening at this point and has that Everything I have to say does not include you right. I don't I know nothing of your world right also definitely don't reproduce You should take yourself out of the gene pool for sure But I'll say this In my head The voice is so loud my own internal narrative is so loud that it's hard to get it to quiet down specifically when i'm trying to sleep like you mentioned before And there are some pretty good techniques To help you learn to to be able to focus on sleep and and do that But it is all the same concept and ultimately this helps us to be able to read. We talked about reading Uh, this helps us to be able to read when we're focusing on reading Sometimes you find yourself a page and a half in on reading and you've been thinking about something else the whole time All that's not focusing at all. No So you've got to be able to do that and really everything we do in life Um, it's important that we're able to focus on that thing be mindful of what we're doing And then set time aside for the other things we want to do rather than just jump around. Yeah, that's right Yeah, isn't it that it's the the first page or two pages of a book that you once you sit down and read Those are the hardest ones to read because you're in the middle of a context switch It has to be because you're starting to read again And you'll often notice that I often have to read the first page or the first two pages two or three times in a row Before I finally get into that mode and then you knock out the next 150 pages and never look up But it takes a little while to get in there and so learning how to how to pay attention to the thing that matters And ignore the distractions is certainly something that that is a trait that can be worked on It is a skill that can be learned There are certainly lots of things that we can do To make sure that it that we help ourselves along the way we can turn off those distractions on our phone We can turn off those distractions on our laptop. We can put ourselves in a quiet room We can get the noise canceling headphones You can put the blinders on so you can only see the things that are right in front of your face But ultimately there has to be some sort of mindful focus on Here's the thing like you have to be very intentional about focusing on a thing and ignoring the stuff that doesn't matter And I think as we do that I've often thought I used to joke This is not by the way, please don't write me because this is what I used to think back in like the 80s And I don't know that I think exactly this but it'll make make sense I remember thinking when I was a kid like I was 10 or 11 It was like 1989 and a kid would be ADHD like I have ADHD I was like, oh no that kid just hadn't been spanked enough spanky kid enough no more ADHD now I'm not advocating beating your children. It's a different world, right? But the reality is is what it was was my experience with kids At 10 11 12 13 years old in a classroom who could who couldn't sit in a desk and be quiet Who couldn't focus and do their work was like that is an undisciplined kid who's never been forced To actually be disciplined and focus on anything right and the reality is is it at eight or nine or 10 years old It's not the kid's fault. It's his mom and dad's fault. It's his teacher's fault It's the people that that were responsible for discipline But for those of us that are listening to this podcast we we are adults And we can take ownership in disciplining ourselves enough to learn how to do this thing And so while certainly some of you are going to be more Sort of genetically predisposed to be distracted It doesn't mean that you can't get better at this thing And so the ability wasn't it the was in an interview with Gates and Buffett where they were like, you know What makes people successful and both of them basically said the ability to focus and get shit done People who can focus and get work done are the most successful people there are and they both said it sort of Sort of independently of each other. They were like that was the same answer for both of them And so learn how to focus and get shit done and that's the practical takeaway Thanks for listening to another principles episode of the barba logic podcast Hope your sunday is wonderful And you got some stuff that you can probably put into play and into practice tomorrow morning Tomorrow is monday morning Get everybody probably has work to do some of you are still at home A lot of you are probably still at home And so distractions are greater than when they are at work in your office And so you've got the opportunity to put some of this in practice And take what you've learned and get better at it. Don't get frustrated with yourself It's not easy You're not going to be professional at it in the first day or two that you try this But it certainly will get better along the way. So thank you for listening Give us a five star review at itunes if you love what we do and we'll see you tomorrow morning