 We're talking about effective strategies to stay motivated at work here on the journey. It is money, you guys. So if you're wasting your time, you're wasting your money. So we're gonna teach you some great ways to stay motivated at work and some surprising ways that you might be actually ruining your workday productivity. Starting with limit mobile notifications. I know I'm super guilty of it. I have my phone face up on my desk. So every time I get a notification, every time it rings, beeps, buzzes, whatever, I'm looking at my phone, distracted from my work, going to Instagram, going to the message, and not working, not being productive. Yeah, that can turn from minutes to hours. It's too easy whenever you get that notification, I go, I gotta stop what I'm doing. I can't pay attention to this anymore. I got a notification. And I gotta check the gram. Right, exactly, but really it's just a distraction from the work you actually have to do. So there are different things that we can do. With your phone, obviously you could hide your phone or download certain apps to actually make sure that you're using your time wisely. And it goes beyond just mobile notifications. I mean, there's even extensions you can use online on your desktop to actually minimize those distractions, keep you from going to certain websites so that you're not wasting your time. Yeah, and the tool that you use is just a Chrome extension called StayFocused. And it does exactly that. It helps you stay focused. So you can set a timer of cool I'm working for an hour. I wanna make sure I block all those distracting sites that I know I'm gonna eventually go to because I have the tabs open and whatnot. And what really helped me figure out where I was spending most of my time was this app called Rescue Time. What it does is it tracks everything you do on your computer but it keeps it basically top of mind of cool, you were on social media for four hours today. You were working for two, you were on this site for three hours, whatever that looks like. And you can really understand where all your time is going and start to eliminate some of those things where you probably shouldn't be using it as often. And number two is do less but do it more strategically. So this brings to mind Pareto's principle or the 80-20 rule. So basically this economist, Vilfredo Pareto, he a long time ago realized that 20% of the population owned 80% of Italy's land. So basically what that translates to is that 80% of the results that you're gonna get come from 20% of the actual work that you're doing. So basically focus on that 20%. That's what's gonna make a difference. Not all of your tasks have that same importance. Right, and I like to really help people understand and really figure out what that 20% is and just thinking of a graph. So on the left-hand side, we have importance or effectiveness. On the bottom, we have time. Then you're gonna basically put it into four different quadrants. So up here, we have high importance and effectiveness, low time. Basically you wanna find your sweet spot, all the items that fit there. You wanna do those first. On the bottom left, we have low time, but low importance or effectiveness. That's not really that important because it's not very effective. It's not important over the bottom. Right here, we have high time, low effectiveness and importance. So we really don't wanna touch that at all. And then top right, high time, high importance and effectiveness. We wanna really make sure that the items there, they're gonna take a lot of times we have to section that out. But that sweet spot is high importance, high effectiveness, but low time. Get those done first. Make sure that that's a part of that 20%. Yeah, something that really helps me is if it's a task that you can take care of in two minutes or less, do it right then. If not, then put it on your to-do list and knock it out later. And our third strategy is schedule less time than necessary. You're a big fan of this one, right, Justin? Yeah, sure. It's basically saying I don't like to work. But no, so schedule less time than necessary. I know with meetings, I like this a lot instead of going the full 30 minutes. I'll schedule a 15 minutes so we get all that content in. Same goes with your tasks, right? Parkinson's Law, I talk about it a lot, but basically it means however much time you give yourself to complete a task, whether it's an hour or a week, whatever that might be, that's how long it's going to take you. So if you set aside time to do whatever task that you would have done in an hour, schedule for 30 minutes, you'll be surprised that you'll actually get it done and now have 30 minutes go do whatever you want, like nap. And that leads us to our next point. Yeah, leave time for naps. I wish, but no. It is schedule your unscheduled time. So it's really important to make sure that you're setting aside that time to deal with all those notifications or any unexpected things, because if you don't set aside that time, then all of a sudden your entire day's schedule is just gonna be thrown in the garbage. Right, you'll have meetings back to back to back with no breathing room, telling everyone I have a hard stop at 11, 30 except to go to another meeting and I have a hard stop at 12 and you don't even get to eat lunch. It's happened too often. Make sure you schedule that unscheduled time and put yourself as busy. That time is yours to just reset, reflect on whatever's coming next. Give yourself that needed time. Yeah, you're gonna wanna at least leave about one third of your day as unscheduled because those notifications, all those unexpected tasks take up a lot of time. So leave about one third of your day and that way it gives your brain that time to really reset, recharge and be able to focus on the other tasks really more efficiently. Now moving on to our next strategy is procrastinate productively. And what that means is go for a small walk, complete little tasks like tidying up, just anything to kind of reset and do something that's not your actual work and procrastinate, but don't just procrastinate there to play video games or sit on the couch. Do something that's productive to another portion of your life. Yeah, this is actually my favorite one because I am really bad about procrastinating. So this helps me because if I have a really monotonous task that I need to do and I'm sitting there just dreading it, I will tell myself, okay, you have five minutes to procrastinate if you go and do the dishes. So all of a sudden my options are, okay, you can either do this task or you can go do the dishes. And so if I really, really want to procrastinate, then at least I'm doing the dishes as well. And you don't have to do them later. Number six is a fun one, it's gamify it. So I know I'm really competitive, so turn something into a fun task like setting a timer for 10 to 20 minutes. Challenge yourself to get that task done in that 20 minutes. Yeah, and I know I like to do this just and give myself little rewards. So when I'm building out a website or doing whatever task, I'll set that timer for 45 minutes an hour. Then when I'm done with that, I go and play Xbox for like 10 minutes just to reset. That's my little gamification reward I have there. But that timer, it's really helped me to like, cool, I gotta get this task done in that hour. Being a little competitive with myself goes a long way. Yeah, we actually have a video right over here about the Pomodoro technique, which is a really great way that you can use a timer to make yourself more efficient. The next strategy we have for you is to limit decision-making. Sometimes making decisions all day is hard. There's actually a term for that called decision fatigue. So the more options and choices and decisions that you have to make all day, the less productive you're actually gonna end up being. Yeah, I'm extremely indecisive, like I'll stand in front of my closet, you know, I'm like, I don't know what to wear, whatever, wasted time. So a really great example of this is Steve Jobs. So everyone knows that he wore that same black turtleneck all the time. The reason he did that, because it was one less decision he had to make every single day, that way he could spend more of his time and energy actually focusing on his business, rather than focusing on what should I wear. Time to update my wardrobe. Our next strategy, if you're having a hard time staying motivated, is to change your surroundings. It's amazing how just going to a different environment can really change your effort and re-energize you. Yeah, absolutely. Where are some of the places that you like to go to re-energize yourself? So it really depends on your personality and what works best for you. I know for me, if I need to focus, I need to be somewhere that's a lot more quiet. So I could go to like a coffee shop and get more caffeine while I'm at it. But some people, you know, they need to go to a more energetic environment. It really just depends on your style. Yeah, I know I like to go to a different co-working spaces just because there's so many people just like me kind of that collaborative effort helps me like get my energy going or I just see other people like just crushing and working like the competitiveness of me is like cool, I need to do better than them. So it helps me work. Or there's always a library to go and have that free option and that's super, super quiet. Yeah, there's a great co-working place in Austin that actually allows you to bring your dogs. So not only, you know, are you able to work there, but there's dogs everywhere. So it's like heaven. So those are our effective strategies to stay motivated at work. Make sure you like this video, add a comment below and subscribe to our channel. And ring that bell so that you're the first one to know whenever we upload more videos. This is The Journey. Thanks for watching.