 is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goals. We're really, really bad at focusing because we're masters of distraction. If you follow this to a tee, you'll get more done than you ever have in your entire life. Do not ever say the phrase, I don't have enough time. Let me say that again. Don't ever say that you don't have enough time. I promise you that there is somebody who has been in the exact same situation as you or very similar that has been able to create the life that you want. And so if somebody else has done it, there is absolutely no reason why you can't do it as well. Don't blame it on your children and say, oh, I've got children and that's the reason why I don't have enough time. Don't say, oh, I've got a full time job. And that's the reason why I don't have enough time or don't say I don't have enough money. And that's the reason why I don't have enough time. Whatever it is, just admit to yourself finally that all of that is just an excuse and that you are going to create the life that you want to no matter what. Cool? Can we all agree on that? Here we go. Instead of saying I don't have enough time, just say it's not a priority for me because that's the truth. It's not that you don't have enough time. It's just that you haven't made that thing a priority. Just say you don't care. Instead of saying, well, I don't have enough time to create my dream life. Just say, I don't make my dream life a priority. And see if that starts to shift your mindset a little bit more into creating the life that you want. Because ultimately what it comes down to is intention. And so when we go into these seven steps, realize that you have to put intention into every single thing that you do. And if you do, you put intention into becoming better at focus and becoming better at being more productive and getting things done, you will eventually get whatever it is that you want in life guaranteed. So let me give you my seven tips for maximizing your productivity and your focus. Number one, get some freaking headphones. And I would say don't just, if you really want a tip, invest a little bit of money into a really great pair of headphones. Don't just use your Apple headphones. You just put them in and you can still hear everything outside of it. The ones that you get for free with your iPhone. Actually go and invest, I don't know, $50, $100, $200, $300 into a good set of headphones. I like to use the ones that I have. I don't know the exact brand. I know the brand is Sony, but I don't know exactly which ones they are. But they are noise canceling. So literally what I do is I put on headphones, I click on the noise canceling so I can hear nothing outside of it. And then what do I do? I put on some focused music, binarial beats, and that's what I listen to. So literally if a train were to go by, I probably wouldn't hear the train, which means that that's, if I'm focused, if I'm in the zone of something, I want to have my headphones on so that nothing can pull me out of that focus. Why? Because you know, you've been really focused before and then somebody taps you on the shoulder or somebody makes a phone call to you. And then you get out of it for 30 seconds and then you try to get back in. How detrimental that can be, that 30 seconds of pulling you out of focus can be. And so if you have noise canceling headphones and you're listening to binarial beats or you're listening to something that has absolutely no words in it, it makes it so much easier to focus. So get a really good set of headphones. The other reason reason my headphones are great is because people are less likely to walk up to you and steal your attention away if you have headphones on. So if you don't have headphones on, it makes it easier for someone to just say something to you across the room. You know, if you work in an open area, people can just say something over to you and steal your focus away. If you have your headphones on, they could go, oh, yeah, I guess I'll talk to them later. Right? So put on headphones and find music that has absolutely no words that you can just put on and listen to. You may have heard me say it before, but I have songs that I listen to just for focus. I have one song, one YouTube video. I put in focus binarial beats on YouTube. And it's the one, if you want to use the same one that I am, focus binarial beats on YouTube. And it's a little neon owl is the one that I listened to. It's like three hours long. And I listened to that so much that my brain knows when this song is on, Rob focuses. So buy a good set of headphones. If they're a good set and you invest into them, it makes you more likely to take it serious and more likely to actually use the headphones and to be more serious about getting stuff done. Second tip that I'll give you, which is my number one tip actually for being highly productive, but this is tip number two right here is to do the Pomodoro technique. You may have heard me talk about the Pomodoro technique, but it is incredible. It has changed my life as far as getting done and stop multitasking. Multitasking actually they have found makes you dumber. You do worse work slower when you multitask. What you should do is what they call single tasking, doing one thing at a time. The Pomodoro technique is perfect for this. It's super simple. You do 25 minutes of work, five minute break, but those 25 minutes of work is focused on one thing and one thing only. So you say, okay, I have task XYZ in front of me. This task has to be done today. I'm going to go for 25 minutes. Maybe you don't finish out for those 25 minutes, but at least you get a break and then you go back into it. 25 minutes on, five minutes off, 25 minutes on, five minutes off, 25 minutes on, five minutes off where you focus on one task and one task only. If an idea comes into your head, jot it down with pen and paper. Don't look at your phone. Just have a journal next to you and write down that idea and go right back to what you're doing before. While you're doing the Pomodoro technique, put your freaking headphones on, right? Stay locked in. You ask yourself the question, like if I'm trying to be focused and I'm trying to be productive, the thought that I have in my head is I need to be locked in. What is going to assist me in being more locked in? Headphones, that'll help me be locked in. Pomodoro technique, that'll help me be locked in. 25 minutes on, five minutes off. If you want to hear me go deeper into the Pomodoro technique, just Google RobDial Pomodoro Technique or go to YouTube and type in RobDial Pomodoro Technique. I have entire lessons on just specifically how to maximize the Pomodoro technique. So stop multitasking, start single-tasking, and when you single-task, use a Pomodoro technique. That's tip number two. Tip number three, take your to-do list. If you're a to-do list person, you have 30 things on your to-do list. Let me make your life super simple, okay? I know because I've done this and I've talked to so many people who have done this before. You'll make a to-do list and you'll be like, oh my God, I got to do this thing. And you go do that thing and then you come back to your to-do list and write that thing down on your to-do list and then cross it off. So you feel like you crossed something off on your to-do list, right? You've done this before. We've all done this before in some different way. The easiest thing to do is this. If you want to get hyper-productive and hyper-focused, is productive means doing the important things, getting the important things done that need to be done, right? Make your to-do list. And then what I want you to do is circle on your to-do list if it's 20 things, let's say, the three most important things. Circle of three most important things. Take out a three-by-five card, an index card. Write down number one, the most important thing. That's the hit list. I need to get, if nothing else gets done today, I've got to get my most important task done. Then I write down number two and then I write down number three. Then what I do is I take that three-by-five card and I put it in my back pocket and I leave the to-do list wherever it was. I can leave it on my desk. I can come back to it later. But now, instead of having 20 things that I have to focus on, which can make me feel really scattered, and if I feel really scattered, I'm less likely to actually get that thing done and to do it. Instead of doing that, what am I going to do? I'm going to take that list of 20 things, make it into a list of three things, and then only focus on those three things and that's it for the day. I'm going to focus on number one and I won't do anything else until number one is done. Once number one is done, I can cross it off, now I can go to number two. And I won't do anything else until number two is done. And then once number two is done, then I can go to number three. And I won't do anything else until I get number three done. If I just get my most important things done every single day, that's a really freaking productive day. And I might not get the other 17 things done, but they weren't important in the first place. The three most important things were on that index card. Let's say I do happen to finish those three things, then I can go to the rest of the to-do list and figure out what's most important after that. But what it comes down to is being productive versus being busy, which is what we're going to go into in the next one. So the next one is being productive versus being busy. If you think about it, tip number four, being productive versus being busy. A lot of times people will call themselves, oh, I don't have enough time, I'm too busy doing things. You're doing busy work, you're not doing productive work. When I say you take a list of 20 things and shorten it into three things and concentrate on those three things and only focus on those, that's called being productive. Being busy is just taking time and focusing on doing whatever it is and just getting stuff done. So let's say, for instance, I run a business and I might have make 10 sales calls. That might be the top of my list. I might have reach out to my employee and talk to them about this. I might have make a lesson. That might be another thing that helps me. And then also on that to do this, I might have do my laundry. And then I go, well, doing laundry is easy. I won't get rejected. I could do laundry at least cross something off my to-do list. So then you ask yourself, is doing laundry being productive or is it being busy? It's just being busy. I'm just acting like I'm keeping myself busy doing things when in reality, I'm not doing anything that actually means something for my business. So when you look at tip number four, am I being busy or am I being productive? One of the things that I find that holds most people back is that they think that they're being productive when in reality, they're just keeping themselves busy. They go, oh, you know what? I've got a, for instance, I could go, oh, I got to make a podcast episode. And I could go, I'm going to do an episode on being focused. And I could spend the next 10 hours actually researching being focused. Or I could go, I'm going to spend 20 minutes about trying to be focused, and then I'm going to start actually creating content. The creating content is the most important part of what I do. So I don't need to spend 10 hours focusing and figuring out how to create the best podcast episode. I need to spend 20, 30 minutes focusing, putting it together, and then boom, I need to record it. Because recording it is the actual most important part, which is the productive side of it. People go, oh, you know what? I want to work out more. And then so instead of actually going to the gym, which would be being the productive side of it, they go, you know what, I'm going to research for the next three hours the best protein. I'm going to research the best diet. And all of the stuff that's important, yes, but that's not going to move the needle. Like going to the gym will, right? Being productive, go to the gym, pick up weights, put weights down, throw them at the ceiling. That's being productive. Being busy is I'm going to spend the next few hours researching the best diet plan and researching the best protein and researching the best workouts and researching this and researching this. Is it important in some way, yes, but it's one-tenth of the amount of importance of actually going to the gym if you're trying to lose weight. Make sense? So are you being busy or are you being productive? Ask yourself this question to just cut through all of the BS. Is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goals? Is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goals? Ask yourself that 100 times a day. I guarantee you're going to find yourself being way more focused and way more productive of doing everything that you need to do. Is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goals? Simple, that's all you got to do. So then you look at it and you say, okay, is researching protein for the next two hours getting me closer to or further from my goals? It's actually getting me further from my goals. Is going and buying new yoga pants getting me closer to or further from my goals? Honestly, that's getting me further from my goals. Just going and doing yoga, getting me closer to it. So you have to realize you can either be productive or you can be busy. And the way that you decipher what you're being as you say is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goals. So that's tip number four. Are you being busy or are you being productive? Tip number five is to find your peak hours. Everybody has peak hours. It's usually about two to four hours where you are the most focused where you do your best work. For me, it's from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. That's my most focused peak hours. All of the most important stuff that I do in my day is done between the hours of 10 and two. For you, it might be the same time. For you, it might be later on at night. For you, it might be earlier in the morning. Find your peak time. I have friends that wake up at three o'clock in the morning because they have kids. They wake up, I have a friend that runs a business and he wakes up between three to four o'clock in the morning and he runs a $30 million business because he wants to be up before his kids so that he can get as much done as he possibly can. His peak hours is he likes to wake up and work as soon as he gets up. I don't like to work as soon as I wake up. So it's different for everybody. When are your peak hours? When are your three to four hours of peak time where you can really get locked in? Because that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get locked in and being focused and being productive. If you try to have me get a lot of shit done after 7 p.m., it's not happening because usually throughout the day I'm working so hard that my brain is fried after 7 p.m. So that's just the way that I am. But do you know the way that you are? Do you know when your peak hours are? Think about that. That is tip number five. Tip number six is to clean up all of the shit that's around you, right? A cluttered space, a cluttered mind is usually the key to it. Now, are you gonna have everything being perfect around you? Absolutely not. But if there's crap all over the place and you're trying to be productive and you're spending 50% of your time rustling through things to try to find the things that you need to, that's gonna hold you back from being productive. If you have crap all over your desk and you can't find what you need to in order to get stuff done, that's holding you back. It's taking time away from you. So what if you were just to hire somebody to come in and tidy up your space for you, right? That'd be one of the best $100 or $200 you've ever spent. Is it beneficial to have someone, if you work from home right now because everything that's happening, is it beneficial for you to spend $150 to have someone come in completely clean your place to make everything more organized, to get rid of all of the crap that's on the floor, to do your dishes for you, to do your laundry for you? Is there benefit into paying somebody to do those things for you? You know, is it more beneficial for you to put your time into doing laundry or if you were to take the same amount of time that it took you to do all that laundry and actually put it into work, would you make more money working than you would doing laundry? And if you would, maybe you should hire somebody. If it costs you $100 to have someone do your laundry and it takes them two hours, but you make $100 an hour and you were to say, okay, if I work about $100 an hour, if it costs me $100 to have somebody do this and in that time that I could have somebody do this, I could make $200. Let's say on average, you'd make $200 an hour and it takes somebody an hour to do all of your laundry, right? You would make, if it's $100 to do all of your laundry, let me try to explain this so it makes the most sense, if it costs $100 in an hour for someone to do your laundry and you make about $200 in an hour when you're hyper productive, that means by paying somebody $100 and you make $200 that you're actually netting $100 extra dollars. Most people don't think about this. They just think, oh, I got to pay somebody and I don't want to pay somebody because I'm too cheap, but if you're net positive in the revenue that you make or the amount of money that you bring in, it's worth it for you to do that. So maybe it's worth it for someone to come in and clean your place. Maybe it's worth it for someone to do your laundry. Maybe it's worth it for someone to do your landscaping. Maybe it's worth it to outsource things so that you could be more productive at whatever it is that you do because you only get 24 hours every single day. And if you're sleeping afraid of it, you only wait for 16 of it. So how can you be more focused and more productive and outsource the things that you don't necessarily need to do? How can you clean things up? Okay? And the last thing that I'll tell you is this. Tip number seven is to batch your tasks. What do I mean by batching it? I'll give you the perfect example. You take everything that you do and if you do something over and over again, can you do all of those at one point in time? Like for instance, if you wake up in the morning and you're like, you know what? I'm just going to get all my emails done first thing in the morning and later at night. And you just do all of your emails in the morning and at night. Then you don't have to do your emails throughout the day and you can focus on other things you need to do. Right now, I'm recording this episode. This is the third one that we've recorded in a row. All I do is literally change my shirt. I'm not lying to you. This is the third shirt that I've been wearing in the past hour and a half. Why? Because I'm batching this stuff that I'm doing. Right? First shirt out. Okay. So now I'm wearing it. For those of you guys that aren't watching the video, I'm wearing a green shirt. The episode I did before this, which was literally recorded right before this, I was wearing a maroon shirt. The episode I did before that, I was wearing a gray sweater that said be a nice human. Right? I just recorded and made it look like it was a different day. It's the same damn day. But why do I do that? Because it's easier to batch my tasks and to get my stuff done all at once. Because what do I do? Wake up in the morning. Today, I've planned out four episodes. Right now, we're recording three episodes. Later on in this week, we'll record another three episodes. So if I put out three episodes per week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then I have a bonus one that comes out on Thursday, I only need to record most of the time one day to get all of next week done. Right? So what can you batch in your life to make you more productive? Your emails, your phone calls, your meetings, right? My Tuesdays are my busiest days. Why? Because I batch all of my coaching calls and all of my calls. You know, I've got business breakthrough, which is where I teach coaches how to build coaching businesses. I teach them how to make money and how to make six figure businesses. I do my call with them on Tuesday. Then on Tuesday, I've also got my accelerator program later on, which is the advanced mindset course that I have. I do that on Tuesday as well because I know Tuesday is my coaching day. So I could get my coaching brain on, put on my coaching helmet, and get that done on Tuesday, and then I don't have to worry about it for the rest of the week. Batching stuff will make you way more focused and way more productive. I cannot recommend it enough. So batch all of the tasks that you do if you can batch them. So that is tip number seven. So you only have 24 hours in the day. Every single person alive only has 24 hours in the day. So you have to figure out how can you get more locked in? How can you get more focused? How can you get more productive? And ask yourself this question is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goals. If you ask yourself that 100 times a day and you focus on being productive and you focus on being focused, you will get a whole lot more to get done than everybody else. Know this. Your brain is going to resist anything that is outside of its comfort zone or any new action. So if I'm laying on the couch and I know that I need to go type up a podcast episode and plan one out, my brain is naturally going to resist from going from one action that I've been doing for a while to another action that I have to start doing. There's going to be a resistance point switching from one thing to another. Just know that more than anything else. The reason why taking action so hard a lot of times, why it's so hard for us to sit down and take action, why it's so hard for us to get focused, we're really, really bad at focusing because we're masters of distraction. We have trained ourselves over years and years and years and years to be distracted, not to be focused. So of course it's easier for us to be distracted. I'm going to teach you how to rewire that into your brain so that you can become much more focused. So, you know, I'll give you an example. Let's say you've never played basketball in your entire life, but you wake up today and you say, you know what? I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to focus on basketball and becoming the best basketball player I can possibly become. I'm going to put every single moment that I have besides sleeping, besides eating and going to the bathroom, 18 hours a day, 16 hours a day, whatever it is that I'm awake, I'm going to put that into playing basketball and trying to become better. Now, if you've never played basketball before, but you put 16 hours a day, every single day for the next year, into playing basketball, don't you think you're going to be pretty damn good at basketball? Like, you might not be LeBron James or Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, but you're going to get really freaking good at playing basketball if you take the next year and focus on it for 16 hours a day. Why do I bring that up? Because we distract ourselves all day long. We're basically professionals at any sport, that level of distracting ourselves. Why? We wake up. We check our emails. We check social media. We check text messages. We, throughout the entire day, are getting notifications. Then we have Netflix and we have music that's constantly playing. We have phone calls coming in and then we have more text messages. Then we check email again. Then we check social media and we have so many social media so we're like, I'm going to check my Instagram. I'm going to check my Facebook. I'm going to check my TikTok. I'm going to check my LinkedIn. I'm going to check YouTube. I'm going to check all of these. I'm going to check Snapchat. We have mastered the art of distraction. We spend the majority of our days distracting ourselves. So why is it hard to focus? Because you're a freaking professional of distraction to yourself. So of course it's going to be hard to focus. Doesn't mean that focus is impossible. Absolutely not. It means that you're going to have to bring a lot of intention and focus to focusing, right? Like you're going to have to literally go, you know what? It's the same as if I wanted to learn a sport and I wanted to master a sport. I want to master the art of focusing. What do I need to do to master the art of focusing? Let me tell you. Let's dive into it. The first thing that you need to do in order to master the art of focusing is to find out for you what time of day is best. So everybody has different times of day where they are the most focused. There's, you know, a lot of people. It's very early morning. I know some people that wake up at four o'clock in the morning and they get the best work of their lives done from four to seven thirty. And then their family wakes up at seven thirty and they go on about their life. But they get three and a half hours of intense focus. That, it ain't me. I'm not, I'm not intensely focused at four a.m. in the morning. For me, it's about ten to two o'clock. Those are my most intensely focused times. Ten to two o'clock, I know I can be focused at this point. So whenever I need to get something very important done, it is in my schedule from ten to two o'clock somewhere in there. So what is it for you? Maybe it's, you know, seven p.m. Maybe it is for you. For me, that's definitely not my time. That's usually my brain likes to shut off and chill. But maybe it is for you. So first off, before you do anything, don't try to force yourself to focus at times when you're not normally focusing well. So you have to kind of use yourself as a guinea pig and say, do I will focus well in the morning in, you know, around noon, late noon, you know, late morning, late afternoon, early afternoon, late night, evening. When is it that's best for me? You have to kind of feel, when you take everything I'm going to teach you, you have to feel out what is the best for you. So for me, ten to two. If I have something important, it's happening between ten or two. And I've just learned this simply through trial and error. That's it. Just trial and error. So you're going to have to use yourself as a guinea pig for a little while. The second thing to do is to create a ritual. I'm going to tell you what my ritual is for intense focus. You can create whatever ritual you want to, but I'm going to tell you why mine is important to me in different ways that it helps me stay focused. And then what I'm going to do is allow you to take any piece of this or all of this and steal it from me if you like. And I'm going to tell you why this is important. The reason why we want to create a ritual is because it's the same as Pavlov's dogs. I'm conditioning myself to tell my brain it's time to get stuff done. It's time to focus. So the same way Pavlov's dogs, if you've ever heard, they'd ring a bell and they give dog food. And they'd ring a bell and they'd give dog food. They'd ring a bell and they'd give dog food. After a few weeks of this, they'd ring a bell and the dog would start to salivate. Why? Because it was expecting food. So if I can create a ritual, my brain is going to expect, oh, it's time to sit down and focus. It's time to get rid of all distractions. I have very specific rituals that I do every single day between 10 and two to make myself focus. First thing I do is, you know, is I have a very specific spot that I usually sit down. So I have a spot in my house. So I work just to give you an idea. If you're watching this on video, I work in my office normally throughout the day. On my intense focus times, I literally sit behind me on the floor at the coffee table and work there. It's brighter in this room. I just like to get more done here. It's the only place where I usually do intense focus. I literally sit down there and intensely focus on that exact, in that spot. And the reason why is because I want to make sure that my brain knows this environment that I'm in that's different from the other environment when I work is where I need to intensely focus on what it is that I'm trying to do. So that's the first thing. My environment needs to reflect a spot where I'm intensely focused. I'm triggering and telling my brain, I'm conditioning my brain. This is where I focus. So I sit down, I make sure that all notifications are off. There's no way you can get a hold of me on my phone. If you send me an email, if you send me a text message, if you try to get a hold of me on Facebook or Instagram, there's absolutely no way on my phone or my computer that you can get a hold of me in some sort of way. All notifications are off and in fact, my phone is always in another room. So I don't even have the urge to go and get my phone and reach for it next to my computer because there's no way for me to get it. It's in another room. Next thing I always have is I always have tea with me. And usually what I drink is Yerba Mate. Yerba Mate has a whole lot of benefits to it. You can Google it. Got about the same amount of caffeine as coffee does, but I take it because of the fact that it hydrates you instead of dehydrating you. It has a whole bunch of benefits to it. There's a whole bunch of Google. And I don't even tell you all the reasons why Yerba Mate is good. I have Yerba Mate simply because I get a big spike in energy and it doesn't drop immediately or very soon. Like coffee, it usually takes about four to five hours for your body to fully process it. And that's the energy dropping throughout the time. So I have Yerba Mate. In your case, it could be any form of caffeine if you really want to. Another thing that I have is I have noise-canceling headphones. So that therefore I can't hear the outside world around me. My brain now knows I'm in an environment. I'm drinking the same tea I always do. I have noise-canceling headphones. And then I listen to the exact same three-hour song on YouTube, which is Binaural Beats. There's no singing in it, nothing. It's just the exact same song. I literally put in Binaural Beats Focus and that's what I listen to. It's like two hours and 48 minutes. So now I'm creating the sound in my ears, telling my brain now it's time to focus. Then what I do is something that's important. This is how you get your brain and your body on the same page. So what I do is obviously I sit down. It's the exact same place. I have the same taste in my mouth, which is the Yerba Mate every single time. I have the same headphones on every single time. I have the same song on every single time. And what I do is I then look at my screen so if you're going to be writing your book or sending emails or whatever it is that you have to bring intense focus to, if you're using a computer, you can use this in any other arena that you want to use it in. But if you're using a computer, stare at your screen for about a minute to two minutes and try not to blink. This is telling your brain when you don't blink and you literally keep your eyes open, you stare at the screen, it is telling your brain, I need to focus on this. And the less that you can blink, now if you have to blink, no big deal. You can blink. But try to do this and bring intense focus to it. And what you're trying to do is, the good thing about it is, is you're, you know, as Andrew Huberman, the neurobiologist out of Stanford says, you're trying to get in the tunnel. You're trying to make your brain, your eyes, go from seeing in the peripheral vision to closing in a little bit, so it's kind of like just a tunnel and get rid of your peripheral vision. This is actually your eyes telling your brain it's time to get focused. Because visual focus is always before mental focus. So if you're trying to get your brain to focus, you need to bring your visual focus first. And less blinking brings more focus to the brain. So if I'm going to sit down and I got to get intense work done, I've got to get some intense work done on my computer, I'm going to write my book, right? Then I'm going to sit down, I'm going to go through all of these checks that I do this ritual every single time. And I'm going to stare at my screen for as long as I possibly can, and not blink as long as I possibly can and try to get myself in the tunnel, try to stop seeing my peripheral vision, try to see just the computer as much as I possibly can. That is telling my brain it's time to focus. And if nothing is still coming out, what I will make myself do is I will start typing. So a lot of times we feel like if you've heard of writer's block. Writer's block a lot of time is actually not creativity block. It's actually a block that your brain is putting in, resisting going into a new action. Same way that I said that if I'm going from sitting on the couch to going and working out, my brain is going to resist it simply because it is a new action. So if I'm sitting down to write and I wasn't writing earlier, my brain is going to resist it. So I'm simply just going to start typing. So if I'm sitting down to write my book, I'm going to do all of the exact same things I normally do. I'm going to bring intense focus. I'm going to focus my eyes because visual focus always precedes mental focus. So you've got to bring visual focus. That tells your brain to focus. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to sit there and I'm going to say today is Saturday. It is a sunny day outside. I am wearing a gray shirt. I'm wearing a watch and it is 1234 p.m. And I'm going to literally just type, just type anything that you want to. Yesterday, I did this for about three to five minutes. Just type anything and you can delete all of it. What you're doing is you're warming your brain up to this new activity if there's resistance towards it. It's normal to feel resistance and frustration. It means you're doing it right. If you're actually feeling this. A lot of times if we feel frustration or anxiousness, we think that we need to back away from what we're doing. But when you're bringing in intense focus to something, until your brain is completely changed, completely changed, like if you completely rewire your brain, until it is changed and bringing intense focus in the early stages of doing this, the brain is going to resist something new. And it's always, this is one of the most important things you're ever going to hear me say, it always feels like stress and agitation and anxiousness in the brain. So sitting down to do a new action should make you feel stress, agitation and anxiousness in some sort of way. Because that's literally the chemicals that are released for focus. Norepinephrine, which is adrenaline in the body and the brain is called norepinephrine. And acetylcholine, which is actually a part of your, chemical that's released inside of your brain so that therefore it can make you focus. And cortisol are all released when you're going into doing something new. It's the resistance that you feel, but the resistance that you feel is your brain actually putting these chemicals out so that you can focus. This is actually how the brain warms up the circuits that are going to be active for what it is that you're going to do. So when we sit down to do something and we feel stress or agitation or anxiousness, we think there's something wrong with us. But in reality, that is actually the precursor to intense focus. So you've got to fight through the anxiety feeling or the anxiousness feeling or the frustration or the stress feeling because those chemicals are being, it is literally your brain showing you. I am releasing the chemicals that you need in order to be focused, just keep going. So you're about to get into deep focus at this point. This is super important. Usually feeling stress and anxiousness and anxiety makes us feel like we want to shut down in doing something. It's actually the exact opposite if we're trying to bring intense focus to it. So this is actually a really, really good thing. Just fight through it for about three to five minutes and then your focus will be there. And this is why literally you get the most done the day before you go on vacation or the day of a deadline. If you're about to leave for vacation, you have to get something done. Or if you have a deadline that you absolutely have to meet, the stress, anxiousness, agitation, it's already there because you know you have to get it done. But that's why you get so much done is because they're already present, which makes focusing be even easier. A lot of times a brain is going to resist a new action. Writer's block is not a creativity block. Writer's block is just a resistance to starting a new activity. You have to fight through it. Just start typing, whatever it is you got to do. And so then what I do after I do all of this is I put myself into 30 minute increments. I do something called, you may have heard me talk about it before, it's called the Pomodoro technique. 25 minutes on, five minutes off. 25 minutes on, five minutes off. 25 minutes on, five minutes off. 25 minutes of hardcore work on one thing and one thing only. I don't let myself, if I have an idea, I have a notepad that's next to me, I just write the idea down and I go back to what I was doing. I don't open up a tab, I don't pull up my phone because my phone's not next to me at all. So it's 25 minutes of hardcore work for one thing and one thing only. And then five minutes of another thing that Andrew Huberman calls, non-sleep deep rest. Non-sleep deep rest basically means I'll do 25 minutes of hardcore work, I'll go outside on my patio for five minutes, I'll sit down and I'll just sit. I don't have my phone, I don't go on Instagram, I don't do any of those things. I'm allowing my brain to go from hardcore in the tunnel focus and then when I go sit outside, it brings it back to peripheral vision and I can see around me again and I can see the world and what's going on. Now most of the time I stick to this, but if at 25 minutes, I'm in the zone and I'm at hardcore focus, I'll allow myself to go for another five or 10 extra minutes if I need to because I don't want to break hardcore focus if I need to. The reason why this is important is because there were studies that were done on people's focus and within about 10 minutes, you have this huge spike from not focus to the most focus, the highest point and then after it gets the highest point about 10 minutes in, it slowly drops and it continues to keep dropping and there's no other spikes in focus. So if you work for 90 minutes, you only get one big spike and then it continues to fall the rest of the time. But if you work for 25 minutes, you're going to get one huge spike at 10 minutes, then it's going to slowly drop and then you work for another 25 minutes, you're going to get one huge spike again and then it's going to drop and you work for another 25 minutes, it's one huge spike again and then it drops. So instead of getting one over a 90 minute period, instead of getting one bit of hardcore focus, you're actually getting three when you break it up into three separate increments of 30 minutes. And so I try to go for 90 minutes of hardcore focus for whatever it needs to be done and then I take about a 20-30 minute break. Nonsleep deep rest. Once again, I can do whatever I want to. I can go outside and look around whatever it doesn't need to do. I can talk to people, I can make a couple phone calls and then what I try to do is I try to get one more bout of 90 minutes. If I can get in two cycles of 90 minutes, each one of them is three cycles of the Pomodoro technique 25 minutes on, five minutes off, 25 minutes on, five minutes off, 20 minutes on, five minutes off, if I can get two cycles of hardcore 90 minutes done, that's literally, what is that? Three hours of intense focus. I'm going to get way more done than the average person that just works eight hours a day in the office and isn't trying to bring intense focus. I'm going to give you a five-step process to making sure that you're better at focusing to get stuff done every single day. And if you can take this one daily habit and put it into every single day, I promise you this, it will change your life. Slow and steady wins the race. I promise you it'll help you. If you follow this to a tee, you'll get more done than you ever have in your entire life. And the reason why I say this is because most people work, quote unquote work, eight hours a day. But in those eight hours, how much do you really think people are getting done? Maybe 10 minutes here, then they go talk to somebody, then they do five minutes here, then they go to the bathroom, and then they do five minutes here, and then they go scroll on Instagram when their boss isn't around, isn't looking. It's not really any focused, productive work to get stuff done. And I'm not the most talented, I'm not the most skilled, I'm not the smartest person in the room, but one thing that I think I've been able to figure out with my own brain through learning about neurobiology and learning about human interaction and how humans work is I feel like I've been able to get really good at mastering the skill of focus. And I call it a skill and not a talent because I think that anybody can learn to focus when you can learn how your brain starts to shift and starts to move and what chemicals are going at this time. And it's the ability to literally sit and lock in and focus. And the number one thing that I want to tell you is every single day your goal is not to work for eight hours. Every single day your goal is to be completely locked in for just two hours a day. That's it. Full locked in two hours a day. Now everybody has different times that is easier for them to lock in. You know, some people are morning people they've got a ton of energy they've got a ton of focus in the morning. Some people are, you know, afternoon. Some people are noon. I'm usually my best time to lock in is about 11 o'clock to 2 o'clock. Somewhere in that area my brain seems to be like it's just easier for me to lock in. So you have to figure out what works best for you. And it's just two hours. And this is going to be really big for you guys to realize if you have a company this is going to be really big for you because you're going to get more productivity from yourself and from all of your employees. This is also going to be big for people who work for another company but you don't want to work there anymore because the average person that has their job and they don't enjoy their job the average person thinks they have to go home because they hear people like Gary Vaynerchuk who I love but at the same time I think that he puts a little bit too much emphasis on hustle and pushes a lot of people away but instead of going home and working from you know eight to five and then going home and from six o'clock until 1 a.m. working on your side hustle to build it I would say go home eat some food and then lock in from 7 to 9 p.m. or from 8 to 10 p.m. go to bed get some good rest fully locked in for two hours a day at the end of the year is over 700 hours of being locked in if you put 700 hours into deep locked in focus into a brand new business into a skill into making money into whatever it is that you're trying to create 700 hours it's a lot of hours over 700 hours is what you get if you're just doing two hours a day every single day 730 hours I think is the number right that's a lot of hours it's beautiful because if you are trying to create a business if you have a business or if you're trying to leave the place that you are currently yet so I'm going to give you the five steps to hardcore focus this is just something that I've learned after talking with Dr. Andrew Huberman and learning about focus through him and also reading some of the stuff that he's put out other things that we've learned neurobiologically inside of your brain of how to make yourself focused so the first thing is this write out a to-do list now you're probably like oh no write out a to-do list and I mean write out a to-do list like just brain dump every single thing that you need to get done it could be laundry it could be the dishes it could be pick the kids up from school and then you're going to get every single thing all the things that need to be done around the house all of that but then you're also going to get the stuff that really needs to be done and what I want you to do is I want you to look at that massive list that you just created 10 things 20 things 40 things whatever it is and I want you to rank number one number two and number three I want you to identify your three most important things and in my mind even if you don't get to number two and three but you you conquer number one that's a successful day in my mind if you can knock out your most important thing every single day that's a really good day isn't it? I would love to just get my number one thing done every single day that's 365 number one things done over the course of a year so you're going to write out your to-do list you're going to figure out what number one number two number three is you're going to take a three by five card cue card and you're going to write number one at the top number two right under that and number three right under that you're going to take the to-do list with all of the other stuff and you're going to put it somewhere else so you don't have to look at it you don't have to worry about it you don't have to focus on anything that is not your most important stuff and you're going to take number one two and three and you're going to set it right next to you so you can make sure you get it done and you're going to focus on number one until it's done and if you don't get it done you get a half done well you still got tomorrow you can go back and go to it So that's number one is to write out to do list and then come up with number one number two and number three The second thing is to create a space that is conducive for focus. What does that mean for me? I'll tell you what it is for me for me headphones. I've got noise canceling headphones. I put them on I can't hear anything my girlfriend tries to talk to me I can't hear anything that she's saying my dogs are barking can't hear anything She's saying someone's at the door can't hear anybody knocking The only thing I can hear is the music that I'm playing inside of my ears. That's it Music never has any words to it. It's not a song that I know. It's just if you go to YouTube, you can look it up It's called focus binarial beats. That's what I listen to every single day no matter what I've literally trained my brain to know that when this song comes on it's time to get done It's like a dog that's peeing inside the house. You take it outside You take it outside you take it outside you take it outside you take it outside Eventually it goes oh and I feel this urge inside of my bowels. I have to go to the door That's exactly what my brain is doing with this song. Oh, I'm listening to this music. It's time to focus. I'm listening to music I'm trying to focus. I listen to this music. I'm trying to it's time to focus literally I'm training my brain so create a space that's conducive for focus whatever that means for you for me It means headphones number two turn all of your notifications off I don't know why people have notifications on their computer in the first place like every time they get an email That sounds terrible and it sounds Extremely unproductive to just stop what you're doing to go check an email or do something else But not me I turn off all my notifications on my computer Put your phone in another room don't put it next to you because then you're gonna be drawn to it Put in another room, you know give it to your spouse and say give this to me And don't don't they get this until two hours from now. Whatever it's you got to do So create a space for focus. There's a few things you can do another thing that helps as well If you're creating space for focus is create a body that's ready to focus What does that mean if you need to do a workout before do a workout before if you need to do some push-ups You need to do some stretching some yoga do that Do you need some caffeine for some people caffeine makes you focus actually for most people caffeine will make you focus too much Caffeine will actually make you it make it really hard to focus for me whenever I've got a focus I put on the headphones. I turn my notifications off. I put my phone in another room And I drink your bimate for those you guys that are watching on video This is what I drink literally. It's right next to me. I was drinking it earlier today It's coming called Guayaki. They should sponsor me. They're not giving me any money I should I give them a lot of money because I have one of these a day, but it's your Ramate Guayaki GUAYAKI because I get 40 messages a week about what your Ramate I drink your Ramate spell Y E R B A M A T E and I take the traditional unsweetened because if you get the sweetened one It's a lot of sugar and I don't need to sugar crack crash So this is what I drink for those you guys that are watching on video here You are for those you guys that are listening to the podcast Go on to my YouTube my Facebook you can find it. We'll put it up there So I drink your bimate throughout the day, and that's what makes me focus. I don't remember what it is But there's also a chemical that's inside of your bimate. It's just a tea. That's all it is your bimate is a plant Your brother mate is a tea that's made from a plant I don't remember what it is but according to the neuro biologist Dr. Andrew Hooperman It's got something that's really good for your brain in there. I Trust him. He drinks your Ramate. He was the focus. I've been doing it for years So that's number two create a space that will help you focus Clear off all of your stuff. Don't have anything on your desk. Just your computer Whatever it is you need to do number three is to use the Pomodoro technique Pomodoro technique is 25 minutes on five minutes off 25 minutes on five minutes off 25 minutes of hardcore intense focus on one thing and one thing only After those 25 minutes you take five minutes off Don't take five minutes off and go to Instagram take five minutes off now that you've been in deep focus The best thing is to go outside stare at the trees allow your brain to go to Wandering you can have a conversation with somebody whatever is you need to do five minutes completely off and Then you go back into 25 minutes and I do four rounds of this 25 on five minutes off That's 30 minutes. I do four rounds. That's two hours You will get more cranked out in these two hours and you probably have on a typical Eight-hour day over the past ten years of your work day Normally and that's what helps so the Pomodoro technique also you might say well How do I know when the time is up? How do you know when the time is up literally go old school kitchen timer and put it next to you if you're you know Needing to to see the time you can get a Clock right next to you have an alarm clock and have that alarm clock literally go off at 25 minutes And you don't do anything Except for one thing in those whole 25 minutes and it's intense intense focus Cool step number four when you ask yourself How do I get intense focus what you're trying to do actually chemically inside of your brain? Is you're trying to turn off your peripheral vision and focus into one thing? So what you're actually trying to do is basically see like if I'm working on the computer What I'm going to do is I'm going to stare at the computer screen and try not to blink when you blink it actually Resets Neurologically different aspects of your brain so when you literally stare at your screen for those you guys watching the video I'm staring at my screen and not blinking what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to tell my brain that this is what we're going to Focus on this is what we're going to focus on and my brain will eventually lock in and what it does is it takes your peripheral vision And it actually starts to narrow it so that you're just seeing the screen That's telling your brain that's telling you and you're actually watching your your peripheral vision disappear You're going okay. I'm getting more focused. I'm getting more focused. I'm getting more focused And I can tell that my brain is getting more focused on this now. I know it's time to lock in so then most people go Okay, let's say that you're a writer for instance, and you're like, but you know, I've I get writer's block Well, that's what's gonna go into number five number five is to just start Whatever task it is or acting like whatever task it is and let me explain this is gonna make more sense Number five is just start most people think if they're a writer that they have writers block and they think writers block is a Creativity block writers block in most cases is not a creativity block It's actually a mind and body resistance to a new task And so what you do is you've got to kind of warm up your mind and body to this new task And you can use this for however you want to use it if you're a painter you can use this But I'm gonna use as an example for someone who is a writer who has writers block I'm gonna stare at the screen Which was number four and number five was just start. I'm gonna stare at the screen. I'm gonna say today is Thursday I am wearing a blue shirt. It is sunny outside. It has been raining for the past six days I live in Austin, Texas. Da da da da. I'm recording an episode of the mindset mentor podcast And I'm just gonna type a bunch of bullshit doesn't matter what I type I'm gonna delete all of it what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get my brain and body Past the resistance point which is usually about three to five minutes in and then your brain goes This is what we're doing now It's the same reason why we have so much resistance to actually going and working out is because it's just a new thing that our body Our body on brain and brought it brain and body Always resist doing something new a new task switching. We're inherently lazy It's just the way that humans are built, right? So that's why if you go into the gym It's hard to get stuff to go in the gym But once you're there, it's easy once your body starts moving I'm gonna start the task that I want to and it's not creativity block It's just resistance towards the new task. So if you know that you need to Write a talk or let's say you need to do a PowerPoint for a talk You got to create this PowerPoint. You're like, dude, I just hate creating PowerPoints I'm gonna stare at the screen as long as I possibly can without blinking and basically Narrow my focus and tell my brain This is what we're going to do and then what I'm going to do after I can start to feel myself Focus a little bit more as I'm gonna start typing out this PowerPoint and it could just be random stuff I could put colors down. I could put, you know, whatever it is This is the talk I'm about to create and I'm literally starting my brain and my body into the task To focus on whatever it is After a few minutes, you're gonna start to notice that you're getting a little bit more into the flow now We get stuff done now. We start to go through it now We have about 22 to 20 minutes left of hardcore intense focus before you have five minutes off That's tip number five step number five is to just start you lock in for 25 minutes Then what you do is you take five minutes off to whatever she needed to do go to the bathroom You know stare at the trees, whatever is you want to do and then come back You'll notice that when you come back You'll already be a little bit more focused than we were before and your focus starts to get better and better and better And the reason why the Pomodoro technique works so well There were studies that were done on human focus and what they noticed is that about 10 minutes in human focus spikes At its highest and then it just slowly dips off So if I were to just work for two hours straight It would spike one time at 10 minutes and then it would slowly drop and drop and drop and drop for the next hour In 45 minutes hour and 50 minutes if I go in I do the Pomodoro technique I get one large spike at its highest at 10 minutes And then it'll slowly drop and then I'm done at 25 minutes Take five minutes off and then I get another spike at 10 minutes on the next one And then I get another spike at the 10 minutes in the next one get another spike So instead of having one big spike where I'm at my highest productivity, and then it drops for the rest of the two hours I'm getting four of those spikes of high productivity, and I'm using my brain in my body knowing how it works Knowing my space knowing my brain knowing my body knowing neurobiologically how all this works I'm using this to my advantage to focus and I'm telling myself Rob All you got to do is two hours crank out two hours of hardcore work And then whatever is you got to get done outside of that get it done But as long as I get those two hours of hardcore focus done I get more done in those two hours than I do for the rest of six hours seven hours eight hours of the day That I'm getting stuff done as well. You have to lock in for two hours. That's all you've got to do Hey, thanks so much for watching this video if you want to learn even more about master your mind Click right here and watch this video as well a little voice in my head and I like to call it the little bitch What do you want in your life like this is such a simple question But majority of people who I talked to have no idea what they want in their life because life Success happiness joy peace all of those things. They're not difficult. We make them difficult