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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this quick self-help segment I am going to talk about how to stay focused so focus is the topic of the day focus is an important topic right because why do you want to stay focused if you cannot focus then you cannot be productive and you cannot get any work done and then you're staying in place in your life or you're sliding backwards and you're not moving forwards the way you want to so whether it's focused at school focus at work or even focus in a relationship or focus in a hobby that you're doing or whatever being able to focus is critical to getting you the results that you want it's actually not only critical for that but it's critical for your happiness too because we human beings are really not multitasking machines we suck at multitasking despite what you might hear out there we are much better when we're focused and when we're focused and we're super focused and we're using our skills in a process that is challenging to us and we're able to match our skillset to the challenge that is coming up then what happens is that we actually get into a state of flow as it's called this is a psychological concept from Chi Chi semi-high which is a he was a famous psychologist in the positive psychology movement he talks about flow flow being this state of ease that you enter into and total absorption when you are focused on a single task and you're doing it and you're excelling at it and you're doing it really well so how do you actually stay focused what are the practical ways to get this abstract notion of flow to come into your life a couple of simple points here that you can go implement immediately so flow or a focus is all about eliminating distractions so what are the distractions right now that are keeping you from being focused go ahead and sit down pause this video and jot down five things what are five things that are keeping you distracted in whatever area of life you want more focus in so are you not focused at work what is distracting you is it hunger because you're not eating in the morning is it your boss who comes in and disturbed you every 15 minutes or is it emails is it the Twitter feed that's pinging you is it your cell phone that's vibrating from text that you're getting hit up with well you know what is distracting you what about at school what's distracting you there what about in your relationship what's distracting you there sit down and identify those factors because once you've got those identified and I think what you'll find is actually that one of the biggest factors that you'll find is multitasking you trying to do multiple things at one time and that of course is the antithesis of focus when you're doing multiple things you are not focused by definition you're slitting your focus and when you split your focus it's like you know what it's like it's like imagine if we had the Sun it was a bright sunny day and I gave you a magnifying glass and I said here you can take this magnifying glass and if you hold it up at the right angle and you hold it steady then you can burn that ant right there on the ground or you can set that leaf on fire and at first thought you'd say like wow that's you didn't know that you say well that's that's amazing I can't believe that's true let me try it then you take that magnifying glass and you'd run over and you try to burn an ant or burn a burn a piece of leaf and but of course if you didn't listen to the fact that I told you you have to keep it steady and you have to focus the raids that was going to happen is you're going to just kind of move move it around move it around move around and you're gonna come back to me to say what the hell nothing worked this this you're lying to me this doesn't work it's not possible to take the sun's rays and burn anything with them they're they're too weak and of course the problem is that you didn't focus the Rays first that's exactly what its life and you're like in your life if you're trying to get some success in your career and your business at school what you need to do is you need to put your with your full attention on it right you bring all those rays to a point you need to bring your thoughts to a point your mind has to be focused on whatever it is that you're doing and we can't do that when we're trying to talk to our boss on skype and then at the simultaneously we're trying to answer an email for a client and then sign Dainius Lee we're trying to text with uh with your girlfriend or boyfriend and then trying to cook lunch and trying to to ris'n to to listen to the radio if you're trying to do all those things at once you're going to be really really miserable and you're actually gonna be performing all of them sub-optimally and you're going to feel very frantic and overwhelmed when you're doing that so here's the biggest thing you've got to eliminate the distractions and really restructure your life so that you have time quiet time to just focus on one thing at a time this is called working in block time and I cover this concept more deeply in my personal development Lou print which you can find on actualise org but what I'll briefly mention about it here is that to work in block time what you've got to do is you got to basically set off 60 to 90 minute blocks throughout your day where you sit down and work on a task and you do nothing else you do not let yourself get distracted by anything else you don't let yourself get up and do other things you just focus on that one task and you don't do multiple tasks at the same time it's a very simple concept but do you actually have it implemented very few people I find do even when you know about the concept it still takes some time to actually go and restructure your day so it's like this that means when you sit down to work you sit down and you say okay what's the most important thing I got to be doing right now I have to be checking emails okay then you sit down and you just check emails for 60 to 90 minutes you just check emails nothing else you don't check your cell phone you don't check your text messages you don't browse the web while an email is loading you don't talk to your boss you don't go up and grab a bagel you don't do any anything but checking emails and you do that for 60 to 90 minutes then because you've been so focused on checking emails you're going to find first of all you've checked a lot of emails and you basically got that task done because you were so focused so determine you got a lot of work done you were able to concentrate but then of course you were because you were so focused now you're a little bit exhausted because you did put a lot mental energy into that task and now what you got to do is you got to give us a little bit of a break ten to five to fifteen minute break that's where you can go and grab your bagel talk to your friends you know to text your girlfriend or whatever and then fifteen minutes later you come back and you start the next task maybe you need to do another session of email checking or maybe you got to do something else maybe now now I may be going to have a meeting with your boss and you do a meeting with your boss for however long that needs to take and don't make these blocks too long because you're going to get exhausted so 60 to 90 minutes do that and then take another break and basically have your day broken up into these blocks so that you can focus on single tasks and once you find that way if you develop this discipline and really prevent yourself from multitasking shut off all the distractions close the doors close the computer screens close the web browsers shut down the cell phones you're going to find that each one of those tasks is getting completed so much faster so maybe before we're checking the email we'll take you half the day if you just focus on it for 90 minutes without any distractions you'll get all your email checked in just 90 minutes and you'll be surprised because right now you might be thinking well I got to put in as much time as I can and that my work and my productivity is tied to the amount of time that I'm putting in but actually your productivity is more tied to your focus and the energy you're putting in and a a task that should take 90 minutes can easily take a half a day or a whole day if you're doing a bunch of other things while you're trying to do that task because here's what happens is that every time you get distracted studies have shown that it can take up to 10 to 15 minutes to get your mind back on track with the activity that you were doing this especially applies if you're doing creative type of work let's say you're drafting up a plan for your business or you're writing a piece of a complicated piece of code or you're planning a presentation that you're going to give at work if you're doing something creative like that that requires a lot of your you know a lot of your your thinking skills and creativity skills and you're sitting there and you're making that presentation let's say and then your boss comes in he interrupts you 20 minutes in you talk to your boss for five minutes and he walks out now it might take you 10 to 15 minutes to get back to that mental state that you were at when you started before your boss came in and that of course is is setting you back because those 10 to 15 minutes it's going to take you to get back into that flow state is time that you lost time that you're not productive and also it's just not satisfying to us as human beings our psychology is not satisfied when we're always interrupted and we're not able to to finish things off so that's important I think that is that is really the key to focus is to just shut off the distractions and to have the discipline to do that I know in my life I personally don't have enough discipline so I've actually lately been working on this you know I've been shutting off my cell phone more I've been muting my cell phone I've been giving myself more quiet time to do the things I need to do because otherwise I can't get done the important things that need to be done and I can't focus for example right now I'm doing an hour of meditation in the morning and to do an hour of meditation is challenging because I do have other obligations I could be checking email I get phone calls all the time I get text messages what do I do I have to just shut it off I have to shut it off in my mind I have to shut it off in the real world if I'm sitting there and my cell phone is not muted there's no way I can meditate so I have to mute my cell phone just a practical little tip but it gets me focus so again going back to that list of the five distractions that you have now I want you to come up with a list of five things you can do to eliminate those distractions what would that be what does that mean for you if you go ahead and you do that and you implement this block working in block time technique you're going to find that your focus skyrockets your satisfaction skyrockets you're going to be in the flow a lot more consistently you're going to be happy and you're gonna be way way way more productive alright this is Leo I'm going to wrap it up here go ahead and leave me your comments I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to focus and how these techniques work for you and then if course please like this and share it and don't forget go to actualised org for more advanced personal development videos like this will really teach you how to become a high performer in your life focus is just one of those parts and there's many other components to that and I cover focus a lot more in depth and you can go there check out my free videos sign up to the newsletter so you always get all the new stuff that I'm publishing every week you