How to eliminate distractions

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You’re as busy as you choose to be.
I know that might seem hard to believe, especially if your day is running over with excess commitments and distractions. But the first step towards gaining control over your day and becoming more successful in sport, coaching and business is just a matter of setting priorities.
You can succeed as a coach or gym owner, of course you can! You just need to recognize something right at the start – You cannot do it all on your own. The classic rookie mistake in business is to take on too much. You should have a clear vision of what you want to create, and very high standards, but if you do not delegate and share the workload you’ll never be able to keep up your growth. Stronger people than you have burned both ends of their candle down chasing entrepreneurial goals.
If you are feeling distracted and overwhelmed (in other words, early onset burnout), one of the best places to start is with some advice from the legendary Peter Drucker. To paraphrase, he would advise you to stick to your strengths. In business, strength paired with complimentary strength is what leads to success. If you’re trying to do everything, you’re almost certainly spending too much time on tasks that aren’t strengths for you. Hell, you might even hate doing them, which is an obvious problem.
Reminder, if you want to succeed, play from your strengths and surround yourself with people who have complimentary abilities and characteristics. Hire awesome people to do all of the stuff you hate and suck at. That will finally give you room to breath, think and truly focus for once.
Once you realize the difference your life will change dramatically.
Here’s another simple idea that should help – Work in and of itself should not be considered a virtue. The quantity and pace of what you produce has limited value. The pressure you feel is very likely self-applied. To remove that, you have to be focused in the quality and effectiveness of your actions.
Let’s say you’ve got a 5-hour block of time to get shit done. You’ve delegated, so this should be stuff you enjoy and excel at. But still, distractions are everywhere and extremely persistent. After all, you’re just one Instagram notification away from swiping at your phone and breaking focus. As busy as we might feel, the truth is that we don’t notice the endless little instances where we have initiated the distraction ourselves.
Forget about all the things you could do today. Instead, try focusing 100% on the one thing that will create the most value. The biggest impact. Utilize the present moment to go after and achieve that daily goal. Of course you won’t always be successful. But something very powerful will start happening in your life when you start to establish daily priorities and high impact targets.
One last idea is the buffer day. This really could change the way you work and live forever, once you get used to it. Start by setting aside a whole day for rest and rejuvenation. Get out of the gym for a while. Do some easy recreation. Find something beautiful that you can appreciate for a while. Just anything but work. You have to hustle and grind incredibly hard to make it in business.
Forget about being more productive. If you don’t give yourself a break for recovery every once and a while, you’ll simply burn all the way down to nothing.
The next day in this 3-dayt cycle is your buffer day. It should be devoted to all of the busy work that occupies your life. Financial stuff and bills. Mail runs. It could be anything. Instead of letting it spill over into each day, derailing and distracting you, it’s far better to do it all at once so you can “clear the decks” for a hyper-productive focus day tomorrow.
You need to have long stretches of time set aside to think about all the incredibly important but non-urgent things that require your full attention. If you’re living life in a mad rush all the time, this never gets done, and you will never grow in business.
Focus time is best spent on your unique genius, that thing you love and need to do more than anything else. Because you are fully rested, and because you don’t have to think about the stupid and annoying shit you have to do later, you’ll quickly find that your efforts will result in greater effect. You’ll be making more money in no time, with half the perceived effort.
After a good hard effort o your focus day, you’re ready for some more R&R. The cycle repeats.
I know, this is a very different way to organize a work week, but consider this. Taking just 1 hour in the morning to meditate, walk, organize your calendar, whatever, can greatly boost your productivity, clarity of thought and happiness throughout the rest of the day. So, what do you think happens in your life when you get in the habit of taking a rejuvenation and focus day for yourself every 4-5 days? How much might that boost your productivity across weeks, months and years?
There’s no telling what you might achieve if you give it a try.
A must read book for those looking to get shit done.
Before we go, this week’s episode include several references to great books. Here are some handy links for your convenience. Buy them all!
- The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker
- The Art of Profitability, Adrian Slywotzky
- The One Thing, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
For more business info visit BarbellBusiness.com and sign up for the newsletter. We’ll keep you updated about some awesome Barbell Shrugged events that we’ve got planned for later this year.
Enjoy the show,
Chris
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