Here is a modern-day problem. With all of the stimulation that we receive, it can be hard to discipline our minds. We can be pulled in a million different directions all at once. We are trying to keep up with our work, our friends in person and on social media, the family and the pile of laundry that seems to grow by the day. We want to get healthier, wealthier and more inner peace. Why does none of this seem to happen?
The answer is in the photo above. We are trying to accomplish too many things all at once. There is an old cliche that asks what happens if you hit a tree with an ax 1000 times in 1000 different places? Not much. What happens if you hit that same tree 1000 times in the same place? You cut the tree down. The same goes for your life. When I was growing up, we were sold the lie of multi-tasking. You are far better off giving your all to one thing at a time and moving on to the next to do the same thing. You will get more accomplished that half-assing a million things all at once. You will do a better job and it will get done quicker if you take them one at a time.
Not to mention, if we try to take everything on all at once, we will become overwhelmed and get nothing done. Then we will look at our lack of accomplishment and come to the conclusion we are just lazy. No. We are just unfocused.
How may of us feel paralyzed by inaction? I would gather in a world filled with options and stimulation, that answer would be quite a few people. It can set us up with a negative mindset. We can get down on ourselves, asking why we are not getting more done. We may even call ourselves lazy. The truth is that we are trying to do far too many things at the same time.
I recall when I was growing up and when I had entered the workforce, the phrase you heard everywhere was ‘multi-tasking’. Which means you should be working on accomplishing several things all at the same time. My guess is that some corporate bigwig invented that idea with the thought that he would have to pay less employees. Trying to accomplish several things at the same time is like chasing two rabbits and expecting to catch both of them. It just doesn’t happen.
From a more scientific standpoint, the amount of time your brain takes to lock in and focus is roughly 23 minutes. That is when you are operating with peak efficiency. Can you see how jumping from one task to another you will never be able to give your best to anything. You would be far better off, from a productivity standpoint, to focus on one item on your to do list for a specific amount of time. Ideally, longer than 23 minutes. Then move on to the next one. By doing so, you will likely complete more and do so in a more efficient time frame. In addition, you will do a better job on each task.
As we go into the week full of tasks that need to be done, remember to focus on one at a time. Even if you have several that need attending to, schedule time for each one and approach them that way. You will feel more productive and you will be more productive.
Have you ever thought of the cost of your distractions? What has that harmless scrolling really cost you? What started as a quick ‘5 minute scroll’ ended up having you hooked for hours. How about binging television shows? You think you will watch just one episode and suddenly your day is over. I hear lots of people justifying this behavior as “I just need to relax.” or “Well I have earned it.” Do not get me wrong, I am not one of those hustle until you die kind of people. Still, we must asking what we could have been doing during that time we were giving to our distractions.
Is it more fun to watch Netflix than clean the house? Undoubtedly. When you put off obligations for pleasures, you still have the stress of undone obligations. It is not just household chores that miss getting done. You could be taking actions that would increase the quality of your health, or your career, or your relationship? That one hour you spent watching videos of cats that look like pop tarts could have been invested in turning your hobby into a business that could add a stream of income. Thinking of ideas to increase the love of you and your partner could have a much greater impact on your life than finding out what the Kardashians are doing.
Do not think wasting one hour a day is such a big deal? If you only waste one hour a day, only on the weekdays, that comes out to 260 hours a week. That is a full 6 and a half 40 hour working weeks you could have invested in bettering your life. Instead of focusing on the pleasure of these mindless distractions, ask yourself what they are costing you. Think of the productive things you could have done with that time.
This post is a bit of an uncomfortable truth for all of us. Quite often we are looking outside of us for that magic key that will help fix everything that is wrong in our life. The hard truth is that many of the things holding us back are created by the person who looks back at us in the mirror every morning. Yes, that is not fun to hear, but it is absolutely true. Have you ever felt like you have 25 hours of things to do in a day? That you are running around crazy busy? One of the best ways to discover how to get more things done is by being honest about how much time we waste. “Not me!” I hear lots of you say. We all waste time. Seneca, a great stoic philosopher, once said, “It is not that we have a short time to live but that we waste a lot of it.” This guy died in the year 65. That was long before social media, Netflix and reels!
A great way to get a handle on our time, discipline and focus is a tool that not many are brave enough to do. Are you? For at least 2 days straight, write down what you are doing for every minute of your 24 hours. You may think, “Well I only watched a few minutes of Tik Tok videos.” Only to discover that you watched ten minutes of them…10 times. You may think you took a break to watch a little of your favorite series you wanted to catch up on. Only to discover it was 2 hours out of your day. Think of all you could have got done in 2 hours? This is not to say that you cannot have any fun throughout the day. Just that we must realize the pressure and stress we put on ourselves through our lack of self-discipline.
A quick solution for this is to set timers for your ‘breaks’ throughout the day. You want to watch some reels? Ok, set a timer for 15 minutes. Otherwise 2 hours later you will find yourself watching a cat drive a truck down the freeway stressing on how you can never get caught up on your housework. This happens to me while trying to write a book often. I am a social person by nature. This can be difficult for an author where you must spend a great deal in solitude writing. So, if I am working on a difficult chapter and a friend, or a beautiful blonde I happen to be engaged to, sends me a message, my brain will subconsciously tell me “This is a lot more fun.” Next thing you know I have had a 20 minute text conversation and have not typed a single word.
Yes, I enjoyed those conversations, but I will continue to be stressed with the lack of progress. It reminds me of the quote from Jim Rohn, “Discipline weighs ounces and regret weighs tons.” Yes, it takes discipline to put my phone away and work. The upside is that I will not be kicking myself the rest of the night for the progress I lost. Try writing down what you do for every minute of the day if you are brave enough. Be honest. What you discover may help you live a more productive and less stressful life.
Happy first day is summer to my friends in the northern hemisphere! This is my favorite day of the year. I am definitely a summer person. Love the sun and the warm weather.
Today is supposed to be the ‘longest day of the year’. Meaning that the sun rises the earliest and sets the latest. That kind of reminds me of life. We all have the same 24 hours. What determines the quality of our life is what we do with them. Is there more sunshine (positive and productive activity) or is it more darkness (negative and wasted energy).
Today, let the first day of summer remind us to have as much light and positivity in our 24 hours as we can!
I want to begin this post with a quote from my favorite distracted genius. “If I keep temporarily eating this junk, I’m going to permanently stay fat.” Meaning, if you just eat that one doughnut because they were free in the break room, or have ice cream because you are out with friends and they are having it. These temporary indulgences can have lasting results. I am not saying that going out for ice cream every now and again is a bad thing. I do it myself. What I am saying is that if you have too many of these moments, you will end up with permanent bad results. If you only eat a doughnut when they are in the break room, what happens if they are in there for 3 days this week? If you only go out for ice cream if a friend is going, what happens if several friends go day after day? What if both of these events happen in the same day?
Even having a snack size bag of Doritos has 260 calories. If you have 4 bags a week, that is over 1000 extra calories. See how long it takes running on the treadmill to burn 1000 calories. I can tell you it is a few seconds longer than forever. Eating that little bag doesn’t seem like much, but as you can see if you keep doing this behavior, it will result in some terrible results. That is scary.
Here is a fact to ponder. This is not only true of food. Think of mindless scrolling on your phone. Well, I am only going to watch a few reels. Suddenly, you have spent a half an hour on mindless nonsense. That may not seem like a big deal, but how many times do you do this during a day? Even once a day adds up to 3 hours a week. Meanwhile, our houses are a mess, we haven’t meal prepped and the dog needs to be walked. What do we say? “If only I had more time.” You don’t consider that few minutes of harmless scrolling that bad. Can you imagine what you would do with an extra 3 to 6 hours a week? Even if all you did was get extra sleep, you would still come out ahead. Whether it is a few calories in a bag of Doritos, or a few minutes on reels, take the advice from my beautiful Margie. If you keep doing these temporary behaviors, you will end up with some scary permanent results.
When I was growing up, multi-tasking was the ‘in’ thing to do. Sadly, there is nothing that ruins productivity more. Firstly, you can’t truly work on multiple tasks at the same time. Our brains are not wired for that. Even if I had 2 computers going at the same time, I could not write both my books and my blogs at the same time. They would end up coming out in a language that does not even exist. If I were to write a book for 5 minutes, then switch to my blog writing computer and let us throw in running over to my microphone to add an episode to the Living the Dream with Neil Panosian podcast. What kind of quality content do you think I would be putting out? It would be garbage. I would be chasing 2, or in this case 3, rabbits and end up catching none.
A far better course of action is to become laser-focused on one activity, finish it and become focused on the next. Do you know how long it takes the brain, on average, to regain focus? The answer is 23 minutes. Now, if we are constantly switching from one task to another we are never fully in focus on any one of them. In the end, this will cost us both time and productivity. Just at the point where we are getting in focus and our brains are adjusting to the task we are working on, we switch gears. This makes little to no sense. Let us look at an even better example.
I like trees, and I hope none are harmed in the reading of this post, but the point should be pretty clear. When we are multi-tasking, we are hitting that tree in a 1000 different places. When we are focusing our efforts and hitting that tree 1000 times in the same spot, we will accomplish our goal in a far quicker time. Think of this next time you want to work on a million projects at the same time.
Let us begin to train our focus to work on one thing at a time. We will not only use our brains to their greatest potential, we will accomplish a lot more and do it in a far shorter amount of time. By developing this habit, we will make the coming year the most productive, and a lot less stressful, year that we have had in a long time.
Listening to an audiobook by Joseph Murphy this morning and heard this gem. For those of you who do not know who he is, allow me to enlighten you. Joseph Murphy is the author of the book The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. (among many others) It is one of the 3 things I give people when they are looking to turn their life around. Definitely in my top 5 books. This was another one of his books, but I think it is a powerful story that drives home a very important point.
In my second book, Living the Dream, I devote a whole section on the importance of having a life mission statement. If you would like to know more about that, I invite you to check out that book for that, and many other life-changing tools and strategies. One thing that I hear a lot at seminars and book signings is “I am not too good at being a multi-tasker.” I assure people that is a good thing. The human mind was designed to focus on one task at a time. When we busy our selves with trying to do many things at once, we end up doing many things half-ass, if you will excuse the language. It would serve us far better if we were to take one task at a time, focus on and complete it, and then move on to the next. It also usually ends up taking less time as well. Why do you think the most efficient manner of getting large projects done is an assembly line?
Many people have a hard time grasping or believing this as we have been fed the ‘multi-tasking lie’ for far too long. The story Dr. Murphy shares in his book is a great example. I will give you the abridged version here. A man hails a taxi cab. Climbs in and tells the cabby he wants to go to the airport. About 5 minutes into the drive he asks to be taken back home because he forgot his passport. Cabby turns around and takes him there. Back on the way to the airport he stops him again. “Can we stop at my work? I forgot my wallet.” he says. So, the cabby again turns around. Leaving his work, the cab driver asks him if he is sure he is ready to go to the airport. “Oh yes.” the man replies. No sooner do they start off, the man stops him again. “Can we stop and see my mother? I forgot to tell her goodbye.” Cab driver checks the meter and again turns around. Hopping back in the cab after his mother’s house, the man proceeds to give the cab driver multiple other locations to go to. Finally, the cab driver drops him off at the police station because he realizes he is insane.
This may seem like an amusing and comical story, but it is exactly what we do to our brain when we do not have a clear goal or purpose. If we attempt to do too many things at once, we are like the man in the cab. We are giving our brains multiple locations to travel to at the same time. The brain works best when it does not have to switch focus again and again. There was a study done that stated it takes the average person 23 minutes to get into a zone with a project they are working on. What do you think happens when we are switching things up every ten minutes? The brain is like the cab driver who thought, “I am going to drop this man off at the police station. He is insane.” Terrible thing when your own brain thinks you are insane. If you want to complete multiple tasks, it is better to focus on one and do it to the best of our ability and then move on to the next. They will get done quicker and with better quality. Same with an overall purpose in your life.
Another post inspired by the late, great Jim Rohn. If you are not aware who he is, I would suggest you look him up. He was a speaker and coach who taught and inspired Tony Robbins, who, in turn, inspired yours truly. This is something I got out of listening to one of Mr. Rohn’s talks on how to master your life. In his example, it was television he spoke about. At the time of the talk, which was given in 1981 if memory serves, the average person was spending 6 hours of their day watching television. To me, this seemed a bit alarming. I cannot imagine sitting in front of the television for that long. After roughly 2 hours of watching a movie with Margie, I am ready to go to bed. That also has a great deal to do with Margie, but that is another post entirely.
Mr. Rohn would then ask people in the audience how expensive their television was. They would give various prices that made sense in the early 80’s. After listening patiently, he told them they were wrong. The television was far more expensive. The cost was the 6 hours of productivity they were losing by watching it. How much is 6 hours a day worth? What if you spent 6 hours a day working on pursuing your passion? Starting your own business? This got me thinking about how we have changed in the last 40 years? Surely we have learned from all of this lost productivity and the cost attached to it. Well…
Remember that 6 hours a day of television in 1981? Let us look at today’s equivalent of the television – the cell phone. According to a study done in 2022, globally, people average 6 hours and 58 minutes of screen time a day. Almost a full hour more than the television in 1981! That figure has increased an average of 50 minutes a day since 2013. At this rate, in another 5 years we will spend half of our day staring at the palm of our head. So much for the theory of evolution. In fact, in the so-called evolved countries, the problem is even worse. In 2022, the average person in the United States spent 7 hours and 4 minutes on their phone! I am as guilty of this as anyone. I often do research, and even write some of these blogs you are reading on my phone. (Fear not, this one was written on my laptop.) If you want some more amusing, but alarming, statistics on cell phone use, read the picture above.
My point here is not to demonize the cell phone. As I mentioned in the paragraph above, they do serve many useful purposes. You can use them for a GPS device to find your way around. You can find out what movie that was that had Will Smith and Kevin James in it and who the leading lady was. (So you don’t have to use your phone it was Hitch and Eva Mendes respectively) The point here is to think about what those 7 hours of your day staring at your hand are truly costing you. Those people who buy a new phone every year (Can’t imagine this myself) think they are spending on average $370 dollars a year ($555 in the U.S.) are underestimating that price significantly. We work 8 hours a day and demand a fair wage for doing so. Yet, we give away 7 hours of our day to a device that not only does not pay us, but cost us countless dollars in cell phone bills, the building of our dreams and memories we could be creating with our loved ones. I don’t know about you, but that is far too much to pay for a cell phone. It is time we make the cell phone cheaper. Not with our wallet, but with our habits.
Every morning I listen to something motivational. I recently downloaded an app to my phone called Fresh Motivation. I like it because it allows you to listen to a host of motivational videos while you have a black screen on your phone. This allows you to save battery life. Most of these videos have a mix of different people speaking. This morning I heard a video that featured Jim Rohn. If you have not listened to Mr. Rohn, I suggest you check him out. You could even do it with the free app I mentioned earlier.
In this particular video, he said something that really struck me, and I wanted to share it with you. The quote I remember was, “It is not the hours you put in. It is what you put in the hours.” He said a lot of people say “I am not getting anything done, but I am so busy.” To which he said he asked, “Doing what?” At my work we have people who seem to run around like their pants are on fire, but they seem to make very little progress, or are always behind. Then, we have people who are the opposite. They seem to look like they are barely working, but accomplish many times more than the people who are running around are doing.
How about you? Are there times when you feel like you are working like crazy and not getting anything done? You must ask yourself, what are you putting in the hours that you are putting in? Are they full of distractions? You can work in the yard cutting grass for hours, but if that is also filled with stopping to text friends or watch amusing YouTube videos, you may find yourself with a half mown yard. Same in the gym. I see people who spend more time exercising their thumb muscles on their phone, than their other muscles on the machines they are sitting on.
How do we remedy this problem? There are countless programs and books on ways to increase productivity. They certainly would be worth checking out. One simple idea to start with is to record everything you do, and the time it takes, for an entire day. Something like this…
woke up at 7am
hit snooze until 710
brushed teeth from 711 to 715
made coffee from 715 to 717
Account for every single minute and every activity of your day. If you are mowing the lawn and you stope to text a friend or watch a video, record that. Be honest with yourself. There is no point in saying ‘cut lawn from noon to 2pm’ if really you watched YouTube from 12:05 to 12:15, surfed Facebook from 12:30 to 12:45, and had a text conversation with Betty from 1:07 to 1:13. Be honest about what you spend your time on. Nobody will see this but you. If you are truly looking to increase your productivity and reduce your stress, this honest evaluation will go a long way in accomplishing that.
This may also have the added bonus of showing when you are most productive. This way you can learn when to schedule most of your projects you are working on. Try this for a week and you will be surprised to learn how much time you spend on foolish things and how easy it would be to improve your efforts.
