If something big has come up where you don’t have time, don’t stress about missing a day. There are some days when you just can’t do it - for me, it’s when I travel or have guests. That said, don’t aim for being perfect.Watch your rationalizations, and don’t fall for them. This defeats the purpose of the practice. It’s easy to say, “I’ll get to it in a bit,” but then you’re putting it off until late morning, and then the afternoon, and finally you’re doing it at 8pm just to say you did it. Don’t allow yourself to rationalize putting off the session.If you have an idea, a task you need to remember, anything you want to look up … jot it on the paper. If you turn off the Internet, keep a pencil and paper nearby.If you need the Internet for your MIT, then close all tabs but the one or two that you need for the task, and don’t let yourself open anything else. Close your browser and all applications you don’t need. Like disconnect from wifi or turn off your router, or use an Internet blocker. With that simple method in mind, I have a few key ideas to share: Stop there for awhile, and then add another session in the afternoon. If you have any trouble at all, stick to one session a day for the first month before adding a second.Īfter six weeks to two months, you should be fairly good at doing two 15-minute focus sessions, and you can add a third. If you do great, add a second focus session each day, with a 10-minute break in between sessions. That’s it! One focus session a day for at least two weeks. After your focus session each day, check in that you did it. Create an online spreadsheet or use an accountability app that they can see (he introduced me to Commit to 3, for example). Find a partner who will keep you accountable. My coaching client is going to succeed in large part because he has me to keep him accountable. Watch your urges to switch, but don’t follow them. You can only a) work on your MIT, or b) sit there and do nothing. For these 15 minutes, you can not switch to anything else (no checking email, messages, social media, doing other work tasks, cleaning your desk, etc.). As soon as you start working for the day (maybe after getting ready, eating, yoga/meditation/workout, whatever), clear away all browser tabs, applications, and anything you don’t need for your MIT for today. This one task you choose for today is your one Most Important Task (MIT). Don’t waste your time in indecision, the point is to practice with one task. What would make the biggest difference in your life, your work? If you have several, it doesn’t matter … just randomly choose one for now. First thing in the morning, before you get on your phone or online, think about what you need to do. If you’re feeling stressed out by all you have to do, unhappy with your lack of focus … then this one skill will help you turn that around in a big way. Those things tend to get pushed back, but staying on task will increase your effectiveness with the most important things by leaps and bounds. Staying focused on one task at a time, at least for some of the day, will help you get the important things done: writing, programming, studying, taking care of finances, creating of any kind, and so on. Your life is too precious to waste, so you want to use your days better. You’ve procrastinated on the big tasks to take care of the little ones, and worse yet, squandered the day in distractions. This is important because constant switching and distraction leads to your time being frittered away, so that the day goes by and you’ve barely done anything important. Otherwise you’ll crumble at the first urge to switch. Why should you care about this? It’s best to give this a moment’s thought before diving into any plan, because when things get uncomfortable, you have to know your Why. So I gave him a plan, and I’m going to share it with you here. Recently I took on a coaching client, and his biggest area for improvement is focus. Just more than now, which is more than enough to see big differences in effectiveness in your day. Not even 80 percent, and perhaps not 50 percent. So how do you train your mind to stay more focused? It’s possible to get better at focusing, but I don’t recommend expecting to be focused anywhere close to 100 percent of the time. It’s a common problem these days: switching between browser tabs and apps on your phone, checking social media and messages and email, thinking about the million things you have to do but putting them off …Īnything but staying focused on one task at a time.Īnd it’s hard to break out of the mental habit of switching, being distracted, letting the monkey mind jump from one shiny thing to the next.
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