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Welcome to Ever Better Today: the daily podcast for creating your optimal business, career, or overall life in ten minutes or less. I’m Lisa Conners Vogt, Executive and Leadership Coach and founder of Ever Better Coaching and Consulting. To learn more about me or my work, check out everbetteru.com. Let’s jump in!
Hi there, it's Coach Lisa, and you are listening to Ever Better Today: Episode Five. I'll be sharing my thoughts on how to focus your brain, along with tips for applying this to your life… all in ten minutes or less. So let's get started!
In episode four, I discussed how to find a physical space with more quiet and fewer interruptions in order to increase your productivity. Once you’ve found your optimal space, you also need to be able to focus your brain. If you're not really mindfully focusing your brain, you'll become distracted by every alert, email, person walking by, or random thought that comes into your brain.
Even when you are trying to control your brain and control your space, there's going to be a certain amount of distraction that happens to you because you're human. But if you can decrease that by even 50%, you will really enhance your productivity.
So today, I'm about to share seven ways to focus your brain. Some of these ideas will work for you, your life, and your work style. Some of them won't. That's okay! If you find at least one way to help enhance your productivity, the return on your time investment will have been worth it!
Number one: control your phone.
First of all, something that you should take a look at right now is how many alerts you have set up. Are you getting alerts that relate to work or your personal life? Are you getting them for social media or breaking news? What are you getting alerts for and do you really need them?
If not, turn them off. Be very judicious about this! And you actually might run an experiment, which is to turn off all your alerts and see if you miss anything important.
Some other ideas: turn off Wi-Fi and turn on Airplane mode.
When you have the combination of Wi-Fi turned off and Airplane mode, your social media won't refresh. You won't get text messages. Your phone won't ring. You won't be disturbed in the middle of deep thought.
Something that I'm experimenting with is the Do Not Disturb mode. I don't know how this works for Androids, but on the iPhone, you go to Settings, choose “Focus,” and within there's a Do Not Disturb mode. Within Do Not Disturb, you can set up different options for driving, for personal, for sleep, and for work. So there are four different categories, and you can allow calls or text messages from certain people.
If you want to be available to your kids, maybe to your boss, maybe to your spouse or partner… you can set it up that way! I can tell that I have Focus mode on because on the home screen for my phone there's a little crescent moon.
So that reminds me, because when you do these things… when you turn off the Wi-Fi when you turn on Focus mode… you have to remember to reverse that.
So that was number one: control your phone. Number two: block time for strategic thinking or unbounded problem-solving.
Build it into your calendar once a week or every day. Maybe you can find an hour for really deep thinking where you're spending time thinking about a challenge, thinking about the future, what you want to build, or your vision, and you are just focused completely on that.
I also use the term: unbounded problem solving, and this is something I'm going to do a podcast on in the future. But what I mean by that is getting very creative about an idea because you're just brainstorming with yourself. You’re just thinking through what the options are for a problem that you're trying to solve, and you can also apply that to something that you want to create for the future!
Number three: use paper. Step away from the computer, put down the phone, and just use paper!
I know this sounds a little rudimentary, like we're going back to second grade. Use pencils, use pens, use crayons, use markers… whatever helps you enhance your creativity and get thoughts flowing for yourself!
When you're on the computer or looking at your phone, there are just certain ideas that are coming to you related to that technology. It's really good to go back to the old-fashioned way of doing things. Use paper!
Number four: use an app, like Insight Timer, to help you focus your brain. There are lots of meditation apps out there, but this is the one that I use. And I'll tell you specifically how I use it to my benefit to focus my brain.
When I need a block of time to work on a specific thing, I turn on a track that's called “I See You Harp.” It’s 47 minutes long and instrumental, so there are no words to distract me. It's by Pablo Arellano, and he has a lot of instrumental tracks on Insight Timer.
Now, you might want to hear something a little bit more upbeat. You might want to hear something that's a little softer. It's up to you! Just try some different tracks and see what works for you.
I've gotten to the point where when I turn on this track, I have trained my brain that this is work time. For me, it's just a shortcut to getting into focus as I turn on that track by Pablo.
Number five: use YouTube study music.
So like the track on Insight Timer, you can go to YouTube and find all kinds of different options for instrumental music. There's an audio component, and there's also a visual component. So to find these, what you can do is go to YouTube and just search “study music,” or “instrumental music for studying,” or something along those lines. In the one that I listen to, in the background, you also see really beautiful images from a forest and waterfalls. They're great nature images!
So I sometimes put this on at home when I'm working around the house or focused on a particular thing that I want to complete for my coaching practice. I put it on. I’m listening to beautiful, relaxing music. And if I look up, I also see these beautiful nature images.
You can do it on your phone, on your YouTube app, or on a smart TV that has a YouTube app.
Number six: use earbuds.
This blocks outside sound and helps you to focus. So as you listen to Insight Timer, YouTube, or whatever helps you focus, if it's piped directly into your ears it's very helpful in blocking out outside sounds.
It's also a signal to your brain. It's a signal to your brain that you're getting focused. So for me, I actually sometimes put in my earbuds and have the intention of going to Insight Timer, and I just don't even do it because my brain has gotten that signal that the earbuds are in and we're going to focus now.
It’s also a signal to others. If somebody walks by you in a public place or office and sees you with headphones on, he/she may be less likely to stop and have a casual conversation.
Alright, number seven: distract yourself with a subtle distraction.
I'm talking about listening to something: maybe on YouTube, maybe it's a webinar, or maybe it's a podcast. And these are talks by people who inspire me, whose voices I find very soothing.
By putting these on in the background, I'm subtly getting a subliminal positive message while I am working on a task. So one example that I'll give you is Tara Mohr, who wrote Playing Big.
I've done a lot of training with Tara. I love her webinars. I love listening to her voice, and everything she says inspires me. So, I will sometimes put on a webinar by Tara Mohr in the background, while I'm creating, because her words are not enough of a distraction to take me away from what I'm trying to accomplish. But I do find them to be motivating!
Try that for yourself! You have to find the person that works for you, and it's all experimentation.
I hope this episode helps you to optimize one thing or to elevate one thought in your life, because small changes add up to major shifts. So keep listening, and let me know what's changing for you. In order to do that, you can send me an email at lisa@everbetteru.com or check out my website at everbetteru.com and click the link to send me a note.
I'd love to hear from you and learn about how the ideas I just shared apply to your life or business! And if you know someone that might benefit from this information, do them a favor and share the podcast.
That's it for today. Join me tomorrow for another episode of Ever Better Today!