Productivity Tips: How to Focus

[00:00:00] Oh, the creative brain. So many ideas, and yet so little time. Whether you're a creative who wants to hone your craft or a business owner who wants to beeline their way towards success, or some blend of the two, gaining control over your ability to focus, to stay engaged on a task to see it through to the end, is a constant challenge, but is quite a worthy one to pursue.

[00:00:32] In this episode, I'm going to be sharing with you at my top tips to stay productive, to find your focus every single day to get the job done. And I think my very favorite one is going to be the last one, which is my favorite tip for helping anyone who has lots of ideas or anyone who gets especially distracted by all the shiny objects.

[00:00:56]

[00:00:59] Welcome back to 10 Minutes to Being Boss a bite-size show offering up tips, tools, and tactics for helping you do business.

[00:01:05] I'm Emily Thompson, host of the Being Boss podcast and co-author of the book Being Boss: Take Control of Your Work and Live Life on Your Own Terms. And we are talking productivity today. In particular, we're talking about finding your focus.

[00:01:21] For the past 10 years, I've been working with creatives, helping them do business, mostly online. And what the really underlying thing is that I have been doing in those 10 years is helping the creative brain focus on the task at hand so that goals can be achieved. So we're going to be diving into my top tactics that I have created, a system basically that you can use throughout your day or week to assist you in finding, focus on what it is that you are doing.

[00:01:52] But before we dive in, I do want to share more about our sponsor Podia. I know that doing business online is the dream, but I also know that the tech side of doing business online often keeps creatives or educators from sharing their message with the world. And that's where Podia comes in, an all-in-one digital storefront that allows you to easily create and sell courses, memberships, and digital downloads all in one place. You can sign up for a free trial of podia at podium.com/bosses and get 15% off for life. That's podia.com/bosses.

[00:02:34] Okay, let's talk about these productivity tips, shall we? These ways in which you can and should focus. This is a system. You should be using all of these, I think. Most of these probably will not be new, but what I hope that they do for you is remind you, if you're not doing them, and to also show you how it is they work together to create an environment in which you can focus.

[00:03:00] So, number one is that you have to schedule your week. I talk about this all the time. I know this is not new. I'm going to keep talking about it until all of you are doing it. It is so important for you to sit down every single week and plan what it is that you're going to be doing for the week. A lot of times, one of the biggest struggles that creatives have with finding their focus is not so much focusing on the task at hand, it's deciding what tasks to do next or what is going to be the most impactful use of their time or energy in the very near future. By sitting down and scheduling your week at the beginning of the week, you are making an entire week of decisions in just one moment.

[00:03:46] And then the rest of the week, you can show up and just do the work. It is my foundational tactic for you to be able to find focus all week long. I do have a free training on time-blocking, on how it is that I schedule my week every single week, and I will leave a link to that in the description below. It's being boss.club/time and it is a must-watch if you are interested and you should be because I'm telling you it's foundation number one, if you are interested in learning more about how it is you can effectively schedule out your entire week so that it's easier for you to find focus when the time comes.

[00:04:30] My second tip is for you to prepare your body for focus. I don't know about you, but whenever I'm hungry, I can't do diddly squat. Literally nothing can't accomplish anything but stomping, screaming, and eating. That's a little dramatic. I'm not quite that bad, but legit, if I'm hungry, if I'm thirsty, if I'm sleepy, if my clothes are uncomfortable, I cannot focus.

[00:04:53] So for me to show up and do my work every single day, I have to know that my baseline needs, my baseline body situation is as optimal as it possibly can be. So I make sure I eat before I come to work. I make sure I have plenty of water to drink. I make sure I'm wearing clothes that are comfortable to sit and work in all day. I am making sure that I am well-rested and able to focus in every way that I possibly can. I know it's not always optimal, but it is something that I am prioritizing so that I can show up and do the work.

[00:05:29] And can I share with you my favorite little hydration tactic? Here it is. It's a little embarrassing. It's not.

[00:05:37] Look at this massive jug of water. So David, a couple of months ago, bought this water bottle and I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen. I was like, why in the world are you buying this? Like, this is so not usable. Where are you going to take this?

[00:05:54] I use it every single day now.

[00:05:57] So I have this jug at the office. Um, I take it down every single morning and I fill it up at the water cooler, and then I come back upstairs and I drink this throughout my entire day. Actually, what is in my mug is always just water and this beast is a 64 ounce water bottle. So at work I'm drinking 64 ounces. Add to that what I'm drinking in the morning for breakfast and what I drink in the evening at dinner. And I get all of my water every single day, and I'm not going back and forth to the water cooler four times a day, either. I do it once a day.

[00:06:33] I'm not distracted by the need for more water. I have my water at my feet at all times.

[00:06:39] So tip number three is for you to gather your tools before you get started. So this may be your water or your snacks, but it's going to be your paint brushes and your paint and your paper. It's going to be your files. It's going to be making sure that you have the right mouse and the keyboard, and all of your things are connected and your batteries are full, or at least not dead and all of the things. Before you get started doing the work, make sure you gather all of your tools first.

[00:07:12] I cook a lot and if I'm ever in a rush, I will go into the kitchen and just start throwing things together.

[00:07:19] And I'm spending my entire time running around the kitchen, pulling ingredients, putting them up. It's all crazy. It gets done. But it's an unfocused mess, the process is. On the other hand, if I take a moment at the beginning of cooking, gather all of my ingredients, all of my pots and pans and get them out and ready and then start the process of creating, of doing the work to do the thing, it goes significantly faster, way more chill, because I have the ability to focus on the task. Not where's the salt. It makes all the difference in the world to first gather your tools before you start the task at hand.

[00:08:02] Oh my God. This is embarrassing. I'm like gather all your tools and make sure your batteries aren't dead, and my camera battery died. And I'll tell you, cautionary tale here too, cause I feel like it just killed my creativity. No, it didn't. I'm a boss. I can get it back together really quickly. But, legit. I should've made sure my batteries were not dead.

[00:08:23] Let's just dive back into it. Where were we? I think number three was gather your tools. Number four then is remove distractions.

[00:08:37] I'm totally seeing this. It's very funny. Okay. Legit though. Remove distractions. This is going to be your focus-killer, obviously. Having all the dinging, all the notifications, the people, all the things. Whenever they are distracting you, you lose your focus in a second, so do what you need to do to remove those distractions.

[00:08:56] Turn off your phone, turn off your email, shut down your Slack. Tell people not to bug you,.Whatever it is, whatever time you've allotted for yourself, because you scheduled at the beginning of the week, when you would be sitting down doing this task, making sure everyone knows. Or that you have removed all the distractions that you need to get focused work done during that time.

[00:09:20] Tip number five can be a little problematic, but you need to get over it. You really do because I find this to be one of the most important tactics for me to really stay focused in the moment. And that is for you to either set a timer or track your time. Whenever you are setting a timer, you are pre-allotting an amount of time that you want to designate for this task.

[00:09:46] It can be 20 minutes. It can be 45 minutes, an hour and a half, three hours, whatever it may be, setting a timer and working towards focusing for that amount of time will do amazing things for you to hold yourself accountable, to focusing on that single task for that amount of time. A slight shift from that, and the problematic one, is tracking your time. A lot of creatives have some PTSD around old jobs or agency days, uh, where they had to track all of their time, all of the time. But it's important. It's something that I do myself all day, every day. I'm tracking my time in this moment. For me, it also holds me accountable to staying focused during that amount of time.

[00:10:34] It's incredibly important for my process. And every boss that I have doing this completely sings its praises. It will do wonders for assisting you in staying on track in the a lot of time and that you want to stay focused on your task. A little sub-tip for this is to actually do some co-working with some friends.

[00:10:56] This is not something I've ever been one to do myself. However, recently there being both community a boss has started hosting virtual coworking, and I have found this to be incredibly productive. I'm able to sit down with some bosses. We're all really quiet, but we are getting work done, and we're keeping each other updated in the chat section as to what it is that we are working on.

[00:11:20] And I'm a very productive person in general anyway, but I have found that this setting, where we are both setting a timer, claiming our tasks, and holding each other accountable to doing the work has done insane things for my ability to be even more productive than I already am. So if you haven't tried that yet, definitely give it a go.

[00:11:42] But if you're not doing it with other people, I highly recommend either setting a timer or tracking your time. They're really similar, but there is a little shift there that I find makes a ton of difference for some creatives.

[00:11:56] And finally my last tip, my very favorite tip, especially for anyone who has tons of ideas, who struggles with focusing, especially maybe a little more long-term, because of all of those ideas, or you suffer from shiny object syndrome, you have the ability to be distracted by anything and everything, especially all of those amazing ideas that come up, is for you to keep an idea notebook.

[00:12:22] So an idea notebook is actually something that I came up with a couple of years ago when my business partner and I were considering, um, a set of time when we would be implementing no new ideas in our business, we needed to focus on what we currently had going so that we could bring it to fruition and not be distracted by all the ideas that we have.

[00:12:45] So instead of engaging in these new ideas, we instead wrote them down and wrote them down in an idea notebook. And we found this really instrumental in us feeling like we were able to fully engage in the things that we were doing, but not lose any potential amazing things that came up along the way. I have continued using this over the years.

[00:13:09] I have a section in my notebook where I will flip to and keep a long list of all of the good ideas that I have on this piece of paper, or really a set of papers. In the Almanac team, where we do crystals and make products and source from amazing makers, we have a team idea notebook where we're all able to keep all of our ideas in this notebook so that we are able to capture all the amazing ideas that we have save them for later and otherwise focus on the things that we are trying to get done right here.

[00:13:45] Right now, it is instrumental in our ability to move forward. As a team of creatives, we are all having amazing ideas. And then we sit down once a quarter and we go through the idea notebook. And it's very powerful because it does two important things. One, it does save those ideas for later. We're able to go back to those ideas and see which ones are going to work now, which ones maybe we'll save for later, which ones were maybe not the best idea and we're not going to implement them now, but it also really shows us, the entire team, how off course we would get if we allowed ourselves to go at every idea that we have whenever we have it. We're able to see the effects of keeping these ideas separate so that we can focus on what needs to be done and do everything significantly more strategically, how that has such a positive impact on our ability to show up and do business in the way that we want to do business.

[00:14:47] So there you go. Those are my six tips. You'll see that all of those can and should be done on a weekly and daily basis for you to be able to show up and do the work, to say focused and engaged on the task at hand all day, every day. And I would love to hear your tips as well. So if you have any additional tips or tactics, any tricks that work really well for you to home in and get focused on the task at hand, please feel free to share those in the comments below. I would love to hear your tips as well.

[00:15:22] And thank you very much for coming to hang out with me. I hope you learned a thing or two, or at least maybe are newly inspired to reimplement some of these things in your work in life to assist you in either honing your craft or, and/ or reaching your goals.

[00:15:41] And until next time, do the work be boss

[00:15:47] Here's something I can't really quite tackle yet. And that is, yes, I have to stay very hydrated in order to show up and do my work. My brain really does get a little nuts whenever I'm not hydrated, but what do I do about having to go to the restroom 14 times a day? That is always the break in my focus that drives me the most insane.

[00:16:08] So whenever someone figures that out in a way that's not disturbing, please feel free to share because having to go to the bathroom kills my focus every single time.