Distractions will truly destroy your potential that will waste your time and they'll lead to feelings of guilt and stress and pressure. But when you choose to genuinely and deeply really follow these principles and advice, you'll start to see your productivity, effectiveness, and most importantly, your energy will rise. If you feel that you've become more distracted, how many of you think you've become more lethargic? How many of you feel like you've become slower because of the last 12 months?
I'm serious. I know so many of you that are saying, Jay, I'm just struggling with the distractions. And there's a great phrase that was coined by Dr. Cornell West, who called them the weapons of mass distraction, right?
There are these weapons that distract us. They steal our focus. They destroy our drive and determination. And it's so important that we're aware and vigilant of these tools.
And for so many of us, I know it's becoming harder and harder because we've been indoors for so long. Even if you're outdoors again now and things are opening up, you may find that your mind, you're feeling a bit of brain fog, you're feeling lack of clarity. It takes you a bit longer to get there. How many of you feel like you slowed down during the pandemic?
I know that I felt that because I literally hadn't watched TV shows for 10 years when the pandemic hit. And I'm not getting you. I'd watched movies. I love movies as you know, I talk about movies a lot, but I hadn't really watched the TV show or binge watched the TV show.
And in the pandemic, I did that. I realized I literally felt slower because for the first time in a long time, I was actually consuming rather than creating. I was taking information in or allowing my mind to just be in that autopilot state that we consume television in versus being an alert, action oriented state. And so today, I want to help you move out of that state, because I'm sure none of you want to have a lazy, lethargic, unfocused, undetermined year or life.
And this isn't a productivity episode. It's not just about how to get productive and how to win stuff and how to break stuff. I wanted to do that. Of course I do.
But I also want to do it with grace. I want you to be able to be happy and joyful as you achieve and as you win. And it is possible. It is possible.
Now, before we dive in, I do want to take a moment just to thank all the amazing people that have left reviews on the podcast, because it makes a huge difference to the episodes. It makes a huge difference to me because I love reading these. So this is from Susan Flynn. I find that just as I need to hear a perspective and something to get me outside of a slump, there he is reading my mind.
Thank you, Jay. I share your podcast with others in my life who need your words as well, a fan in Michigan. Susan, thank you so much for listening to On Purpose. I hope you hear this message.
I'm sending you so much love. So this is another one from Sun Pocalypse. With all of my life experience, I was surprised at how many things Jay said that should be obvious by now, but weren't. I still needed someone to say the words.
I'm so glad I could be that for you. And I appreciate you coming here. I'm going to read one more, which was from the Esther Perel podcast. This one is great.
It's from Jacques Peters. Jay, this is the best episode on relationships I have ever heard. Too many tips and practical advice to capture during the first listen. This deserves a second and a third listen just to take notes.
I've already ordered the where you should begin game, a game of stories. I can't wait for our next dinner party to play with our guests. Thank you for bringing us another fantastic guest and inspiring us to listen, watch, learn and grow two times per week. Thank you.
Thank you, Jacques. I really appreciate you. Thank you to everyone who's left to review. Let's dive straight in to today's episode about these distractions.
So the place I want to start here is a really, really powerful insight. And this came to me while reading the book, The Organized Mind by Daniel Leviton. And in this book, he introduces a concept called decision fatigue. Now, decision fatigue is something that we all experience.
How many times does your partner ask you something? Like, how do I look at this? Or what do you think I should wear tonight? Or what should we have for dinner tonight?
And you immediately snap. And you say something like, I don't know, just figure it out. I don't know, just you deal with it. How many times does someone recommend something at work?
And they're explaining it, but you're just trying to wait till they get to the end of them. All right, I get to the point. Get to the point. How many of you feel like you're often quite, what's the right word?
You're a bit agitated. You get frustrated easily or you want someone to get to the end of something quite quickly. This happens because we've had decision fatigue. When someone asks you what you want to eat tonight, what do you think I should wear today?
How do I look in this? You feel you've already made so many decisions, choices, and thoughts by that point, you don't want to have to make another. And the sad thing is that you think you're being mean. So you feel guilty.
If you have a conscience, you're going to feel guilty after a while. But the person they feel like you don't care. They feel like you don't love them. I experienced this with Radi many times where she would ask me a question.
And I'd had so much decision fatigue that I just don't want to have to deal with it. And this is something that distracts us. We get distracted by our decision fatigue. We're so tired of making decisions that we can't make important decisions.
And most of us are making insignificant decisions, irrelevant decisions from the morning we wake up. So when we wake up in the morning, if you have to think about things like, well, what do I have to do today? What time do I have to leave today? What shall I make for lunch today?
What shall I wear today? What's that meeting about again? If you have to answer any of those questions, first thing in the morning, you're going to experience decision fatigue. And by the time you get to work, you're already going to be tired.
Or your brain is going to lose the ability to make that really powerful decision. In the book Daniel Levittin gives an example about how Warren Buffett, when he's investing, he doesn't just sit there at his laptop and invest with all his distractions. He'll go and lock himself in an empty New York apartment. And supposedly he just eats milk and cookies for a week while he makes his investment decisions.
He doesn't want the pain to figure out what to eat. He doesn't want the pain to figure out what to wear. He doesn't want to let his mind wander to anything else apart from the numbers and surviving for that week, of course, not forever. The other example that's given more commonly is the idea of Barack Obama or Mark Zuckerberg wearing the same thing to work every day.
I experienced this as a monk. Well, we've wore the same thing to purpose every day. We wore our robes. You wouldn't have to think about it.
And today, I've talked about how I have a lot of the same item, but in different colors. So I have the same fit jeans, but in different colors. I have the same fit sweatshirts, but in different colors. And that way, I'm still providing some simplicity to my mind rather than the complexity, which leads to decision fatigue.
So I want you right now to identify what are the decisions that you're making on a daily basis that are distracting you from getting things done. And for you, it may be food, it may be clothes. And therefore, you want to make sure that you prepare your meal idea meal prep the night before. You want to decide what you're wearing the night before.
You want to create your to do list and focus the night before. And this is what you want to do at 6 p.m. at the end of your day when you're dying to just relax. And you just want to get over stuff or you want to do it just after you have dinner.
And I'll explain to you, if you do it just at the end of the day, then you're going to save yourself from doing it late at night when your mind can be busy. But if you want to do it just after dinner, that's fine too, because you often make better decisions once you're fed. Studies show that even judges in court cases make better decisions after lunch, because they can make more accurate judgments and judgment calls after they've eaten. So these are the best times for you to decide what's happening the next day, ideally meal prep, deciding what you're going to wear.
Those two things alone will stop you from being distracted throughout the day to the biggest distractions that will come your way. Now, the second thing that distracts us is starting our workday with our email or our inbox. In 2019, I read a recent study that said 333 billion emails were sent. And I know what you're thinking, you probably sent half of those, especially the ones that say ignore that one.
Sorry about that one. Oh, by the way, one liner, right? The people that write one line email, you're like, why don't you just text me? Why don't you just put up the phone, right?
But 333 billion emails were sent. And so many of us choose to start our workday by opening up our email inbox. Why does this not work? Why is this a distraction?
It's a distraction because you're now focused on everyone else's priorities. You're now focused on everyone else's focus. You're now starting the day for someone else. Now, there are certain roles where you might need to look at email to do your own work, and that's fine.
But you want to start with the things that are important to you, your manager, your teams, do not start with the stuff that is important to someone else. And so I always tell everyone on my team, I don't want you to start your day with your email, I want you to start your day with your purpose, your to-do list, your work that you want to achieve today. And of course, you're going to check your email throughout the day, but that's not going to be your top priority. So often, people feel unaccomplished or unfulfilled even after getting through all their emails.
Why is that? It's because they don't feel they've achieved the more important tasks of the day. They haven't actually accomplished their priorities. They haven't actually got to do what they really needed to get through.
And so I want you to think about how you're going to avoid starting your day with your emails. Or if you need your emails to get through some things, you're going to prioritize which emails you deal with. The best way to do this is use the first three hours of the day to get stuff done, and then set an email check-in. So you may check an email in the morning because you know something specific you want to work on, but the later emails you're going to do in the middle and towards the end of the day where you're going to respond to everyone.
Now, you may find that you missed one thing, you missed a couple of things, but I promise you that you're going to be so much more productive and effective when you start with the work that you really, truly want to do. So I don't want you to look at your emails in the morning. I want you to set a time to look at them in the afternoon or the last thing in the evening of your work day before you switch off where you can respond to everyone else's needs and get through whatever you need to. I've been doing that for a long time now, and I can honestly say that it's changed the way I function.
I'm able to do more. I'm able to get through more stuff. I feel more accomplished at the end of the day, and then I love helping everyone out who's sending emails, asking for support or whatever it may be. So that is my second principle to avoid distractions and be more focused.
This third one is really, really important to me, and it's about creating the right audio environment for your work. So this is about creating the right audio environment. What I mean by that is, what can you hear in that space? You want to create the right audio experience?
Are you hearing cars? Are you hearing traffic? Are you hearing birds? Are you hearing water?
What do you want to hear in your ideal work environment? I've known for a long time that my ideal work environment is complete silence. I don't like any noises that are like any distractions. And to do that, I often put on noise-cancelling headphones.
I have these great headphones. I put them on my ears, and I'm not listening to any music, but I have them on. The great thing about that is if someone walks into the room, they also think that I'm on a call or I'm listening to something, and so they don't distract me either. I actually learned this technique from what I used to do before exams.
Before exams, I would always put my headphones on. I would not be listening to music. I'd be in complete silence, but I didn't want anyone else to distract me or ask me a question. So this was my way of dealing with them being antisocial and being isolated.
Anyway, it worked. But the idea is that you want to get your audio experience right. Some people like music, some people like silence, and some people like chatter. I don't know how anyone does it in chatter, but I know people who told me, J, I want to go work in Starbucks, and I like knowing there's stuff happening around me, or I like working in a co-working space, because I like to know there's people around me.
That is definitely not me, but it might be you. So I want you to decide, are you music, silence, or chatter? And if the answer is you don't know, go and test all of them out and see which one works for you. See which one you are most productive in.
Your most productive environment is where you got the most done with the least amount of distractions, right? Which area did you get the most done with the least amount of distractions? Check out Starbucks or wherever it is, check out silence, and check out music. I know that when I'm working on a presentation often I'll put on some music, and I like instrumental specifically.
I won't ever listen to anything with lyrics or a song that I'll sing along to because they're now get distracted, but I love listening to instrumentals as I do creative work that often just keeps me in the flow and keeps me in the zone of the work. So I do use music now and again. The reason why audio experiences are so important, and why I even learned about the noise cancelling method, is because when I lived in New York, there's something known as cognitive load. What this is is your brain trying to make sense of everything it hears and sees.
So we don't know this because we don't do it consciously, but when you hear a sound your brain is trying to make sense of what does that sound? Where did it come from, right? What did that? Was that an animal or was that a person?
What is that? The challenge is, and I learned about this in New York, and often this is what distracts us, but also drains us is the idea that we get tired trying to make sense. So in New York when I didn't use the headphone method, often what would happen is I would be hearing traffic, I'd be hearing construction work, I'd be hearing digging and drilling, I'd be hearing fire engines, and what that's doing is your brain is trying to make sense of irrelevant, insignificant sound that is not important to you. So you're actually wasting energy on making sense of something that doesn't affect you, and that wastes time.
And so allowing yourself to build the right audio experience could actually save you from a lot of fatigue and a lot of stress. The fourth principle I want to share with you right now is keep books everywhere. This has been one of my biggest and most favorite recommendations is keep books everywhere. Keep them in the living room, keep them in the dining table, keep them in the kitchen, keep them in your study or your office, wherever you are, because it will stop you from looking at your phone.
Now, the books have to be interesting, by the way. The books have to be stuff that you actually care about, and you may say, well, they're always in my bag. No, take them out. If you really want to leave them open on a page, and what you'll find is when you see a little book there with a page open, it will kind of be quite attractive and alluring and it will drag your attention towards it rather than your phone.
I find that sometimes I find myself mindlessly scrolling on TikTok or Reels or whatever it may be, and then I'm just like, what am I doing? And if I see a great book there, I have something to replace it with. If I don't have something to replace it with, then you might get distracted again by something else on your phone. But when you can put that down and pick up a book, a book that you want to read, a book that you've been trying to read, and you just read one word or one page or one phrase, especially if it's a self-development book or a personal growth book, it can shift you into action quicker than anything else.
Just as I'm speaking to you about this, I have a book here on my table. It's The Complete Artists Way by Julia Cameron. I'm going to go to a page and read you one that it's on. And it happens to have a bookmark on it.
So I'm going to opening up that bookmark. It says week seven, recovering a sense of connection. We turn this week to the practice of right attitudes for creativity. The emphasis is on your receptive, as well as active skills.
So listen to this, it says listening, which we're doing right now. The ability to listen is a skill we are honing with both our morning pages and our artist dates. The pages train us to hear past our censor. The artist dates help us to pick up the voice of inspiration.
While both of these activities are apparently unconnected to the actual act of making art, they are critical to the creative process. Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite, getting something down. The directions are important here.
If we are trying to think something up, we're straining to reach for something that's just beyond our grasp up there in the stratosphere, where art lives on high. When we get something down, there is no strain. We're not doing. We're getting something.
Someone or something else is doing the doing. Instead of reaching for inventions, we're engaged in listening. I mean, just reading that. How many people have inspired already?
How many of you heard me read that and go, wow, I need to get things down, not try and get something up there or out of there? How beautiful is that? How amazing is that? Truly.
How genuinely incredible is that? Just think about that for a moment. How powerful? How phenomenal, right?
And it's just amazing that just a few lines, that was literally six lines, maybe eight. I feel moved. I've learned something. I feel like I've grown.
I've got a new insight to share. I've got a new insight to live by. I've got something to test. This is why keeping books open everywhere.
Now granted, I also have a couple of my books here in different languages. I have one in Spanish. I have one in Greek. I have one in Japanese.
I can't read any of the three books that you can have around you that can just be open on pages in every room. Start doing that and you're going to start to feel incredible. I promise you because you will be forced to learn without even trying to learn. The fifth one is kind of similar to the email one, but it's even deeper.
Don't start your day with your phone. I'm going to keep saying this until you stop starting your day with your phone. Sully show, we look at our phones 52 to 200 times per day. And I mean, for most of us, we're doing it every minute, right?
So 60 minutes a day, times by, let's say we're up for 18 hours, or let's say 16, 16, 60 times by 16. That's 960 times a day. So that 50 to 200 is well off the mark. For most of us, they're looking at our phones all day.
So if you're looking at your phone 960 times a day, right, but you don't need to do the first thing in the morning, right? If you're going to look at your phone throughout the day, don't do it first thing in the morning because you're opening up news, notifications, negativity, and noise. You're asking your mind to go from zero to a hundred miles per hour in a matter of seconds. You're starting your day.
Now, I actually did this as an experiment on myself where for seven days, and then I did for 30 as well, but I woke up with my phone purposely, and then I tried it waking up without my phone. And I promise you, the days I woke up without my phone, I was clearer throughout the whole day. I was calmer throughout the whole day. I was less stressed throughout the whole day.
I felt like I was making decisions better because there was just less information. When you pick up your phone, it's like you need to know everything. How many of you like compulsively will open up Instagram, TikTok, messages, email, everything, and you're just scrolling through everything because you need to know. You feel like I need to know everything, but you don't.
And the challenge is when you feel you need to know everything, you end up feeling really overwhelmed and overloaded. So here's what you're going to do. You're going to get yourself a traditional alarm clock. You're going to leave your phone in another room, or you're going to leave your phone on the other side of the room so that it forces you to get up out of your bed, turn off your alarm, and then get on with your day.
And you're going to make sure that your phone isn't there with you until you start your workday or your commute on the way to work. I want you to always spend all your time at home eating breakfast, getting ready for the workday, seeing how simple it is. Do it for one day and see how it changes your life. Literally test it for one day.
That's all I'm asking you to do. You don't need to do this forever. Try it for one day and just see if it transforms your life, right? Just for one day, that's all you have to do.
Another extension of this is making sure that you turn off your notifications, but more importantly, you add a time limit to your phone. So you may say, I'm only going to be in my phone for two hours today and then it will block you from being on your phone. You can do it on your iPhone, or you can do it on your device. Set up a time limit for how long you're going to allow yourself to be on your phone and make it something excruciatingly low, not 10 minutes, but like two hours.
If you look on your phone how much time you spend on your phone and it says eight, make it a quarter of whatever it is. So if you spend an hour on your phone every day, cut it to 15 minutes. If it's eight hours, make it two hours. If it's six hours, make it one and a half hours.
If it's four hours, make it one hour, make your limit 25% of what you currently use. And just see when it blocks you how you're able to do so many other things when you don't have this distraction. We're all so distracted in so many ways. And the last one I want to share with you is creating a visual environment.
Many of you may have seen that on my podcast, I have this wall of people I'm inspired by. It has everyone from Ali to Prince, Mr. Copeland to Oprah to Steve Jobs to so many other athletes. And people often think I have that wall as an aesthetic.
And sure, it does look great. But the real reason I have that wall is that it inspires me. When I walk into that room, I think, what would they do? How would they have dealt with this?
How would they be working right now? And that really moves me to get more work done. But what moves me even more is I know their stories, I've studied their lives, I've read into like, what mistakes did they make? What went wrong?
What did they get right? What was going on in their life? And that way your visual environment can actually stop you from getting distracted. So many of us get distracted because we don't have a visual environment that keeps us engaged.
What is your visual environment currently? What can you do to make your visual environment more appealing? What can you do to make your visual environment more engaging so that you are really present there and you're really focused there on what you want to do and what you want to achieve? So these are some ideas I wanted to share with you today on how to be less distracted and more focused.
Distractions will truly destroy your potential that will waste your time and they'll lead to feelings of guilt and stress and pressure. But when you choose to genuinely and deeply really follow these principles and advice, you'll start to see your productivity, effectiveness, and more importantly, your energy will rise. I can't wait for you to all experience that. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
I hope that you'll be back again next week. I'm so excited to do that and I will see you very, very soon. Thank you so much for listening to On Purpose. I'm so grateful.
Let me know what insights you got from this one. Make sure you share it with a friend. Thanks for listening everyone.