SDH191: How to Create Flow and Focus in Your Business, Solocast with Amanda Boleyn

Today's solocast is part 3 of a six part series in honor of She did It Her Way Summit and I'm sharing how to create flow and focus in your business.  What is flow and how do you create focus? Finding flow is about managing your time, energy and attention which results in creating focus. If we can understand how to manage our time, energy and attention better we can produce better results in our business.  Identify your big 3 for the day. What will move my business forward? Will this help me achieve my goals? Will I feel good after I accomplish this? 2. Eat clean. Remove as much processed food from your diet Limit the amount of sugars as possible, especially added sugar. Sugar causes you to have increased energy but quickly followed by a crash Manage caffeine intake. Note effects on adrenal glands. Adrenal fatigue is when you put your body under emotional, mental and physical stress. You could have trouble getting out of bed, tend to be tired or in a state of fog, struggle to think clearly. I am not a doctor only someone who has gone through adrenal fatigue Find ways to destress (meditate, yoga), eat a clean diet, regular sleeping habits. Create buffers to avoid stressful situation. I wrote about this in last week’s blog post. Create buffers, not the bowling ones but time buffers. If you think it will only take you 10 minutes to travel from one meeting to the next, double it. Avoid checking email right away when you wake up. Create space in your day to get the important things done. Spend time doing those activities that require your full attention and energy. Tim Ferris Energy ZAP theory Create space to accomplish your big 3. Attention and focus are muscles. The more you practice using them in the right way the better they will serve you. Being able to maintain focus is like exercising a muscle. If every 5-10 minutes we’re being distracted by our cell phone we’re actually conditioning our muscle to only hold attention space for that short 5-10 minutes. Similar to practicing meditation. In the beginning we may only start out at 5 minutes but over time we grow to 10 to 15 minutes because we’ve built up that practice. Limit distractions Airplane mode Clean desk Shutdown email Close all tabs Become aware of time leaks. Start to purge the items on your to-do list that don’t produce results Start to outsource tasks that don’t need to be done by you If you’re having trouble outsourcing, don’t think about “Who am I going to outsource to?” think about the tasks and then record yourself on your computer (screen flow) doing them and start collecting a database of tasks so that when that moment comes you’ve already created a library. Take advantage of your time gaps. These are the 30-45 minute time gaps in between appointments or while we’re waiting somewhere. Take advantage of them, do tasks that don’t require a ton of energy to get done, quick email, make phone calls. Get outside. Fresh air. When working from home it is soooo easy to roll out of bed and go straight for the office or wherever you chose to work and start diving in. First, take a moment and step outside, do a quick 15 minute walk around the block. I don’t do this every day but on the days I do do it I feel much better and more awake. Schedule time with friends who feed your soul. Give yourself grace. No one is perfect This has been something that I’ve been working on and I was talking to a close girlfriend of mine. All of us listening to this podcast I bet are go-getters and as go-getters we tend to take a ton of responsibility for our actions and we’re always striving to grow and move everything in life forward. So that when that moment comes and we feel like we’re stuck or we made a mistake we can be hard on ourselves. Which friend, serves no one, not us, not the people we surround ourselves with, not the people we do business with. Because if we can’t give ourselves grace first, we can’t give others grace. Remember that no one is perfect, perfect doesn’t exist. We are all right where we need to be in our journey and living life with grace is way more enjoyable than if we don’t.