Building courage and becoming aware of a scattered mind can go hand in hand. Unfortunately, with a lot of “noise” in the online space, it can be easy to start chasing a lot of shiny objects – and suddenly realize that your day has disappeared before even realizing what’s happening!
In this episode, I explain:
- How to quiet some of the noise so you can focus.
- Why you need a sign for your door!
- How to create better goals.
Reduce overstimulation to double your revenue and time off.
– David Wood
To find out more about Linda and view the podcast, go to https://sisterhoodofsweat.com/sos-podcast/
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– TRANSCRIPT –
Linda Mitchell: [00:00:00] But one thing I really want to address, which I think is a problem right now with the online space. There’s so much noise. This person’s over here on their chit-chat points to this, do that. This person’s like I’m a model on my yacht and this for, like, you’ve got all this shiny object syndrome going on and I call it chasing every squirrel.
It’s a freaking epidemic among all of us business owners. How in the world do we quiet the noise and get in touch with what it is we’re here for and what it is we really want?
David Wood: [00:00:42] Yeah. I think one of the reasons we go to retreats or did before the pandemic is we want to get away from a lot of the input and have a reset.
So I imagine 200 years ago, things were very simple. You might wake up, you know, guy might be like, I’m going to chop down that tree. That’s his day. Goes out, chops down the tree. Stops for lunch. Finishes it. Comes back, has dinner. Very simple. But in the information age, one of the problems is we have constant access to information.
And the first step, again, just like with courage, the first step is awareness. Let’s start to realize how scattered we are. You can stop by looking at your goals. For the first 12 months, do you have 20 goals? Do you have three? This is assuming you have them. If you don’t, there’s a tip, go and get some goals.
And then when you wake up, what are you going to do that day? There are a lot of demands on your time. Your family might want something. Your customers might want something. Your staff might want something. Your boss might want something. Your friends might be wanting something, and then there’s what you want.
And it can get lost in the shuffle. So, what I recommend is we got us, we got to have moments and even blocks of time, I call them sprints, where we’re going to turn off distractions and we’re actually going to get a good chunk of something done. So, and I have a checklist for this, and I’m happy to give this away to listeners in a few minutes, but one of the things on the checklist is book sprints in your calendar. Two hour blocks where you turn everything off and you get something done. You put a sign on the door, tell him, tell the family I’ll come out and I’ll hug you. When the alarm goes off. Let me do this because I’m having trouble focusing. And then you turn off the phone, turn off notifications on your computer, and then you choose what you’re going to do.
Now, this sounds simple, Linda, but it’s not easy because you see let’s suppose you get this far. You’ve booked the sprint. You’ve shown up. You’ve got the sign on the door and you’ve turned off notifications on your computer and your phone’s on airplane mode. Okay. You’re doing well. You got like six things out of 15 on the checklist already, but you sit down.
What are you going to choose? Oh, I work on my website for two hours. That doesn’t work. That’s not a goal. I’m going to draft, I’m going to have a complete draft of my website with bio photos, pain points and benefits. Okay. That’s concrete. Now you know what you’re going to do? The challenge then is can you actually do that because your mind will say, oh, Hey, Linda. You forgot to order that thing on Amazon. Hey, for this trip, that’s coming up. You didn’t order those medications. You gotta send that text and oh, you know what? I’m going to need to pack that thing. I’ll just grab it out of the drawer and go and put it in.
I’ll find myself even during a sprint doing some other tasks that is not written down on the paper in front of me. And I will say out loud, David step away from the task. That is not what you said. Step up. Because the human mind is like a monkey on crack . I say, chasing monkey treats. And so we need to come back to the some kind of discipline and just do what you said. Now, the first few times you do this listeners, you’re probably going to be really bad at it.
And that’s okay. Because again, the first thing we want is awareness. I started doing something today and I’ve got written down on the sheet of paper, these five things I want to do. And in the middle of it, I go to check email and I was just, I was amazed at it. I’m like, David. I can already feel some tension in my body.
I’ve got a limited time in an hour. I’ve got a phone call I need to do. These are the things I want to get done. What possible gain is there to looking at email, which has gone to load my brain with more things that it wants to get done right now, because it isn’t very good with time management. It just wants everything.
Now don’t do that to yourself. We want to filter out the noise and we can start by booking the sprints, turning off the distractions and actually getting good chunks of productive time.
