TL;DR Click here to skip why deep work is important and go straight to the 7 things I do

We spend our working days like this:

Constantly distracted by messages and emails.

Clicking from one chrome tab to the next attending to “emergencies” from other people while wondering what we were actually supposed to be doing again…

Everyday feels hectic but when the clock near 5PM you still feel like you didn’t really get anything important done today.

The truth is:

Important work requires deep thought.

Important work requires deep thought

And you can’t think deeply when you’re always distracted.

So when you’re always attending to other people’s “emergencies” you  think you’re doing the right thing but in actuality….

You’re creating a toxic, short-term driven environment which leads to:

• Stress
• Making mistakes
• Missing deadlines
• Unhappy clients
• And burnout in you and your colleagues

It’s bad for us.

It’s bad for our clients.

And it’s bad for our friends, kids and families….

Now, a lot of us try to blame technology for all this distraction.

But technology is not the problem.

Technology is not the problem

You know who’s fault it is…..?

It’s our brains.

Our brains are wired to pay more attention to that which is:

• different
• new
• and that which stands out.

And that worked great! For our hunter-gatherer ancestors…

But the world has changed.

We don’t live outside in nature anymore.

We live inside and look at screens all day:

In our current world we encounter HUNDREDS of new and different things that stand out EVERY DAY.

Be it people, online profiles, commercials, emails, messages etc.

And we CAN’T pay attention to it all as if it were all very important.

We need to PROTECT our brains from all this information.

Because if you want to:

• build a business
• be productive at work
• and help the world

you will need FOCUS to get your shit done.

In other words:

You need a lion’s mind.

You need a Lion’s mind.

You need a brain that can:

• focus on 1 thing for hours without interruption
• ignore distractions when they do arrive

Now, I still identify as human so I don’t claim to have a Lion’s mind yet but I’m getting close!

7 things to keep you focussed

Here’s the 7 things I do to protect my ATTENTION and FOCUS that I invite you to try as well:

• 1. Turn off notifications on your phone
  2. Use pomodoro
  3. Don’t get trapped in the newsfeeds of social media
  4. Get out of the YouTube rabbit hole
  5. Unfollow a lot of people and businesses on Instagram and Twitter and engage more intensely with who’s left
  6. Don’t allow push notifications
  7. Clean out your email inbox and subscriptions

If you want to do this too, follow the steps below:

1. Turn off notifications on your phone

📱 This works for mobile.

• • • It’s easiest to just delete time sucking apps like Facebook and Instagram from your phone and only use them on your desktop/laptop.That way, you’re free from notifications on your phone.If that’s too drastic for you (it shouldn’t be):Check out how to disallow notifications on your phone so they don’t distract you during the day and you don’t spend costly minutes and energy swiping through your news feeds.
    • You should at least get a distraction free “lock screen”.Or just totally disallow notifications from apps at all so you’ll only see if there is any news once you open an app yourself (without it blinking with a red notification bubble)

      

      

      

    • Most important time sucking and distracting notifications are from apps like:
      • WhatsApp
      • Facebook
      • Instagram
      • Snapchat
      • YouTube
      • Netflix
      • SMS (Messages)
      • Calls (Phone)But everyone has their own apps that steal away their time.Candy Crushers for example…. you know I’m talking about you.So go through your own apps and see for yourself which ones are important to you.Remember:It’s way easier to just DELETE the aforementioned apps from your phone.But if you’re not ready for that, make sure you DISALLOW NOTIFICATIONS so you don’t get distracted by them during your day.

2. Use pomodoro

Pomodoro is a technique that lets you take more breaks and get more work done (best of both worlds).

If you have never used it, try it for the next block of work you do.

If you have already used it, you might be like me and use it only for boring tasks (like copy pasting things in excel for example).

Download any pomodoro timer app you want, I use Tomighty but they all work.

3. Don’t get trapped in the newsfeeds of social media

👨🏼‍💻 This works only work for laptops/desktop.

If you use a laptop, this is a huge help.

It’s harder to control our attention on smartphones which is why I prefer to just delete those apps from my phone.

I do use social apps but only on a separate phone that never goes in my pocket and just stays in a drawer at home.

On my laptop I use the following Chrome extensions to help me stay focused and fight distraction:

• • • Use News Feed Eradicator for Facebook to get a Facebook experience where you are not sucked into the newsfeed because it shows you only a single quote instead of your news feed.
      
    • Use Twitter Newsfeed Eradicator for blocking the Twitter timeline so you can post a tweet or message someone without getting sucked into random Twitter threads in your timeline.
      
    • Use LinkedIn Newsfeed Eradicator for blocking the LinkedIn feed so you can post an update or message people without getting sucked into the news feed.
      

4. Get out of the YouTube rabbit hole

• Use Distraction Free for YouTube to get a clean YouTube experience (with no autoplay, comments, suggestions or related videos).Now you’ll only watch what YOU want to watch.Not what YouTube’s algorithm comes up with for you to watch.
  

5. Unfollow a lot of people and businesses on Instagram and Twitter and engage more intensely with those left

📱 👨🏼‍💻 This works for mobile and desktop.

• • • Go to your “Following” tab on Instagram and/or Twitter.Unfollow A LOT of the accounts you are following that are not critical to your inspiration or relation management.Think: “Will I DO something with what this person is tweeting?” If the answer is “no”, you unfollow.You’re only really taking action on people’s advice like 1/100th of the time anyway. You’re just consuming.So unfollow a lot.This way you can calm down your news feed and engage more intensely with the people and brands you really love.
      

6. Turn off push notifications

📱 👨🏼‍💻 This works for mobile and desktop.

• • • Block all browser notifications so you won’t get interrupted by push notifications from websites that want you to visit their site.
      If you’ve already allowed some, go to your Settings in Chrome to add them to your block list.

      

      

7. Clean out your email inbox and subscriptions

📱 👨🏼‍💻 This works for mobile and desktop.

Use Unroll.Me to:

• • • Unsubscribe from lots of newsletters at once
    • Roll up several emails in 1 email
    • Leave them in your inbox as they are

I’ve unsubscribed from 494 emails since using this tool.

And I’ve added 252 emails to my rollup so they come in only once a day instead of spread out over the day.

Only 70 emails go straight to my inbox when the emails are sent (for example payment confirmations, order tracking info and anything else that is time relevant).

8. BONUS: Do the same OFFLINE

Good.

Now do the same in your OFFLINE life.

Take out all the bullshit and unhealthy habits and negative people from your life.

Except the few people you can’t just cut out, some family/partner/friends/coworkers/bosses etc.

Now look at them and see the reason they are triggering you is because they are placed before you so you can GROW and EVOLVE as a more complete human being.

That’s why you can’t just cut out all the negative people in your life.

Some of them stay so you can learn how to deal with them in a positive way and make you a BETTER person.