[Transcription]
Welcome, welcome. Rob Brown of Encore Partners here.
Welcome to day 3 of the 21-day Time Mastery challenge. At this point I’m betting that if you haven’t gotten a half of an hour, an hour, maybe even more back in your day, you see how you will.
That’s awesome. Let’s keep going.
Today we’re going to continue talking about creating space. I want to build some more space into your day. Take some things away from you, take some things that are crowding you…so you have more time to spend on those things that are most important.
Today’s a big day. In fact, today’s activities may save you more time than anything else you do during this program.
I want to put you on a social media, smartphone and distraction diet.
Yes, a diet from social media, your smartphone, and all the distractions that come and are related to the technology and things that surround us that keep us from concentrating.
You see, when we allow ourselves to be distracted by the things that are coming in around us, those sensory points that cause us to stop what we’re doing even if we don’t realize that we’re stopping what we’re doing, you know, to spend a few minutes checking a text or checking into Facebook, whatever it might be…
When you’re doing that, you’re wasting time whether you think it’s a few minutes or not.
How often do you jump onto Facebook? You say, “I’m going to spend just a couple of minutes” and the next thing you know a half an hour has gone by?
Things like that add stress to your day because you’re taking time away from things that are more important. It’s distracting you. It’s reducing your concentration on the things that are most important, and it’s a form of procrastination.
We don’t like to admit it, but we all procrastinate more than we think that we do.
A friend of mine, Perry Marshall, who wrote the book on 80/20 productivity, says:
“Most procrastination isn’t doing nothing, it’s doing what’s comfortable and mediocre.”
It’s hopping over to Facebook, it’s paying attention to that TV that’s running in your office, it’s responding to meaningless texts or emails when you could be concentrating on something that’s really going to move the needle for you personally or in your business.
So, that’s why we need to go on a diet.
Let me give you some steps for making that happen.
First of all, silence your cell phone. Whenever possible, silence your cell phone and if you can’t turn it off, if it’s essential for calls that may come in from family or important clients, create special ringtones so that you only answer it or pay attention to texts when those ringtones come in.
But, whenever possible, silence your cell phone.
Most of those calls and texts aren’t important. They’re a distraction, they’re causing you to procrastinate, and you’re wasting time.
You’re reacting.
Here’s another big one: turn off the TVs and radios in your office.
I was just talking with a client of mine a couple of days ago. He was so excited, he built out some space in his new office. He built some space to have a television so that it created a feeling of business and busyness in his office.
He said, you know, I don’t pay attention to it that often but it’s good to have it there, it’s good for the environment.
I think that’s absolutely wrong.
When you have the news or financial news or other things going on around you, it catches your attention. It can’t help but catch your attention, that’s what it’s intended to do.
Those commercials that come on in between the news segments…those are intended to get your attention. They’re intended to be distractions.
Turn that TV off.
I regret the day when cable became so easy to get and things like Bloomberg and CNBC became so popular that we all felt that we had to have TVs in our offices…so we could keep up with “things”.
Truth: It’s much easier to keep up with things if you don’t have the television on.
And the same thing applies to the radio.
Yeah, I know it’s nice to have some music going on in the background, but it can’t be distracting, something that isn’t filled with commercials…and certainly not the news or talk radio.
Those are distractions. Turn off those televisions and those radios.
The next thing, and this might sound almost impossible, but I want you to delete your social media and news apps from your smartphone. Yes, just take your social media and your news apps off of your smartphone.
When they’re on they’re too easy to get to and we have a tendency to want to use them…again and again. They are a way to be doing something when we’re not really doing something.
It’s that procrastination that makes getting the important things done so much harder.
If you don’t believe that you can’t do without them, at least for the next few weeks, turn them off and see if you really miss them.
Next…turn off your push messages.
Go into the settings on your iPhone, or if you’re using an Android I imagine there’s a similar settings functionality, and look at all of the apps and things that are on there that can push messages out to you, even push email out to you.
Those are distractions.
Turn off the push messages.
The systems that we’ll build through this program will make sure that you don’t miss important things…you don’t need to set yourself up in a way that you’re constantly distracted.
Next, don’t check social media during your business day.
That’s right, don’t check social media during your business day.
95% of the people that I work with don’t use social media as part of their ongoing business strategy. So, why would you check it during the course of the day?
It’s something that you do for entertainment.
It’s something that you do to distract yourself.
It’s something that you do to procrastinate.
Don’t check social media during the day.
What I would do…even if it’s just for the next three weeks, limit social media to 30 minutes per day. You know, for the next three weeks, next 30 days, limit social media to 30 minutes per day.
Get rid of that bad habit of feeling like you always have to be connected.
I mean, come on, you haven’t kept up with those high school friends in years and now you’re watching what they say every single day. You look at the political stuff, it just makes you angry. Limit yourself to 30 minutes of social media per day.
It’s critical, critical to the social media diet.
It’s critical to getting rid of distractions.
So, that’s your assignment for today.
- Create ringtone for essential calls and texts, if you can’t silence your cell phone.
- Turn off your television and your radio during the day, don’t leave it on, you don’t need that background noise.
- Delete social media and news apps from your smartphone.
- Turn off push messages, including your emails.
- Don’t check social media during the business day and limit social media to 30 minutes per day for at least the next three weeks or 30 days.
I want you to build some good habits.
Again, this will create a ton of space.
I’ve talked with people who have gone on this type of diet and they have found that they have gotten 90 minutes, even 2 hours, back in their day.
When they really think about how much time, how many diversions, they made when they go for that quick social media check-in and then they’re on there for an hour.
How often does that happen to you?
So, take the diet seriously and you’ll begin to get even more time back in your day and you’ll be well on your way to getting 5 to 10 hours back in your week…each and every week.
Thanks for listening. We’ll talk again tomorrow.