Why I'm able to work 12 hours a day with 100% focus - 6 ONE-MINUTE Habits

foreign so I have these simple but incredibly effective habits to thank for the fact I'm able to stay focused allowing me to perform to the best of my ability and really excel in my job perhaps I'm going to show you in two sets the first three allow me to stay deeply focused while I'm working the second three really then prepare me outside of my work time to maximize my energy mental Clarity and motivation and together these habits really have been the keys and I've been working long hours so let's dive in habit number one is the time yourself to distraction so if you've ever watched another productivity video which you probably have if you're here you will know that multitasking is bad how Newport in his book deep work have gone over all of the many many studies showing that effectively when we multitask each time we change tasks we have to get over this activation energy hump I.E when you start a new task your brain has to get in the zone and if you regularly change between tasks you constantly have to expend energy which effectively makes us less productive and the best technique that I've picked up to combat about this constant task switching distraction from phone looking at notification replying to email is one that I picked up from the awesome Mike and mati over at Cajun koi Academy which is to set an upward timer where you effectively start the timer on your phone maybe put on Do Not Disturb and then I just get to work and see how long it takes for me to get distracted whenever I then glance over at my phone and realize I've only been focused for three and a half minutes I then get back to it I don't count that as like needing to restart the timer I just get on with my work and stay focused and I create this kind of competition with myself of how long can I go without losing focus I've always found techniques like the Pomodoro bit too restrictive in that if I count down from 25 minutes and I'm still in a state of flow I kind of want to continue working and enjoying that state of flow so set the timer put your phone on work or do not disturb mode maybe put on an app like endle or your favorite YouTube Lo-Fi music playlist and just get in the zone and work and I've been doing this for a couple of months now and as a productivity YouTuber I've genuinely been so shocked by how poor my focus has got can constant distraction at work and so it's been a hugely welcome technique my personal best is currently 1 out of 15 minutes so give this a go drop down in the comments how long you manage whether it's three minutes or three and a half hours and make me look bad I think you'll be really surprised how effective such a simple technique is the second habit is the set personal deadline so Hofstadter's law states that things always take longer than expected even when we take into account this law so if I think a task is going to take an hour and I give myself 15 minutes of contingency time the task inevitably ends up taking an hour and 45 minutes for Sydney Opera House they built in loads of contingency time for giving a generous four years to complete the project it took 14. I think this law is particularly dangerous when we're working really long hours so if you're working a 14-hour day and a task has taken two hours longer than you thought it would I think by the time you get to 1am it's like oh well I'm up this late anyway like what's the point in stopping I might as well just spend a bit longer on it and I think that's a really dangerous position to get into you can kind of get into a habit of working really long hours even when it's not necessary So to avoid this unhealthy expansion of work I find it really helpful to set personal deadlines to myself that are different to the actual deadline so if today is Monday and if you're given a task to complete by end of the day on Thursday you think it's going to take around five hours I would recommend if at all possible setting yourself a personal deadline of tomorrow evening Tuesday evening and giving yourself maybe a three hour window in which to do it get that piece of work done way in advance of the actual deadline so you reduce stress on yourself you avoid Hospital's law and you really force yourself to focus on getting it done to meet your personal deadline the beauty of this is that you avoid work just expanding into Wednesday night for example before the deadline just spending longer and longer trying to perfect this thing so often I found that the longer I spend on something I really get such diminishing returns on the time I'm spending on it and it actually often makes the end product worse and second this gives you a little bit of distance between when you first complete the task and when you then over the next day or two go to look at it re-read your work and you will almost certainly find areas to improve it's almost like rereading an email after you just sent it in spotting errors except in this case when you've set a personal deadline you haven't yet sent the email so you can make those Corrections the third habit is the plan to work in waves so when you're sat down and you're blocking out your day try to think about your day as kind of having these waves these peaks of energy and focus and you need to try and balance having some very significant peaks in intense work where you're really focused on the task but between those having slightly shallower Peaks where you're maybe doing less intense work and you should also obviously be making sure there are some troughs where you're having breaks although there isn't tons of scientific consensus around this count Newports suggests that deep work is only possible for around four hours a day and I think from my own anecdotal experience it's probably true that your mind is really in flow is is probably only possible for maximum maybe five or six hours a day when you're planning your day you should also think about what you're doing when based on your chronotype so in Daniel Pink's book when he talks about the idea that early birds and night owls have quite different energy patterns throughout the day effectively if you're an early bird you should spend the morning doing your most focused logical tasks and if you're a night out you should leave these to later in the day maybe around three four five six pm even and I have a much more detailed video about this so go check that out essentially we want to achieve deep focus in every single time slot when we're doing a specific task but variety between the different tasks we allocate throughout the day think of this kind of like going to the gym and you don't work out just your biceps non-stop for two hours you do a few different muscle groups and the brain is kind of the same you need to excise your brain in different ways throughout the day to get the most out of it now before we go through the second half of the habits I want to give a quick shout out to menos which Beth and I created to become the go-to brand for ambitious young professionals we felt like athletes turned to naive adventurers to North Face and young professionals to nothing basically so that's why we created menos made from 15 recycled plastic bottles the menos backpack has all you need from a commuter backpack laptop sleeve notepad pouch Pockets water bottle holder plus unlike top loaders it opens 180 degrees so you can easily pack all your weekend Essentials or reach for something in the bottom of your bag without having to tip out the entire contents menos is also for people who want to wear something that says they care about our planet we collect 100 ocean bound plastic bottles collected by local people in developing Coastal communities who are paid for their work and plant a tree with every single purchase our packaging is also compostable and recyclable so yeah to say I am an ambitious young professional head over to we are menos.com and get your menos backpack now and as a thank you for watching this video in particular I'm gonna drop a discount code down in the description which can only be used 100 times so go use it now if you don't want to miss out the backpacks are also available on Amazon Prime in the UK okay second three one minute habits were all about how I get my mind and my body in a place where it's able to stay focused physically and mentally for significant periods of time when I'm tired and under stress and habit number four is to smile I say this because it's so easy when you're busy you have this constant stream of to do I need to get through that and that and that and you do that that and you end up moaning about life you end up in this kind of cycle where you just need to get the next thing done to get through this period of busyness so that eventually after all that work you get to a place where it's less busy it's calmer and I can enjoy that time but right now I just need to get through this look I get it like it's obviously inevitable that sometimes you'll be overworked you'll be really tired and it will be stressful and I'm not saying you should try to make everything completely Jolly all the time that just isn't realistic but just because you are super busy right now does not mean your life has to be miserable for me there are two very small practical things that I focus on to try and improve my mood when I'm busy the first of those as the name of this habit suggests is humor trying to actually make people laugh trying to have a bit of a joke about the situation we're in and how tough this is being in it together and creating that communal Bond there's been so many studies that have shown laughter releases serotonin which is the neurotransmitter targeted by most antidepressants it makes you feel better laughter also releases endorphins another of the bodies feel good chemicals via opioid receptors which also help calm us when things are tough laughter is insanely powerful and really should not be underestimated the second practical focus is FICA which is the Swedish word for sort of like communal coffee and cake for 10 minutes okay not exactly a one minute habit but 10 to 15 minutes spent during a really tough period having coffee with a colleague having a laugh showing them some silly thing from Married at First Sight Australia just bringing some levity to the situation is incredibly powerful and can put a smile on people's faces and if you're working really hard what's another 10 to 15 minutes spent at the end of the day when you've made your day that much happier habit number five is to set a daily non-negotiable just one thing that you never give up or only very very exceptionally give up but never for more than a day or two when you're working really hard for me this is time spent outside it could be as little as 10 minutes for a quick stroll or a very quick run but I just need to see daylight and fresh air the final habit is the plan at the end of your day when you get to the end of a long day working the last thing you want to do is spend any longer working so it's like I just want to run for the hills and get out of here but just spend one to five minutes jotting down your priorities for the following morning it one allows you to get all of that stuff out of your head which means that you'll have a much more relaxing clear-minded evening and probably sleep better and second similarly to how Ernest Hemingway would finish mid-sentence when he finished a writing session so that he could continue the next day from that middle of the sentence at the end of the day you write down those things things that are your priorities while you're still in the flow of work so that the next day when you pick up that work you can be like ah yeah I remember that was a thing I was going to continue working on and you get back into a flow much more easily so yeah I really hope you've enjoyed this video please do give it a like if you found it helpful and then comment how long you managed to do when you're timing yourself to distraction and finally go grab yourself a Manos backpack support me and Beth in our adventure they look absolutely awesome take them to work show them off tell your friends about them we massively appreciate your support and I really look forward to speaking again very very soon

Channel: Liam Porritt

Views: 559,179

Keywords: focus, flow, how to stay focused, how to concentrate, work 12 hours a day, study, how to study, how to focus for long hours

Id: y1oFxKxAmWE

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 30 2023