- This video is sponsored by Brilliant. Be one of the first 200 to
sign up at the link below to get 20% off your annual
premium subscription. (clock ticking) It all sounds so simple. Sit down and do the work. But it isn't, is it? Ever since you merged your
workspace with your living space, ever since the days begin
to bleed into one another in an undifferentiated
cycle of light and dark, and ever since your
social interactions moved to small, fake islands, you
haven't been able to focus. Shia's impassioned calls
to action fail to stir you. And you're starting to
wonder if you'll ever be able to concentrate or get anything
worthwhile done ever again. This is really dramatic, isn't it? Okay, so I've heard this a lot lately. It is way harder to stay focused when you're working at
home versus your office or a coffee shop or wherever
it is that you normally work. The lack of separation between your work and your personal life, not to mention lots of
additional distractions floating around, means that
your home is kind of like the final boss of difficult workspaces. Well, no, that would probably be a Chuck E. Cheese, actually. But still, today, I want to talk about how you can actually stay
focused on your work, not to mention get started
on it in the first place, when you're working from home. And first, we need to
talk about intentionality. Intentionally, the most
useful thing you can do when you sit down to work is to set a strong intention first. If you're anything like me, I'm sure you can think back
to a time when you sat down, and instead of working intentionally, you found yourself bouncing
between mostly useless busywork tasks, things
like answering your email or checking your credit score. How is this even possible? These tasks are easy, and they give you an immediate
feeling of accomplishment. So they're tempting to work on. But they also cause you to
procrastinate on the work that you really should be doing, work that's truly meaningful to you. So really, they often end
up being a net negative. And setting a strong
intention before you work helps you to avoid them, at least until the real work is done. Now, one useful way of setting intentions is to follow the Rule of Three. This is a concept from Chris Bailey's book "The Productivity Project,"
and it's really simple. When you're writing out your daily plan, choose no more than three meaningful tasks that you intend to get done. And if you write your daily
list on a white board like I do, then you might wanna tweak how you use it by writing these three
intentions at the top and listing any smaller tasks below them in a de-prioritized way. Don't worry about those until
you get the main intentions taken care of. Then when it's time to
sit down for a session of focused work, look
at your list and choose just one item to work on. Really mentally commit to
devoting this working session only to that item. And just like that, you
now have a strong intention that will help to guide
you and keep you on task. Or at least you would, if you happen to be
sitting in an empty room in like a monastery with
no phone or internet access or anything else to distract you. But since you're at home, I would wager that your environment is absolutely teeming with distractions. And if your intentions
are gonna be translated into action, then these
need to be dealt with. There's just no getting around it. And that has to deal with
how your brain is wired. The human brain has evolved over millions of years to be
a highly sensitive instrument, ever attentive to the small changes in a constantly shifting and
often dangerous environment. And while this has
enabled the very survival of our species, it has also
made a lot of people very angry and has been widely
regarded as a bad move. And that is, not least of which, because it renders us easily distracted when we're trying to do complex work, even if we set a strong
intention beforehand. Because meaningful work is hard, because it requires us to really tax our higher brain functions, we are naturally resistant to doing it. And we'll take any excuse
to fixate on something else. Additionally, our brains
also have what's called a built-in novelty bias. Even when we're not
resisting difficult tasks, we are drawn to new things, kind of like flies to a light bulb. An analogy can be found in
an observation that I made back when I was in middle school. See, when I was a student, I used to carry a pack of
chewing gum in my pocket for, you know, myself. And any time that I would
get a piece of gum out, again, for myself, any
one of my classmates who saw the pack of gum
come out of my pocket would stop what they were doing and instantly become a mooch. - I will literally die
if you do not give me a piece of that right now. - And saying the word no
to any of these classmates was like hitting them in
the face with a brick. The wounded looks in their eyes told me that in denying them
that stick of Big Red, I had ripped apart their dreams, torn their hopes to ribbons, and extinguished every
spark of happiness and joy that had kept them pushing forward in this cruel, cruel world thus far. And yet, seconds before
this exchange would happen, not one of those classmates
was thinking about chewing gum. Hadn't even crossed their mind. And this is how our brains work. We have this novelty bias, but of course a novel object has to be brought to our
attention for it to be engaged. Out of sight, out of mind. It's why marketers and
advertisers talk so much about the AIDA framework, Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. It's the order of operations that governs most of the actions we take, including the ones that lead us to indulging in distractions. Also, if you don't chew Big Red, then. Fortunately, you can use this knowledge of human psychology to your advantage. If you know that being merely exposed to a potential distraction
is gonna put you aboard the AIDA Express on a one-way journey to wasting the rest of the day and looking at more cat pictures
than you probably need to, then all you need to do is ensure that you are not exposed
in the first place. So, Anna was gonna help me film a skit for this part of the video. Then, she fell victim
to the worst distraction in the entire house. In other words, remove
any potential distractions before you start working. Dealing with them ahead of time is infinitely easier
than trying to fight them in the moment. I swear, I'm just getting footage to make this point more visual. Six ours later... Now, you're not always
going to be able to do this. Chris Bailey's book, "Hyper Focus" breaks distractions down into
four different categories based on whether or not
you have control over them and whether you find them fun or annoying. And those that you have no control over, like loud colleagues, construction noises, or calls from your mom, are hard to plan for ahead of time. The best you can do is to deal with them while keeping your
original intention in mind, and then get back on track
as quickly as possible. But the distractions that you can control can also be dealt with in advance. And let's start with your phone, because it's probably the worst offender. Now, in the past, I have
been a bit soft on phones. "Put it on Do Not Disturb," I said. Use features like Focus mode on Android or Screen Time on iOS
to simply limit the time when you can access distracting apps. But you know what, I think it's time to get
a little bit tougher. If you don't need your
phone for your work, and let's face it, you probably don't, then keep it out of arm's reach. Personally, I've been setting my phone to Do Not Disturb mode for most of the day and also putting it on the printer on the other side of my office so, again, it's out of arm's reach. I also have it set so my favorite contacts can get through Do Not Disturb so my phone does actually work as a phone. But everyone else gets silenced, along with all app notifications. Your computer is also a
huge potential distraction, and that is mostly due to the fact that it's connected to the internet. And if that's a particular;y
big problem for you, then you might want to
actually disconnect it when you don't need it, either by disabling your WiFi or by actually unplugging
the ethernet cable. Barring that, there is one rule that I highly recommend you follow. Don't keep email or any
instant messsaging apps like Slack or Telegram or
whatever, Microsoft Teams, whatever it is, don't keep any
of these open while you work. These are constant sources of novelty, so they are distracting by nature. But they also come with the
additional social pressure you feel to respond to a
message when it comes in. Personally, I'm part of
several different Slack groups. And over the past few months, I've gotten into the bad
habit of keeping them open while I was working. And I realized that I
would sometimes spend entire workdays just chatting with people. So now, I only check Slack and email at specific times of the day, and I respond to everything in batches. To remove other
computer-based distractions, you can look into getting
a distraction blocker, which would block any websites or apps that you put onto a block list. I use one called Freedom, which
can be set up to block sites during prescheduled windows of time throughout the day or enabled
for timed work sessions. Now, I'm not gonna spend
a ton of extra time talking about apps here. But if you're looking for other ones that can help you focus, I've recently published
a page on my website called The Focus Toolkit
which recommends several more, and I'll have that linked in
the description down below. Lastly, since you're at home, ask yourself if there are
any other potential sources of distraction that are
particular pain points for you that you should address. Like maybe your game
consoles are a temptation. Well, if that's the case, put the power cord in another room until you're done with your work. Make it inconvenient to access them so you don't do it impulsively. I'd also recommend keeping a
distraction journal nearby. And whenever something pulls
you away from your work, make a note of what it was
and why it pulls you away so you can figure out how
to eliminate it in advance the next time you sit down. Now, once you've taken care
of all those distractions, the last thing you need
to figure out how to do is to get rid of the resistance
you feel towards starting. And this is serious. Mental resistance towards
difficult tasks is a big issue. For just one example,
there was once a study done on people who felt high levels of anxiety towards doing math. And the study found that
the mere anticipation of having to do math caused
increased brain activity in some specific regions of the brain, namely those that deal
with threat detection and even physical pain. And what this illustrates
is that certain parts of our brain view difficult,
mentally taxing tasks in the same way they would view touching a hot stove burner. Fortunately, this aversion you feel towards difficult tasks
really only affects you at the beginning. Once you get into it,
you build up momentum that overcomes that resistance. So all you need to do is
to reduce your resistance enough to get started. And you do this by making
the task feel less daunting. Now, the first method for doing that is to break down your tasks. In other words, narrow the
scope of your intention. Earlier on in the video, we talked about setting an intention by choosing one of the
three meaningful tasks on your daily plan. But if those tasks feel too big, then simply break one
down into smaller chunks. That way, you can pick one of those chunks and set it as your intention instead. For example, when I sit down to write, I never set my intention
as write a video script. Instead, I create multiple
subheadings based on an outline, and then I sit down with the intention of writing a draft of
just a single section. Now, if I put forward into more sections during that writing session, great. But that is not my intention
when I'm starting out. Secondly, commit to working only for a specific period of time, and make it low enough that
you no longer feel resistance. So if 30 minutes feels like
too much, then go for 15. Now, whatever time you decide to go with, set it on a timer, or at least put it on a timer app. Using one of these tools
creates a little bit of external pressure so
there's one less thing you have to rely on your willpower, your internal self-control to handle. So now you have all the
tools and and the concepts that you should need to sit down and do some focused work. But if you'd like to see an example, here's exactly how I do it. First, I will look at my white board, which now lists my top three intentions separately from other smaller tasks. And if each of these is too
big for a single work session, I will choose part of one and set my intention based on that. Next, I choose how long I'm going to work. And lately, that has been
about 35 minutes per session, at least for starters, which means the very next thing I do is set a 35-minute block timer on Freedom and choose a block list
that supports the task. For writing and video,
or for doing research, I use my Morning block list, which blocks Slack,
email, all social media, YouTube, and any busywork
sites like Google Analytics, which are a pretty big
distraction for me, personally. Then I'll chose something to listen to, which lately has been
either the focus sessions on brain.fm or my Sunday
Study playlist on Spotify, which I'll link to down below. And finally, I set an actual timer in a little Mac toolbar
app called Be Focused. This takes all of 30 seconds. And in that time, I've done
everything we've mentioned here. I've set an intention, I've removed all
distractions ahead of time, and I've eliminated my
brain's aversion to starting by choosing a manageable
time for my timer. And I've found that doing these few things enables me to stay focused for much longer and helps me be a lot more productive. And it makes sense, right? Once you've taken the big problem that seems so difficult to solve, the problem of not being able to focus, and broken it down, you're left with just a few smaller, easier to solve problems. And these quick actions
neatly take care of each one. And it's worth remembering that
all problems are like this. Once you've broken them
down into smaller parts, you start to see little angles
of attack that you can take for applying useful solutions. And doing this is a skill that you can get better
at through practice. And one great resource
for getting that practice is Brilliant. The math, science, and
computer science courses on Brilliant are all built to engage your problem solving abilities, as they quickly throw you into challenges that force you to really interact with the
concepts you're learning. And not only does learning with Brilliant help you to become a
better problem solver, since you're spending
the majority of your time actively solving problems, but it can also help you to get ahead and understand the world more thoroughly. Brilliant's library features
more than 60 in-depth courses with a full math suite
that covers everything from basic number theory
to high-level probability, along with science and
computer science courses. And that includes a new
course on neural networks, which are a fundamental part
of artificial intelligence. So to start learning and building your problem solving skills today, head on over to brilliant.org/thomasfrank and sign up. Link will be in the
description down below. And if you're one of the
first 200 people to do that, you're even going to get 20% off your annual premium subscription. So that is it. Thank you so much for watching. And if you like this video, definitely hit that Like button to show YouTube's algorithm what's up. And you may also want to go
follow me over on Instagram, because today, I've actually
put up a little bonus video with an additional tip for
dealing with a particular type of distraction that I know
a few of you deal with on a regular basis. So check that out. Link will be in the
description down below. Otherwise, you can subscribe right there or check out one more
video on this channel right over here, probably. I think this is where
the button's going to be. Yeah, smash your face into it and watch some more videos, dude. Otherwise, go do whatever you want, because as always, I'm not your dad.
