Podcast: Play in new window | Download
How do you keep your focus? Keep your focus in spite of adding new tasks, new projects, new activities to your schedule?
How do you prevent it from disrupting your life? How do you become one of those people who can do more and therefore have more?
This is the question many of you have asked me.
Most people are unproductive. period. So this article is mostly for people who are productive in their main occupation, until…
Until what? Until something else comes up, and then they lose it all. Again and again.
Until they start to produce no results neither in the old nor in the new activity…
Or alternatively they completely forget about the true and tried, and focus only on the new. If the old is a business, a business that provides you with your livelihood: it can go under.
So adding something new upsets the apple cart and you need to be careful a how you do it.
I learned in Landmark Education, that the way to do it is ‘wedging it in’. But in my experience that is very disruptive.
I am going through this exact thing right now: my new activity is disrupting my routine:
I have been, for years, writing my daily articles, running my many workshops, creating new ones, and it was ‘smooth sailing’.
Then I decided that having all the old and expensive programs I bought and still have in their original binders is a shame. I decided that I should sell them on ebay.
And suddenly I am having a difficulty writing articles, running my workshops. I am even having difficulty sleeping.
In spite of the fact that I have decided to only work on the new project 30 minutes a day.30 minutes shouldn’t be too much, given that I have been reading or watching online TV shows way more than a measly 30 minutes a day.. So why is it disrupting, maybe even destroying my smooth sailing business?
Good question, and I bet I am not the only person struggling with this.
After all even just taking a course or a workshop with me can be disruptive. even if it is only once a month with some homework, like a few minutes a day.
I don’t have an answer for this conundrum yet. so I am going to take a break from this article, and let the question percolate. and hopefully I’ll get some message from the ‘invisible’, the beyond, and I can share it with you.
Not ready, some insights:
I am seeing that almost any project is a distraction. It’s new and for some weird reason, it is all consuming.
Now, what if the statement that humans only have a finite amount of attention to give? or as Tai Lopez calls it, they have only a certain amount of glycogen…
Is my making home made sugar free chocolate using up a lot of the ‘glycogen’? Glycogen I used to use to write articles? Muscletest says: yes.
oohoo, not good.
Does the same thing been happening since I’ve been ordering food from a more interesting place? yes.
So is this what is going to happen to people who learn to become a producer in my Integrity Workshop?
No, says muscletest.
Why? I am now really curious.
The Technique of being productive I learned from Robert Plank.
He, for many years, climbed steadily as an internet marketer. He went from being a software person, awkward and shy, to a confident content creator. A content provider, webinar teacher, author, whatever. His videos on youtube are really good.
I am not in touch with him nowadays, since he has married and has a son.
Marriage and having a child are distractions. Distractions that my not coexist with being a high producing business person. distractions for all the reasons I have listed above. especially if you want to work from the same physical location where the child and the spouse are…
From what I can see he has lost his touch… let’s hope he recovers soon.
I wouldn’t have a business that works and supports me and that I do as if it were nothing without his courses.
But, of course, it is not nothing, my business, and it is, like any business, is vulnerable to extracurricular activities… like it’s been proven to me these past weeks.
OK, I still don’t have a coherent answer about how to add a new project to your existing life, but I feel I am getting closer.
The secret of Robert’s technology is to have a time limit, a schedule, and a focus on the added tasks.
I will teach it in the Integrity Workshop, starting the second session, but I may give a little bit of taste of it, just enough to make you dangerous in the first session that is coming up really fast: in fact it is tomorrow at 2 pm.
One of the brilliant aspect of Robert’s technology is that it doesn’t care if you are using it on your main business, main agenda, or on extracurricular activities, or on restoring your integrity.
It is like a kitchen knife: you can use it to slice vegetables, or you can use it to dig out some carrots from the soil, if you don’t have a better tool.
Don’t have a main activity in your life? It is all like a heap of todo stuff?
Then maybe your first task will be to create some priorities and some order, so you know what you are about.
A few years ago I had an altercation with my very first student in this business. She spent almost all her time straightening her house, so when her doctor husband gets home, it is all nice and cozy.
I’d just bought a coffee mug in the grocery store that every time I looked at it made me laugh. The inscription on the mug said: A woman’s work is never done… Why start?
I brought it to one of my calls, and was laughing uproariously. She took offense.
I saw her only once since then…
But something magical happened: she re-prioritized her life, and she is now an artist.
So no matter what, she got redirected by my mug and my laughing… I say.
I just visited her store on Etsy, and it’s fabulous.
More insights: New stuff that is designed for you to grow
Almost a year ago I signed up to get a mobile app, and then a little later I signed up to a coaching program that had something different every day of the week, including Sundays.
Based on the ‘glycogen’ theory of focus and attention, you would expect that my business suffered.
But it didn’t. So the ‘glycogen’ theory only applies if… if what? If the added activity is not serving the main activity, in my case: my business. If the new activity depletes you.
You need to ‘refuel yourself’… and that is what I did: I used this new added activity as a refuel.
First I was floundering, flailing, researching… and that really threatened my business. I am old and a phone is really small and my eyes have been bad since I was 9 years old… so it was a challenge.
So I hired a girl for $250 to start the mobile app for me, and also tutor me. She was perfect, and I was one of the first people who bought the app, who had a functional app that I could invite my customers to.
And the tutoring made it easy to continue where she left off…
It stopped being a hindrance, and became a motivator. I revisited old programs, reworked them, and got more inspired than I was before.
Then the coaching program threatened to distract, but I decided that I am doing it to support my business, and not for any other purposes, and that new context calm down the hubbub. Today I only follow two of the seven topics, and every time I do, I see something more for my business. Small things, but potent things.
I can say that in my case an addition to my already busy schedule did not disrupt, in fact it ‘fertilized it’.
Here is another example:
When I started this business, I still had two other businesses going. I was webmaster to an advertising site. And I was working as a massage therapist.
Those were my main source of income, and the yourvibration.com was an add-on.
I scheduled myself to write an article every day as soon as I woke up, or if I didn’t have anything to say, as soon as I had an idea for an article. Then I put it on my blog, and returned to my main business.
When I started to see results, money coming in on the yourvibration.com site, I slowly let go first of the webmastering and then of the massage business.
On the opposite spectrum: I also have an example:
At some point I decided to put my energy remedies on Amazon’s marketplace.
They sold well. I got greedy, my desire number was sky high. It was a mighty disruption, even after Amazon removed my products… then I was distracted by grief.
Greed made me outcome dependent, the death of smooth sailing… the death of peace of mind, the death of doing business well… at least I say so. Is it true for everyone? Muscletest says: yes.
OK, you can say ‘Too much information’ and you may be right. But I want to be able to help you make a good decision so if you decide to do the Integrity Workshop: it will be a ‘fertilizing’ add-on, an add-on that adds to your life instead of disrupting it. Enrichment instead or disruption.
If your tendency is to be outcome dependent, even if it only shows up obviously in conversations, like you can’t take guidance, because you have to be right all the time, then maybe you first need to deal with your outcome dependence… because either the workshop will be disruptive, or you won’t be able or willing to take the guidance.
Lastly I have a little ‘inside information’ for you: the vantage point of the coach or the teacher:
If you consistently refuse to heed the coaching, to take the coaching, to appreciate the coaching, to consider the coaching, then the relationship between you and the coach will be less than optimal.
Why? Because there is no integrity in who you are being. Either you need to find a coach whom you trust and willing to follow. Or you need to change your attitude from ‘I know everything‘ to ‘I am here to learn and for you to guide me.‘ Even if you just put in your two cents worth that conflicts with the coach’s instructions.
Here is an example: A client’s husband is ill. Muscletest says the Big Bundle can’t help in this case, the illness is too aggressive for that. So I need to do the healing personally.
The first healing session goes really well. The energy, like heated knife in butter, kills the offending cells. So I share it with the client. Not the husband, my client.
So my client in her imminent wisdom, goes to her husband and forces him to use the Big Bundle. that is her own two cents worth.
The following healing session is an utter failure. The poor husband is not available to be in healing, he is struggling with the Big Bundle…
And your need to be smarter than me kills your results.
The ‘about-me’ number, i.e. the inverse of humility, you need to lower it. or all the coaching will be wasted on you. Humility is the name of the game. If you cannot be humble, no one can coach you.
Back in 1987 I learned a very important move that made me trainable:
I declared myself incompetent in the topic. Was I truly incompetent? No. But declaring myself made me listen to everything I was taught as if it were a life-jacket thrown at me out on sea.
And that has been the secret of my low about-me score and my high humility, in spite of my soul correction that says ‘I already know everything.’
OK, if you are ready to embark on the Integrity Workshop, learn what you can, and build a life worth living, here is the link.
There is a last minute bonus: I am going to add two more videos to the section where we talk about empowering context. That’s been the hardest part to master, to make it easier for you. I will add it next week
Sign up to the Integrity Workshop
