It has been a great journey so far as we have explored the first 4 of 7 Keys for Living a Productive Life from my book: The Productive Life. In this message I am going to explore Key #5: Focus Your Mind.

How is your eyesight? In my younger days, I never appreciated how critical clear vision is until I started struggling to read in low light and, over the last decade, started to struggle with seeing stuff in the distance clearly. As an avid birdwatcher, who is on a quest to photograph every single bird species in Southern Africa (I have snapped 717 and have under 300 to still find and photograph), I know that good eye sight and the ability to focus is critical. The last 9 months have been rather hectic – an eye disease caused bleeding in my eye balls which forced me to have a surgery (known as a vitrectomy where the fluid is extracted and replaced and the retina is lasered back into place) and then as a side-effect I developed cataracts. I think I am somewhat qualified to talk about the importance of Focus!

Everywhere you turn these days you hear stuff about neuroscience. My wife and I have just started a Udemy course called SuperLearner 2 and we are so excited about going deeper with memory insights and boosting our reading speeds and comprehension rates.

This Key is epic and, if I can say so myself as the author, it is a cracker of a chapter. I actually believe that Attention Management is as important as, if not more important than, Time Management! The ability to control our focus is critical. Paul J. Meyer said: “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort” and part of the opening quote for this chapter is from Tanya Dalton: “Productivity is focusing on what matters most.” This Key will help you take control of your mind and enable you to do your best work in every area of your life as you learn the 3 Secrets to Focusing Your Mind:

1. Live Your Passion: Focus starts with doing stuff that we are passionate about. When I am working on something that I am passionate about, just about nothing can distract me!!! I am really excited to share a tool with you that will help you discover your passion in life – I call it the Passion Indicator. It is based on a set of questions that help you discover your passion and write it out. One of the six questions in the Indicator is: “What activities leave you energised but not drained?” When you work in the area of your passion you will be refreshed and not depleted!!! If I were you, I would buy the book just to get access to the Passion Indicator.

2. Train Your Brain: Dr. Amber Selking, a performance coach from the US, gave me permission to include an overview of what will be a book launched within the next year on Building Championship Mindsets. She writes about 7 building blocks for building a championship mindset and her fifth building block is Attention Control. I have recommended her podcast for this Key and you should consider subscribing even if you are still to buy my book. It is called: Building Championship Mindsets. There are also insights from the field of neuroscience in this secret from writers like John Assaraf, Dr Caroline Leaf and you should definitely subscribe to the podcast by Jim Kwik entitled: Kwik Brain.

3. Limit Your Distractions: The third secret to focus your mind is to limit distractions. You can’t have your phone distracting you every time an email or social media message pops up because it takes from 7 to 20 minutes to refocus every time you are distracted!!! Scary, right? I have a reputation of always responding to people who message me, but honestly, I do it in a way that does not cause me to lose my focus when I am working!!!

How are you doing with focus? Do you need some help in this area? Grab a copy of my book and invest in your development using this link: http://bit.ly/TPLBOOK. You can also get a free chapter using this link: https://bit.ly/TPLSampleChapter

In the next message I will explore Key #6: Know Your Self which will help you learn how to work with who you are to become productive! After all, stress-free productivity is what we are after!

Your productivity coach

Mark