Free to Focus Read online

  Lower heart rate

  Decreased blood pressure42

  Many of these benefits rebound to our mental health, of course, forming a virtuous circle. We can look at these benefits like optional add-ons or upgrades to our lives. But the truth is they’re normative. We’re hardwired to spend time playing, relaxing, and resting, especially in natural environments. If you want to stay sharp, you need regular injections of recreation, exercise, and outright play into your busy schedule.

  Practice 6: Reflect

  Another source of rejuvenation is reflection. This could take many forms, but most often it’s something like reading, journaling, introspection, meditation, prayer, or worship. So much of what we’ve covered so far emphasizes the body: sleeping, eating, moving, and so on. All of these things are good for the soul. But we also need to spend time intentionally rejuvenating our minds and hearts. This first section of Free to Focus is called Stop, and reflection is often the last thing we stop for—if we ever do. But we need to make time for these sorts of reflective practices. If we don’t, we run the risk of losing ourselves.

  It is so easy for busy people like us to rush through life at warp speed, taking action and making decisions without ever stopping to figure out where we’re going, who we’re affecting, and what all these actions and decisions are adding up to. This lack of awareness over weeks, years, and decades creates a life lived haphazardly, on the fly, and as a reaction to outside forces. That’s not the kind of life you want to look back on.

  Along with our frenetic schedules, social media and our instant-gratification culture make this doubly important. It’s possible to skip along the surface of our life and never go deeper than status updates, one-click purchases, and streaming television binges. We’ll never fully rejuvenate unless we slow down and contemplate our life and the way we move through the world.

  Strive to make time for reflection every day. What ideas really matter to you? What are you feeling? Give yourself space to think through your day, including your daily decisions, wins, losses, ideas, insights, and everything else that made the day unique. This exercise ensures that you’re connected to a bigger why and that you don’t get lost in the minutiae of life. Staying firmly connected to your why will give you the energy and strength you need to complete your work and finish the race—every day.

  Practice 7: Unplug

  So how do you win with these practices? It’s not an empty question. Even if you buy into them, it can be hard to do them. If we’re habituated to overwork, it can be easy to stay connected to our jobs even when we’re trying to disconnect. We drift into unhelpful patterns like weekend working and skipping sleep when we should be using our margin to renew our energy. The phone is always in the pocket, the email is a click away, and notifications are pinging and buzzing, demanding your attention.

  You could invest in a personal, room-size Faraday cage and shield yourself from any incoming signal. But that might be overkill. Still, we need some sort of way to ensure we unplug. Since this is a struggle for so many, I recommend creating several rules to help you disconnect during nights, weekends, and vacations. Here are four I use (with one exception you’ll find in chapter 8). Feel free to create your own and share them with anyone who will help you implement them.

  First, don’t think about work. Put it out of your mind. Preoccupation with work while you’re spending time with family and friends makes you physically present but mentally absent. Even when you’re there, you’re not there. Be mindful of worry creep. When you sense yourself thinking about work, focus on something else instead.

  Second, don’t do any work. This includes staying in touch and up to date. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb, ignore your email and Slack, and shut everything down. You might put your phone in a drawer. Close desktop apps like Slack or email and don’t open them during your downtime.

  Third, don’t talk about work. Avoid spending downtime discussing projects, sales, promotions, or work problems. This gives you and your family a much-needed break. Give people around you permission to call foul when you drift back into jobspeak.

  Fourth, don’t read about work. This includes work-related books, magazines, and blogs, as well as things like podcasts and training videos. Cultivate other interests and use your free time to develop passions that aren’t work-related.

  Next to getting ample sleep, unplugging might be the most challenging of the seven practices. When researchers asked one thousand college students across ten countries to disconnect from their devices for just twenty-four hours, most couldn’t do it. “I felt like a drug addict,” said one. “I sat in my bed and stared blankly,” reported another. “I had nothing to do.”43 That’s precisely why the other practices are so important. I’m not suggesting you disconnect from all your devices; that might be helpful, but it’s a bit extreme. Instead, I am suggesting filling your rejuvenation time with other meaningful nonwork activities, such as play, connection, and reflection so you fully rejuvenate.

  Renewing Yourself

  I hope this chapter has blown away some longstanding myths when it comes to managing time vs. managing energy. Remember, time is not a renewable resource. It is fixed. You can’t do anything to add a single second to the day. However, energy is renewable. It flexes, and we can take positive steps to make it flex for our benefit. We can increase our energy exponentially when we sleep, eat, move, connect, play, reflect, and unplug for rejuvenation. Then we can direct that energy however we want, in ways designed to feed our why, improve our lives, and lead to the freedom we’re all looking for.

  Amazing things happen when we Stop. We create space to Formulate, to get a clear picture of where we want to go and what we want our lives to become. We take the time to Evaluate, understanding exactly where we are and what our current situation looks like. And we make the time to Rejuvenate, investing in ourselves and our energy reserves through intentional steps forward in our rest, health, and relationships. It may have seemed counterintuitive to start with Stop, but I hope by now you’ve seen the value of taking a breath. As we’ve learned, you can’t get where you’re going unless you know where you are now and where you want to go. When you’ve completed the following exercises, you’re ready to move on to Step 2: Cut. That’s when you’ll really start to see your new productivity vision take shape.

  REJUVENATION SELF-ASSESSMENT

  It can be difficult to make time for things like rest, healthy eating and exercise, relationships, and periods of reflection. But life is better when we make these things a priority. We end up with more energy and stamina, and that ultimately improves every area of our lives—including our productivity.

  Download a copy of the Rejuvenation Self-Assessment from FreeToFocus.com/tools. Rank yourself according to the assessment questions and then tally your score. While we often feel tired in general, this tool will identify areas that may need more urgent attention. Consider retaking the assessment every few months to see how you’re improving and what areas still need attention.

  Next, download a copy of the Rejuvenation Jumpstart from FreeToFocus.com/tools. This tool will enable you to reflect on a possible goal for each of the seven practices we covered in this lesson. When you’ve identified at least one goal per area, pick the two you want to focus on for the next month. Finally, to keep your goals in front of you, identify an Activation Trigger for each of those two goals. This is simply something that will remind you about your goal. It could be a note on your bathroom mirror or a reminder on your phone—whatever works for you to remember your goals and prompt the action you need to take.

  4

  Eliminate

  Flex Your “No” Muscle

  I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done.

  STEVE JOBS

  Several years ago, I put myself through one of the worst weeks of my professional life. I say “put myself through” because that’s exactly what happened: I said yes to too many things. In one week I attended board meetings for three
different companies, two of which were out of town. I also had five different speaking engagements amid the board meetings and travel. Oh, and did I mention I was also reviewing the copyedited manuscript for one of my books under a tight deadline? Of course, while I was running around meeting, speaking, and editing, I dealt with the 669 emails that came through to my private account. I felt exhausted and overwhelmed, but it was completely my fault. I said yes to all those things.

  You’ve probably had weeks—or months, or years—like that too. Between work, family, social activities, church/community, and a million other types of commitments, we freely give up our precious energy to practically anyone who asks. We know we can’t say yes to everyone, but we still take on far more than we should. Why do we do this to ourselves? For many, it’s a lack of courage. We may hate conflict, feel guilty about disappointing people, or worry about missing out on new opportunities. Whatever the reason, it is important to get comfortable saying no.

  The trick is to remember what’s at stake. You’ve already done the work to figure out your why; now you must keep your why in front of you all the time. Courage is the willingness to act despite your fear for the sake of an important value or principle. Your why is an important value or principle! That means it is worth protecting, and if you don’t protect it, no one will.

  If we want to be free to focus, we must eliminate everything standing in our way. That doesn’t mean simply saying no to a lot of bad ideas; it also means turning down a ton of good and worthwhile ideas. In today’s busy world, staying overworked and overcommitted is easy. The hard work comes in summoning the courage to say no to requests that aren’t important and to eliminate those unimportant tasks that are already eating up your time and energy. While other productivity systems focus on constructing the perfect to-do list, I’d rather focus our energy on the road less traveled: the Not-to-Do List.

  In this chapter you’ll discover how to reclaim your time by eliminating nonessentials—those tasks that destroy your day but don’t bring you closer to your goals. We’ll attack these time-wasters by reviewing five ways to tactfully delete them from your calendar and task list without wrecking your business. By doing this, you’ll learn how to cut out unnecessary tasks and commitments, count the true cost of all your thoughtless yesses, and unleash the power of no. Saying no may sound impossible today, but it’s easier than you think. Few things will energize you and your productivity more than the powerful little word no. Now let’s learn how to use it.

  Understand Time Dynamics

  Poker isn’t known for creating wealth; it’s more of a transfer of wealth. It is what’s commonly called a zero-sum game. Each player brings money to the table, and that’s all the money there is for the game. If five players each bring $100 to bet, then the stakes of the game are $500. That’s it. Throughout the course of the game, each player will control a different portion of that $500, but at any given moment, the sum of everyone’s holdings will be $500. If they play until “winner takes all,” that winner will take $500—no more, no less. Nothing anyone does throughout an entire night of card playing will create more money; all they have to play with is the original $500 from beginning to end.

  Time is just like that. It’s a zero-sum game. There’s only so much to go around because, as we saw in chapter 3, time is fixed. It can’t flex. You and I only get 168 hours each week. If time, and therefore your calendar, is a zero-sum game, we must realize saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else. Even if we hate saying no, we must understand that every yes inherently contains a no. For example, if someone asks to meet with me for breakfast at 7:00 a.m., I can’t say yes to that without saying no to my morning workout. Or, if I say yes to a client’s dinner invitation during the week, I am saying no to dinner with my wife. Do you see how that works? The truth is, even if we hate saying no, we’re unknowingly saying no all the time—every time we say yes.

  Eventually, all these little yesses and nos add up and we find ourselves with a packed schedule. We get to the point where we can’t add one more thing without eliminating something else. That means we must make choices, and these choices are often not between something good and something bad, but between competing opportunities that are good, better, and best.

  Acknowledge the Trade-Offs

  Yes and no are the two most powerful words in productivity. However, we must recognize there is always a trade-off baked into each one. As we saw above, every time we say yes to one thing, we’re saying no to something else. It is unavoidable. Time is fixed, remember? I can’t accept that dinner invitation from a client and have dinner with my wife at the same time. Even without saying the word no, accepting that meeting would mean saying no to the most important person in my life. That’s the trade-off for saying yes to the client.

  Of course, I’m not saying that these implicit trade-offs are all bad. Just the opposite, in fact. Once you understand the nature of trade-offs, you’ll find it easier to say no when you need to. All you have to do is think about the trade-off you’re making when you’re confronted with an opportunity. Most of us don’t do that. We say yes too quickly and only later realize what we’ve traded in exchange for that yes. However, when you go into these decisions understanding you are willfully trading one thing for another, you can exercise control over these decisions. You can knowingly count the cost of saying yes by answering some tough questions. For example, you can ask yourself, What will I have to give up in order to say yes to this opportunity? Or, Will saying no to this allow me to say yes to something better? Facing these trade-offs head-on is empowering, especially for those who struggle with saying no.

  Filter Your Commitments

  When examining the trade-offs in our commitment decisions, we need a filter, something that will enable us to process an invitation, request, or opportunity and determine whether we should say yes or no. Wouldn’t that make things easier? Just imagine it: a request comes in, we run it through a prepared and familiar decision-making framework, and the right answer suddenly becomes crystal clear. Well, guess what? We already have a filter set up to do exactly that.

  In chapter 2 you completed the Task Filter and Freedom Compass worksheets. Like a real compass, it will point you in the right direction. It will remind you of your true north, your Desire Zone, whenever you get lost or start veering off in the wrong direction. As new requests and opportunities pop up and as you review your existing tasks and commitments, here is the rule of thumb you need to cling to for dear life: everything that is outside your Desire Zone is a possible candidate for elimination. I’m not saying all of them should be or will be eliminated, but they’re all candidates. If something is outside your Desire Zone, you should at least stop and ask the question, Could I eliminate this?

  Turning things down and taking things away may not be the picture of productivity you had when you first picked up this book, but now you should know better. You aren’t a victim of the more myth anymore. You know that true productivity isn’t about squeezing more things into your packed schedule; it’s about doing the right things. That means cutting away the nonessentials is essential.

  Think of it like gardening. A good gardener doesn’t allow plants to grow wild. Instead, he constantly trims back the plant, cutting off everything that is dead or unhealthy. That’s called pruning. The gardener prunes away until only the most robust parts of the plant remain. Why? Because once all the dead weight is removed, the plant can truly thrive and reach its full potential. The same is true for you. By cutting away the nonessentials, you create space for the things that really matter to flourish. Many people get nervous at this stage, but this is where you should have the most fun. Now that you have clarity on how to use the Freedom Compass to guide you, you can begin processing your commitments, projects, and tasks and start the good work of cutting. Best of all, you can do it without fear, because you know you’re cutting only those things that are dragging your whole productivity machine down.

  One of the fastest ways to get focus
ed on work that drives results is eliminating low-leverage tasks and commitments that fill your lists and clutter your calendar. Cut everything you can from your Drudgery, Disinterest, and Distraction Zones.

  Let’s start with the things already on your task list. Grab the Task Filter worksheet you started in chapter 2. Now it’s time to scan back through your list and see which things you can check off under Eliminate. Here’s how: Look at each task on your list that you did not classify as a Desire Zone activity. For each one, ask yourself, Does this really need to happen? Can I just eliminate it? For example, if you reviewed your daily activities in chapter 2 and put something like “Surfing the Internet” on your list of tasks, I bet you didn’t put that in the Desire Zone. It could be eliminated. Other tasks, however, such as “Vendor Management,” may be outside your Desire Zone but still need to get done. In this example, you might not be able to eliminate it, so don’t put a check mark there. Don’t worry, though. We’ll talk about ways to automate or delegate those kinds of tasks later. For now, just check off the obvious things that can be removed with no ill consequences to you or your business. If something could be cut and no one would care, cut it. We’ll talk more about how to cut these things later; for now, just be honest and check off the things that ultimately need to go.

  Be warned, though. This exercise is going to put a lot of your favorite things—things probably in your Distraction Zone—on the chopping block. Sometimes you must have the courage to tell yourself no too.

  Create a Not-to-Do List

  I’ve seen a million to-do list apps and systems, but I’ve never seen a Not-to-Do List solution. Again, most of the world suffers from the more myth, believing the key to productivity is doing more things faster. You’ve probably tried this approach before too. The problem is, though, the ever-growing to-do list doesn’t work. It simply helps us spend more time doing even more things that ultimately don’t matter. That’s why so much of the Free to Focus system involves pruning.