SNM268 Do Less to Make More with David Wood

Jonathan Green: Do less to make more with focus expert David Wood on today's episode.

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Announcer: Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to Serve No Master podcast, where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.

Jonathan Green: Now this is a topic near and dear to my heart because we've become really obsessed with efficiency in our culture, whether it's do more with less sleep or biohacking or getting things done or there's so many different methods of organization that I wonder if we're looking at the symptom, not the problem. And my experience especially, I'm very interested in focus because I think the number 1 reason people fail starting their own businesses is because they try to do too many things. That they we buy too many products or try too many systems. I'm gonna learn Facebook ads, Amber Learn Podcasting, Amber Learn YouTube all at the same time, and we can't do it all. So I'd love to start from there and maybe just tell me how you became passionate about focus.

David Wood: Thank you. How I became passionate. I don't know if there's a way I became passionate. I started I've realized in my in the last 10 or so years that I love systems. I love seeing how things are put together. I like puzzle pieces. And when I work things out, and that includes life. That includes productivity. It includes emotion emotional intelligence. Includes leading your staff. It includes talking to your kid. I'm really into that. And I've been noticing myself and my clients over the years how it's so easy to get scattered, the human mind is like a monkey on crack. That's how it is. It's just crazy. It's like while I'm here sitting with you, my mind's like, oh, shit. Send a message to your manager because I had another thought about something that we were dealing with. That's how it is. And I was listening to a fantasy book last night, Jonathan, and this kid wants to ascend to to the copper stage of his evolution. And he's asking his master questions about the gold stage. And the master said, Oh, jeez. I wish I'd written it down. It was something like, clear your mind and focus on the matter at hand. If you want any hope, of ascending to copper. That's where you've gotta be right now. And it really stuck with me because I thought that's how it is in business. You got so many people you wanna serve, so many problems you wanna fix, so many products you wanna serve up, so many traffic sources that you wanna master. And so many lead magnets you wanna provide and so many services. I'm getting a little stress just talking to you about all those possibilities. So what's possible once you realize that, like, wow. My mind is so scattered is to come back to what really matters to me? If I was to prioritize, what really matters? And can I meditate on that for 25 minutes? For many people, that's a win. For 25 minutes, if you're able to stick to 1 task with no interruption from Facebook or voice mail or someone knocking on the door, that's a win. Now if you can expand that and maybe focus for a day on 1 or 2 tasks that really matter, then boy, you're really off to the races. And then what if for a week or for a month you can have your business focus on 2 or 3 priorities that really matter and get some traction on those things. It's not simple because a mind wants to take you everywhere else. So there's a long answer to a different question. You asked me how I got passionate about it. But when I see what's happening, I'm like, oh, we can change that. And then it's so fulfilling.

Jonathan Green: I definitely think about how every single product in Corsa in person I know is trying to get to a million dollars. Right? They wanna be a millionaire. That's the line. No 1 wants to be a hundred thousand or even you get a pretty good life as a hundred thousand there. Right? Everyone wants to get to a million and then 10,000,000 and it's very different going from 0 to a hundred thousand in a business, going from a hundred to 505 hundred. It's very different because it's different parts of scaling business, but you're exactly right that you're focusing on a future problem. Right? Like, oh, what do I do when I have a thousand customers? We don't have any customers yet. We often worry about problems that we don't have yet. And 1 of the best lessons I ever learned was that focus is our most valuable resource. And that if you Try to learn 1 thing. You give it a hundred percent of your focus. You'll learn it the fastest way possible. If you try to learn things, now it's twice as long. So tasks would take 1 month, now it takes 2. And this is where I see people that are trying to learn all these different things at the same time. For me to learn a new traffic method or system my business takes about a year to learn, master, and implement. Takes me a full year to try and go through a high level course, high level training, and implement and I see people who buy 4 or 5 in a row, it's impossible because there's hours, hours of training videos, and homework, and learning. So there is this desire, right, to get to this specific tier that causes us to it just takes so much longer because you're worried about things that aren't a problem yet. Like, oh, how do I deal with this scaling and that scaling? And, certainly, my business now, a lot of what I deal with is organizing a team and systems and organization. That didn't matter 5 years ago. And if I worried about them at the wrong time, yeah, it would have really slowed my growth. So this is very interesting to me. I think this is a really important topic because people get caught up. Like, I always see people like, oh, what are the habits of billionaires? I'm like, maybe you shouldn't start with that. Like, maybe you start with the habits of people that are where you wanna get to for your next goal. Right? Like, There is Oh,

David Wood: yeah. I like that a lot. When I when I was wanting to make it as a speaker, years and years ago, I'd go to the national speaker. Association. And these people get up on stage, and they'd speak about how to be a great speaker. But I'm not convinced that those were the people that I should have been listening to because they couldn't remember what it was like 20 years ago when they were getting started. They know how to get the big speeches. That's the world they live in. What I realized, what I probably needed was someone who had recently done it, always in it, and doing really well. And then, like, okay. What's working for you? Show me how to do that. So, yeah, some of this stuff is remedial. And when my clients you know, I'll get them started on on on some productivity, and I'll give them 2 or 3 things to practice. And then the next week, they'll come back and say, I had mixed success. I had a little bit of success, but here's where I fell. It fell off the rails. And I'm like, okay. Great. Let's really dive into it. Where did you get oh, you got phone calls that interrupted you? Why was your phone on do not why wasn't it on do not disturb? Oh, well, what if I got an urgent call from someone. Okay. So we gotta deal with that so that they can remove the distraction. So, usually, people will fall off the horse, and you are right. You gotta pick what you wanna get good at. I signed up for a 9 month awakening program. If I now sign up to another training program that I'm interested in, am I really gonna show up for both of those? Maybe not. Maybe I should show up a hundred percent for the 1 I'm already in chew and swallow before you take another bite might be how we could summarize this.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. It's really hard to learn multiple things at once because then you're trying to load balance. So I spend 2 hours and this, 4 hours on that, and I do what you're talking about with the phone thing. When I teach a lot of people who are writers, And I say when you're riding, turn off. Unplug the router. And that's so scary because we think we need to be connected. I do love that you mentioned that, well, what if it's an emergency? Well, how many emergencies have you had? In my entire career, I think I've had 2 times, 2 emergencies came in, and they were both emails, not phone calls, right, in 12 years. So unless you're a doctor or in the police like, if you're in something like that, right, where you're a first responder type person, okay. It makes sense to have it on. But when's the last time you had a blog emergency? Right? Like, when's the last time you had? Yeah. Something that couldn't be handled. 1 thing I've learned from doing client work, whatever with the client, it's always an emergency until it's on their desk. This is a lesson my dad told me. He was a he was a lawyer. He's like, oh, the contract's an emergency until I gave it to the client. They have to review it. And I can tell you, whenever I write a book for someone and it's in the rough draft and they're looking at the rough draft, it's not suddenly, it's not an emergency. It's, like, weeks or months or even a year. They spend before they look at it because our definitions of emergencies are so off that we sometimes get influenced by other people in that, oh, they say it's emergency, but it's not really an emergency. That we think -- Great. -- we need to be so available. I, for a long time, was talking about this in last week's episode, was we're talking a lot about getting good sleep I used to have my phone every single work email, every single contact, and it would buzz hundreds of times a day. And I because I was like, oh, I'm so important. But it was all spam email. Get a buzz. Right? Reply to an email. That doesn't matter. Get a buzz. A bill is coming in. Get a buzz. And I used to get phantom buzzes from my leg the time. I'd be driving. I'm like, did my phone just ring? And I'm pulling it out. Right? While I'm driving, it's horrible, and there's nothing. Because only when I now I I often I realized today, actually, I don't know where 1 of my phones is. Just think of it. I was like, oh, man. Because I have a phone for work, a phone for personal stuff, and a phone that I use just for shooting TikTok videos and posting videos for there for work. I don't know where that phone is. I'm gonna have to ask my wife for this because it's like, I often don't know where my phone is. Usually don't know where all 3 are, to be honest with you. Like, they're for 3 different things, and I usually they're always on silent. The thought of hearing the phone ring because it's never important. The most common call I get is from the delivery maze. Like, oh, I'm here with something. Right? We ordered something to our house, and it's not an emergency, but we think it is, and it becomes this steady distraction. And we're afraid we think that if we turn off the Internet, that's the 1 time there'd be a super rig emergency. But I think that's a really good place to start for people is, like, instead of thinking about adding more efficiency, it's removing the distractions.

David Wood: That'd be the simple way. But there's 1 other thing that's gonna buzz you. So let's suppose you turn off your put your phone on do not disturb. I love the idea of unplugging the router. Set up your email so that it doesn't ping you when there's a notification. That should be by default. So you don't know when someone's trying to reach you. You have to go to your phone and look at it at it. To check messages. That's the first change. But once you've done that, I'll tell you the next stage that people get struck by is Your mind is gonna buzz you. Your mind is gonna buzz you. However, you sit down to do 25 minutes, and most people don't do that. But if you said so, you sit down, you're gonna do a Pomodoro. Is a 25 minute period of focus on 1 task. Watch what happens. It's insane. You will you will find yourself on Facebook. You'll find yourself your open email to send an email to someone. I I get caught all the time. And now I see it, and now I'm in it. And now I'm responding to that when I had just told myself, this is my goal for 25 minutes. So the 2 ways to counteract that is 1, set a 25 minute goal and just watch what happens and just catch your mind when you're going off and just see how much you wanna go and address this and that and whatever, you might find yourself going to get a snack. You're like, wait. What just happened? I said I was gonna focus. And the second thing you can do is keep a later list. Just put later at the top of a piece of paper. And when an idea comes to you, I'm gonna do it now. Text, Manager. There you go. Boom. Write it down just as if you were meditating and a thought came into your mind. You might allow it. Notice it. Byron Katie says, give it a picture. Thank it for sharing its life with you, and watch it drift off and come back to the breath. Write it down in your later list. Come back to what you were doing, and just see how good it feels to nail 25 minutes at something.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. That's very interesting that we have these habits. Like, it took me a while to transition to checking email once a day. Sometimes I check it once at the beginning, once at the end of the day because I read this study that said people work in corporate or work for companies, check their emails 6 hours of the day. They spend just doing email stuff. It's like and then they spend 2 hours working. It's so inefficient. The 1 of the big things that happens for people that I've seen is when you have like, when you're working on your side business 2 hours a day. Right? You're so efficient because you have only a small amount of time, but then you quit your full time job, and suddenly you have these huge swaths of time so you don't become you don't get 4 times more done. You get the same out done in less time. Because you get, well, I have all day to work on it. Right? I have 8 hours instead of 2, so I work on it now. I can work out later, and we our efficiency plummets I've seen this happen to a lot of people that it's sometimes being able to leave that main job is the worst thing that can happen to. So many travel bloggers is what them. All these travel bloggers were so hot 5 or 6 years ago. As soon as it made enough money to start traveling, they all went out of business in a few months because they stopped doing any work. Right? They spent all their time traveling and not lying about it anymore. That that becomes this curse. So when people are facing that suddenly I have, like, so much time that I don't feel the pressure to be efficient, what's the best way to approach that. When you're talking to people and they suddenly have these huge swaths of time because that could be so dangerous. It's like, if it's due tomorrow, I'll work on it really hard. But if it's due in a month, I'll wait 29 days to start working on it. Right? Like, that's everyone.

David Wood: Yeah. I can relate to that. Sometimes I get up, and it's like, wow. There's nothing I have to do today. So I've got a client who's they're probably at the what's it? 20,000,000 a month revenue. That's what we're doing. And they got a slim operation and they're pretty efficient. And they just wanna know how to do better. So each time we look at how to optimize. And 1 of his questions is, what do I have time I've got maybe 10 projects I'm managing, but sometimes there's nothing I need to do on that 1 project. And I asked him this great question, what do you wanna create? Like, when that happens, ask yourself, what do I want to create? And we started looking into it, he realized he doesn't wanna bring on another big project because the other projects are gonna ramp up, and then it's gonna too much. So he's just got a little bit of downtime. And what he wants to create is he wants to get into real estate and really learn about real estate investment and his projects. So now when he's got some downtime, he can go to that. Also, we came up with maybe he'll do an acknowledgment cycle, which is Just go through the peep on the company and think of something he appreciates about them. Ping off a little message to everybody. What a great way to use your downtime. And there's something that I've done. If I And I you know, actually, I'm reminding myself now to to get back to it. There's something called the morning pages. Have you heard of that, Jonathan? Morning pages Yeah. The morning pages are from a book by Julia Cameron called The Artists Way, and it's for people who wanna be creative. And 1 of the exercises, I don't know if there are many of my friends who haven't done this, is you do in the morning, as soon as you wake up, maybe you grab a glass of water, maybe you go to the bathroom, but then you grab your notepad and you write it's journaling, but journaling where you're not allowed to stop the pen. So you just write stream of consciousness, anything that comes to your mind. Oh, I don't know what to do today. I had no deadlines. What am I gonna do? And I write blah blah blah when I come in, blah blah blah. Oh, look. There's a bird out the window. My left foot feels a little warm. Well, what do you want to do, David? What wanna create. You just asked that guy yesterday what stream of consciousness, 3 full pages. Usually takes about 20 minutes. And I find that at the end of that, I know what I wanna do. It comes out. I'm like, oh, I wanna do that. I wanna handle that issue. I'm gonna reach out to so and so because I that's been sitting there for a month. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. I got 7 things, and I order them in order of priority. Now I've got a very clear day. So great technique if you find in any given day you're feeling a little lost or you just wanna be more creative in your life. The theory, I believe, is she's into you dump out all the crap that's in your head. Just get it out on paper so your mind becomes more free. And I've I've never done it for 8 weeks, which is what she suggest. Do it for 8 weeks, and she also says you're not allowed to read Don't read it. I cheat because I I do it, and then I'll circle things that I wanna do, and then I've got my task list. But a very powerful process.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. Because a lot of times, this used to be me too. It's like, I'll sit down and work for you. I was like, and I'll be what did I do? I don't you can't even remember what you did for the last 4 hours or 6 hours or 8 hours. Right? You work an entire day. And someone says, what did you do today? And you can't really tell because there are so many distractions. And for me, at least, I go through different phases. I used to be someone who would spend huge amounts of time on social media whenever. And, like, before this was my job. Right? Now I hate the Internet. If I'm to me, this is my job. Right? The Internet is my job. So if I'm not working, I don't wanna be online. Like, the thought of many people's social media posts, so Twitter ing at people about not work stuff, that doesn't resonate with me at all in the same way that I write nonfiction books as a huge part of my business. I never read nonfiction books. I only read fiction. Like, I've absolutely read the book you were talking about earlier. I know exactly which book it is. Like, I'm, like, on book 8 in that series, I'm waiting for the new 1 to come out in a month. Like, that's me. Is, like, I separate work, what I do at work, and what I do at home. It's like, I'm sure you're the same. Like, the last thing you do when you're not working more is wanna talk about efficiency. Right? It's like in your time off, you don't wanna do work stuff, but there is this. There's so many things. And the way every inner program is designed, right, is to be interesting. Right? They're specifically designed to reward you for checking or log in or open the app every single day or this and that. They have all these little rewards built in because they know what they're doing. It's why those free to play games are so profitable. Right? They're doing millions of dollars a day because they know how to create that dopamine effect of, oh, I'm getting a little reward in this reward, and I'll buy this currency to get that currency play this game to get that reward, all of that stuff, and it can become it's so powerful. Like, they know what to pull you in. That's why I do say, like, the only way to stop it is to block it. Right? It's to turn off the Internet for a few hours. And there are these, like, focus apps that only let you open certain programs or whatever to control you, especially for riders. This isn't this is why for me, I always separate the research from the writing phase. Because if you have I have to be online to look up stuff. I've been looking up a study. Like, I was a ghost running a book for a client last week, and he made a claim about a percentage. Right? And I have to look that up. That's during the research phase. But when I'm just doing the writing, I don't want that to happen. I separate those phase so I can have a phase where I don't have to be online. Because that's absolutely for me. That's what I'm the most efficient. Because, yeah, if you're it's very hard if your phone's ringing, you know how to answer it. If you get a buzz or an alert, I forgot you mentioned it earlier. I forgot that your email could make a noise. Remember we used to love that you got mail. It was, like, exciting, and now it's, like, the worst noise you can hear? And I've turned off those about so many years ago because I realized I was checking the email once every hour. It's like, you check your email every 3 days, and you're probably fine. To be honest with you, like, it's so rarely something that's that important. It has to be same day. Legally, we have so many alerts and noises and all of these things that they're really distractions.

David Wood: I wish there was a a survey. I'd like to know how many people check their bathroom check their phone when they go to the bathroom. It's such a part of it. It's such a habit. 1 tip is you can take all those all those apps that have an banner an icon notification. So when we'll show you, like, oh, you've got 2 messages or you got 3 messages on that. Right? That wants to pull you in. I you know, I'm Look. Here's my phone right now. I can see I got 1 on Messenger, and I've got 5 messages on WhatsApp. Duolingo's got 1 as Dua Lingo. Man, are they good at gamifying? They had me last night checking my phone at 07:00 because there was an award that was gonna unlock between 6PM and midnight. That was the only time I could get it, then I could get my double XP points. And now it got me competing with 30 other people in a group, and I don't like to lose. So they're absolutely brilliant in getting engagement. What you can do is move those apps with those banner notifications to your second screen of the phone so that it's not even there. You have to go and move 1 screen over to see who's trying to get to you And another idea that came up to me, as you're talking about the apps know how to get your attention, you also can use that to get your own attention. So if Duolingo knows how to gamify and give you a buzz and give you that dopamine hit, you too can do that for yourself. You can hack your own system Do a 25 minute sprint on something that matters to you. Maybe start the day with 25 minutes on something you've been putting off. Have it be the first thing you do. You got your cup of tea, coffee, you're gonna pee. Maybe you've had a little dance, whatever your morning routine is. You sit down. You don't check email. Do 25 minutes. 25 minutes goes off. Go and do some push ups, whatever. Reward yourself in some way. And notice how good it feels that you did 25 minutes on something that matters. And then here's the other thing. The universe can start to reward you. That 25 minutes might have involved some outreach, and then someone gets back to you and they're interested in maybe working with you. So now you do a session, and then you get a client out of it. It's real life gamification. So hack your own system, hashtag.

Jonathan Green: Yeah. I think that there are a lot of opportunities as soon as you go from passive to active. I think a lot of us, certainly for me for a long time, right, I just approached Focus and efficiency kind of passively. Like, I wasn't paying attention to them until you start getting all these alerts. Like, I I'm always turning off which apps are allowed to notify me of things. Like, a game app? I would I always have to I'm like, how dare you? Right? But, also, my phone is never on. It's never notifications around. Like, I won't know if I have messages unless I pick up the phone and push the thing because it doesn't have anything showing. It doesn't flash a light. None of that stuff, and it hasn't affected my life negatively. It's never like, 1 time my wife called me and there's an emergency, it was the exact second I picked up the phone. I was like, oh, the universe takes care of you. If it's an emergency you find out. Right? So, yeah, all these it's amazing how yeah. You're right. I think everyone takes their phone to the bathroom. Everyone so you said, are you check your phone right before you get to bed so your sleep's not as good? We're talking about that last week. Right? You have that blue light in your eyes so you don't, like, wind down

David Wood: Yeah. And what if there's something that actually does need your attention right before bed? Or What if it's something that's stressful? I'm in contract negotiations right now for a movie in Atlanta, and it's not always peaceful. And I'm so glad I did not get that message from my manager until this morning. I'd gotten it last night It would have loaded up in my system, and it's something I would have had to deal with, and it might have gone into my dreams. Let's not do that to ourselves. So it seems like you I think if I'm hearing you right, that what you had was an addiction to being available because it there was some belief that it was super important. And if you weren't available, something bad would happen. And you've now dealt with that and found that It's actually not that true. We often discover it when we get sick. We think we're so irreplaceable, and then we get sick and can't do anything for a week. And Guess what? Stuff got done. Stuff got handled. Nothing crashed that can't be repaired. So, yeah, like hearing about that evolution for you. I'm hoping people listeners can take something from that and go, yeah. I don't have to be available.

Jonathan Green: I think that all of those notifications make us feel important that, oh, I'm getting a message, and this message is with I'm getting so many emails a day. The more emails a day I get, the more important I I think that's a thought. That's a phase I went through. Right? Like, everyone's reaching out to me. Everyone's notifying me. And now, like because sometimes parts of my business run so smoothly. I feel like I'm not needed. And it's like, well, do I matter? You start to feel like, oh, I built such a good machine. It doesn't need me anymore to operate it all the time, and you start to feel like a a dip in your self confidence. And because most honestly, most of my projects right now, like, I could go to sleep for a month. My revenue wouldn't change. Like, I could rip Ben Winkler. Right? Because I built I've been doing this for 12 years. Most of the stuff is pretty automated. Other than sending out my daily emails, nothing else I do for the rest of the day matters. This podcast doesn't matter. Like, this podcast is not gonna affect whether or not I pay for my kids to go to college. Right? It's not a critical part of the business, but I do it because I love it, and I meet amazing people. It helps me to help my audience a lot. But we so often think the things we think are important aren't. Right? We think That's why I love the 80 20 where, right, you analyze what was the thing I did that mattered the most. Right? It's usually 1 thing I do every day is the most significant. The rest of the day is just meetings or setting up things that will make a difference in 6 months or in a year as the company grows and projects grow, but we get so we have this desire And I think it's linked to affirmation. I remember some people say, oh, I get if you get all of your affirmation at work, then those little notifications become a form of affirmation. I am needed. Someone needs me. I need it as someone needs me. Right? And if that's your source of affirmation, it can become very powerful. And There's a thing I wonder about that a lot of people now mix business and pleasure. Your laptop is where you work, and it's where you walk to Netflix. Your phone is where you work if there's been a merging of the business and the personal, so it's like your work laptop is also very nobody has 2 laptops. Right? Nobody has a work and a personal laptop. We used to. Right? We work somewhere else. But what do you think about that? Like, as we merge, right, as we use the same tools for business and pleasure because, for me, I have to get into a work state if that makes sense to you. Like, I have to be in work mode. And so in this room, this is office, I would never in a million years would I put a video game on this computer. And I play video games. Right? I have a PlayStation. I have a Nintendo. I would never play a game on the computer. Right? To me, that's so like, there'll be dragons. That's beginning of something that would break that barrier for me, but sometimes it's not a if, you know, when I had a smaller location and my computer was in my bedroom, then it was harder to separate those 2 states of mind and you do have to spend some time not working. I used to get sick a lot more because I would work too hard, and I would either blow out my throat or get a different injury from just overcomputing because it's right there. It's like, oh, I can just roll out of bed, work an extra couple hours. How do you think that affects your focus. As these merging of these 2 worlds, it used to be so distinct and separate.

David Wood: Well, I don't have any experience either myself or with my clients of separating the locations, except that I have suggested to clients who are having trouble sleeping that They only use the bed for sleep and sex, and that's it. Don't watch TV in bed. Don't always just so you just associate bed with that. But what I do advocate is choosing by time when you are working and when not. And that doesn't I don't even think you to have, like, 9 to 3 each day your work hours, but it might support you to do that. What's most important is that you choose when you are gonna focus and when you don't. And because it's silly to to suggest that someone would be focused 24 7 unless you're some monk working on some ninja. If you're a ninja, maybe. But choose when. So it's okay. Consciously, from 8 till 10, I'm gonna do a sprint. That gives me 4 sprints of 25 minutes with 4 5 minute breaks, and that's when I will be focused. And for that If sitting at your desk is the place where you're gonna feel focused in your office, great. If you wanna do it in your bed, I don't mind. As long as you're sleeping well, and you're able to focus for that period of time, that makes a difference. And then when you get to the afternoon, it's 02:00, and you're like, alright. I'm not gonna be so strict now. Now I'm gonna check voice mail. I'm gonna check my messages. I mean, power to you. If you can wait until 02:00, in the you know? So you've started 8, and you go 6 hours, take an hour for lunch. Maybe over lunch, you check your messages. So time wise, this is when I'm working.

Jonathan Green: I think that's good to create some type of barrier, either it's a physical barrier, like, I'm really into or a time barrier. Where you go, I'm working now and you kind of switch. I've always been a big believer, especially when I'm writing as I have a prework ritual. To get my mind, and I'm about to start writing. This is my process before I write so that when I sit down on the computer because you wanna get, like, that rhythm. Like, you have to I've always been fascinated by Pomodoro. I've never been that type of writer because I'm a marathon writer. So it's, like, 25 minutes too short for me. So if I'm in the zone, like, I'll write for 2 or 4. It used to be 8, not anymore. But now I if I'm writing, it's gonna be, like, a much longer curve. And so I build in right in a way where all my sections are blocked out, so I don't accidentally write really long straight. So I actually have a break in there. I think that's the important thing is that you have to find the right system for yourself to where you have a barrier when work is starting and will work as a name when your focus sessions are. But I think Pomodoro a lot of the people I work with who write, it's really helped them to have a specific system. I know there's a lot more people who are doing, like, online coworking sessions. Have you seen this where you're, like, I've done that. -- love it. Yeah. I thought it's so weird when I first heard about it. It's like, well, just sit online. We'll both be working, but we won't be talking to each other. Right? Like, you work for 50 minutes, you talk for 10 at the end, or they you say, here's what I'm gonna do. It's amazing how the social pressure causes you to work, the person can't see you. Right? They don't know if you're working or not working.

David Wood: Yeah. You can call it you can call it social pressure. You can also call it social support. Just having someone around. In this awakening course, we're doing tapping emotional freedom technique, and I hadn't been really doing it. I set a date with someone who's in the course, and we got there, and I've never tried this before, tapping with someone else, we put our videos on mute but she was right in front of a computer. I was right in front of my computer so she could see my face she could see the tears running down my face if she wanted to, but she probably wasn't looking because the tears are running down her face And we did this together for and we did a check-in halfway through, which wasn't a good idea because we're in the zone. So we just said, let's just keep going. But that support, I didn't wanna do an hour on my own. I didn't really wanna do an hour with someone else, but I'm willing. And then once I'm into it, oh my god. It's amazing. So a human presence if you're having trouble working, I would say try the Pomodoro technique first, do sprints of 25 minutes. And if that's not kicking it for you, there's a an app that I've downloaded. I have not used it yet because I've what I've done is I've gotten friends together. I just reached out to some people and say, hey. Do you wanna be on a thread on Facebook Messenger, and I'll let you know when I'm doing a sprint, and anybody can join me. And that was great. So I'll be like, oh, I can join tomorrow for half of that. And they come in and you check-in at the top of the hour, this is what I will do. This is what you will do. It either goes on mute or you can close off Zoom. And then you check back in at the top of the hour, or you could do 2 hours. And I do find that at accountability makes a huge difference And if you don't wanna organize it with your friends, this app, I wish I'd thought of it and created it. It's called Focusmate. And you just you find someone. I imagine your first session is free or something like that. And after that, you pay something to the app to connect you brilliant. And then see what happens to you. At the minimum, here's what I want for you. If you try Focusmate, listeners, or any kind of co working, at the minimum, you discover how much your mind wants to go off in another direction. When I first did this, I was crap at it. And that was the win to just you know what? Jonathan, you asked me how I became passionate about it. Now I'm remembering. It was doing this thing called a do it day with Steven Robbins, who's a great guy, and he invited me to join it, and I did it from 9 till 5. And discovered how bad I was at staying on track. And I'm like, alright. Let's learn how to stay on track. And then when I learned something, I like to share it with other people. And that was about maybe 2 or 3 years ago, and I got right into productivity because I discovered how much I was bad at it.

Jonathan Green: I think that's really interesting because some a lot of people just would act like they've always been a productivity actor. Right? I was born for productivity, but it's much more interesting to hear about like, a journey and to see that it's real because we can always get better at at the things we're doing. And that's really interesting to me. My 1 of the of the ladies I'm coaching right now is finishing her first book finally. She swears my focusmate, and she measures how much work she's done by the number of focusmates that she's Like, I did 4 folks made sessions there, 2 folks made sessions today. So it's a really powerful way, right, that people do measure. Like, when you have finally have a way of measuring how much you've got done, And -- Yeah. -- it is I think it's okay to see it as a journey. Like, as long as you do a little better today than you did yesterday, that's, like, such a step forward, and it's a really great place to be. So I think that's awesome. So I do have to --

David Wood: And I wanna make 2 points here that just came to me. The first 1 is you don't have to do any of this. You don't have to get more focus. It's totally valid if you wanna get up and just do what you wanna do in a day and see what caused you. Thomas Leonard is considered the father of modern coaching, and he popularized coaching in its form today. And he said, his system is did this get up and navigate by curiosity? So you can do that. The techniques that we're talking about today are only if you wanna produce more in less time. You're not happy with the current pace of the game you're playing and you in the game of life and business. If you wanna progress faster, you want more results, you want more money or more peace or to impact more people or whatever, then use this stuff. But you might also say, you know what? Friday, I'm not gonna do any of this. I'm just gonna navigate by curiosity. Saturday and Sunday, I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want. So I don't want you to hear this like you have to do this to be a better person. No. Which brings me to my second point. I'm not that passionate about productivity in itself. I'm passionate about people's lives being something that they are proud of and something that on their deathbed, I want everyone to be able to look back and say, I gave it all. I gave it my everything. That's what lights me up. And if that means that you discover more about yourself, if that means you start speaking more of your truth, If that means that you build your relationship so there's more love in your life, then great. If while you're doing that, you wanna also work on your business. And have it be better? Great. I'm a nerd for systems, so let's do it. But I it's really the personal side that gets me jazzed And I do the productivity stuff when my clients are like, hey. Help me out with this. I'm feeling really scattered, and so that's got me stressed and I know I could be doing so much more and have more time off. I had 1 guy just did a speech for his local club group of entrepreneurs, and it was called how hiring a business coach helped me double my income, and cut my workload by 80 percent. And I was like, is that what happened? When we worked together, he said, yeah. He said I doubled my income and my workloads cut by the percent. I'm like, I'm really glad to know. Like, I I know this stuff works. I did not work that well. But that's what's possible if you want to walk that path. So it's not me saying, everyone's gotta focus. It's more me responding to people saying, how can I do this? I was like, well, if you wanna do it, these steps have worked for me, and they are working for my clients. This is great. Where can people find out more about you and see what you're doing online and follow you and learn more about your focus journey? Thank you. Well, I love that question. If you're listening to this and you wanna engage with me in some way. Firstly, I'll give you my email address. A lot of stuff on my website is free. The articles, the downloads, if I can help you in any way. Please don't add me to a mailing list. Please treat my email list with respect and let me opt in to any list I wanna be on. But if you got a question, something wasn't clear here, or if I can help you in some other way, david at focus dot CE0. There may be a spam challenge on that, so you have to prove that you're human, but david at focus dot CE0. And if you wanna go further, I've created a link for listeners So you can't find this if you just go to my general website. But if you go to this link, I'm gonna offer 3 things. The first 1 is a session with me. Now to qualify for this, you need to be already up and running with income and doing well. So, you know, sometimes I work with people as low as 5000 a month as high as 8000000 a month. So the revenue doesn't really matter as long as you are up and running, and you're serious about getting some support in doing better in all of your life, not just your business, I will do a 15 minute session with you and just offer anything I can help create the beginnings of a plan and that may be all you need. If you want longer term coaching, we can talk about that. So there's the free session, and I have a download called it's a video called how to achieve twice as much in half the time. So if you wanna go deeper into what we talked about today, that video is free. And then for 12 95 on that website, there's a link to my book Mouse in the Room, and that's for people who want to go to a deeper level of truth in their life and learn how to do it in everyday conversation be more of who you are, and then that'll have everyone around you unconsciously get permission to speak more of their truth with you. That's called Mouse in the Room. And the link is focus dot CE0, which is my website. It's not a dot com. I got the dot CE0, which I thought was pretty cool. Focus dot CE0 forward slash gift. That's as simple as that. And if you wanna subscribe to other videos that I send, you can do that at the web site. There are lots of options, but focus dot CEO forward slash gift will give you a couple of goodies that I hope really support you.

Jonathan Green: Sounds great. Thank you so much for all of your time. We really appreciate it. No people are gonna love this episode. So thank you very much. I know a lot of people didn't come visit you, so thanks for visiting me.

David Wood: My pleasure. Good to meet you, Jonathan.

Jonathan Green: Thanks for listening to today's episode. I love podcasting, and it's never too late to start your amazing podcast. Get started with my free guide at start master dot com forward slash checklist.

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