Or… How To Reclaim your Time, Energy and Attention so you can make more Money and focus on implementing Systems in your life you can scale your income and impact.
Every bit of time you do not waste adds up, and as I shared yesterday, every 3 hours a week you can save ends up becoming a week more of your life you can spend doing whatevertheduckyouwant…
So without further ado… let’s get after it!
1. Delete all apps on your phone that you haven’t used in the last month. Be ruthless. You can always redownload them later.
Place only the apps you DO use on a regular basis on the home screen. All the rest go in folders on the second screen. If you have more screens than this, delete more apps.
2. Go to notificiations (settings–>notifications–>click on each app) and turn off all notifications. No buzzing, no bells, no whistles, no little red icons. Only keep the red icons for the ones you ABSOLUTELY need to be cognizant of, but if you can go without it, nuke them all.
3. Go to settings–>general–>keyboard–>text replacement and add any snippets of text that you send often, like your address, parking directions, pickup directions for uber, links to stuff like your calendar scheduling link (link to video on how to set it up below) to save you oodles of time scheduling and much much more. This will save you endless time having to type the same things out over and over. I use the letter q followed by the keyword and it autopopulates the message or link so I can send
4. Go to settings –>general—>accessibility—>display accomodations—>color filters—>click greyscale. This will make your phone screen black and white. Why? Because most of your attention is sapped by colors, your brain is wired to pick out colors like red (the color of all notification bubbles) and tell you to pay attention because something interesting or dangerous is happening. You can’t help it. Same thing with other colors, they all trigger neurochemical reactions in the brain that you are powerless to stop, and companies spend billions of dollars researching this so they can commoditize your attention. Fight back, greyscale your phone, zap the notifications, and take back your consciousness. Back out of that when you’re done and go to accessibility shortcut (all the way at the bottom and select color filters, now you can turn greyscale on and off with a triple click on the home key. Neato! Great for watching videos.
5. Use bedtime and do not disturb so you are not awakened during downtime either during the day (naps) or night (scheduled sleep) by a ringing phone. If you have kids or family and need to get their calls, you can override this by having them as ‘favorites’ (go to their contact in your phone and just say “add to favorites) and go to the do not disturb menu and select “silence: always” then “phone: allow calls from favorites” and turn on repeated calls, so if you get the same person ringing you more than once in 3 minutes it will go through. That should cover all your emergency bases. If you have people who might need to reach you, let them know they will need to call multiple times during those hours to get through.
6. Now that you’ve deleted the Facebook app ? download the google chrome app instead and you can access FB if you really need to (with limited functionality, but everything you need) through that, you can bookmark it and create an app through it. This will stop Facebook from listening to everything you say and serving ads based on your conversation content (yes, they, Google and Amazon actively do this with their listening devices you so cleverly buy and place all around your home and carry around with you on your person) but one way to combat this invasion of privacy is to simply stop carrying it around and be a more mindful consumer of information.
7. Go to Facebook dot com (the desktop version) and download FBP (google it) which will allow you to even have more fine toothed control and grab the intently app and the newsfeed eradicator app before you go. Then do your best to only access FB through desktop so you can be a mindful creator instead of a listless consumer of content. Go to m dot me (it’s a url, type it in your browser) instead of facebook dot com so you can interact with people one on one in an optimized experience instead of those tiny little chat windows that annoyingly pop into the bottom of your screen when perusing FB dot com. Now you will have no newsfeed distractions, no ads and no annoying pop up windows so you can actually write and serve your community! Hooray!
8. If you really have trouble with certain websites, look into more nuclear options like the selfcontrol app, leechblock, or if you want to have a shockingly bad time, get a pavlok and set it to mercilessly shock you for no reason until you’re collapsed in a puddle on your office floor. Because that will stop you from browsing the internet for sure, side effects may include not wanting to touch people anymore and crying in the corner rocking back and forth. Just kidding. But do get leverage on yourself, your attention is yours, use it on things that actually matter, like making your world and our world a better place.
9. Email… stop using it as much as possible. I check it once maybe twice a day now, and spend more time delegating than ever. Most things are not urgent, and not important and if you are diligent, people will stop bugging you with their agenda altogether. While you’re at it, go to unroll dot me and unsubscribe from all the mailing lists that you’re a part of. Even mine if you don’t like valuable messages such as these. I won’t be offended. There must be casualties in the war for your attention.
10. Now that you are in a distraction free zone, use more paper, more notebooks, more pens, and less tech. Retrain your brain to log more hours of undivided attention. Fill your space with things that bring you joy, and sell, give away or otherwise divest of things that do not. Begin to write and collect gratitude, magic moments and quotes from the past that you want to remember and fill your space with it. In another section, fill your wall with visions of what you want to create in the future. Your environment has way more leverage on your habits than your willpower does, and no capacity issues. Every time your eye wanders, it will be drawn to something loving, powerful, a celebration, gratitude, a vision that will excite you to continue on our mission. Create different spaces around your home and office for different energies and flows, writing, reading, sleeping, naps, calls, standing, sitting, laying down, working out… really geek out on it. I also love those giant white post it notes for action and accountability items, especially related to daily means goals that I accomplish and write down that if I am consistent on will lead to my ends goals.
11. If you must consume mindful content such as podcasts and videos, I highly recommend two apps for this: overcast for podcasts, which allows you to shorten silences and speed up podcasts generally while boosting sound quality, and video speed controller for chrome which allows you to speed up and slow down educational content to suit your preference. Some people I need to 2x the normal cadence of their voice so I don’t go insane. Saves me 10 hours a week easily, and I can always go back if I miss something important and hear it again.
12. Now that you have extra time, start thinking about systems… how do you shower, eat, take out the trash, do dishes, prepare food, get food delivered, get alkaline water delivered, shop, drink coffee (or not), sleep, wind up, wind down and more? There is SO MUCH LOW HANGING FRUIT all around you… let’s get creative and make the time and space for the things that truly matter so you are no longer a slave, a cog in someone else’s machine clicking their buttons and fueling their empires, but a sovereign individual in control of their time, energy, attention, money and sanity.
13. I love you, thank you.