Optimising for Focus

Good morning, thanks for tuning in. I hope your day is starting off right. Today I want to talk about focus. Focus on one thing. So I am in Thailand right now, and I’m learning Thai Boxing. And I was talking to my trainer yesterday about how he goes through his day, how is he able to have a thriving business in a third world country. And what I got from that is that literally everything he does during his day has some to benefit his business. And he does nothing that doesn’t serve his business. This guy wakes up at 5, and starts training his clients from 6 am till 8 pm. Private classes in the mornings and group classes in the afternoon. And he uses all the time that he has to improve his business. Literally, between rounds when I have to catch my breath and drink some water for two minutes. He cleans boxing gloves so he doesn’t have to do that later. And he uses the newspaper that he reads in the morning and puts them in the gloves to help them dry and to absorb the smell. So really everything he does has a use. When he has an hour where he doesn’t train anyone, he goes for a run himself, so he stays fit himself. And he repeats the same things every day. Everything he does serves his business in some way. Yes, he works super hard, but it’s not only that. Everything serves the same goal. I think a lot of us work very hard, but a lot of the activities we do, don’t serve one single goal like that. I think our focus is more scattered. We’re trying to do so many different things. And I think if we just have a fraction of the focus that my boxing trainer has, we can do anything we want. This would apply to a music business as well.

I realise that in this episode I’m going to sound like a hustler guru, I hope you can forgive me. But what can we do to optimise our activities and be more focused for our music business? Here’s some thoughts that I have about this.

I think the first step would be to eliminate all things that we do that don’t serve us. Everything hat doesn’t bring us closer to where we want to be. And some of the biggest of these things are lifestyle choices. So, we can ask ourselves, if we go out and party all the time. Does that bring us closer to what we want? If we constantly swipe on tinder and go on 4 dates every week, is that useful to our business? If we play video games the whole day, does that take us any further? For me there were so many things that I was doing that were not just not helping me move forward. They were negatively impacting my ability to make the right moves. Like drinking alcohol. That was a toxic habit for me that was distracting me, making me depressed and decreasing my ability to focus as well as decreasing my physical energy. So it was clear that that was one of the first things I had to stop doing. Another thing I had to stop doing was saying yes to everything, giving my time to everyone who asked for it. Even if I didn’t want to. Because I was trying to please people left and right. I felt obligated to go to every party that people invited me for. Even if I had more important things to do. I’d even hang out with people that I didn’t actually like and leave the social situation feeling drained of my energy. So cutting out lifestyle decisions that don’t serve your goal is one. I’m not saying that having some time to relax and recharge is a bad thing. But for me a lot of the time I was not actually relaxing when I thought I was. I was just distracting myself.

The second step I think can be to look at what actions you can eliminate in your work. And this applies to music as well of course. I used to say yes to every project that people asked me for. Not really looking at it critically and asking myself if it would take me in the direction that I want to go in, and if there was something else I could do that would take me in the right direction more. Does this collaboration help me move in the right direction? Do I really need to help my friend’s niece with making a soundtrack for their high school play for free? Do I really need to spend all this time chasing behind collaborators who are very slow and trying to get them to work? Or are there more useful things that I can do? Like make more music for example.

So after eliminating all of the things that don’t serve us, there’s room to do more of what does serve us. Learn new things. Keep ourselves healthy. Practice things we want to get better at. And create more of the stuff that fits our vision. With everything we do we can ask ourselves, does it bring us closer to who we want to be or does it take us further away from that. I think it’s a great idea to structure your day in a way that allows you to really focus on those things.

This is something that everyone has to figure out for themselves, what works for them. I know some musicians who wake up some time in the afternoon and work from 8pm until 6 in the morning and they are very successful at what they do. I personally like to wake up early and work a couple hours in the morning. In these hours I do what I think is most important for my music business. This is most of the time creative work. So, making music, making content, making a podcast, writing copy. I like to do this early in the morning because then I then I have my best, most focused, most creative energy. And I use that to do the stuff I think is important first. Then I go have a workout and then I eat something. Then in the afternoon I have my second part of the work day, where I do more collaborative work and some projects for other people do e-mails, planning stuff like that. Then I have some dinner, then in the evening I have some time to relax if I want, read something, or if I’m still inspired, I do some more work. And then I go to sleep around 9 or 10. This right now works really well for me. And some people already think this is kind of extreme, and that I should relax. But I don’t agree, I don’t really want to do things that aren’t productive in a way. I want to stay focused. But then when I look at my boxing trainer I feel like I’m lazy and like I can optimise even better, his life is designed around a singular focus on his business. And he does the same things every day. The level of discipline is inspiring to me. But to some people it might sound boring to live like that. Everyone looks at life in a different way and there’s nothing wrong with that.

So these are the three things that are I think will help everyone stay focused: One, elimination of bad lifestyle choices. Two, elimination of unimportant work projects. And three, optimisation of the day to do as much focused work as possible. I hope you found this interesting and enjoyed listening to this podcast episode. If you feel like I’m sounding like a wannabe business guru too much or you have some other thoughts. Let me know. I’m trying to make this as interesting and valuable as possible. My WhatsApp number is in the description. Thank you for giving me your attention this morning. I hope you have an amazing day, much love!