Jan 30, 2018
The 11 detrimental habits that drain focus, waste your time and ultimately leave you aimless in life.
Saying ‘literally’ at inappropriate times in your speech.
For instance, “I literally died laughing.” Um, no you didn’t and this type of speech reduces your power in the discussion and reduces your perceived intellect by others. Clean up your speech and speak with a deliberate word choice. When you meticulously choose your words in your speech you focus on the moment and what you are saying.
The drinking of soda, energy drinks and other sugary beverages.
They may be great in giving you that burst of focus for 20 minutes or so. Afterwards however, the sugar- rush results in a heavy crash.
Your focus dwindles and so does your energy levels. The soda companies don’t care about your focus- they care about your dollars.
Lack of direct eye-contact (especially when you are the speaker)
Direct eye contact can drastically increase focus. When your eyes wander, however, you tend to become aloft in the conversation. Perhaps you are checking out the beautiful woman walking by, or the kid skateboarding by, or the old man trying to cross the street.
How many times do you catch yourself saying to your friend,
“wait… what did you just say?”
Drinks with the coworkers Friday after work.
This [weekly] habit can be completely detrimental for your development. It causes resentment when you’re gossiping, aimlessness in keeping you small in adventuring out and drastically reduces focus both that night and the morning after.
Look, if you’re trying to break free and find a pursuit that makes you happy, congregating in a bar with people who complain isn’t the way of going about it. You’re setting yourself up with a hangover the next day when you should be grinding and hustling towards freedom.
Stagnation
Your brain needs oxygen to achieve optimal focus. When you are idle and not moving you aren’t getting the proper supply of oxygen to the brain.
When you exercise and workout (or perhaps even take a 20 minute walk during your lunch break) you allow for more oxygen to reach the brain and increase your focus.
An irregular sleep schedule.
Your body needs consistency in order to be fully optimized. It needs a schedule to tell it when to be active and when to rest. Your focus will be lackluster if you are going to sleep and waking up without a consistent schedule.
What causes the inconsistency?
Well, going out and drinking on the weekend for one. Procrastination of work also doesn’t help the cause here.
A cynical attitude.
Negativity and treating everything as stupid or useless or foolish can drain focus. This habit is hard. Sometimes you are so deep in a cynical state of being that you can’t even see how negative you are being.
When you are cynical and negative towards anything you cannot focus on what is in front of you.
Nihilism has the ability to grab you by the throat and make you think anything worth your time is a lie. Not everything is stupid. Some things do require your genuine curiosity.
Binge watching Netflix, HBO, Hulu etc
Sure it’s fun.
It’s like eating an entire half gallon of ice cream (guilty).
All this done is numb you in the short term and set you back with your goals in the long term. It’s tough in today’s realm to not turn on the streaming service and see what’s new and exciting (it seems like there’s a new show being released on a weekly basis).
Orange Is The New Black is not going to get you closer to your financial freedom goals.
Endlessly scrolling news feeds, twitter feeds, photo feeds etc.
Engagement is a hot topic in the social media and entertainment industries. What tools do they have at their disposal to get you to scroll longer and stay engaged with the screen?
Once you turn the app on or go to the web address it is like digging an endless ditch in terms of your focus.
You will feel like you went somewhere and gained something but the reality is you just wasted time seeing what other people are doing.
You didn’t get further along with your quest, you helped others further theirs.
Excessive tardiness.
Stop showing up to commitments late.
What happened the last time you were late to a meeting or appointment?
You probably came in flustered.
You were rushing into thinking about what needed to be said, what needed to be written, what needed to be recorded and you didn’t completely focus on the present moment.
Anxiety was winning the battle here and not conscientiousness.
Giving a shit what other people think.
Who are we kidding- perhaps this is habit that is so enveloping it becomes a way of life.
You care so much what other people think that you take so much of your focus and energy on satisfying others’ needs and it completely takes away from focusing on what you need to do to better yourself.
Now I’m not talking about being needlessly mean to rude to people.
Be mindful of how your thoughts may be dictated by what other people think rather than the guide deep in your soul.
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