Productivity Today: Managing Attention in the Digital Age | Learn with Todoist | Kevin Siskar | Skillshare
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Productividad hoy: Gestionar la atención en la era digital | Aprender con Todoist

teacher avatar Kevin Siskar, CEO, Finta

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introducción

      2:10

    • 2.

      Mejora de la atención general

      6:29

    • 3.

      Perfecciona tu enfoque

      6:08

    • 4.

      Reduce las distracciones

      4:58

    • 5.

      Dar prioridad a las tareas correctas

      6:40

    • 6.

      Crea una rutina

      6:22

    • 7.

      Reflexiones finales

      0:56

    • 8.

      Más clases sobre productividad

      0:35

  • --
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  • Nivel intermedio
  • Nivel avanzado
  • Todos los niveles

Generado por la comunidad

El nivel se determina según la opinión de la mayoría de los estudiantes que han dejado reseñas en esta clase. La recomendación del profesor o de la profesora se muestra hasta que se recopilen al menos 5 reseñas de estudiantes.

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About This Class

¡Aprende a controlar tu atención y toma tu productividad a nuevas alturas en esta nueva clase con Todoist y Kevin Siskar!

En el mundo de hoy, todos quieren tu atención. Desde las notificaciones de aplicaciones y sitios web hasta los correos electrónicos y las invitaciones del calendario, puede resultar difícil mantenerse concentrado en la tarea que se está realizando. En esta clase, Kevin comparte cómo puedes aumentar tu capacidad de atención, calmar tu mente y hacer más cosas. Aprenderás lo siguiente:

  • Perfecciona tu capacidad de concentración
  • Reducir las distracciones diarias
  • Mejora tu proceso de priorización

Tanto si eres freelance como si trabajas a tiempo completo, todos pueden beneficiarse de aprender a gestionar mejor su atención en los tiempos en que vivimos. Una vez que tomes esta clase, recuperarás el control de tu propia atención, lo que te permitirá poner tu enfoque donde quieras y ser más productivo cada día.

Si tienes alguna pregunta de todos, puedes mandar un mensaje de texto a +1 (646) 907-669.

Más clases de Kevin en Skillshare: 

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Kevin Siskar

CEO, Finta

Profesor(a)

Kevin Siskar is the CEO of Finta. Previously he was Managing Director of the Founder Institute in New York where he built an investment portfolio of over 150 early-stage companies. Kevin is the host of the Ambition Today podcast where he explores the hardships and heroism of the entrepreneurs, creators, investors, and builders who ambitiously change the world. You can find him on Siskar.co talking startups, products, technology and services -- and the people who build them.

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: In the 21st century attention has been stolen from us. Everything from our iPhone, to our Chromebook, to our Macbook notifications, everything is vying for our attention. Being conscious about that and really being conscious and where we give that attention. That we get the most value and meaning back from it matters. So, we're going to talk today about how do you maintain that attention? How to keep that focus instead of just drifting off in-. Ooops, sorry, a notification came in. I'm just kidding. But, see how easy that happens? It happens to us constantly. Hi my name is Kevin Siskar, and I am the managing director of Founder Institute in New York. We help early stage founders start, accelerate, and build meaningful and enduring technology companies. I'm also the host of the Ambition Today podcast. A podcast where we interview serial entrepreneurs about how they built, and grew, and sold their businesses. In today's attention management course, we will be talking about understanding attention, minimizing distractions, prioritizing your day-to-day to-do list. How do you build those tasks into routines that are repeatable week, month, year after year or to go through a lot of software, and tips, and tricks that you can use to optimize your attention management in this course? But, one of the most important pieces of technology you're going to need to put together is a great to-do list app. I've personally used and recommend To-Do List and we'll be taking you through To-Do List today and showing you how to use and optimize that To-Do List app. You can find or use any To-Do List app on the web or maybe use something that you already have built in to your life. We'll show you how to prioritize that list. There's also many powerful integrations and features that I personally like to-do list for and we'll show you some of those today. When you're starting a company, productivity matters. Typically when you're starting out, it's you as the founder, maybe a co-founder too. It's really on you to hold yourself accountable. If you are not moving the business forward, then nothing is moving the business forward. So, taking the time, you're having the attention and the focus to execute on the right goals, to get you to the right milestones to move you to the next level is of the utmost importance. All of that and more in today's attention management class. 2. Improve Overall Attention: When we're talking about attention management we're talking about, how can you best use the 24 hours you're given every day? When I say attention management, what I mean is your ability to focus. Throughout the day how well can you stay attached, focused, and working on the things that you need to get done that day to move towards your long term and short term goals? Attention management is a little different than time management. Time management is there's 24 hours in a day, how do you allocate that time. Now, as we all know, allocating time versus actually focusing and doing stuff at the time we're supposed to be doing it is very different for anyone that's been stuck in the YouTube, Wormhole, or anywhere else. Attention management is more, we've already set up our day, we've planned it, we know that 11:00 AM we're supposed to be working on that email to Greg, how effective are we being at focusing on that email, writing it well, and sending it on time without being distracted or without failing to complete it before having to move on to the next time-slot we've allocated for the day. Attention management, in my personal opinion, has become an essential skill in order to succeed in your work life, as an entrepreneur, and even in your personal life. There are so many things pulling for our attention. I can grab my phone right here and show you in the last minute I've got an Instagram notification, a text message, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight emails, a YouTube notification, and it's gotten very hard to focus. Your email inbox and your push notifications are your to-do list as dictated by other people. Everything that comes in your inbox, every push notification you receive is something that people want you to do that you didn't decide. It was sent to you, given to you. And so, making sure that your scheduling time away from that, that you can think, figure out things for yourself, being present, and knowing what you need to get done, and execute against will be all the difference, and a huge competitive advantage compared to everyone else who is simply just doing what they're told through an inbox or through push notifications. It's become very important though to be able to focus the same work has to get done as 30 years ago, as 5 years ago. And so, building these skills now is only going to behoove you in the future as these things accelerate and it becomes harder and harder to focus. There are two aspects to attention that I really want to talk about and highlight, and it's prioritization and focus. Prioritization is figuring out what tasks you should be allocating your time to. What matters? What needs to get done? And then focus is your ability to execute on those tasks. The ability to be in the present give it everything you have, zeroing on it, and get it done in a meaningful manner that you can cross off a to-do list, be happy, be excited, and move on to the next task. We're going to deep dive into how you can optimize your prioritization strategies and your focus throughout the day. Before we jump into that though, there's a few tips, and tricks, and kind of high-level things that I do in my day that I think you might find valuable, and I like to share with you now. One of the first ways that you can optimize taking the time each day is meditation. I'm a big fan of taking the time to be present not just on our own mind, but your own body and really understanding what you're feeling and what needs to get done. There are some great apps out there. I highly recommend Headspace. It's a guided meditation app that takes you through 10 days right off the bat. Another great one is Calm really lets you be tranquil. It even helps you go to sleep if you're stressed and you need help going to sleep at night. There are some guided stories and sounds that can put you at ease. Another way to schedule time today to keep your mind clear is to just start to unplug and power down before you go to bed. You can keep your phone in the other room and you could pull out a book or a magazine and just take the time to read something in a print. I promise you you'll feel much better for it and it'll feel much more intentional than just zipping around notifications and apps switching. You'll start to unwind and after a Chapter 2 or a few pages you'll start to actually get sleepy and you'll turn the lights off and go to bed. Even before that, another thing you can do is turn the night-shift mode on on your iPhone. If you have an android you can also download an app called Flux, which is also available for your computer as well if you're doing email or you run your desktop late into the night. Working out is also super important for scheduling time in your day to keep your mind clear. Pumping endorphins into your bloodstream is one of the best ways to keep yourself happy and keep your stress levels down. Working out reduces the level of cortisol in your bloodstream which is the chemical that drives stress into your body. And so, working out daily, maybe taking a day off or two a week, but consistently working out and keeping your body in good shape will really help you keep your stress levels down, be able to focus better when you need to. One easy way to grab a win right off the bat is to simply make your bed in the morning. There's actually a little bit of science backing this, and it's also a big technique in the military. But making your bed in the morning, taking the time to intentionally do that every day is a little win and you do get a little ahead of dopamine for crushing that goal and taking it off your to-do list and from there you can carry that momentum with you throughout the day. That's if you have a little bit of time. If you have a much longer bit of time, one of my favorite stories comes from Dennis Mortensen is the founder of the x.ai. Every Sunday Dennis lives in the Wall Street and he takes the six train up to 125th Street, 125 blocks north of his apartment, and with no headphones, no iPhone no technological distractions, he walks back to his apartment and it takes him a few hours, but he takes everything in his brain and he mentally puts it into the boxes. That meeting that he has on Thursday with his executive team that they want to discuss the new AI they're going to roll out. It's already, and he thinks about it and he compartmentalizes it. So, what Dennis has told me is when he gets into that meeting on Thursday there is no, "Oh, I need to get back to and think about it." It's already been done. So, he tells his team what to do, they go and they execute on it, and they crush it. So, those are a few things you can do to optimize your overall attention. Next, we're going to dive into a few ways that you can minimize distractions throughout the day. 3. Hone Your Focus: In this video, we're going to talk about how you can minimize distractions and really focus on the task at hand. Minimizing distractions in your day-to-day life is very important. Did you see Irvine study showed that on average it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task you were working on whenever you get distracted or switch tasks? Think about that. Your best friend has texted you that YouTube video. You've just got that push notification. You glance at it. When what you think it'll just be a second and then you're going to get back to what you're doing, but the science shows that's not true. You will be back for probably 20 minutes and that can add up a lot throughout the day. That's why it's so important to minimize distractions throughout the day, so you never get distracted in the first place. One of the biggest ways we get distracted is other things we should be working on. This is can actually be summarized in the Zeigarnick Effect, which is the tendency to remember our uncompleted tasks over our completed ones. So one of the best ways to fight against distractions, things that pop in your head, is to just quickly get it out. For me, I just brain dump everything, rather than Google it on the spot and get distracted in some wormhole that 23 minutes later brings me back to what I was supposed to be doing. I have a place that I call my inbox, and it actually lives inside Todoist, and I quickly just write down anything that pops in my brain and I leave it there. Then later, I categorize it and I assign myself the time to come back and check it out then. So we've talked about how important it is to have an effective to-do list, and I want to jump in and show you how I use Todoist for my own personal style of work, and some of the tips and tricks that I use throughout the week to make sure I'm effectively getting the right things done. For this process, you can use whatever you like. You can even use pen and paper, but I'm going to be using Todoist because it's my current process and I already have some of the tools installed that I'm going to show you today. So I'm going to show you today on my desktop app, so I'm going to open that up and I'm going to start with my inbox. Now, this is a place where I can dump anything I'm working on. So say I had an awesome idea for my podcast and I wanted to partner with Steve at WeWork for Podcast Studio, right? So, I can dump that in there and I can come back to it later. I'm going to show you how to categorize it in a little bit. Another great way is via your e-mail. Todoist offers a Chrome extension that plugs right into Gmail. So I'll open this email from Joe here. I had a meeting with Joe on Sunday and I need to follow up. Actually, I have an action item. So I can actually click the Todoist button right here in the e-mail from Joe. It says, "Thanks again, " which is the subject of the email. But I'm going to change that, I'm going to say, "Follow up with Joe about Mentoring Founder Institute, New York." I'm going to add the date. Let's say we want that due for Thursday. I'm going to add a priority, Priority 2, and I'm going to add a task. Then that adds up to my inbox. So I can come back over here, I can press sync, we see it right there. One of the best parts about it is with one click, I can get right back to that email from Joe. So when I am ready to work on this, I know exactly what happened, where the information is, and what I need to respond to. So the combination of mentally putting everything in my Todoist inbox, taking all the action items from my emails, putting them in my Todoist inbox, and even sometimes some Slack, taking my action items and putting them in my Todoist inbox, really lets me get everything that needs to get done, actionable tasks in one place. So anybody can do a brain dump, you can do that and pen, paper, or you can, like me, use Todoist, and pop everything from your mind to your Gmail in there. So, now, what do you do with it? You've got all your action items in one place. You now need to take the time to categorize them, add them to the projects that make sense, and really set your week up so you can execute on this. As you can see, I have quite a few projects already. So I'm not going to add a new one but I'm going to take my inbox and I'm going to organize it into my existing projects. So let's look at this one. "Exclusive invitation of the New York Space Alliance's Innovation Exchange." So with this, I am going to add this to my project. I am going to add it to partnerships right there, and I am going to set the due date for next week. So let's do that and then it's gone and it's there, and it'll show up on my today view, which is over here on my next seven days which you can see here. So we go on the next seven days. We can see that it showed up right here at the bottom and so it's on our Todoist for next week. As you start to categorize things, sometimes your list can get a little heavy. I can tell you from personal experience that I find having a few key things we need to get done each day are best, and for a week, any time my list gets above 45 tasks in a week, it's very hard to complete them all, and you end up snoozing a majority of them. So make sure that you're very diligent about what's worth your time, what you can actually get done, and the amount of work you give yourself for the week as you categorize these. The other great thing as you're categorizing these, is Todoist use a smart syntax. So say you want to just do this tomorrow. You can write tomorrow and it'll highlight it. Or you could say every third Tuesday, and Todoist will pick up on that too, and create a recurring event that you can complete multiple times. It's really great. I actually want to do this tomorrow though, so I'm going to change that, and I'm going to add this to the partnerships. Then, here's that one from our e-mail inbox. I have to follow up on that as well. So there we go. My inbox is categorized and I can move on with my day. 4. Decrease Distractions: Aside from brain dumping everything into To-Do List and keeping your mind clear that way, there's a few other things you can do as well. One of the things that happened to me a few years ago, is I bought an Apple Watch. And for some reason, I couldn't set it up because there was something corrupted in my iCloud data. And that forced me to delete everything on my phone and restart from scratch. Going into that process, I'm not going to lie, I was a little angry and I was pretty upset that I was going to have to start from scratch. In hindsight, it's one of the best things that ever happened to me. Deleting all the apps on my phone did one big, very important thing. It removed a ton of push notifications. In the months after wiping my phone, there was a dramatic difference in the amount of notifications that came in, and how distracted I got. Over time, you download more apps, you kind of get back to where you were. And so, you have to be conscious about this. Delete apps you don't use. Most importantly, turn off notifications. Freeing my mind from those little blips, those little light flash bulbs of come visit me, has really been freeing and allows me to focus on what I need to focus on. Another way you can reduce notifications on your phone is actually built right into the control center. It's called, do not disturb. It's also available on your Mac. On your Mac, you just go to the right tab here and you click Do not Disturb. And as you could see, notifications come in when it's off and notifications don't get shown when it's on. And, that really lets you stay focused on the computer and then you can also do that on your phone as well. Now, I want to show you a few tools that you can use if you really need some help limiting your screen time. One of them is called, Onward. It's a VPN that you install on your phone thru downloading the app and you can set limits. So, you can limit your time on social media or a game you play too much. And so, you can pick the windows during the day that you want to be able to play it, and block yourself from it during times you know you shouldn't be playing it. Another piece of software that I've personally used that I recommend is a tool called, Go Fucking Work. And the reason I love this is it's motivational, entrepreneurial tone, blocks websites that you set. Another tool that I highly recommend is called Escape 2. It actually sits up in your computer, up in the tab here, and it tracks how many times you switch between tabs on your computer, and so you can actually keep track of how often you get distracted. And then, it actually shows you stats and measures it across weeks. So, you can see which days are your most distracted days, and which days you're most focused. Another time tracking software you can use is called, aTimeLogger. It's used to recommended by one of the founders from Founder Institute, Tom Comerota, who's the founder and CEO of DentalStores. What are the main reasons Tom uses aTimeLogger is because if you can't measure it, you can't track it, you can't improve upon it. And so, he uses aTimeLogger to log all his things throughout the day. Everything from watching TV, to time spent on coding, to the time spent versus designing versus shipping dental products. One of the quotes Tom gave me about his experience with aTimeLogger is, "You can't time everything. So I try to keep general buckets, unless I really think it's an issue and I want specific data on activity X. And if that's not enough reason to use it as an added bonus, you'll start feeling really guilty about pressing the watch TV category, or when exercise falls to last place on your list of actions." So, just the social conscious awareness that having a pie chart of your time gives you, really lets you draw conclusions that you can execute on to make yourself better, stronger, faster for the next week. And some of the best founders and CEOs I know, track their time for this reason, and then push themselves to improve on it week after week. And so, you need to think about that in your own life too. How can you create the structure, these processes that are repeatable, and can move you towards your goals as you execute on them over and over and over with new data, new product, new inputs. Right? New inputs come in, go through your process, outputs and actions come out that hopefully execute, and lead to long term growth for you or your business. A few more things I do to reduce distractions is, I try to keep things separate. I'll tell you back in the day, I used to put everything in my inbox. I would email myself reminders for work that had to be done, for articles I wanted to read and I'd end up with this lumped, hard to sort through inbox. And so, what I do now, is I've sort of separated those things and I find it really helps. I keep my personal email and my work email all together in separate inboxes. And another tool I use is called Pocket. It's on a Chrome extension. It's on Android and iOS, and it lets you save articles. And that sounds simple and nuanced, but I read a lot and those articles that show up and pop up is distracting. You can save them for later. 5. Prioritize the Right Tasks: So far, we've talked about understanding attention and minimizing distraction. Now that you've got a clear mind, you've got everything out of your brain and in the tool list somewhere, I want to talk about how we can prioritize it, how we can make sure we're doing the most important work first, followed by the secondary work, and then the stuff of lower priority. Once you have everything in your to-do list, taking the time to organize it and prioritize it is very important. If you don't do that, you'll end up just doing tasks and checking them off, and you will be super busy. Congratulations. But, being busy is not the same as being productive. Making sure that you're doing the right tasks at the right time to move your life forward or your business forward is super important. Shana Lebowitz from LearnVest points out that there's three different types of attention. There's proactive attention, inactive attention, and active attention. Proactive attention is the kind of sustained focus you need to do the most important work, to write that business proposal, craft that email, solve that problem, and really focus to get something done. Active attention is more necessary for the smaller, day-to-day activities, maybe writing or compiling your to-do list, getting everything out into your inbox. Then, inactive attention is more suited for the automatic things, filing paperwork, deleting your spam or your promo emails, things that really are just click, done. You can easily get them done. When I think about prioritizing tasks that require my proactive attention, they are probably pretty important. I'm probably going to give them at least a half hour, probably an hour's worth of time to do. I'm going to make sure that it's a good time of day, somewhere where I'm most focused, most fresh. I'm probably going to grab a cup of coffee, throw on some headphones, a great playlist, and just focus on getting that task done. Tasks that require my inactive attention, typically I could schedule it at a time of day where I'm maybe not on my A game, but things still need to get done. Having that self-awareness really makes sure that you still make progress through those moments. Lastly, active attention is sort of in the middle space between proactive and inactive. These are things like meetings, they're typically a priority two for me, but I always make sure that both active and inactive tasks never distract from my proactive tasks, my priority ones. They're separate. They're kept away. You really have to protect your time so you can really execute on those top priority items that are really going to move things forward for you. Bringing the types of attention back to my to-do list, here's a way you can think about it. Today, I have to record the Skillshare class. That's going to require all of my attention, my focus. It's a top priority. I can't really do anything else while I'm doing that. That, for me, is going to be a priority one flag here on to-do list. Now, next, I have to submit Alta Claro for Syndicate. That's actually also going to require my full attention when I need to get that done later today, and so, that's going to also be a priority one. Let's say I'm doing some data entry. That's kind of passive. That's probably inactive attention. I'm going to give that a priority three. Then lastly, I have to look up The New York City VC Sports Project. That's somewhere in between, probably active attention. I'm going to give that a priority two. What I'd like you to do is take your to-do list, go through it, and start to think about what is going take all of your attention, what is going to be inactive, proactive, and active. It's really important to start thinking about when the attention they require fits with the attention that you can give them in your daily lifestyle. Maybe you're a morning person, maybe you're a night owl. Start to think about those times of the day that you're most effective, and make sure you align the proactive attention requiring tasks with those most efficient productive moments of your day. Now that you have prioritized your tasks and put them up against how much focus and time and energy they're going to take, where do you put them in your actual day? So for that, we're going to look at the Eisenhower Method, which consists of Do It, Dump It, Delegate It, or Defer It. What do each of those mean? Do it means you're going to complete the task. You're going to execute on it and get it done. Delegate it means you're going to give it to someone else on your team, and they're going to execute on it. Defer it means we're going to snooze it. You're going to push it to a later date when it needs to get done. Dump it means you're going to delete it. It's not worth your time, it's not worth your energy, and it's a distraction. Jumping back into my to-do list here, I'm going to show you a little bit about what the Eisenhower Method looks like in action. First up is do it. Record Skillshare class, that is something that needs to get done. I'm going to leave that there. It's my top priority, and I need to do it. Next up is dump it. Let's say there's a task that I needed to delete. Ideally, if you've done a really good job filtering, that didn't even make it this far in the process. Let's say, you have someone else on your team, they assign you a task that shows up on your to-do list, and you don't need to do it. Manually pull a report from Database, I'm going to say, I'm going leave a comment that says, "Can automatically be pulled.'' I'm actually going to just delete that task because it does not need to get done. Or, you can archive it, or you can mark that as completed. I'm actually going to mark it as completed because then it stays in the database, and someone can find it later. Next up is delegate it. I have a task here for data entry. I actually am going to have Yusuke do that, my associate. I'm going to change that category from inbox to associate. Then, I'm actually going to assign that to Yusuke. Set the due date as today, and then that will actually go over to his to-do list, and disappear from mine. I have delegated that. Then lastly, we're going to defer it. I really need to look up this New York City VC thing for the sports project, but I probably not going to get to that today. I have two priority one tasks already. They're going to require a lot of my time, so I'm going to the to-do list here. I'm going to go snooze. I can choose the suggested date from their AI. I can pick tomorrow automatically or I can manually choose a date here and pick tomorrow as well. After you've thought about the types of attention your tasks require and you've gone through the Eisenhower Method, what you're really left with is a core to-do list, a real set of the things that need to get done that are important, that require your attention, and that will really move your business forward. 6. Create a Routine: One of the most important lessons we teach, if understood, is the requirement to build scalable, repeatable processes. You can't build a globally scalable business if you don't have processes in place that are repeatable and dependable week after week. It's the only way that you can grow to be a million, billion dollar business. Now, I'm going to walk you little bit through my routine and what I do each week and, mind you, I have a little bit more flexibility than most. You'll see what I mean in a minute. Keep in mind that you still have flexibility as well, within maybe the constraints of your own life, your own job. You can, for the most part, try to force through and get things done in the way, manner, workflow that works for you. I devote Mondays to getting organized and getting the inbox zero. Inbox zero means that I have responded to all the emails in my inbox and there is literally zero emails at the end of the day. This is really important because it lets me do that brain dump, really clear everything out of my inbox and put it into my to-do list and really lets me get everything from where it came in to where it needs to go, in order to execute on it and get it done. Next up is Tuesdays. Tuesdays, I typically reserved for my meetings. Meetings happen throughout the week but, for the most part, I try to make them happen on Tuesdays. Just like Mondays, I have a similar goal. My goal's to have a meeting, come away with action items. I put those items in my to-do list. From there, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are all about executing on those to-do lists. I think through the types of attention and focus that the items on my to-do list are going to require. You can then go through the Eisenhower method. You could start to figure out whether you should do it, dump it, defer it, or delegate it. Once you've done that, you're going to have a really strong list of what you need to get done on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and you're going to have the time set aside to execute on it. Now, obviously, yes, emails get answered on Thursday, and meetings happen on Monday sometimes, but it's not the end of the world. This is a goal that you should strive for. This may not be 100 percent attainable week after week, and that's fine. But if you're getting there 98 percent there, 99 percent there, it's about working towards the goal that matters the most. One of my other key tips for having, running a successful inbox email system, is not playing email ping pong. This involves the repeated redundant emails that just suck your time. Predominantly, that means scheduling a meeting. You go to schedule a meeting, you've agreed to meet. Then you have about seven or eight emails on average that require setting a location, is it a coffee, is it a phone call, what day of the week, what time, and, typically, eight to nine emails later, you have it on the calendar. Now, if you take five meetings a week, this is a lot of email that you're generating, and a lot of distractions and attention-sucking time Wednesday through Friday. You really need to reduce that if possible. There is a few free solutions out there for you to reduce email ping pong in your life. X.ai uses an artificial intelligence bot called Amy that you can CC on any of your emails. Amy will then respond, handle all of the email ping pong back and forth, and automatically get the meeting on your calendar at your favorite coffee shop or anywhere that you would like to set. Another alternative is called Claralabs. Claralabs is more of a B2B AI assistant. It's not free but it's another alternative. In the middle of the road between x.ai and Claralabs, is Rivly, a virtual assistant company where you could secure your own virtual assistant who isn't an AI bot but is actually a real person that can help you get to know you a little bit more and really take advantage of having a one on one relationship, where they know you, they know your information, and they can set up meetings for you, make purchases for you, and kind of automate some of your life. Reducing email scheduling has been the number one impact on getting my time back. The distractions from email ping pong throughout the week will disappear. It's probably more affordable than you think. You can probably get, using x.ai, Rivly, or Claralabs, all of the scheduling removed from your life from somewhere between free to $150. I highly recommend figuring out a process to automate email scheduling, remove that from your daily process, and really get back that time and prevent those distractions. Another way to use routines to manage your attention was recently told to me by Peter Shankman on my podcast, Ambition Today. Peter is notoriously famous for having ADHD and finding great ways to succeed in your life and use ADHD as an advantage. On my podcast, Peter has told me that every morning, he wakes up in his gym clothes. The night before, he puts his gym clothes on, he goes to sleep in them, and when he wakes up, he is ready to go, and he goes to the gym. He's figured out mornings are hard,. He has figured out and built a process that's repeatable, a routine, that protects his time, his energy, his focus. By putting his gym clothes on at night, he can wake up in the morning, go to the gym, and get it done. Routines don't always have to be big. They don't always have to be days or weeks. Sometimes, they can be just 10, 15, 25 minutes. One of the ways you can do that is simply using a timer. There's plenty of apps out there that can let you time or if you want to get real fancy you can buy an old school kitchen timer. Set it on your desk, press start for a 25 minute timer, and just know that when that gets to zero, you're going to take a break. But for that 25 minutes, you're going to work and be as proactive with your attention as possible. Something as simple as setting a timer each day for even just 20 minutes can be your routine. That isn't routine in and out of itself. Over time, that's going to be a trigger for you that's really going to let you build these routines long-term. Twenty minutes each day with a timer will become a daily routine. It's a stepping stone and a start to building long-term routines that will keep you going to where you need to be going. 7. Final Thoughts: If you take the time to build out these processes, do the self-reflection and really think about where you want to go long term. I promise you, you will see a meaningful impact in your life. [inaudible] today, we listen to entrepreneurs, but we don't really listen about what they do today, we listen to how they got started, what they did in high school, college, the lawns they mowed, and over time the processes that they built that allowed them to succeed, grow, change, and morph into the successes they are today. So, I promise you everybody starts at the beginning and everybody has to go somewhere. So, putting in the work will make a difference. Even if you're just at the beginning, you can get to where you're going in a short amount of time just by doing the work. Thank you so much for taking this class. I hope it was helpful. I can't wait to see where you go from here. Please reach out if you have any feedback or need any help. Stay curious everyone and I'll see you next time. 8. More Classes on Productivity: