“In order to HAVE focus we need to escape TO focus.”

– Greg McKeown

If you want an amazing life. A life by design. A life worth living. A life you are stoked on. Then you must build this life out. But that takes TIME and FOCUS. So, are you taking the time to focus? And then taking the time to build it? 

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First You Need TIME:

You can either spend your time, or you can invest your time! I vote for invest your time into building out a life that really means something to you! To do this though, you first need to find some time to be able to focus. So when thinking about time, remember: 

• Everyone has the same amount of time in their day. The most successful people you know and/or see have the same amount of time as you do. So saying something like “I just don’t have time for that” is false, because you do have the time, you just end up using your time elsewhere. Which, this is okay, unless where you are focusing your time isn’t getting you to your dreams.
  • So if you are feeling like you don’t have enough time to focus on building out your life you have designed in your mind, then next I encourage you to track how you are spending your time throughout your day.
    • Is there anywhere you can cut out activities that aren’t being productive?
      • There have been times in my life where every night I sit and watch TV and that’s okay. But when I look back I think to myself, dang I could have been so much more productive if I worked on “x” instead of sitting there and watching TV.
        • Then again, there are days that I know I need to just shut it off. Turn off my brain, my mind, my computer, not do anymore physical activity, and just zone out. So TV is great for that! I probably don’t need that every night (and if I do, then perhaps I need to reevaluate how I’m spending my days). 
      • I used to scroll through social media every night before bed and I didn’t even realize how fast the minutes went by and the next thing I know, I’m way past the time I wanted to be asleep to get my full eight hours of sleep. Now I try to force myself to not even open a social media app when I’m in bed and instead pick up my book. 
      • I also used to wake up and browse Facebook and Instagram first thing in the morning. Yet again, I realized I was wasting 10-20 minutes of valuable and productive time (I’m most productive and fired up in the morning). So I now try to get up and immediately get out of bed. 
    • When are you most productive? If it’s the morning…perhaps waking up earlier is going to give you that time you are needing. It’s amazing how much you can get done from 5:30-7:30 AM. That being said, I always recommend getting the right amount of sleep so if you do this, then make sure you go to bed earlier. I know that might be hard but if you aren’t as productive at night then perhaps it will be okay?? 🙂
      • And turn off all distractions (emails, phone calls, alerts) during this time to be super focused and productive. 
  • Think about your priorities and do those first thing! 
• If you don’t protect your time, someone else will take it up (your boss, your spouse, your kids, your parents, your unconscious mind stuck in habits of wasting time). 
• Lastly, after a few google searches of how to find more time in your life here are my favorite tips:
  • Handle Things Once- if you open an email, handle it immediately rather than saving it for later to deal with. 
  • Make Good Use of Waiting Time- at the doctors office waiting for 30 minutes? Well, bring along a task you can handle while you are there. 
  • Chores- perhaps your time is better spent NOT doing the house cleaning or laundry. Pay someone else to do that. 
  • Systematizing Your Life- Just ask me more about how to do this if it interests you as we have a lot of this in our life! 
  • Exercise- Keep the exercise but have it dialed in and planned before you show up so it’s efficient. Ask me today for my favorite workouts! 
  • Be Decisive – Rather than spending an hour to find a cheaper airfare, give yourself 15 minutes and be okay with spending a little more knowing you just saved yourself 45 minutes. I need to remind myself of this as I’m always searching for the best deal and this actually backfires a lot! 
  • Efficiency- Do the dishes while you make those calls to the tax guy, tag team with another parent for pickup/drop-off for sports or school, when cooking, make a double batch and freeze it for another night! 
  • Set a Timer- For nonproductive activities or other time sucks. Did you know on your smartphones you can set timers to clock you out of social media? If you don’t want to enable that, then use an old fashion watch or phone timer to go off sixty minutes after you sit down to watch your favorite show so you don’t get sucked into the next episode. 
  • Learn to Say No. Eek this one is hard for me! But when you say yes to one thing you are saying no to another, so always think what a yes today might mean a no for tomorrow.  

Then You Need to FOCUS:

Once you can find some more time in your life, then next step is to block out and use that extra time to go focus! Focus on what? Well read on to find out! 

• I never realized how important this really is but in the past few years I’ve had a lot more solo hikes and trail runs (because my main adventure buddy, my husband, is at home watching kiddos while I adventure). I miss him and other friends on these days but lately I’ve realized how these solo times have forced me to escape it all and given me time to focus on my life. I’m able to think about how I can improve my business, to think about the goals I want to achieve in my life, to think, well, just about everything!  There are so many thoughts I’ve had during these moments that I never even realized because I never had the space to get there in my mind. 
• So once you’ve created some more time, then respect it! Even if that time comes and you think, I don’t have much to think about today, I encourage you to not let it get filled up with other tasks. Just go for a walk during that time and keep the podcasts off, keep the phone on mute, and just walk and think. The fresh air, outdoors, and an endless trail creates this amazing atmosphere that just gets my mind going and I discover all these subconscious thoughts and goals I never realized I had! So just go BE in that space and see what happens. 

Then You will DREAM: 

I hope that as you are taking the time to focus you will then start to dream. And this, this is the ticket! This is the money spot. This is when the magic starts to happen. As you are focusing on what you want in your life I hope your life starts to unfold into a brilliant wonderful world of opportunities. If so, then I encourage you to document all these exciting thoughts! If you are at home, then grab our beloved Dream book and start adding to it!  Or if you are like me and you are out on a walk then use this tip- send yourself an email that you can voice to text (so you can just talk and think) and you can add it to your dream book later! 

We hope the creative juices just start flowing now that you have created this space to think and brainstorm but if they haven’t, here are some questions to help get your brain cranking: 

• Analyze these areas of your life and think which ones could be improved, changed, set goals for, etc. (List is pulled from the amazing book, The Dream Manager).
  • Physical
  • Emotional
  • Intellectual
  • Spiritual
  • Psychological
  • Material
  • Professional
  • Financial
  • Creative
  • Adventure
  • Legacy
  • Character
• What inspires you?
• What are you proud of?
• What would make you proud to accomplish this year? In 5 years? In your life?
• What Instagram accounts do you follow?
• What are you an expert in? 

Then You Take Action:

Once you find the time to focus, and then you get to focus on what’s important, you’ll most likely be fired up with not only goals but actions steps to take to achieve those goals.  So now you need to build out your system and you need to do this soon before you lose that momentum!! So remember to do some of these steps to help: 

• Continue to time block for more focusing time, and more time to work on these action steps, especially if they’re not in alignment with activities you already do. What I mean is, let’s say you’ve always wanted to write a children’s book but you are a chemist. Well, you now need to time block out some space for you to work on writing the children’s book and it has to be outside of your work time.
  • Sometimes it’s just as simple as using that time to write. Other times you need to spend time researching and learning and masterminding.
    • If you want to write a book, you might need to read other children’s books, talk to authors about their steps in getting published, set up your workspace to be able to write (are you a pencil and paper writer or a computer typer), etc. 
• Like we talked about in the last enewsletter, make sure you are reviewing your progress of reaching your goals. 

And also remember this, sometimes it’s not always about taking action. Sometimes there is beauty in just dreaming and having that passion fired up inside of you. So don’t always feel the pressure to take action if the timing isn’t now, or even ever. Instead, just dream and think and write it out, and someday, maybe, it will become a reality, and if not, that’s okay too because dreaming is sometimes just as important. 🙂 

You and The World Needs This:
You most likely are a busy person. You most likely have other people, jobs, activities that need your attention. So the idea of taking more time away from them may be hard and feel impossible. But here’s the thing, if you are living the best version of yourself then all those other things will benefit! So stop with any guilt and figure out what YOU need. Figure out WHY you need it. Then have a pow wow with all those people in your life to talk about why this is important, what you need, and how it will affect them (the good and the bad). 

The world needs more people living passionate amazing lives. So go get out there and find the TIME to FOCUS on what you need to make your life the best life ever.