26 Habits for better FOCUS

Summary

Your dreams will never come true unless you beat the number, one dream killer - procrastination.

Nothing is more frustrating than having a great idea, knowing what you should do, but for some reason not being able to get started.

The key to beating procrastination is to build habits for better focus. With the right habits, you will get better focus and you can stay away from distractions.

Today's episode is split up into four topics that will teach you 26 habits for better focus.

1. Why you procrastinate, and what actions to start with. The things you need to do once, that will still have a big impact.
2. It's not your willpower that is the problem, it's the environment and distractions around you. How do you change an environment that stops procrastination?
3. Biggest weapon against procrastination is to have friends that crush it. How do you find friends that are doers?
4. How to create a step by step plan that will increase your motivation and solves the procrastination traps.

With these four topics, you will be able to build habits for better focus and stay away from distractions.

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Today's episode is a personal development episode, where Erik Bergman and Emil Ekvardt explore topics about how to grow as a person and get a better focus.

We are both personal development junkies and spend many hours every week sharing our ideas and reading about new things. This episode is great for you who want to learn about our latest perspective.

We share lots of personal stories, talk about how it applies in our lives, and where we have learned it from.

In the first topic, we talk about the common advice of how to deal with procrastination - "just work harder". This is bad advice because it doesn't help you to get better focus, quite the opposite. It will make you feel worse about yourself which will make your performance weaker, not stronger. We touch upon how we struggle with procrastination ourselves and how it feels to deal with it.

In the second topic, we look at what differentiates people that have lots of self-control from people who don't. What is it that the people with lots of self-control do, and how can you apply it in your life? This is the key to being less distracted and keep your focus.

In the third topic, we look at one of the most powerful ways to stay focused on your goals. Finding friends who are inspiring doers. Surrounded by the right friend's everything is easier when it comes to staying focused.

In the fourth and final topic, we look at how you can build your motivation so it's much easier to be focused. When you want something enough it's easier to stay engaged with it and limit your distractions.

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Social media channels:
http://linktr.ee/smilingerik
http://linktr.ee/emil.e

Transcript

[00:00:00] Your dreams will never come true unless you beat them, no one dream killer over thinking there is nothing more frustrating than having a great idea, maybe knowing exactly what to do.

[00:00:15] But for some reason, you cannot seem to get started if you struggle with overthinking is crucial to start building better habits. And that is what this episode is all about. So stick with us until the end, because if you do, you will have all the tools you need to beat overthinking forever.

[00:00:40] It doesn't take creative power, you see results straight away, you're going to feel less stressed and less anxiety because the environment is as good and tidy around you.

[00:00:49] So I think that's that's a great place to start. Yeah. I mean, if your environment is cluttered, your thoughts are going to be cluttered and you're going to have a lot of overthinking. So I think that's it's easier to start there than. Yes. Oh, let's just do more. Do more.

[00:01:25] Welcome to the becoming great dotcom podcast, and I am here with, as always, Erik Bergman, who is the founder of Great,com, our company that would give away 100 percent of its profits to help the environment. And Erik made over 50 million euros before he turned 30 when he founded his previous company, Catina Media, that went from zero to 300 employees in just five years. And beside of great is teaching personal development and entrepreneurship. This over 200000 Instagram followers. Erik, how are you doing today?

[00:02:02] I'm doing very well, my friend. And as always, I'm here with my good friend Emil, who is the host of this podcast, as well as our other podcast, Great.com talks with. And it was the first one joining me in about two years ago. And he this super smart guy, he just loves learning things together with my creative sparring partner in this podcast and Instagram and and YouTube content, everything around it is just it's just so fun to learn. Well, and he's also a personal coach where he runs a coaching business on the side of what he's doing with great teaching, especially men how to live a young and how to live a richer and happier life. How are you doing today?

[00:02:46] I am feeling excited for this episode. It feels like we have a lot of a lot of concrete advice to give to you guys listening. And hey, if you're new to this podcast, our intention would becoming greater is to be the podcast in the world that gives you the most value per minute that you listen to us. And we plan to accomplish this by spending a lot of time planning to set these episodes, knowing what to say, not allowing pointless stories. And also, we don't have any commercial breaks at all. We think it's kind of annoying when we hear commercials and other podcasts. And if you feel the same way, think of us the next time you get bothered by a commercial break in another podcast. And our goal to bring you the most value per minute that you listen to any podcast within the field of personal development and entrepreneurship. And today's episode is divided into four topics in the first topic. We are going to look at how come you're overthinking in the first place and what are some quick fixes you can do right now that would take one minute and would have a huge effect on your ability to focus in the second topic. We are going to look at willpower and how that is not really the problem. The problem is your environment. How can you fix your environment to be more focused in topic number three? We are going to look at your friends. Having friends that crush it and that are being productive is one of the best ways for you to stay focused. How can you find those kind of friends that are doers? And in the fourth and final topic, we're going to look at a step by step plan to break down your projects and make sure that you get focused and productive.

[00:04:29] Let's get into it.

[00:04:40] Eric, over 200000 followers on your Instagram and you get questions all the time, and the most common ones you get are how to deal with overthinking and procrastination, which is pretty much the same question. Why do you think this is so common?

[00:04:57] So if I start by addressing what I believe is the most common advice out there, I think it is to just push through and keep working and go at it. And I believe that's horrible advice, because I think that once you're I know myself that it's someone telling me to just push it. When I am procrastinating, I usually procrastinate because I'm feeling overwhelmed or I'm tired. I'm lacking motivation or energy. And someone just tells me to go from that energy. I, I don't find the goal in that energy. So I believe that big reason why I get this question so often is that there isn't really good advice out there for how to deal with this. And this is it's a very hard thing to deal with. I believe all of us deal with it as various extents. And I know that I struggle with it sometimes. And how is procrastination for you?

[00:05:52] Well, before I answer that, I can see how to shut up and work harder. Advice is really unfair to you, because when you get that and you're already maybe in a low energy, you will just feel lower confidence, you'll feel bad about yourself, you will feel lazy, and that will do nothing to help you change your state. And to answer your question, the times when I am procrastinating are often at times where I don't have so much energy. I don't feel so creative. Maybe I haven't slept well. And then it really doesn't help for someone to just go work harder now.

[00:06:27] And I would like we spoke about in in our previous episode and for you listening, if you haven't listened to our episode just before this one, we broke down the mental side of overthinking and procrastinating and what's happening within us. And we look at this as a downward spiral, which touches on this with, oh, just push it, go through it. Because what usually happens with procrastinating is that we feel low on energy. We dealt ourselves, we compare ourselves with others. We're afraid of failing. So instead of taking action, we do so and we watch TV or we call our phones or drink alcohol, we eat crappy food, which just increases the probability of us failing again, that we feel even worse about ourselves. This spiral just goes downwards and this is what happens when you get the advice. Just push through, just do it. Because when you're not following that advice, then you're just getting further down on this downward spiral. So not only is this advice not helping, it's personally, I believe it's just more likely that you're going to keep overthinking and feeling worse about yourself or what do you think?

[00:07:36] I totally agree. And that is why we spent the whole episode addressing the question of how can you feel better before you even start? But now we're going to be more practical. So we mentioned before that willpower is not the problem. It's the environment. Like, what do you mean by that?

[00:07:53] There is a saying that is the people who have the most self-control are the people who use their self-control the least. And what this means is basically that if you have your phone right next to yourself and it's beeping, it's really hard not to watch it because you want to see what was it that that message you. But if you don't have your phone close by, it is in another room far away and it's beeping. You're not even hearing it is very easy to not get distracted by it. And this is what it means by creating a good environment around you, which is basically limiting all the distractions that is around you, the things that poke for your attention and whatever that is, that if you don't have those things close to you, it's so much easier to be self controlled and be able to stay focused towards your goal. What are some action points that someone can take today to start changing their environment?

[00:08:48] Well, first, I want to say why it's so important to take this action points. And what's super crucial to understand is that everyone has a limited amount of self-control. It's like a gas tank in your car and when you're out of it, you're going to start making crappy decisions. And to take your previous example, when your phone is beeping with a notification on Facebook from the latest cat video, you have to use your precious self-control to not look at your phone. So if you just put it away, you save yourself control for the real important things in life. Sort of things were going to go through. Now, are those things that take just one second to fix and it's going to make your environment so much better so you have more self-control to use for the really important stuff.

[00:09:31] Ok, so if I'm sitting and working and my phone beeps, I need to use self-control not to look. My phone is to stay focused, but if the phone is in another room, I don't need to use self-control to keep working because I don't get distracted. So I keep the gas in the tank.

[00:09:50] Exactly. Another very obvious example is let's say you have let's say I have candy in my fridge and I go there to just take some water. When I'm working, I have to use my precious self-control not to eat the candy every time. So it's easier to not have Canadair.

[00:10:07] Yeah, that makes complete sense. OK, so what are some of the quick things that you could do today that's going to have a big impact?

[00:10:15] I think. The easiest one is to turn off notifications on your phone, all of them that are not crucial, like Facebook, Instagram.

[00:10:24] Yeah, I think that that one is actually so important that you listening to this podcast turn it off right now and just go into your settings and switch off notifications, because if there's only one thing you take with you from this episode and one thing you do, if that's the one you did, I promise you it's going to have a positive impact on your life straight away.

[00:10:45] Yeah, you're leaking self-control. I want to avoid all the things that are causing me to leak self-control. For example, I have a porn filter on my computer as well, because we all know that everywhere on the Internet, you're one mistype away from something you should be looking at. So I just have a filter that blocks all sites that contain any nude pictures or anything like that, because that is making me very distracted when I'm trying to work.

[00:11:11] And you find out by just Googling porn filter and you can install it on your computer.

[00:11:16] Yeah, there are hundreds of them. I think mine is called tiny work kind of porn filters. It's an extension for Chrome. It works well.

[00:11:23] Ok, I have something similar on Facebook, like the news feed eradicators. It's also a Chrome extension. And what it does is that it takes away the news feed. So you called scroll Facebook and it takes 30 seconds to install. And I don't know how many hours that one has saved me. That's been amazing.

[00:11:42] So which notifications do you have on your phone? Are you using?

[00:11:45] I only have when people are calling me, that is turned on everything else. I think I've turned off as a as well because there is only very few people actually understand. This is everything else I've turned off. And another thing I've been doing that's been very beneficial is to I've deleted a lot of social media apps from my phone, but I can still log in on those social media on my computer. So, for example, I when I use Twitter, I use it on my computer because I don't want it on my phone. And when I've been using social media too much in periods which definitely happens, what I've been doing then is that I, I changed my password to pretty long and complicated password, which takes quite some time to type in. And I always log out when I've been using it and I don't save the password. So when I want to use social media, I can still do it. But then I need to go through that little annoying hurdle of writing the password, which takes, I don't know, twenty, thirty seconds. And that is long enough for me not to do it a lot of the time, because at the end of the day, social media doesn't do that much good for me. But at least I can go in and out if I want to. But just by changing that password, having that news feed eradicators or deleting the apps on my phone and just using a computer, that's been a couple of really simple things. That change saved me a lot of time and a lot of self-control in my tank.

[00:13:15] I think those are brilliant habits that you don't have to make it impossible to watch just a bit harder will take away a lot of the distractions. Yeah. Now, so I would say turn off all of your notifications and minimize your the apps you have on your phone. And you also want to clean out your environment of junk stuff like don't have candy at home all the time, don't have crisps at home all the time if you don't want to eat that so much. And another thing that I think is big is just to clean up your immediate environment, like have a workstation where you work, have nothing else there, and keep your desk somewhat tidy.

[00:13:52] Yeah, I like that one. I think that's a great place. So if you struggle with procrastination in general, one great place to start, I would say, is just to clean out your room because it's it doesn't take creative power. You see results straight away. You're going to feel less stressed and less anxiety because the environment is as good and tidy around you. So I think that's that's a great place to start and to go from there.

[00:14:16] Yeah. I mean, if your environment is cluttered, your thoughts are going to be cluttered and you're going to have a lot of overthinking. So I think that's it's easier to start there than just, oh, let's just do more. Do more to have something more you want to add on this topic?

[00:14:29] No, let's let's move on. And now we've looked into the small parts of the environment that you can change easily. Lets and then I suppose we're going to look at the big changes that you can do. That's habits are also the ones that can have the most power to turn you into super duper.

[00:14:54] So in the last topic, we spoke about quick fixes, now here we're going to focus more on lifestyle changes that you can do to build habits that will give you more focus. And, Eric, where would you start if you create better habits?

[00:15:09] I believe that a big part of procrastination is how much energy we have.

[00:15:15] You can see how much energy we have the size of the gas tank. Like the more energy you have, the more self-control you're going to have in this gas tank to actually direct that towards the things you want to be doing.

[00:15:27] And personally, I believe that the biggest source of energy is sleep and getting proper rest.

[00:15:35] And this is another place where our phone and our distractions and Netflix and all of these things make us stay awake longer than we kind that our body wants to go to bed later than our body maybe want to. And then we wake up early because we need to go to work and we're really tired.

[00:15:53] And here as well, the advice of just work harder, stay up five a.m.. It's so unhelpful.

[00:16:00] Yeah, it's horrible. I like people saying sleep less, work more. That's that's like a recipe for how to procrastinate, not the other way around. So what you want to be doing here is to get into the habit of of going to bed and getting proper sleep. That's that's crucial. And when I say proper sleep, I mean waking up without an alarm, that's the right amount of hours for you. And for some people, that might be seven hours for some people, 9:00. Trust me, no one has five hours as their limit. Someone who says that just simply doesn't know how much energy they would have if they slept eight hours. That's my firm belief they might survive, but that's it. But what if let's say I don't set my alarm and I sleep until 10 in the morning and I miss my whole day, then you need to start getting into habits where you go to bed earlier, because then the problem isn't that you sleep the whole day. The problem is that you were staying awake longer than your body actually had the energy to be awake. And the problem is, at least for myself, I know that if I'm watching Netflix in the evening, I'm getting tired in my couch and then the episode ends and I know that it takes me more energy to get out of the couch and go to bed than it does to start watching another episode. So I actually stay awake because of that habit of just keep watching the TV instead of just turning it off and going to bed.

[00:17:25] So but but what if I can't fall asleep early? What if I. I know my brother has this problem. He goes to bed, but he has later and he's overthinking and having all of these thoughts and. Yeah.

[00:17:36] So falling asleep is hard. It's something that I've struggled with my entire life and that I've learned over the last few years where some things have been very beneficial, like one thing that's very beneficial is that I put my phone in flight mode at 8:00.

[00:17:51] So I don't use Internet. I don't use anything that gives me dopamine triggers at eight o'clock after eight o'clock. I rarely watch TV after 8:00. Instead I go on a walk or I spend time with my girlfriend just talking to our play guitar. I listen to music or read books so I don't get triggered by what's happening around me and what's also happening when you're looking into screens like the computer, your phone or the TV is that you're actually staring into light, which means that you're telling your body that it's day because it's not supposed to be light at night. We're not like it was never bright lights and the Savannah 200000 thousand years ago. So I believe that you might not be able to control when you fall asleep, but you can control the behaviors you have before where walking, not watching TV, not doing things that trigger dopamine. Are things at least going to help you? It's not a sure bet, but it's going to help you a lot. And it's had a big impact for me.

[00:18:52] Yeah, I really like that advice. You can control how you fall asleep, but you can control your behavior before you fall asleep. And something I notice that really undermines my sleep is if I work late at night. So let's say I eat dinner at eight and then I'm just going to do a little bit of work at 10:00. That starts to bring up it starts to bring up. Yeah. You want to slow the brain down for hours before you fall asleep.

[00:19:18] Another big one. So I always have my phone in flight mode when I sleep. And the reason for that is that previously if I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn't fall back asleep, I usually took my phone and I started doing something with it, which made it even harder to fall back asleep just because I was bored at 3am. So I never look at my phone. I never turn off flight mode on my phone until it's time to go up. And that's that's been like a small thing that gives much better sleep over time.

[00:19:50] Right. And here we again see the advice. Shut up and work harder and get more hours in how that is backfiring, because checking your email a little bit of work before going to bed is really going to undermine your ability to be rested and stay focused and productive.

[00:20:05] Yeah, I think that sleep is a top priority. It's way more important than answering that email at least 99 times out of 100. I would say that this is about rest at night. What's what's your perspective on resting during the day?

[00:20:19] Something that really helps me feel less overwhelmed is when I am giving myself periods where I have no input. For example, I usually take a short walk around the block before lunch and at that time I do my best to not look at my phone, not have a podcast in my ears. I take a little nap during the day where I don't need to fall asleep, but just having a period with no input that is recovering my creative energy. I think if I didn't do that, I think I would just be like scrolling on my phone or watching the news or something like that.

[00:20:57] Instead, I think I think that's a key thing that just saying that I believe that scrolling on our phone or reading the news or playing some video game is like fake resting. It doesn't take self-control to do it. It doesn't feel like you're making an effort, but your body's actually not regaining energy. It's just decreasing in energy much, much, much slower compared to taking that walk where you probably recuperate some energy or if you lay down for a nap or just sit and breathe.

[00:21:28] Yeah. And it creates the solution because if you scroll instead of rest, you are going to feel more energized. But that is because you're getting dopamine, not because your body's recovering and gaining energy.

[00:21:40] So you feel energized, but only for a short a very short period of time.

[00:21:46] Yeah, it's a quick fix. It's like eating a bar of chocolate.

[00:21:50] What do you mean?

[00:21:51] We're going to talk about health later, but you want to avoid eating things that gives you quick spikes of energy and then make a crash, right? So if you are tired and you chose to scroll Instagram, you're going to get a quick surge of energy from the dopamine that you get from your phone. But then you're going to get tired again later in the day and then you're going to start procrastinating and then start looking at your phone again. And now you have this negative spiral.

[00:22:17] You want to avoid the things that gives you quick energy because they usually comes with a kind of energy hangover 30 minutes later or an hour later or something like that.

[00:22:28] Yeah, exactly. So that walk without something in your ears, that is a little bit more boring, but that's actually going to give you energy instead of this quick fix.

[00:22:37] Yeah, I can definitely see that.

[00:22:42] Yeah. So what can you do to create an environment for productive work?

[00:22:50] So for me, the key things about being productive and working is to not have my phone in the same room. I, I leave it somewhere else and if I have it in the same room, it's crucial not to have it on the work desk or desktop or not in your pocket, have it in a bag somewhere where you can't see it. And another thing that's been crucial for me is whenever I find myself looking at a screen but not really taking action on anything, you know, when you find yourself scrolling or reading something that doesn't make sense or watching some cat video or whatever, I have made a habit to leave the computer because that's been my signal. It's my tell that. OK, Eric, when you're just staring at the screen, not doing anything, it's because your brain is actually tired and you want rest, but you're just staying here because of the dopamine that the computer gives you. So I choose to always I would say always. Almost always. I try to always, but I don't accomplish it. But walk away from the computer as soon as I feel that, OK, I'm not focused now. And instead take that active role that you described either with a walk or just sit breathing and just do something else, because I know that once I start scrolling something, I'm just going to get more and more tired and less and less productive.

[00:24:09] Right. And here again, it's crucial to clean up your environment. You don't need that self-control to regulate yourself. For example, I don't have you know, when you open your browser and your starting page is newspaper football news, gossip channel, it's going to be that just breeds distraction. I don't have any games on the computer that I'm working on. If I'm playing games, I have to move to a different room and that helps me stay focused.

[00:24:37] Yeah. So once again, don't have those simple distractions really close by, have a porn filter, don't have news tabs, whatever, and do these things. And for me, not reading the news has been a big thing as well because it's so easy to go on a news site, scroll the news and feel like I'm being productive. It feels like I'm educating myself, but in reality, I'm just wasting my time, you know, just distracting yourself.

[00:25:04] So what are some lifestyle changes someone can get? Because I started talking a little bit about food. What would you give us an advice for someone to some the things they can do to have more energy, biological energy.

[00:25:17] So for me, the biggest and easiest change has been to stop drinking soda and energy drinks. That was something I did a few years ago. Like it's almost pure sugar and it gives you energy rush for a little while and then you crash. And it also it sugar is basically bad for everything within your body and your energy and for your sleep. So another part about getting better sleep is to not drink energy drinks or sold off that mattress. For me, it was a quick fix that came from just ordering water immediately when I came to a restaurant because I usually drank sodas at restaurants and just drink water to kind of take my thirst away. The first thing I did and that made it made it easier. So drink less soda and more water and in general.

[00:26:07] Right, we talk more about this in Episode 51, I think that is called Food Hacks for better energy. Another thing on the topic of avoiding things that spikes your energy in the short term that has really helped me lately is that I don't drink any coffee after 12:00 p.m., so no coffee after lunch. And I noticed that really helps my overall energy because it takes coffee eight hours to have four for half of the caffeine to get out of your body. So if you drink a cup of coffee for half of that cup of coffee still in your system when you're trying to go to bed, that I guess.

[00:26:47] Yeah. That's actually not true.

[00:27:00] Ok, we're back, we had a disagreement. Apparently, the half time of caffeine is not eight hours, it's how much the Eric some around four or five hours.

[00:27:09] So it felt like an important thing to clarify.

[00:27:12] Thank God for Google. So we don't say all stupid stuff. But the point is still that if you drink it, it's going to be in your system when you try to go to bed.

[00:27:22] Yes. That that one is all true.

[00:27:24] Right. So if you would quickly summarize what someone can do in lifestyle changes to get more creative and focused energy, what would you say to once again turn off notifications?

[00:27:35] It's the simplest trick in the book to actually do something and keep your phone in flight mode while you're sleeping. That's super simple. And install the porn filter if you're watching porn and we all accidentally do sometimes and install the news feed eradicators. If you're spending time on Facebook, those four are so simple. Do it right now and make sleep a top priority.

[00:27:59] Make it a top priority. Eight hours to snap up one of the biggest weapons against overthinking. And one of the most important tool for staying productive is to have friends around you that are crushing it, that are living this kind of lifestyle that you want to live as well. So let's move on to the next topic where we look at how can you find friends that are doer's? A super weapon against overthinking and not getting stuff done is to be surrounded by people who are inspiring, who have high energy, who them themselves are doing a lot of stuff. I mean, just compare having one friend that likes to watch football games on the weekend and drink beer, and then another friend who might want to spend his weekend working on a project or going to an inspiring seminar. Who do you think you should spend the most time with if you want to deal with overthinking? What do you think, Eric, and how do you find maybe the second group, maybe the second group is the answer to this question?

[00:29:12] I think that this is such a powerful thing to think about that looking at your friend group and see who of your friends, your current friends are getting shit done and go after their goals. And you don't need to cut the other people out of your life. But if you want to get more stuff done, focus on spending more time with the people who gets more things done. And if you don't have these people around you, I think that you can find these people everywhere. There is high energy, productive, positive people everywhere, but they're not going to be in your living room. So you need to go out and find them. And I've met very inspiring people when I've been out. I dance a lot. So people who go to dance classes, there's a lot of people there who challenges their fears. They go there. They're interested in growth because dancing is pretty scary. And it's been the same thing with different personal development seminars. I've been following different mentors going to their speeches and the people I meet. There are people who want to do things and get shit done. And just anywhere, basically where you go outside and people do activities, you will find people are willing to do activities because they're not at home watching football and drinking beer.

[00:30:22] They're somewhere else to look for them in places where people voluntarily face their fears. And one fear that is coming up. An uncomfortable feeling that is coming up in me right now when we speak about this is that I feel a bit judgmental against people who are not getting shit done. And I know lately in the last couple of years of my life, I've spent more and more time with people like you that have a very high focus on productivity. And I feel like I'm neglecting my other friends who might not be so interested in entrepreneurship and personal development. Like how can you say no to those friends? Wouldn't you feel like a bad friend?

[00:30:57] Yes, I would feel like a bad friend. And I've been in this situation several times, but I've also looked at myself like what is most important to me. And for me, it's very important to grow and to challenge myself and to do these things. And unfortunately, that has meant leaving some friends behind or at least spending less time with them than I used to like some people that I spent a lot of time with back in the days, I still see them occasionally. But the people I look to spend time with are people like you. You love to do this podcast. You love to practice public speaking. You want to grow. You want to challenge yourself. And when I, I just like myself better when I am with you than I do with some of my older friends.

[00:31:44] Yeah. And I've had exactly the same experience over the last couple of years. And I guess that's a harsh reality, right, that you can spend time with everyone else. You kind of have to choose. And I think what if you listening start going to these places where people face their fears? I found a lot of I met you at a poker tournament. I met some of my best personal development buddies in public speaking clubs here in Stockholm. And once you start going to these places, you find these amazing people and then the choice becomes like it's almost not a choice. You just want to hang out with people that are more inspiring if you want to walk that path.

[00:32:22] Yeah, I think there's I don't think it's that much about leaving other people behind as much as it is finding more people. You want to spend time with your you're naturally going to be more drawn to people who who wants to accomplish the same things as you do. And you can still meet the other people. Like I'm always going to love my family. I'm just going to hang out with my family. But they're not really into personal development and personal growth. It doesn't mean that I'm breaking up with my parents. So I don't think you don't need to break up with anyone to be on this path. But you need to find people like this if you want to deal with procrastination because you're not going to be able to beat procrastination. Hello. I'm sorry. It's it's really hard. But once you have around people who don't look at their phones when you're around, people who wants to go out running or wants to go to a seminar, you're just going to end up at a seminar without even thinking about it. And you didn't. You need to use. So if you go back to the self-control metaphor, you don't need to use any self-control to get yourself to an inspiring seminar if four of your friends are pulling you there. And that's a big difference. But if four of your friends want to. Watch the football game and drink beer, and you want to go to a seminar, you need to use a lot of willpower or self-control to actually get to that seminar instead of just staying and watching the game.

[00:33:41] Yeah, I think that is very true. Now, we spoke about places you can go, but also where can I find these people online? I know a lot of people in your Instagram feed has met each other, has had to close the loophole where you can go you can basically go anywhere, I would say, and meet these people.

[00:34:01] But now in Korona Times, and you can't really go anywhere and or if you're in a place where it's hard to go in general, social media is a great place. And what I believe I have over 200000 followers on Instagram and all of them are more or less interested in personal growth because otherwise they wouldn't be following me because that's the only thing I talk about. That means that everyone who writes comments on my page is interested in personal growth. So there has been a lot of things going on there, and I think the most beautiful thing that I can give to a follower is an inspiring friend because I can't be friends with 200000 people and talk to them regularly, but they can be friends with each other and everyone can find 10 inspiring people. So something that I, I challenge people to do is to go over the last 10 posts of my page or anyone else you find inspiring and look at who has written the comments and who have actually written engaging comments that add value, because already there there are on a page what you like, and they've been writing something engaging, which means that they're already like the top one percent of this person's followers because most people don't write anything.

[00:35:06] And then you message this person to have written this comment and say, hey, I saw your comment on this post. It really helped me this way, or I appreciate that you did that or something like that. So then you start a conversation with someone who's interested in the same things that you are who are more ambitious than most people because they brought an ambitious comment and you're starting by showing them appreciation. So you actually telling them, hey, you have already added value to me to already there you are starting a conversation from a place where you do a great first impression. And there are lots of people who met each other in my comments that have been reaching out to me elsewhere. And just this other week, I heard about the first couple that met in my comments, someone who found someone who was really interesting, person development. They started talking. They started calling each other and now they're dating. So they found each other through social media and through the comments of someone they looked up to. And I think that's a great place to meet people online, much better than Tinder or whatever.

[00:36:05] Yeah, for sure. That's an inspiring story. And it also shows it also gets you into the mindset of networking and trying to find new people that are interested in the same stuff as you are. Yeah, and they're everywhere. You talked in the beginning of this episode. You described a downward spiral that you can get in. So if you start doing these things, if you start limiting distractions, thinking about your health in a more long term way and start to surround yourself with friends, what do you think is going to happen with the spiral here?

[00:36:35] So the spiral goes downwards when we're feeling like victims and we don't take action when everything that we're doing makes us a little bit feel a little bit about yourself, which makes it even harder to take action. But if you do these things that we have highlighted here and you don't need to do all of them, we probably mentioned like 30 things. I don't know lots of them. But just by doing more and more, are you going to turn this spiral from going downwards? You going to shift it around? It's going to start going upwards with every little thing you do. You're going to get more self control, going to get more energy, going to get more inspiring friends going to get better sleep and get better health. And everything you do is kind of feeding into each other. So you're going to reach a point where it's easy to take on challenges that you previously thought were impossible. And every time you take on a challenge that felt impossible before you kind of grow your confidence, you're going to keep going like this.

[00:37:26] So the spiral that used to take you down to the basement is now taking you up to the penthouse.

[00:37:33] I love the metaphors and a contrast now. OK, so we spent three topics now looking at what you can do to build your self-control, build your creative energy tank, create more positive habits. So let's switch to the fourth and final topic where we look at step by step instructions to actually getting stuff done in your project. Once you have the energy to do so, let's look at topic for. I know another question that you get asked a lot is I want to start a company, but I just keep overthinking it. What advice would you give to that person?

[00:38:19] I believe that a big reason for procrastination is over thinking is that we don't have a specific next step plan and like starting a company that's a very broad and vague thing, you don't really know what the next thing is.

[00:38:34] You don't really even know what starting your company means, because there's. It means a thousand things. So I think that big reason why people don't get started with this dream is that they don't really know where to start. There are too many different angles that it's I think here's it's so important to start.

[00:38:53] You start creating that plan and have a step by step moving forward to know where you're going. So where would you start if there is something you really want to do?

[00:39:04] Something I often start with, as I'm looking at why is this important for me? Why do I really want to do it? And I often write these things down, for example, when I work with Great. So I have a list of reasons for why I work with Great and why that is important for me. And that really helps me to be motivated when I walk through this step by step. So I would start there.

[00:39:26] Ok, so let's say you really want to start a company. You would start by writing down. Why do you want to start a company to kind of build your own energy up or to build your own motivation up for them?

[00:39:38] Yeah, I want freedom over my time. I want to be the boss. I want to go on vacations, whatever it could be for you. Yeah, I want to make money. I want to.

[00:39:49] And I think this is a good one that it's easy to think I want to start a company, but not necessarily really understanding why that is or think about I think a lot of people I want to get rich, but it's not all that it's about, I think writing. I want to make my parents proud. If that's the main driver or I know a very common one amongst entrepreneurs that I've spoken to is I want to prove them wrong. I there is a teacher who said something or they're friends or people in school who said you can never accomplish it. And just writing that down in front and saying I want to prove them wrong is a big driver. And I can relate to that one as well, because he is getting these things down on paper. Could be a first step to starting a company because then you understand this is actually why I want to do it. And when you have that list in front of you, it's much easier to just say, OK, I'm not going to turn on my phone today. I'm not going to watch Netflix. I'm not going to watch porn. I'm going to get on with this list because look at all of these things I really want to do.

[00:40:50] And that's really important because it's sometimes your tasks are going to be a bit boring and then it's going to be so tempting to be distracted. So know why the big picture reason of why you want to do stuff. So how about we get a little bit more specific, how someone can get started? Let's say someone wants to they want to create an app and they want to start a company for this app. Like where would you start? I guess there are many places you can start.

[00:41:15] You could start with just understanding why you really want to do this. If you're if you're struggling to find the motivation to get going, I think that's a good place to start. Another good place to start is to just write down the different tasks that needs to be done. And just in no individual order, just because they want to start up company, then I need to start an actual company. I don't really know how to do that. That's something that need to be done. I need to find a developer. That's another thing. I need to build a prototype of this app. I need to find investors if that's needed. And OK, it would probably be a good idea to discuss my idea with someone who have experience about this as well. So I would take that list and then I would look at it. OK, now written down five things. It could have been fifty things. And I was like, OK, where's the best place to start? And the best place here would probably to start with, OK, discuss this idea with someone who has knowledge. If I don't have it myself, someone can tell me, OK, you can, you can build this. It's easy, it's brilliant. Or maybe they'll say, OK, this is actually impossible to build. It's going to cost millions and millions of dollars. Or they're going to say, OK, did you know that these guys already built that? It's been around for three years and already there, you know, if this is a good idea or not and if they say, hey, this is actually a brilliant thing and then someone who knows things about it, you can move on to the next step after that. But I believe that when we have it, when we just say, I have this app idea and you don't really know where to start, it's so easy to just not start because you're in front of that list and.

[00:42:45] What you said reminds me that I think something I hear often is that people want to keep their idea secret so no one can steal them. But then you cannot get this kind of feedback and you might be wasting so much time. What is your perspective on keeping it a secret?

[00:42:59] Yeah, that's a very common thing. I used to think that I wanted to keep my ideas secret as well. And what I realized later on is that keeping your idea secret is probably the biggest reason that you're going to fail because you're not going to get input from anyone else. And so No. One, you talk you can't talk to and want to get advice, but that's not the worst part. You can't talk about anyone and be excited about it. I think that's even more important if I'm not going to share my idea with my friends or with someone else because I'm afraid they're going to steal it. I can't build my own excitement. I can't think more about that. I can't find more things about it to do so. Personally, I've never heard about anyone who got their ideas stolen. I've never heard about anyone who got their ideas. And even if someone were to try to steal your idea, they can only steal it if they're actually smarter and better at executing it and care more about it than you do. If someone tries to steal your idea and you're smarter, you're working harder, you're more excited about it. It doesn't matter if they tried to steal it, they're not going to beat you anyway. So personally, I believe that keeping an idea secret is probably just going to result in that you never take action and never do anything with this idea while talking about it is going to greatly increase your chances of of succeeding.

[00:44:17] Right. And then people can help you as well, right?

[00:44:20] Yeah. You can find people who want to help. You can find developers if that's what you need, or you can find anyone who's excited about it. I mean, if you if you let's say you were at the launch and you choose to not talk about your idea, OK, you're going to talk about something else. Let's say you at the same lunch, you talk about your idea and then your friend sitting at a table say, hey, my uncle knows a lot about this. And just by sheer luck and you're his uncle, start to help you. And that would never happen if you kept your idea really secret. So you miss out on so many opportunities of finding help, finding people who are interested in it or just finding people that can tell you like, hey, this idea is never going to work because this and that. And they might actually know what they're talking about. So you can save your energy and move on to another idea.

[00:45:06] Right. So now you have this list of things that needs to get done. You have started to talking with people that can give you a relevant feedback. What is the next step?

[00:45:14] So the next step is just prioritize this list and then see what is it that I need help with. So let's say you spoke to someone and they said this idea is great. OK, brilliant. Start now. You know, you're going to continue. And next on the list, you have you need to start an actual company. You need to find a developer. You need to build a prototype. You need to find investors. OK, so where would I find a developer? Let's say that's where you want to start, because without to develop, you're not getting anywhere and you have no idea where to find that. Then you can ask yourself, who can I ask for help with this? So that's the next question. Like, OK, who do I know that could help me find a developer? So instead of just having the task find a developer, which might sound big, you have the task. Ask your old buddy Bob about developers, because you know that Bob was a computer, a fantastic he loved computers to write down. Who can I ask? So instead of having the task find a developer, you have the task as a person, a person B, ask person C for help and get to that perspective instead. To this way, you're not getting stuck at these big, overwhelming things. Instead, you get smaller and simpler steps that are easier to take action. I ask this person or find this thing, which is a lot easier.

[00:46:29] Right. So what I heard you say so far is that you create one list for you, write down the reasons for why you want to do this in the first place. Then on another list of the same list, you write down what needs to get done and then you start to after having gotten feedback from people, you start to look at these items on the list and say, OK, who can I ask for help here? Who can ask? I can make this task a little bit easier so that you get going. Is there something more you would like to add?

[00:46:55] I think that that's brilliant and.

[00:46:59] If you just do these things that the key is to know what is the next task to do, because when we don't know, it's really hard to do it. And when we have this big task in front of us, we don't really know what is the small chunk to start with. Like how do you eat an elephant like one piece at a time, you know, but you can't if you don't know what piece to start with, you see that elephants like I'm going to eat this thing where I'm going to start.

[00:47:25] It's going to be hard trying first or is trying first. So any last piece of advice to our listeners?

[00:47:33] Why would you give them any last piece of music? So for you listening. If you're struggling with procrastination, then one of the best things you can do is to use the time that you have back and forth to work or back and forth to school to learn about personal growth, to learn new things. So listen to audiobooks or listen to podcasts. And we have done 80 or so episodes right now where we talk about things that will help your lives. If you haven't listened to all of our episodes, feel free to start there. I promise you that there is value. So when you see that bus coming and you're about to jump on it, think about us and pick up your phone and find a new episode. Or if you're just going to go out for a walk, pick up your phone, find an episode and keep us in mind, because I promise you that we have given you a lot of advice during the last couple of years. Where will it help you to deal with procrastination? And it's a shame not to learn them.

[00:48:25] What can someone do who wants to help us, the first in the spirit of the next step, if you haven't listened to last week's episode? I think that one that turned out so well when we talk about mindsets, that will help you be more productive. So definitely listen to the last episode. And if you want to help us out somehow to help us maybe spread the idea of this podcast, something you can do for us is to get into your podcast, app and press subscribe, because if a podcast has a lot of subscribers, competitor viewers and we are a pretty small podcast yet, then we can get into different podcasts, top lists, and then we can grow and expand. Some more people can hear these kinds of conversations and it would make us very grateful. And we would want to do more episodes. We want to do more episodes. And thank you for staying on to the end. I think this was the longest episode we've ever done.

[00:49:13] Thank you for being here, guys. See you next week.

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