50-minute focus finder

The power of Silence for Focusing on your business

Focus, Marketing, peak Performance, Productivity, single target market, Uncategorized

For a lot of people who follow Buddhism , today is an auspicious occasion since it Lord Buddha’s birthday. One of the things linked to Buddhism and the overall philosophy of religions that originated in the Indian Sub-Continent is the practice of “Dhyan” and Yoga. While there are a lot of people who follow and practice Yoga across the world “Dhyan” is something that is missing in our lives. “Dhyan” involves sitting in pin drop silence and just focusing all your energy to think.

We all (me included) are so busy running after deadlines all day that we don’t give our brains the bandwidth to actually do what it can do best – which is THINK. When you get into the “Dhyan” stage you are able to connect a lot of the dots which otherwise seem impossible to connect.

I have many times earlier, mentioned a practice by Dean Jackson called the focus finder. Its a very practical way to do a brain dump and then get on to the activity of Thinking.

Today I was a little frustrated that I was not being able to figure out a solution for identifying a Single Target Market. I keep giving you folks a lot of inputs on why you should go about identifying the Single Target Market and the incredible benefits it can have in your marketing.

But today I had a mind block and I was not able to think through on what would be my STM. After lazing around mindlessly and watching un-necessary web series for about an hour, I decided to just sit down with my notebook and pencil and started jotting down thoughts as they came to me about my “bullseye ” (the STM)

While doing this my brain also kept throwing up additional items that I could include. But I had to make my STM as sharply defined as possible. So I kept listing down, all the people whom I would not be able to help.

Automatically I ended up putting a lot of AND statements to ensure that there were as little possibilities as possible for some additional markets creeping in.

Once this was done I went two steps further, I even identified the the markets, one variable away and two variables away. This would help me, in case, the STM I have defined is not viable economically and I have to expand it a little bit.

While I spent close to 2 hours dilly – dalling, I was able to achieve all this in a matter of about 45 minutes, when there was pin drop silence and I was only focusing on this activity. These 45 minutes were more precious because of the immense productivity I got.

If feasible I would suggest everyone to regularly do these focus exercises, they can increase productivity levels dramatically and because you take out everything from your brain and put it on paper, there’s no chance of missing things.

Till next then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The ability of your brain to give you the niggling feeling

Fear, Focus, Human Brain, Thinking, Worry

I am writing after a long time related to the brain functioning. This comes from he fact that I get to hear a lot of times and I am also a culprit sometimes, that I end up saying – “I did not have the time”. Or even if you don’t say it in the open, you are overwhelmed and always under pressure because you have so many things on your plate.

A lot of this whole situation arises because we are being reactive to our circumstances. Whether its the email which comes in – complaining about a problem or a phone call giving us a new requirement or even just a person interrupting us, asking if we have a minute. Suddenly you get pulled one after another into tasks that were not planned for the day. I have had the habit of keeping a To-Do list for many years, but by reacting to all these interruptions, the To-Dos only kept growing longer.

Now to top that when I try to switch off my phone or switch off my email, I have this constant fear, a niggling feeling, that there’s a disaster waiting to happen on the other side . Now my brain is designed to ensure my survival, so it will always keep warning me about impending danger. So what happens, its even more difficult to concentrate on a task. This happens because of the Zeigarnik effect and the lizard brain which still resides inside us.

One thing which I learnt from Dean Jackson is to do a brain dump for a concentrated 50 minutes, from time to time. I have mentioned this earlier also – please watch his YouTube video on the Fifty minute focus finder. Its an amazing detailing on how you can become more productive. I keep going back to that video from time to time and each time I watch it, I learn something new to make me less reactive.

This brain dump does help the brain become a little more restive, because it realises that I have put out the things on paper so I will execute on it. Its a very relieving exercise. But you need to do it without any kind of distraction.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Do a brain dump…..reduce the nagging feelings

Brain size, Focus, Human Brain, Worry

I have over multiple posts written about how the Zeigarnik effect helps us. While there might be detractors to this theory, I know something like this exists because my brain keeps me alert on things that I need to get done.

While my brain does not remember all the things that I need to get done at a time, it does ensure that it keeps sending me the alerts if I am missing something.

On the other hand this effect actually keeps prompting you with feelings, for all the unfinished tasks, and eats up a lot of energy.The feeling of overwhelm also could be sourced to this phenomenon in my belief (no scientific proof of this).

You may have also had an experience like this. Whenever I go on a vacation or even for a two day break, for the first day or so, I am always having a feeling that there was unfinished business. I keep trying to rack my brain to find the source of the feeling, it dodges me, but the nagging continues. This nagging feeling makes me more irritable also.

This could also happen because the mind is pre-occupied with a lot of things. If you have a clear mind then, maybe you will get a signal on the exact item that the brain is pointing you towards.

II have found that a better way to handle the situation is to use the focus finder method of isolating yourself for 50 minutes ,which Dean Jackson has (You can search the video on YouTube) and dump down everything going on in your mind, on to a piece of paper. (This method is so good that after I do the brain dump, my mind gets so relaxed that I start feeling sleepy) This way the issues of nagging feelings can be reduced considerably. One day before you go out, just ensure you have ticked-off all the items on the list and you can have a decent break.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Serendipity – Part 3

Serendipity

A lot of times we think of something and just by chance , you get a message related just for that.

I don’t know – how many of you have seen the movie Serendipity. If you haven’t, its a nice romantic movie about a person who believes in serendipity and the other who doesn’t but he is so much in love that he tries all means to reach out to her.

I use an android phone and on Saturday , I was thinking about deleting a lot of irrelevant photos which have been lying around and consuming memory in my phone. I have the “files” utility from Google, on my phone which I use to identify applications / files which are consuming a lot of memory. You need to know that I did not talk about deleting the photos with anyone. It was just something that was going on in my mind that I wanted to do on “some” day.

Yesterday morning when woke up and I was seeing the notifications on my phone, I saw a notification from “files” telling me that it had identified more than 12000 duplicate photos, which if I deleted, I could save about 605MB. I clicked not he notification and it actually took me to the photos where it showed me the original and the duplicates. I went through some of them randomly to check if by chance the Google algorithm could have made errors. But there were none, so I accepted the recommendations and Google cleaned up 605 MB of space for me.

Let me give you another example. You can verify this from my post yesterday. I had written about Dean Jackson’s fifty minute focus finder. however when I was writing about it, I could not locate the link to share it with you’ll.

I am on Dean Jacksons mailing list so I keep getting mail’s about his podcasts and other things that he keeps posting. Today morning when I opened my mail box, the topic of his mail was the fifty minute focus finder. For those who read my post yesterday and wanted to know what the fifty minute focus finder is, pls find the link here. I am posting it because as they say “it was meant to be” that’s why it appeared in front of me. https://www.morecheeselesswhiskers.com/155.

Now what would you call this?

For me this is pure serendepity.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!