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Growth Spurt: Focus · The Growth Project

• 0:02
  You.
• 0:03
  Hello, doctor Drew Brandon here with amylose to bring your growth spurt for the week. Hope everybody's getting their week off to a great start and want to share a little bit today on the topic of focus.
• 0:16
  This is one that is talked about plenty these days. I feel like. And usually when it's brought up, it's done. So in this way, we're constantly kind of harping on the fact that people lack focus.
• 0:28
  These days, that focus isn't what it used to be. It isn't what we need it to be. It isn't good enough to really put us in a position to be successful. And my response to that is always, well, of course it isn't. Of course, focus is bad. Of course we aren't.
• 0:45
  As I like to say, locking in on the things that matter with consistency.
• 0:50
  And one of the biggest reasons that's occurring these days, and why we're seeing such big problems in this space, is the accessibility that we have created for ourselves. So we have done this really to ourselves. And I'll kind of get into an example of that. It is not uncommon these days for a person who is in there if they go as they go into their workplace, and we'll imagine they're kind of in their workspace.
• 1:14
  And for many people, what that means is there's a computer involved in this, and there's a personal cell phone device involved in this. And, they will have a setup that goes something like this. Their phone is sitting right by them, usually face up, and they have a ringer on they have notifications fully enabled. They have,
• 1:36
  really opened everything on their phone to, to get their attention.
• 1:41
  They also have their computer, whether personal emails open, work emails open. They often have some type of kind of internal messaging thing going, whether that be Teams or Slack or whatever it is. And they have if truly kind of created this utopia of accessibility of inbound things. So there's no shortage of things pinging them constantly. The emails, the text messages, the notifications on slack or teams.
• 2:10
  And what that all results in is a complete lack of focus. Constant disruption. Constant interruption. Now, I always want to be sympathetic to the fact that we realize there are industries and roles out there that require greater degrees of accessibility than others. But what I have seen again and again and again is there are many people in roles and industries that could turn all of those things off for stretches of time to help them be more focused.
• 2:43
  If not all of them, they could turn off many of them. They could really kind of shrink the scope of things that are getting their attention.
• 2:52
  All of what we're talking about there has a lot to do with kind of the environment that you're setting up and the environment you're creating. Environment and focus are always very, very closely related.
• 3:04
  If you alter your environment in a way that really kind of drives focus, you're making decisions that are pushing things out and you're blocking out distractions. There's one of my favorite kind of mantras of of all time that that we've talked about before on the Growth Project is, starve your distractions, feed your focus. So starving distractions means
• 3:26
  closing out of email, turning off notifications, putting my cell phone in another room, getting things away from me so that I can focus.
• 3:35
  Right. That's starving. Distractions. Feeding focus means being very, very clear on what are my action items that I'm most heavily focused on. What's my short list of priorities for today? Oftentimes, we don't want to walk in and have ten things on our priority list. When there are ten things on the list. That usually indicates a lack of priorities.
• 3:58
  But using that very simple framework of starving distractions and feeding focus is a great way to get you moving and get you going in some steps of improvement.
• 4:08
  I think about today's workspace and an image I still have very vividly in my head. Although it was a long, long time ago. I can remember going to my dad's office growing up as a kid.
• 4:20
  My dad had a long, really successful career in sales, and when I would go in his office, he had a desk, he had a phone, he had a Rolodex card, and he had a legal pad. And I remember thinking and talking with him about, what do you do in here all day? And, he was out a lot traveling in a sales role, but not all the time.
• 4:42
  And when he wasn't out, he was at his desk calling people on the phone. And I know that era was different. I know the times have changed. And so not naive to that in the least. But there's some really great principles we can still take from that example of. He had created an environment that really drove him toward the most important things he wanted to be doing, and needed to be doing that day.
• 5:07
  No distractions. Clear focus. All the tools and resources he needed to be successful. And there was a lack of inbound things to get him off his path. So I realized that it might not be as simple as creating a work environment just like that. Today, in 2026. However, again, there's some principles there that I think we can all benefit from as we think about how do I design an environment in ultimately a workspace work area that fuels my my progress, my pursuit of goals, and gives me the best chance possible to do the things that I want to be doing and need to be doing with consistency.
• 5:47
  So as you think about this week, how do you go have a week in which you are extremely focused and driven? Give some thought to what what environment of you created? How can you improve it? What changes might need to be made that would really give you a greater degree of drive in intentionality and focus? It's really difficult to do that without altering your environment, so challenge yourself to give that some thought.
• 6:14
  Ask for some feedback and I hope this can be some some really noteworthy things that get you into your week this week to go have a great week in all facets of your life.