8 Steps To Mastering the Art of Minimalist Productivity

Well, how do you do ladies and gentlemen? Brace yourselves because you’re tuning into another riveting episode of the list building lifestyle show, with none other than the unflappable and the indomitable the one and only Igor Kheifets. And no, your ears aren’t playing tricks on you. This is the Joe Rogan voice experience in any form, of course, Igor managed to wrangle me or at least my vocal twin back for another introduction. In this digital age, I can’t even tell the difference anymore. Today Igor got a hot plate of wisdom nuggets ready for us all about maximizing the precious focus of yours. We’re talking emotional baggage, mental apps, sugar crashes, and all the good stuff. Now, let me tell you, this isn’t your average run of the mill advice, you guys got the goods and he’s not afraid to share. We’re cutting through the noise and finding out how to build your business without losing your sanity in the process. If you’re ready to take your productivity game to the stratosphere, then buckle up because you’re in the right place. Now without further ado, let’s get this party started.

01:01

I’m Igor Kheifets and this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process. This podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my bestselling book, the list building lifestyle Confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus a $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

01:47

It’s always really frustrating when life gets in the way of goals, I’ve always found it to be very difficult to deal with. And the more responsibilities I took on especially with you know, kids growing up and moving to a different country while running this business. There are more and more things that always keep coming up. That’s actually one of the reasons why I’m very, I try to be way more minimalistic than I can be. As far as you know, the amount of stuff I buy or the number of experiences I create. It’s kind of like you know, when you buy a boat, you don’t just buy a boat, right? Because if you buy a boat, you need

Both numbers need maintenance, if you buy a boat, it needs to be parked somewhere. So, in the summertime, you need to get a spot in the docks. And in the wintertime, you need to put it in the storage, then how do you pull the boat? So, I’ll also need to truck right. So, there’s like lots of different things that come with the boat that people don’t consider. There’s lots of baggage, lots of tail. And I’m very trying to avoid tail and baggage as much as I possibly can. So, I don’t add to my plate as is. But sometimes, sometimes tail and baggage finds you. And there’s nothing really to be done about that. So here are a few techniques that I found maximizing your focus. First, you definitely want to go to bed quite early, or at least earlier than you go into bed right now. To minimize distractions, and to be able to wake up earlier than you are waking up right now, I know it’s not sexy advice, but hear me out. Because if you wake up earlier than everyone else in your household, if you wake up earlier than everyone else, you know in your life who basically you interact with in one way or another like your mortgage broker and whatever, what you will find is, you can get a lot more done in about an hour and a half that precedes you starting your day, then then you get done in three hours following that moment, because all of a sudden your phone starts ringing, you get lots of emails, right. So, you can put 90 minutes of focus time first thing in the morning before you engage with all the other parts of your life. And you’ll get a lot more done this week. So, in this case, you’re working less, but you work but your output is much higher. And another thing that you want to do is you want to minimize distractions while you’re working. And it sounds like So, a duck. You know, you want to minimize distractions while you’re working. But I’m talking about a fascinating amount of mental bandwidth you get back if you work in an environment that doesn’t involve, for example, just your phone. There’s a study that tested how a phone’s presence in the room influences your ability to focus. And so there were three So, groups through control groups. One is a group that went and went in to do a math test and they were told to put their phone on the table facing down screen down.

04:58

Then they had another group that was told to enter the room, turn the phone off and put it inside their bag or desk.

05:10

And the third group was told to leave their phone outside the room groups and the one and two did equally on the test, I think the average was something like 60, something out of 100. And the third group or the phone was outside of the room did significantly better on the test, showing that even if the phone is turned off and, in the room, and even if it’s out of sight in the room, but you know, it’s in the room, part of your brain, you know, it basically sucks attention, sucks mental bandwidth, away from whatever task you’re So, busy with right now. Next, one thing that will distract you is if you have lots of sugar in your diet.

05:54

If you’re like if your diet involves lots of processed sugar, so it could be you’re drinking soda, you could be or Redbull, you could be eating stuff that’s like, you know, chocolate bars, and you know, cereal, granola, whatever contains sugar, corn syrup, things like that, you will find that you will crash, you will crash really, really fast. And when your energy crashes, it’s really hard to focus, right focus and energy are really tight. So, what I’ve done is I changed my diet quite a few years ago now to have more fats, and fewer sugars, especially in the morning, especially the first part of the day, in the second part of the day, my willpower muscle wears out. So, I allow myself to eat sugar. But you know, that’s after most, the vast majority of my you know, of my work has been done. Now, another tip, as far as distractions go, is emotional distractions. You know, like, if I start my day, and I have a fight with my wife, like right out the gate, my days are ruined, I can tell you, I will not get much done at all, unless we make up very quickly. Because until then I’ll be thinking about what she said, what I said, anger, things like that, it will be absolutely devastating to my work. So emotional stuff will rob you of energy and will rob you of focus. Especially if you’re an emotional person like myself, then you have to be protective of yourself. And your focus by not scheduling. By or by not letting these conversations or things get to you when you’re supposed to be working or just before you’re supposed to be working. Okay. And another tip that I’ll give you, and this is something I’ve never heard anyone talk about. So, this is purely something that I found for myself. And that is there’s times of day, when you’re performing best, there’s times of day, when you’re performing worst, there’s times of day, when you can think clearly. And there’s times of day when you are really struggling to think. So just a few tips. Oh, another tip, I highly suggest you listen to this one, by the way, avoid doing lists. It is an absolute death to your focus, and tranquility, too. If I look at a to -do list, or if I have a to-do list in my head, it just creates anxiety. That’s all it does for me. So, it’s much more difficult for me to get into a task to get into, you know, execution. Because it’s like, oh, there’s like these five things I need to do, where do I start, and it’s going to take forever. And it just is just a lot of emotional baggage that comes with the idea of having to do lists. So usually what I would try to do is I would try to plan to do one thing. But to know that whatever that one thing is for that one thing to be a needle mover. So, this way, I’ll set one task as a goal, or as a milestone that day. And if as long as I achieve that one thing that I think will be a needle mover, I’ll be happy with my progress. So, anything that’s beyond that is a bonus. Right? So, I learned to just prioritize certain things over other things. And, you know, that helps me stay sane when you know when there’s lots to do. The best example is to think about your phone, right? If you’ve got like a million apps open in the background, it drains the battery faster. Make, you know just makes perfect sense, right? So, because our focus is a battery, it’s not infinite. It resets every day, but it’s not infinite. So, because it’s a battery, we have to watch how many apps are running in the background. So, if you had a fight with your spouse, that’s an app. If you’re craving sugar, that’s an app. Like I used to have big issues with that when I was gaming heavy because it’s all endpoint obviously becomes an addiction. So, you know, I was like literally waiting for the moment when I can stop working and go play. And so that’s like that’s an app in the background. So, everything is an app, and you have to be really careful what apps you let run in the background.

10:18

Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episode’s transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, remember to clean your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how he made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package.