This content provides ten practical "hacks" or strategies to significantly enhance focus and productivity, particularly for individuals who struggle with attention challenges like ADHD, by working with the brain rather than against it.
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The most productive people in the world,
they don't rely on discipline and brute
force to stay focused. They found hacks
to trick their brain into this
superhuman level of productivity. So,
I'm going to share with you 10 hacks
that will make you more focused, even if
you have crippling ADHD like I do. These
are the strategies that I use to go from
an ADHD mess to a hyperfocused CEO. You
can start using these today to stop
fighting against your brain and start
using it as a superpower. So, with that
being said, these are the 10 hacks to
unlock insane focus. Starting with hack
number one, make a notto-do list. Here's
my philosophy. Focus is a filter, not a
muscle. Stop trying to brute force
yourself into focus. Decide what you
don't want to do so that you can make
decisions quicker. If every new decision
comes into your life and you have to sit
there with the mental overload and brain
powder, try to make a good decision
because you haven't set up a filter,
it's going to drain your energy. To me,
a new yes is a no to your dream. And a
no is a yes to your goals. If you think
about the most successful people, you
see that success is a subtractive
process, not an additive process. You
don't do more to win, you do less, but
you make the things you say no to the
right yeses. So, when people ask me
like, "Hey Dan, what did you do to be
successful to drive those cars or fly
around on your plane?" Uh, it's what I
don't do. I don't drink. I don't gamble.
I don't play video games. I don't vape.
I don't do a bunch of stuff that would
impede me from winning. And it requires
that to have the level of focus we're
talking about. The way I think about it,
you know that game Plinko where you have
like these balls you drop at the top and
it hits all these different pins and it
goes all over the place. That's how most
people live their life. What I want you
to do is break out all the other options
which is those pins. Drop the ball. Go
straight to the middle. If you think
about each one of those as being a
energy unit of focus, then you would
just literally focus and stack and focus
and stack instead of spreading yourself
thin across so many different options.
So what goes on the notto-do list for
me? Number one is lowv value task.
Anything that I can pay anybody else to
do for a little bit amount of money or
just use an app to get brought to me or
get done, I'm not doing it. Number two
is bad habit and vices. Some of you guys
have bad habits of not confronting
people that say about you. Some of you
have vices like you literally lay in bed
and hit the snooze button 15 times
before you get out of bed. Those things
have to go. The third is energy
vampires. When I'm interacting with
somebody, they either give me energy or
they take my energy. The people that
take my energy see you. Which brings us
to hack number two. Create focus
triggers. Most people wait for
inspiration to do work or hope they'll
magically get in the zone randomly to
start doing the work. I create a
structure to get myself into flow so
that it is by design, not random. See,
flow state isn't random. It's designed.
And when you're in it, guess what? I
don't think about going to the bathroom.
I don't worry about what other people
think of me. I don't worry if my work's
very good. When I'm in flow state, it
produces the best work possible. The way
I quickly get into flow is I create
focus triggers. So, for example, the
location, the chair that I sit in to do
my reading, to outline my goals, to
ideulate. I mean, even when I go off
sites with my wife to plan our quarterly
planning, our year in planning, those
are triggers for us to focus on
designing our future, not worry about
what happened this week or next week or
anything like that. The second is sound.
When I need to focus, I have to have
music playing. It's a vibe. It's a
strategy. Deep work, I'll sometimes put
on playlists that have no words, or I'll
use a special app that uses binaural
beats to actually improve my ability to
focus. Headphones are a must cuz I can't
be distracted with other people's noise.
And the last one is routines. When you
look at worldclass athletes and you
think about how they visualize, how they
warm up, the way they structure their
day, their week, their month, it is a
rhythm. It is a rhythm of success and it
is a routine. And a lot of people think,
well, that would be boring. You know
what's not boring? Having the resources
to do what you want, when you want, with
who you want. And if that requires some
level of routine, sign me up. Which
brings us to hack number three. Start on
hard mode. This one is wild is that a
lot of people try to start easy. Let's
make it easy. Let's build momentum. How
about stop trying to create momentum
with easy wins. I think if you want to
focus and get things done, attack it.
Like go all in. Like literally start on
hard mode. Make it hard. If you do
everything that's easy, it's kind of
like starting your meal with dessert.
Sure, you might enjoy it and it might
fill you up, but it's not going to give
you the nutritions you need to actually
build your body and you'll be too full
to eat the real food. So, to me, we
start with the thing that's the hardest,
not the easiest to do. In many ways, the
hardest task is to stop picking the
easiest task. So, to dial this in and
really get your focus, we have to do a
few things. First off, we have to choose
the one thing. What's the one thing? For
most business owners, it's marketing.
For most individuals, it's working out.
But what's the one thing that if you do
first as soon as you wake up or you sit
down at your desk that it will set you
up to win that it will build that
confidence to create momentum that will
give you the vibe of success. That one
thing if you just nail it out of the
park every time. It's kind of like that
first domino that you know if you get
that right the rest of the dominoes will
fall down. That's where we start. Then
what we do is we do deep work blocks.
For me, it's first thing in the morning.
I used to be a late night guy, and you
can do that, too. But as soon as I had
human alarm clocks, aka kids, my
mornings became my most precious time
because that's when I create connected
to my creator. When I think of like
writing, outlining these videos,
creating videos, coming up with new AI
companies to start, strategy work. It
has to happen first thing in the morning
in my deep work blocks. And it all
happens before checking my email, social
media, or anything else. I can't tell
you how my energy is affected by the
things I consume and if I accidentally
go down a rabbit hole and see stuff or
check things and all of a sudden ah I
have this like oh crap feeling and now
I'm supposed to go dream ideate design
something cool but I'm in this headsp
space of like no you know what I mean my
day is going from bad meeting to bad
meeting I love the people I work with
but nobody brings me anything other than
problems to try to resolve so I can't
check my email before I do the right
work You can't be like reading comments
on your social media feed about what
people think of you before you go sit
down and create more videos to help
people cuz you're going to be like, "Oh,
screw that person. I'm not even doing
this video anymore." See the challenge
with that? Which brings us to hack
number four. Be hard to reach. When I
was sitting down and editing my book,
Buy Back Your Time, I had my buddy Chris
and we got in my car and we drove to the
mountains. There was no internet. There
was no connectivity. And we stayed in a
cabin and we got our laptops out and we
edited literally for 16 hours a day. We
did it for 5 days. We had a rhythm of
working out, editing, lunch, editing,
dinner, editing, pass out. The reason
we're able to do that is cuz we are
disconnected from distractions. See,
some of you make it too easy to be
interrupted. The notifications are going
off, the phone's going off, your inbox
is like blowing up. I mean, your inbox
is nothing more than a public to-do list
of other people's priorities on your
time. My philosophy is you want to be
easy to find all over the internet, but
hard to reach. The only way to make that
work is to use these strategies. The
first is turn off all your
notifications. I mean, go into the app
under notifications and I dare you to
swipe them off. The only two people in
my life that can get through to me is my
wife and my assistant. Other than that,
everybody else can wait. Second thing is
a schedule time to respond. See, I do
reply to people, text messages, etc. I
have it in my calendar, so it's
dedicated. That way, it's a forcing
function. If I got 60 minutes, I'm
spending that 60 minutes heads down. I
was standing in the hot tub behind me
earlier replying to all my text
messages. So, call that net time. No
extra time. Post-workout hot tub sitting
there text messaging creating momentum
in my life. Figure out how to put both
of those together. The third is use
focus signals. So, for me, I have my
headphones on. Please don't talk to me.
Unless it's an emergency. I do have a
rule that if you come in my office and
I'm on a call, you then have to present
on your call. So, my kids have been on
board meetings. They've been on pitch
meetings. They literally if you're in
the room and you're asking me a
question, I'm not going to introduce you
to the people I'm talking to. My kids
are my priority. But they know if the
doors close and unless it's an
emergency, they don't come in. It is so
hard for me to focus to get in the zone
that when I'm in it, I got to protect
myself. And the fourth one is just
remove yourself. I have team members
that choose on certain days I don't want
to come to work cuz I'm going to sit at
home. No distractions, no conversations,
no taps on the shoulders, no got a
seconds, no nothing. just boom, get it
done. Other people, they go to coffee
shops. Here's an advanced move. Don't
take your power cable with you. That
way, when you're there and you know your
battery is slowly dying, slowly down,
slowly down. It'll force you to get that
work done. But coffee shops are great.
Other offices are great. You can
literally go to your buddy's office and
say, "Hey man, can I hang out in your
conference room?" Which brings us to
hack number five. Turn up the pressure.
So imagine this. You've got to move out
of your place, but you got 3 months to
move out. Think about how you would
approach that. You would probably take
your time, walk around slowly, get
distracted easily, pack sometimes. You
wouldn't move with a sense of purpose.
But if I told you you had 3 days to get
out of your place or lose all your
stuff, you wouldn't waste a minute.
That's what it means to turn up the
pressure. There's two ways that you can
do this to yourself before the world
does it to you. The first is to shorten
the timeline. You see, there's this
thing called Parkinson's law that states
the work will expand to the available
time given to it. Which means if you
give yourself a lot of time, you'll take
a lot of time. When I'm talking to
people on my team and they're like,
"Yeah, I'll get that to you at the end
of the day or the end of the week or the
end of the month," I'm like, "No, no,
no. Why not 3 PM? Why not Wednesday? Why
not the 10th of the month?" Most people
default to just giving themselves
arbitrary timelines that don't force the
creativity and the focus to get more
done. The second is to increase the
stakes. What happens if you don't? See,
then you don't have an out. There's this
woman on my team, Jen, who wanted to
lose weight. She was sick of it. She
told the whole team. She asked me for my
help. I said, "Do you want the real
stake?" She said, "Yes." I said, "Cool.
This is how it works. If you don't hit
your goal by a certain date, you can't
stay on the team." You hit that goal by
then, I cannot go on that. If you don't
hit your goal, you can't stay on the
team. Shake my hand. Hold on. No. Make
it a non-negotiable.
And she went, "Oh, no. Well, that's what
I'm saying is like, I care about you. I
want to see you win. You ask me for my
help." That's real stakes. See, most
people don't have any downside if they
don't do. And because of that, they
don't do. Which brings us to hack number
six. Train your algorithm. What I find
fascinating is the billion-dollar tech
companies. These giants hire the world's
best psychologists to design software
with one purpose, and it's to distract
you, to get you to come back in the app.
I'm talking they run split tests on the
red for the notification jewel. They'll
run AB tests on the message of the
notification they send to your phone.
All to get you back and distract you.
However, you can fight against it. See,
I actually use my social media feed to
feed my brain. And this is how I do it.
First off, I teach it my preferences. I
search for things I want to learn about.
I leave a comment on the videos that I
find interesting. And that tells the
algorithm I'm engaged. Second is I
unfollow any account or mute friends
that are not contributing to the areas I
want to learn or get better at and I'm
unapologetic about it because my feed
works for me. I don't work for it. And
the third is integrate what I learn. So
there's one thing to learn something,
see something, save thing. I'm saying
share it and more importantly teach it.
When you teach other people, you will
learn completely different. Which brings
us to hack number seven. Design your
perfect week. This one is going to
shatter some of your beliefs. But
multitasking doesn't work. It's crazy,
but it takes 23 minutes on average to
refocus after your distraction. So when
you're doing work, you got to fight for
that focus. The funny way I like to
think about it is multitasking. It just
means screwing up multiple things at
once. So this is what I suggest to
create your perfect week. The first area
is start with the big rocks. These are
the non-negotiables. These are the
things that you know that if you get
done, everything else will be good. This
is the date nights, the workouts, the
reading time, the strategy meetings, the
weekly rhythms with your teams, the best
practices for the best life. The second
area is understanding that theming your
days for different things like
marketing, sales, strategy, one-on- ons
will help you understand where to put
things in your life on what days so it's
not a decision every time. The third
area is batch and block tasks together.
That ability to take your content
creation or all your conversations and
batch them together and block it in your
calendar into 30 or 45 minute meetings
is a game changer. And the most
important is plan around your energy,
not just your time. I know there's
certain types of tasks I do in the
morning that fuels me to the next level
of task that fuels me to the afternoon,
that fuels me to the nighttime with my
family, and if I did them out of
sequence, I wouldn't be good for
anybody. I wasn't going to do this, but
it would be probably pretty of me not to
do it. Essentially, if you want my
perfect week template, what I use to
structure my week every day, just find
me on Instagram, message me the word
perfect, and I'll send you the direct
link to the dock. No opt-in, no email,
my gift to you. Which brings us to hack
number eight. Gify your work. The reason
why video games are so addictive is
because they have levels and you
visually see your progress when you're
playing them. And what I've learned in
life, new levels, new devils, and it'll
make you want to progress when you
understand you're getting better. So,
design your life where you can measure
the wins. You don't get distracted
because you're bored. You get distracted
because you can't see your progress.
Progress is happiness. Anybody that's
struggling in life right now, I know
that if they made a little bit of
progress in their life, they would just
feel better. So, let's gify our work so
that we show up with focus and
attention. Number one, we got to track
our streaks. Jelly Roll came out with
this great song about winning streaks.
And I just love that philosophy that if
you measure yourself doing something and
you can go day after day after day and
just make it a simple win that day, if
it's 10 sales calls a day, how many days
can you go in a row? My buddy Ben has
been working out. I think he said the
other day 1,200 days in a row he's
worked out and he's done his unrequired
workout. That's wild. The second is you
got to create milestones for the
rewards. This is my favorite cuz I like
to buy things and go on trips. I like to
use milestones as a marker for rewarding
myself like vacations with my family or
my friends as a way to have something to
build towards. The third is make it
visual. I'm a fan of technology, but I
will tell you when you have that in
front of your face as a poster on your
backdrop on your computer, put it on
your whiteboard, I don't care where it
is, but get it outside of your brain and
put it out in front of you so you can
see it every time. That makes it fun.
The fourth is do it together. The more
people you can enroll into the process
of winning, you will create focus around
your outcome like you've never felt.
Because the truth is is you'll do more
for other people, especially if you're
the person that got them to start that
competition or that weight loss thing,
than you will do for yourself. So having
that group of people to do it together
with is a pro move. Which brings us to
hack number nine. Manage your energy.
Exhaust the body, tame the mind. If you
follow me on Instagram, and if you
don't, you should because I'm a good
time, you will see me post almost daily,
exhaust the body, tame the mind. For me,
my energy is a byproduct of my habits.
And if I've got things going on in my
mind and I need to focus, I got to first
exhaust my body. My morning routine is
where I create my proactive energy
boost. The first thing I do is focus on
my process for how I wake up, what I've
decided to do. It's in my calendar. I
move my body. I read my books. I ramp up
my focus so that I can get my best work
done. I'm all about energy and there's
two ways that I make sure that my day
gets the best of me. First off is a
proactive energy boost. That is how I
proactively start my day. This is my
morning routine. This is the philosophy
of prioritizing the pump, getting it on
the calendar, making sure my stuff's
prepped. If I got to work out, I put
that stuff out the night before so when
I wake up, it's ready to go. I don't
have to have decision fatigue. The other
one is reactive energy boost. This is
when I feel drained. Maybe my eyeballs
hurt. I don't know why sometimes that
happens. And I just got to reset. I
mean, the other day I was giving a talk
and a guy asked me, he's like, "Hey man,
how do you deal with like feeling
lethargic and tired and like you've got
the weight of the world on you?" And I'm
like, "Dude, get up front, do some
push-ups." And I did the push-ups with
him. And we sat there and I said, "Keep
going, keep going, keep going until he
failed." And when he failed, I said, "On
your knees." And he went on his knees.
And then we were all done. I said, "Now,
how do you feel?" He's like, "9 out of
10." I said, "That took 46 seconds."
Most people don't realize they can reset
their energy cuz you don't have energy.
You create energy. I can prove it. If I
told you you had $10 million cash in the
bank, taxes paid. How would you feel
that feeling? Where'd that come from? Up
here. The other thing I love to do is
walking meetings or scooter meetings.
All my one-on- ones are done on a
scooter. Why? A lot more fun. Which
brings us to hack number 10. Find your
flow. You see, I grew up thinking I was
broken. I was told I was broken. Needed
medication. Put on rolin when I was 11.
And what I've realized, it wasn't that
my mind was broken, is that I just
needed to find a different way to work
that worked for me. So, here's what I
know. Your journey will be very unique.
Nobody else can tell you how to do it. I
can give you some thoughts, but you got
to figure it out for you. Take the time
to reflect. Journal what you're thinking
about, what's working, what's not. When
I did this, I felt really good. And then
constantly tweak. That's what I do. I
look at my calendar because it's
designed. I said, "That felt good." And
some things used to give me energy that
was very productive and all of a sudden
now based on where I'm at in life, it
doesn't work for me anymore. And you're
allowed to iterate. You're allowed to
take stuff out and try new things on
like new clothes. Does it fit well? If
it doesn't, take it off. Go find
something different. The big idea though
is don't give up. Don't give up on you.
I know that if you master the ability to
find your energy, your focus, and your
flow, your dreams exist on the other
side of that. Now, if you want to learn
the eight habits that will fix 98% of
your problems, click here and I'll see
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