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Productivity VIP - Commentary

Hello this is A.J. and welcome to the commentary for this month’s VIP Lesson and, of course, our topic is ‘Productivity.’

You see, I believe that we live in a modern time that is actually, in many ways, counterproductive. Now, of course, we have lots of technology to make us more productive – computers and the Internet and lots of other kinds of technology that can make us more productive, if used wisely. The problem is these same technological devices, all the cell phones and computers and, you know, iPads and all of this stuff, can also make us less productive, if used unwisely.

Now in a past VIP Lesson I talked about specialization and not wanting to specialize and that is definitely true. In your life you want to have a balanced life. You want to be doing lots of different things. You don’t want to just be one dimension, one kind of person only.

You’re a human being, you want to be a full, complete human being, but when you’re working in a particular area of your life, you want to give it your complete and total focus and concentration, all of your intensity, all of your energy, all of your excellence, then finish what you’re doing and then take a break and do something else. It’s all or nothing.

That’s actually the most productive way to be, the most productive way to get things done. It also produces the highest quality.

You see, the problem is we’re constantly distracted now, right? We’re trying to do 10 different things at the same time. Our cell phone is ringing constantly. We’re getting little email alerts all the time or boom Yahoo Instant Messenger popping up on our computer while we’re trying to do something. Even if we’re just writing an email to a good friend, but then we’ve got all these other distractions happening too. So are we really totally focused, completely, 100% on that email to our friend? Often times we’re not.

That’s why this method of productivity is so powerful and important – working in short intense bursts where you’re just doing one thing only. You’re totally, completely, 100% focused on that one thing for several hours, for several days, however long it takes. You shorten the time period, you make everything much more intense and here’s another important part. You gotta’ turn off all the other distractions.

When I’m recording lessons, for example, my cell phone is off. I’m not getting email alerts or Yahoo Messenger alerts. I ignore my phone. I’m only doing this and, in that way, I get much more done and I’m totally focused on it.

See, that’s the problem. Most of us in our different lives, you know, work, family, everything, we’re kind of doing everything half-assed. Now that’s a nice slang phrase, half-assed. To do something “half-assed” means to do it with low quality, low concentration. It means you’re only giving half of your energy, half of your attention.

That’s the idea of that phrase, half assed. It’s the idea of a very mediocre, kind of lowquality effort.

Even though we don’t want to that’s actually what a lot of us are doing, because we’re so distracted all the time. Maybe we’re at our jobs and we’re working, but then, you know, other workers are coming in and asking us questions and distracting us or trying to joke around with us or we’re, you know, constantly getting little email alerts and things and then we gotta’ go to meetings. There’s always stuff interrupting us constantly and so maybe the most important project we should be doing we’re just doing it half-assed. We can’t totally focus on it.

The problem is that we end up doing everything half-assed, because we’re always thinking about two or three or four other things at the same time. We’re at the business meeting, but we’re thinking about what we need to do next or thinking about the problem that we had yesterday or thinking about the project we should be doing now.

So we’re not really totally there and present and focused at the meeting and when we’re doing our project, well then we’re worrying about what happened at the meeting and then someone is interrupting us all the time and it’s the same thing, right? So it’s a lot of different things, but none of them really focused and 100%.

Of course, this is true in family life and relationships too. We’ve all been guilty of this – of not giving our partner our complete, total, focus and attention when we’re doing something with them, even just having a little chat, because we’re thinking about all the other stuff that we also need to be doing. And so this is the way kind of our modern lives can end up, just constantly distracted, never totally focused on where we are, what we’re doing. That is a recipe for mediocrity. It’s also a recipe for stress.

See, living like that, number one, it lowers the quality of everything you do, number two, it make things last longer. It takes you longer to accomplish things, because you’re always kind of distracted. You never really, fully, get concentrated and get that flow that I mentioned in the video, that momentum, that feeling of getting more and more and more and more done and really getting your energy higher, higher, higher, higher, because as your energy starts going higher, suddenly you get interrupted and it drops down again and then you have to build it again from nothing.

So that’s kind of the way for a lot of us and probably it’s the normal, modern way of living now, so we actually have to go against that in school, in relationships, in work, business, jobs, really in everything, even the simple example I gave of writing emails.

You know now when I write an email to a friend, I take a moment to clear my mind of everything else and just write the email to them. If my phone rings while I’m writing it, I don’t answer the phone. I finish the email to my friend. I give them all of my attention and focus.

Now I don’t do this all the time. Sometimes I get distracted and then I have to remind myself again and then I remember. So, you know its okay. This happens. It’s sort of modern life, but the more we can just focus on things one at a time the higher the quality of our life will be and the higher the quality of our work and our relationships will be. It’s not an easy challenge sometimes. So what I want you to do this month is to pick a few things, a few areas of your life that are important to you, maybe a few projects and, number one, shorten the time to finish them.

Now this could even work in relationships. Let’s say you say oh, I want to spend time, you know, with my girlfriend or boyfriend or something. Well, instead of just saying yeah, this month I want to, pick one single day and maybe instead of making it all day, really long, maybe make it just a couple hours, but make it an incredible couple of hours.

Say okay, I’m busy, so maybe it’s stressful to do a whole day. I’m going to just spend two hours with them this weekend, but I’m going to do something amazing during that two hours and when I’m with them for those two hours I will not think about anything else. I will turn off my phone. I’m not going to answer my cell phone. I am going to give them my 100% total and complete focus and presence, just them, just spending time with them and enjoying them, nothing else; no one else. Try that. Try that with somebody that you care about and see what happens.

Also, I want you to try it with some kind of project you have. If you’re in school, you can have a school project. If you’re a mom at home, it could be maybe something in your home that needs to get done or it could be something with work or a business, but find that project. You’ve given yourself a certain amount of time to do it, what I want you to do is cut that time by one-third.

So if you gave yourself three weeks to do it, now I want you to do it in one week, preferably this week. If you’ve given yourself three days to do it, cut it to one day. You can even cut it shorter than that, if you want to, but one-third at least and when you do it, during that short time that you’re going to do your project, turn off all phones, all cell phones, you know, lock your door, don’t answer anything, turn off your email, tell your boss and everybody else I’m not available during this time. Do nothing else but that.

See, we’ve lost this art a little bit, if we think about it. Think about sort of traditional masters, human masters of something, of an art or a religion or spirituality, anything, imagine a great artist like, I don’t know, Picasso or Van Gogh or Leonardo da Vinci, just imagine them working on their masterpiece.

Like Leonardo is working on the Mona Lisa. Now do you think he worked on it for like 20 minutes and then he just walked out of the room and he got distracted and somebody was bugging him all the time then he would come back the next day and work maybe 10 minutes and then oh, oh, oh I gotta’ do this oh, then he got distracted again? I don’t think so.

Most of the artists I know, they will totally lose themselves. They forget about everything else. They sometimes forget to eat, right? They can work on a project, a painting, for example, for 10 hours, 12 hours, 15 hours, 20 hours. Sometimes they don’t sleep. They don’t eat. They don’t do anything else. They’re so totally concentrated and focused on that one thing. Isn’t that our image of a master?

Think of it, a master carpenter, a master artist, a great writer. Imagine a great writer writing a book. Think of your favorite writer. Do you think they just wrote it for a few minutes and they were getting cell phone calls all the time or if it was many years ago do you think people were interrupting them constantly? No.

I mean I actually used to be a freelance writer. I wrote travel articles and things and when I wrote that’s all I did. I would lose myself completely in the writing. I’d just write hours and hours and hours and I would, I would forget to eat sometimes. I may be sipping a coffee or something, but then, finally, after hours and hours, my stomach would be like hurting and I would realize oh, my God, I have to eat something. I would just forget to eat, because I was so focused on that one thing, writing.

Athletes can be this way, really great athletes. They can be just super concentrated and focused on their practice or in their game and everything else is gone. It’s just one thing.

This lesson is really about going back to a very basic human principle of mastery that’s been around for thousands and thousands of years. This is nothing new, but we’ve forgotten it because in our modern life everything is pushing us to do a lot of things at the same time.

Everything is pushing us to do a little bit of this and then a little bit of that and then a little bit of something else and then back to this again and sort of just jumping around all the time. Oh, now I’ll talk on the phone. Oh, now I’ll do this. And that’s why we feel a lot of stress too. You see, it’s not just about being productive and quality. Those are important yes, but this is also a great way to reduce stress.

It is very stressful, as you probably know, to try to do a lot of things at the same time or to do one thing and think about something else or to be doing something, trying to do a great job, and then be interrupted all the time. It’s stressful. Even though what I’m telling you to do this month, which is be super concentrated and focused and work, work, work, work, work, very intensely in short periods of time, even though that might sound difficult or something, it’s actually easier. It actually feels better.

When you work in this way you will enjoy the work more. You just will forget everything else and you’ll get so focused on what you’re doing – on the work or the person you’re with, whatever it is – that everything else will just kind of go away and you will be just in this moment, right now, doing the work, doing what you’re wanting to do, nothing else.

That is, actually, a very peaceful, great, feeling and all the stress will just disappear. All the stress and worry from your life will vanish. The thing is, though, it takes time to get into that, right? Fifteen minutes is not enough time, it actually takes an hour or two of totally-focused work or totally-focused communication, if you’re with another person or whatever it is.

It takes an hour or two of total focus before, finally, your mind just quiets down and you really start doing great work and all that stress disappears and you just feel this incredible feeling of productivity and power and calm and creativity and, if you’re with another person, connection.

So I’m encouraging you to take the time to restructure your life, to restructure your calendar, your schedule, and begin working more and more in this way – doing one thing at a time for a large chunk of time, all together, concentrated together and then, you know, take a break and rest some and then do something else in a concentrated way, but only that one thing. Then take a break and then another thing like that or something totally different, but focused and concentrated then relax and take a break and then focus and concentrate totally on something else then relax and take a break.

You’re going to have to be strong with the people in your life and tell them that when you’re working you’re not going to be answering your phone, you’re not going to be going to meetings, nothing else is happening. You’re just doing that one thing.

If you’re with another person, let’s say you’re out to lunch don’t answer your cell phone.

Turn it off. People can leave a message and you can call them back. Just be with that person totally and completely for an hour or two.

All right, so you got the idea, right? I hope that I’ve convinced you of why this is important and powerful and, I know, it does go against a lot of what’s happening in our modern world, in our modern life, but that’s okay. When you go against it, it will make you more successful than most other people.

Most other people will continue to be distracted and do a half-assed job. By working this way, you will get more done, higher quality, better relationships, everything will be better.

You’re going to have a lot more success in your life by doing things in this way.

So you already know your homework – pick a few areas of your life and do this. Shorten the amount of time to do whatever it is you want to do, make it at least a couple hours at one time, at least two hours, more is even better. If you can do it all day, that’s even better, if you can do it a few days in a row, even better and then totally rest and then something else in your life; totally focused and concentrated for several hours, days, whatever you need.

And then, finally, what I would like you to do, as always, I’d love for you to go to our VIP site and share your experience doing this, this month. I’d love to hear your stories and love to hear about your experience and I know other members would as well. I would and other members would as well. So, have a great and very productive month this month with your English learning and with anything else you want to try this with.

All right, I am so happy to reach you. It is my honor to teach you, thank you. Have a great day and a great month.

See you again, bye-bye.