00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 70. My name is. I'm a Christian financial advisor. I'm the host of the dollar savvy podcast. And I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence, impact the world by using your time, your talents and your treasures to live out your calling. Find your path to financial freedom.
00:00:27 And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to my friend, Scott Mader, the inspired stewardship podcast Is more full of distractions than ever before, and what we need to do. Isn't just learn to focus and concentrate. But like I said, even more importantly, it's bringing our mind back to pay attention to something. Whenever we have gotten distracted,
00:01:00 that I think is the really powerful steel skill. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. You will learn to invest in yourself,
00:01:22 invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. And tonight, Saturday night special. I talk with you about the power of concentration. I gave you 10 tips to help you improve your concentration. And I also share why you should actually care. Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity.
00:01:58 Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really, really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this, and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done.
00:02:25 What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality. Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type. But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work,
00:02:47 but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch. Let's talk a little bit about concentration and focus. You know, the truth is that concentration or focus, paying attention to what we're doing and really being present in the moment is a skill that we can develop.
00:03:18 People talk all the time about how their mind wanders, they get distracted. I'm sure you've had that familiar feeling where you sit down and you're really trying to work on a particular task or get something done. But just every moment that you sit there, your mind wanders something else, bubbles up into your head and you can't ever get refocused and get restarted or start in the first place on the task.
00:03:44 Instead you just sit there and kind of bubble around or wander through things and don't actually get anything done at all. And the truth is developing. The skill of concentration is important and even more important is developing the still skill of refocusing. Whenever you lose focus, the ability to come back from a distraction and get right back into the flow state is even more powerful.
00:04:16 That's one of the reasons that meditation and things like that. That's one of the benefits that they have is teaching you how to do that. And I'll talk more about that in a moment. So what are some of the ways that you can make sure when you're doing work, when you're focusing on a task that you can begin to develop your power of concentration,
00:04:38 your ability to focus and your ability to refocus when you've lose That concentration and the steps are, are some of them. Cause there's really thousands of things you can do. One of them is just to begin to train your brain to do this again. I love meditation for this meditation. I think it's a false, a false kind of feeling or our false advertising.
00:05:06 People think it's about blanking, your mind, being able to let go of everything so that you're sitting there completely in Zen with nothing going on in your head in the moment. And I would argue that meditation is a little bit more like doing mental push-ups. It's actually about learning to have a thought come into your head, acknowledge the thought, recognize that it's there,
00:05:28 but then release it and return to focusing on something like your breath or a mantra or some sort of attention. Something that you're focusing on with deliberate intention. It's that ability to come back from those distractions that so powerful. But if meditation is not your thing, do things like crossword puzzles or play chess or Sodoku, even video games, at least some kinds of video games can help you with focus and being able to learn,
00:05:58 to pay attention to one thing while everything else around you goes away. One of the other tips to do is to, I actually focus on rest and sleep, get enough rest and enough sleep in, in yesterday's newsletter. I wrote some about how overwork and under arrest has almost become a badge of honor in today's world. But the truth is that that is not true.
00:06:24 Overwork work and under sleep is not the way to get more done. Instead, it's the way to learn, to be distracted all the time, a third area or a third tip, making time for physical activity, making time for exercise, being able to do physical things that help you and help you concentrate and help you pay attention because being able to do physical activities and out there doing exercise.
00:06:55 The interesting thing about it is there's a lot of studies that show that it actually helps your concentration and your attention. At other times it releases endorphins and other brain chemicals that help your body and your brain. It even helps with pain management and other things. And as part of that, another tip and related tip is spending some time out and about and in nature,
00:07:20 because being able to take a walk or take a jog or do other things that are out and about in nature, recharging with the natural environment is powerful, which brings us to your environment, pay attention to the environment that's around. You make sure it's comfortable, make sure it's as distraction free as possible, eliminate things like your phone and other distractions pull you off task or distract your attention,
00:07:46 or pull other things too mind, put up pictures or images that help you focus. Why pay attention to the sounds that are there as well, because you can actually spend time, whether it's putting up pictures, whether it's clearing clutter, making sure that the environment is focused and clean and attractive and comfortable is helpful. That also brings us to taking a break,
00:08:15 being able to take a rest break and, and spend some time away from the task is actually helpful. And as part of your environment, sometimes having music on at least something like classical music or something that doesn't have lyrics, preferably music that is music that you actually don't particularly love and don't particularly hate, but can tolerate very helpful. Nutrition is another their area actually eating enough and drinking enough,
00:08:45 drinking, water, eating breakfast, these sorts of things can be helpful trying to watch your caffeine intake so that you're not overdoing. It is part of that as well. And then of course the last area of focus is your mindset. You know, being able to set aside time to deal with worries, to deal with other things and prioritize so that you're making sure that now when you're doing the actual task that you're focused on,
00:09:14 you're paying the most attention to it and you've shut off all the other distractions. And you're doing that well also don't try to load up where one of your days is nothing but high attention, high energy task. And the next day is all low energy, low attention task. Instead, very some of those during the day and try attention to placing the tasks that require a lot of concentration and energy at whatever times of the day,
00:09:41 that your peak attention and energy flows for some people that's the morning for some it's the afternoon include it sometimes right after an afternoon, nap is a good trick as well. All of these are tips to why and how you can improve your concentration, but why should you care about it? Why should you try to do it? Because the truth is today's world is more full of distractions than ever before and what we need to do.
00:10:09 Isn't just learn to focus and concentrate. But like I said, even more importantly, it's bringing our mind back to pay attention to something. Whenever we have gotten distracted, that I think is the really powerful steel skill because you are going to get distracted. That's just a fact it's going to happen, but what you do about it, that's, what's really important.
00:10:34 Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listened, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode, please, please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate. All one word iTunes rate.
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