Today we’re talking about arguably one of the most powerful (and potentially most damaging) things you should be paying attention to when building up your creative career:
Focus.
I won’t be telling you what you should be focusing on; I’ll be talking more about how to focus on it.
Because as much as many of us think we just need to know what to do and then we’ll be all good…
**The reality is that more often than not we already know what to do—we just can’t seem to do it.
And there’s more than one reason for this, but among the biggest reasons is a lack of focus.
We have a huge problem with focus today and it’s stopping many creatives from growing into their full potential.
We’ve been sucked into this world of constant consumption and distraction, especially on social media.
Every new post we scroll onto promises a new, better answer to our problems, to our lack of progress.
But we never do anything with it, because we get sidetracked by the next new, better answer… and the next… and the next…
We’ve been trained to endlessly consume, as if that itself is the answer.
We’re looking for an antidote to distraction within the world of distraction, while the real antidote to our lack of progress is outside of it.
It’s focus. Pure, interrupted focus.
So many of us are so used to this constant state of distraction that we don’t even realise how unfocused we are.
We’re stuck in an endless cycle of going nowhere.
Focus is the answer.
It’s a weapon. A serious weapon.
It can be massively positively life—changing.
It can get you out of the pit you’ve dug for yourself and transform you.
But if you don’t know how to handle it, it can destroy your entire life. Not exaggerating.
So now I want to warn you of how focus, or a lack of it, can really hurt you—and probably does.
Then after that I’ll take you through three simple but extremely powerful things you can do to take back your focus, and your power, and your ability to make progress in your creative career.
Focus and entropy.
A lack of focus—or too much focus on the wrong thing—can cause entropy, of your creative career, or maybe even of your quality of life.
Here’s an example of this:
I have a dangerous relationship with music.
It’s complicated, and kind of fucked up.
Because it makes me unimaginably happy… but it also has the power to actually ruin my life.
I’ve almost always been on the service side of music, at least for the last 10—ish years.
Before doing what I do now I was producing and composing for others.
I was good at that side; there wasn’t a whole lot of resistance in that work, and I was able to achieve some pretty cool things going down that path.
But when I make music purely for myself, it’s a nightmare.
It’s a whole other world.
Because although it makes me incredibly happy, it also brings me a lot of pain and suffering.
There’s definitely some super deep childhood connection thing going on that messes with me.
Music is the thing I was praised for as a kid, and the thing that I think also helped me survive psychologically.
But it comes with a lot of bad stuff too.
My identity has been deeply intertwined with music from a young age, and unfortunately important parts of that identity were developed in rough times.
So it brings out the playful child in me… but it also brings out the scared, anxious child.
I don’t know exactly how all this works—although I have some ideas—but this has led to me having all kinds of blocks and weird self—sabotage behaviours around making music purely for myself.
Specifically that; nothing else. No other area of music—just making it purely for personal enjoyment.
So it brings a lot of chaos into my life when I start paying too much attention to it, and stop paying attention to everything else.
It has so much emotional sway that it makes me lose focus of everything else in my life.
It’s like the addictiveness of the mix of pleasure and pain just stops everything.
- My health suffers.
- My relationship suffers.
- My business suffers.
- My mental health suffers.
Everything you can think of.
The self—sabotage is so deeply intertwined with the good stuff that it makes it feel almost impossible to manage.
And unless I’m extremely careful, before I know it I’ve let everything slip, sometimes almost to the point of completely destroying everything.
This sounds exaggerated, but it’s really not. This really happens.
I hope you don’t have a similar thing with it, because it’s a nightmare.
Are you obsessed with the wrong thing?
Entropy is a major problem that the wrong focus, or lack of the right focus, can cause.
You can become so obsessed with something that you neglect other important things, things that lead to worse problems if ignored.
I see this very often with musicians I work with on social media.
They become obsessed with something like having their posts perform a certain way and they completely lose sight of the bigger picture.
Their line of vision becomes so narrow that they start neglecting other important parts of building a presence.
^This, specifically, happens so often it’s not funny.
- Musicians will become obsessed with their individual post performance.
- They’ll start losing sight of their overall vision and focus only on making posts that generate a specific type of return, which is engagement or likes or whatever.
- This can lead them to neglect staying true to their artist identity, to their overall strategy, which confuses them and their audience.
- And it can—and often does—lead them to completely stop posting. Things stop working, so they stop working… which leads to everything not working even more, right?
To be clear, there is a time for extremely narrow focus. I am a huge fan of it.
But it’s gotta be on the right things.
If you let yourself get tunnel vision in the wrong way, you’re forgetting to take care of the things that keep you propped up.
If you notice you’ve become too focused on things like:
- Likes, views, and comments
- Individual post performance
- Creating stuff with other people in mind, worrying about what they’ll think
- Or anything that you know isn’t good for you…
Stop. Immediately.
Because if these things steal your focus for long enough, they’ll warp your mind, stop you from seeing the bigger picture, and ruin everything for you.
You can all too easily destroy everything you’ve worked to build up because something grabbed your focus, hooked you in, and kept you trapped in this tiny bubble.
If you notice you’re too zoomed in and you’re not making any progress, the best thing you can do is zoom out.
But this works the other way as well…
When you’re scattered…
Trying to focus on too many things at once is just as dangerous as being laser focused on the wrong things.
If you’re juggling 5+ serious things at once, you can guarantee most of them (if not all) are going to suffer.
Usually what happens is your focus is spread too thin across everything and everything suffers.
This happens to me regularly, and it happens frequently with the musicians I have consultations with.
Someone will book a call and ask for help with managing everything they’ve got going on.
Often they’ve got a list of like 100 different things they’re looking to achieve.
You can’t get anywhere like that.
We often have a very hard time of letting ‘important’ things go, so we try to juggle all of our important stuff at once…
But what we’re really doing here is making the choice to deem nothing important, and everything as only worthy of 10—20% of our attention.
And you know what happens when you only give 10% of your attention to something?
You get 10% of the result… or a lot worse, sometimes 0%.
Your mind tricks you into thinking you can dedicate a tiny fraction of your attention to something and get a crazy result.
But this is only the case if you’ve already got a good solid plan for how to do that—and the experience to make it work properly for you.
Something I help musicians with in my coaching is reducing how much time they spend on social media, while also getting the maximum they can out of it.
Once you’ve found your process that works well, you can start looking at ways to effectively ‘cut corners’, and you can reduce your time spent on the platforms significantly.
But until you have that process, you’ll never be able to do it.
You need absolute focus while you get it sorted.
Otherwise you’ll forever be stuck in the endless cycle of posting and standing still and wondering how you’ve ended up spending so much time on something that gives you nothing in return.
And this applies to anything…
If you want to master it, you need focus.
You want to become a master of your craft? You need serious focus.
No half—hearted attempt at regular practise is going to make you truly great. You need deliberate, focused practise.
You want to build your audience? You need strategy, and you’re not going to get that by only half paying attention to it.
You want to attract opportunities that make your creative career better (or your life better)? You need to focus on the things that will get you them.
Do not make the mistake of thinking you can do 50 things at once and be as good at those things as people who only focus on one of them.
Open loops will keep you stuck.
Also, when you’ve got too much going on at once, you have too many open loops.
Open loops are unresolved problems, unanswered questions, incomplete tasks that your mind can’t let go of, because it needs closure.
Your brain is way fuller than you think.
It’s like you’ve left all these doors open in your mind and it’s trying to solve a bunch of problems in the background, using up a lot of mental power.
We don’t see what’s actually happening in our minds.
We might think we’re focused on one thing at a time, and that our minds are only using up energy on that one thing when we’re paying attention to it.
But really all these ‘open cases’ you’ve got floating around in your mind are draining your energy.
This causes us to get significantly worse results from something than what we could, say like building your audience, mastering your craft, or whatever it is.
We think we’re giving it 100%, but we’re not really.
Say for example you want to start showing up online to build your presence…
But you’re also currently going through a music production course, leaning how to produce your own music.
On top of that, you’re also currently working on a bunch of new songs to release.
And on top of that, you’re also taking a songwriting class because you really want to level up your tunes.
All of this is happening while you work a 9—5, manage a social life, and a bunch of other stuff.
These are all super important to you, so you decide to “fully” commit to all of them right now.
You reason that if you dedicate a certain amount of time to each every day, you can really get somewhere with everything.
You’ll be able to work on one thing, then switch that off and move to the next, and the next, and the next, etc.
Sounds nice…
…but not how it plays out for a lot of creatives.
What really happens is you work on the first thing—which remember is super important to you—then you move on to the next…
But your mind can’t fully let go of the first thing. You’ve created an open loop.
So already you’re not operating at 100% on this second thing, even if you think you are.
Then you move on to the third thing, and your mind is holding onto not just the first thing, but also the second thing.
So now you’ve got two open loops, and you’re operating at an even worse level with this third thing.
You see where I’m going with this?
The more unresolved stuff you’ve got in your head, the cloudier you’re going to be.
If you’re trying to manage multiple long—term projects at once—projects that all require a lot of long—term attention—you’ll be a mess up there.
All you’re doing is losing clarity, focus, and energy.
And the lack of clarity, focus and energy can be devastating.
It can lead to you getting 20% out of something when you could be getting 100% out of it.
Or, if you’re really clouded, it can stop you in your tracks completely.
I’m sure you’ve had that experience where you feel like you have a bunch of stuff to do, you know exactly what to do, how to do it, all that…
But for some reason you can’t do it.
Your head just feels too messy.
It feels like it’s swimming, but you can’t see with what.
It’s like it’s jumping from thing to thing constantly, but at the same time it’s not moving at all, right?
This is what a buildup of open loops can do to you.
It can make you freeze up.
I’m not saying you can’t manage multiple things in your life simultaneously.
We humans all have to juggle things, and for the most part we’re pretty good at keeping most things together.
But a lot of things in our lives don’t require 100% attention in order to make them work well enough.
If we’re talking about things that do require 100% attention to get somewhere decent with them, like…
- Becoming an absolute master of your craft
- Getting unstuck on social media and really going big with it
- Developing a powerful skill that will change your life if you get good enough at it…
Giving them only a fraction of your attention will keep you feeling stuck.
You’ll never be able to get all the amazing benefits of the thing because you’re only ever half—committing to it.
Your mind has too many other important things to think about at the same time, so even though you might be physically there… you’re not really mentally there.
Open loops are one of the silent killers in your mind, quietly destroying your ability to master what’s important to you.
We’ll come back and talk about these soon, but for now I just want you to know about these open loops, and how important it is to manage them.
Focus escapes too easily.
One last warning on the bad side of focus, before we get into improving it and improving your results:
It is so easy to lose focus. So easy.
One day, you can get yourself insanely fired up for how you’re gonna conquer the world with your art, and be more motivated than you could possibly imagine…
But the next day, you’ve lost that fire.
You’ve forgotten about all your crazy big plans, or at least you’ve forgotten what got you so pumped up about them.
You can be in a deep work session, making serious progress and feeling unstoppable…
But then your phone goes off, pulls you out of flow, and suddenly you’re scrambling to get locked in at all.
This is the scary thing about focus.
You can be locked into something that makes you feel incredible and like you’re finally moving forward…
And then one of the million distractions in your life can come along and pull you out of focus, both in short—term and long—term ways.
Your current focus can trick you into thinking “yes I can do this! I’ll go super hard and make this happen” because in the moment you feel so strongly about it.
You are convinced that nothing could stop you from being laser focused on this one thing, this thing that could transform you and help you build the dream life.
But things do stop you. All the time. And easily.
Sadly, those moments of intense focus and commitment are often fleeting.
Because as much as we think we’ve got a handle on them, they slip through our fingers over and over again.
No doubt you’ve experienced this before…
Say you watch a YouTube video that motivates you to finally take a certain action in your creative career.
You could be 100% all in on it, ready to dominate the entire year…
And then somehow it’s 6 weeks later and you haven’t made a single move.
Or maybe you know someone in your life who’s wasted half their life, always talking about how they’re planning to do things, but never actually following through.
It’s not always because you or they are lazy.
It’s probably because your focus was stolen by something else.
It also could be subconscious blocks but that’s another conversation.
But lack of focus is one of the biggest reasons you can’t get around those blocks anyway.
Don’t get tricked by your own mind.
Don’t think your current focus can’t be easily taken from you if you do nothing to protect it.
Because it can, and will.
Supervillain or superpower?
So focus, lack of focus, or lack of consistent focus can be pretty dangerous.
It can trick us into constantly thinking we’re making progress in the moment, but never making any real progress at all.
It can lead us down the wrong path and change the trajectory of our lives, leading us into dark places without us even realising.
It can cloud our minds, keeping us stuck, keeping us frozen, never able to truly see a path forward.
…But it’s also one of the most powerful things in the human experience.
When you unlock focus properly, your life can change radically and quickly.
It’s one of the closest things to superhuman I can think of.
Proper focus can transform your life in a matter of weeks.
6 months of dedicated focus could completely change you as a person.
You have the power to shape your life in huge, meaningful ways.
Although there are things in life we can’t control, you have much more control and power than you think.
You can focus in on something, take proper action, and drastically impact the result you can get from that thing.
You can get clarity like you’ve never experienced.
You won’t know it if you haven’t yet seen it for yourself, but true focus is incredible.
- How much better would your art be if you really focused?
- How much bigger and more dedicated would you audience be if you really focused on it?
- How would your outlook on life change if you chose to focus on the right things?
Many of us are rarely truly focused.
We let ourselves get distracted, or pulled every which way, and we stay stuck in this endless cycle of going nowhere.
If we don’t pay attention, we lose control.
But if we do pay attention, we can be on top of the world.
So now I want to give you a few really simple things you can do to start improving your focus, your progress in your creative career, and honestly the quality of your life.
Admittedly I’m not always at the top of my game with this stuff, but when I am it’s crazy.
I have seen first hand the insane power of true focus, and so here are the 3 biggest things that have helped me unlock a new level of focus and progress.
Please take them seriously, even if you feel like they’re basic…
Because it’s the simple things like these that make the biggest difference.
#1: Choose less for more focus.
One of the single biggest movers to help you increase your focus and maximise your results is to simply stop taking on so many different things at once.
Focus on no more than a few big things, but really go deep into them.
Ideally, it’s one big thing at a time, if it’s possible.
I cannot tell you how much this can change your life and anything in it that’s important to you.
Many of us will load ourselves up with lots of different TODOs.
I think it’s because it makes us feel busy and productive—we can say we’re trying our best.
Or maybe it’s because this is just what we think we have to do.
But I think maybe it’s a sneaky way to avoid fully committing to something, and to safeguard us from true failure.
Because if we commit to too many things at once, we can always stay a little disconnected from any one thing.
And that means if it fails, we have a good excuse for why:
We weren’t able to properly try to make it work, right?
When it comes to your identity, I don’t think it’s good to attach yourself to one thing.
That—in my opinion—is a recipe for disaster, and I’ve personally experienced this.
But when it comes to achieving exceptional results at a specific thing, that’s different.
You need razor sharp focus on the specific thing you’re trying to achieve.
Whatever it is:
- Building your online presence
- Mastering your craft
- Creating something amazing…
Until you get to a place where you can run it effectively on autopilot, or you’re so good at it that you can produce exceptional results without trying too hard…
You’re gonna need to lock into that specific thing and give it 100% of your focus.
There’s a good chance you have no idea just how much more you could get out of it if you were truly focused on it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that you simply cannot have too many simultaneous focuses and expect to get 100% out of them.
The simplest way to get back on track: Cut things out.
Any time I find something in my life that’s important to me is slipping…
The major reason why is because I’m not focused (and the fix is to get more focused on it).
I’ll rarely have more than 2 major focuses in my life at any one time.
Maybe 3, but more often than not it’s just one.
That doesn’t mean I completely stop doing everything else in my life.
But it means the majority of my attention is on a singular big important thing at one time.
I have things in my life that I consistently make space for no matter what to make sure they don’t fall apart.
For example, every Saturday, unless under very special circumstances, it’s absolutely zero work and 100% focus on my wife.
No matter how intense the work week gets, we always make room for spending Saturday together, because it’s hyper—important to both of us.
But besides that and a couple of other non—negotiable things, I’m usually focused on only 1 major thing at a time.
Most of the time, that’s the creative business.
And sometimes it’s a very specific part of it.
For example, when I’m properly focused on growth, I’ll be able to significantly expand my reach.
That laser focus on content and reaching people yields really good results, much better than normal.
I’ve given myself permission to dive deep into one thing, and it lets me see things I wouldn’t normally see and get ahead with it.
But when I’m focused on another part of the business, such as creating a program or product, I’m not able to produce the same results in terms of reach and growth.
I can still keep things moving along, but the difference between “keeping things running” and fully focusing on it 100% is staggering. It’s night and day.
What are you telling yourself is hyper—important but you’re only giving 50% or less of your attention to?
It might truly matter to you a lot.
And you might even think about it all the time.
But you may be finding it hard to make any real progress on it because you’ve got too many other things obscuring your focus.
Maybe your sole focus right now should be on marketing because you need to dive deep for a while to learn how to make it work…
But you’re also trying to do the same thing with three other parts of your career.
You can’t fully commit to anything because everything is important, right?
And so you end up just burning out but not moving forward.
If you’re not getting anywhere with anything right now, you need to brutally cut down your TODO list—for now.
Pick the most important thing, and give your full self to it for a while.
Maybe it’s marketing.
Maybe it’s writing, practising, performing, whatever.
I know it’s hard to let go of the other important stuff, but hanging on to them is a big part of what’s draining you and keeping you stuck.
Remember how we talked about open loops?
If you don’t properly cut things out for a while so you can focus on what’s most important, you will never be able to bring your best self to work.
Even if you’ve got all day to dedicate to improving your results related to building your online presence, or working on your craft…
…if your mind isn’t fully there, you won’t get anywhere near as much out of it as you could.
This is something that’s easy to understand but hard to believe the true power of until you experience it and recognise it.
It’s also very easy to trick yourself into thinking you’re properly focused on one thing when you’re not.
But when you are truly focused, you’ll know, because you feel like a fucking superhuman.
You feel unstoppable.
Your mind will be extremely clear and you’ll suddenly find yourself with a whole lot more energy and excitement.
I know many creatives have 9—5s and/or other major responsibilities that they can’t stop paying attention to.
I’m not talking about things you can’t get rid of, like those—although having to give your attention to those things does make it harder admittedly.
When I talk about brutally cutting down your TODO list, I’m talking about the things you have control over that won’t put you in a bad spot if you get rid of them.
This is not easy.
I know everything feels important right now.
You could probably make a solid case for why you need to keep everything at the forefront of your attention.
But trust me, you’re going to get infinitely further by cutting most of them out for a while and focusing in on—ideally—one thing.
No more than a few.
You’ve no doubt heard people say something like…
“Your life can change drastically with 3—6 months of focus”
It’s absolutely true.
It can completely change the trajectory of your career (and your life) and you can become unrecognisable to your older self.
If you’re currently struggling with something specific in your creative career, give that 100% of your focus for a month or two and I can almost guarantee you’ll see positive change.
- If you need to build an audience but you can’t get anywhere with it, give it all your focus for a while and you’ll start seeing solutions you couldn’t see before.
- If you need to radically improve at your craft, give it 100% of your attention for 6 weeks and you’ll feel like you’ve levelled up 100x.
Seriously, the power of this is insane.
But again, don’t trick yourself.
Don’t think you’re fully focused when you’re actually not.
If your mind keeps wandering to other things and you’re just going through the motions, that’s not proper focus.
You’ll continue to feel like you’re not making progress.
You’ll be cloudy even if you can’t explain why.
Even if you’ve given yourself heaps of space to work on this one thing.
Being properly focused is a completely different way of being.
It’ll change your entire perspective on what’s possible for you.
And it’s something unfortunately many of us don’t experience nearly enough.
Many of us are operating well under our current potential because we don’t have our focus dialled in.
This is legitimately a cheat code for anything you want to get good at.
It’s so simple, but so powerful. Just get truly focused on it and you’ll transform.
I heard Chris Williamson (who in case you don’t know is a very successful podcaster) talk about how it’s crazy to think you can have your focus on lots of different things and expect to get to the same level on any of them as someone who only focuses on that one thing.
He’s so right. It’s so true.
It’s such a simple idea that I think it gets overlooked.
Pick something in your creative career that you want to drastically level up.
Give it 100% focus for a decent block of time—sacrifice everything else you can sacrifice for a while.
Watch what happens.
And once you’ve got that thing in a good place, focus on something else if you need to and do the same thing.
This will change you.
#2: Close those loops.
Ok, another thing you can do to drastically improve your focus and results in your creative career is to close as many of those open loops as possible so you have more mental space to focus on what matters to you.
As a reminder, open loops are basically unresolved problems or tasks in your mind that take up a lot of mental energy.
These are things we’re not always consciously thinking of, but they’re there in our minds, floating around and draining us.
We’re not necessarily aware of it… but it’s happening.
This is one of the single biggest realisations I’ve had about focus in the last year or so, and even more so recently.
Closing these loops is basically like opening a magic door to unlimited focus and progress.
Seriously.
Once you close these—once you decide to essentially get closure on all of the unresolved stuff in your mind—you will have more clarity, energy, motivation and time.
It’s unbelievable how much energy and time and resources we give to these things floating around in the back of our minds.
They drain us without us even realising, and then we wonder why we’re so tired and foggy all the time…
…and why we can’t make the progress we truly want, even if we’re technically showing up and doing what we need to do.
This is another reason why a long todo list is terrible.
It’s constantly reminding us of all these things we need to get around to doing, completely taking us out of the moment and reducing our ability to focus on what’s truly important.
Try this…
List out all the things you’re constantly thinking about needing to do, like for example activities or tasks you’re gonna need to do at some point to help your creative career:
Then go through and make a clear, firm decision about what’s a big main focus, and what needs to be ‘closed’.
If something is going to become a main focus right now, you have to properly cut the other stuff.
You need to get some kind of closure on those other things so they don’t stay floating around in your head, unresolved.
This might mean making a firm decision that you’re not going to give any attention to it whatsoever right now.
Take it off your list and store it somewhere out of sight.
You’re basically committing to forgetting about it for a while.
Properly forgetting about it—not just leaving it sitting on the list and saying you won’t work on or it or think about it.
Or it might mean wrapping it up in your mind somehow.
Maybe you need to take a few actions, make a few calls, to get it to a place where you can safely forget about it for a while.
You need to commit to closing it in a way that will allow you to truly move on.
Being more decisive like this will almost instantly clear some space in your mind.
You can try it right now and you’ll see for yourself, as long as you take it seriously.
As soon as you firmly commit to either cutting something out completely (for now) or making it your sole focus, your life gets better.
I did this recently with things that were really clouding me.
I decided to make firm decisions about what was getting cut for now and what was becoming a priority.
Within 2 days of doing this I saw a massive improvement in mood, optimism, clarity, focus, motivation, and progress.
It was like I got rid of all the dust and mud out of my mind.
It’s an incredible feeling, and it’s why this letter is about this.
Because I got so motivated to share this with you and try to convince you to improve your focus because I’ve witnessed its immense power.
What open loops have you got floating around in your mind right now?
You probably have tons, like most people do.
Maybe you’re constantly jumping mentally from thing to thing.
Maybe you feel like you’re going around in circles looking answers to all these different things, and you can’t seem to find anything that makes sense for you, no matter what you do.
It’s highly likely this is because you’re so clouded up there.
Seriously, I want you to try and do this for yourself so you can see what I’m talking about.
Think back to times where you’ve made a firm decision, one that felt final.
- Maybe you decided to quit your job and go all in your creative work.
- Maybe you decided to properly end a relationship, or finally get over one.
- Maybe you decided to fully commit to a project.
Whatever it was, think about how it felt to make that finalising decision.
To get that closure.
To finally feel 100% committed to a decision…
It feels good, right?
This is you closing loops.
This is you making space for what’s truly important to you at this time.
It’s giving your undivided attention to something and putting yourself in a position to level yourself up 1000x.
If you don’t do this and you’ve just constantly got these open loops draining your energy, you’ll never get on top.
You’ll struggle and struggle to improve, to get results, to find answers, and they won’t come.
Because you’re never truly there and allowing yourself to see what you need to see.
I wish I could emphasise the power of this without just saying the same thing over and over.
But really, I want you to do this and see for yourself.
A lot of what we hold in our mind feels important but isn’t really.
Our lives don’t change negatively without them, and having them just sitting there unresolved doesn’t improve our lives, and often makes things worse.
This firm commitment to getting closure will change your creative career and your life.
Close those loops.
#3: Shape your environment to shape your focus.
The final big hitter (for today) for improving your focus and results in your creative career is to shape your environment to set yourself up for success.
This is something I talk about a lot and it’s also something a lot of people overlook.
Probably either because it feels too basic or they’ve just heard it too many times before so it doesn’t feel exciting.
But there’s a good chance you don’t understand the insane power of this, like I didn’t.
There’s a misconception about focus, discipline, and I’d say progress in general…
…and that’s that it’s all about you.
It’s all about how much willpower you have, how hard you can whip yourself into doing the thing.
And if you can’t, you need to develop more discipline, more willpower.
We tend to think about improving ourselves as this wholly internal thing.
Where no matter what external forces are trying to impact us, we should be able to ignore it all and just power through, stay focused on the goal and stick with it.
I appreciate this attitude for sure.
I think it’s way better than constantly blaming external things for our lack of progress, or just for everything.
And in many, many, many cases, your internal world is going to play a massive part in getting you the results you want—in your creative career, in anything.
But in reality, we can’t ignore how susceptible we are to our environment, both physical and mental.
At all times, your environment is shaping who you are.
Everything from massively obvious things to tiny things you’d never even think about.
Over a long period of time, your environment can completely transform you, whether positively or negatively… without you barely noticing.
Your environment is much, much stronger than you think.
In many cases, it can easily beat you in a fight.
If you’re trying to become a certain person but you’re consistently in an environment that’s setup for the opposite, you will struggle to win.
This is not me saying you shouldn’t take 100% ownership—you definitely should.
And you can be responsible for shaping your environment so it shapes you in the way you want.
But to pretend you can just willpower your way to success when you’re in an environment that’s designed to stop you from succeeding is just silly.
You are one person.
Your environment is many, many things.
Your conscious mind can only focus on so many things at once, and that means you can only control so many things at once.
Your subconscious mind can focus on lots and lots of stuff, but you can’t control it all.
And all the things happening in your environment that you can’t focus on will go straight into the subconscious and change you without you even knowing.
Do not think you can just strong—arm yourself to win when you’re in an environment that doesn’t want you to win.
9 times out 10, you won’t win.
So what am I talking about here when I say environment?
There are lots of different types of environment that help you win or stop you from winning.
One is your physical space.
If you’re set up in a space with constant distractions, how do you ever expect to get anything done properly?
A huge mistake I made for ages was working in my bedroom.
Distaster.
Trying to work in the same room that has our bed in it, a TV, and a bunch of distracting things associated with not work is like trying to make a drum kit sound like a piano.
If you can have a dedicated workspace for the important things you need to work on, and that includes the marketing side, I highly recommend it.
You want to make sure your physical space is free of any distractions.
It’s why you’ll see high performers working in plain, boring rooms with nothing but their computer.
They’ve shaped their environment to make sure the only thing they can focus on is the work.
This is one of those things that sounds like not a big deal, but could legitimately help you get more done in a single day than most people do in a month.
When I get up in the morning to write, I put my phone completely out of sight.
This means that even if I get the urge to check it, it’s not there, and I quickly go back to the only thing in front of me, which is writing.
Every single time I do keep my phone on me while I work—every time, without fail—I end up checking it about a thousand times and barely getting any writing done.
So simple. Such a small thing.
But it makes such a big difference.
I’m not saying you can’t get stuff done in a messy, distracting space… but it makes it way harder.
I don’t know what distracting means for you specifically, but if you care about getting things done, improving your focus, and therefore improving your results…
…I highly recommend you set yourself up in a space with no distractions.
And your physical environment can affect you in all kinds of ways.
If you always have unhealthy food in your cupboards… guess what you’re going to eat?
If you’ve buried your guitar under a pile of clothes you never touch… guess what you’re never going to pay attention to?
When shaping your physical environment, think about the things you want your mind to automatically pay the most attention to and then make them the most obvious thing.
If you want to be more dedicated to practising your instrument, leave it by your front door (on the inside) every day before you leave for work.
When you come back, it’ll be one of the first things you see.
It’s a cue. It’s reminding you every day to practise.
If you want to improve your marketing skills for your creative business, change your desktop background to a big obvious reminder, like “IF YOU MASTER MARKETING, YOU’LL HAVE A SUCCESSFUL CAREER” or something.
If you see that every time you open your computer, you’re going to give it more attention.
You’ll be more likely to look into marketing strategies, remember to study, learn, practise, etc.
This by the way is also why in the last letter I so strongly recommended you show up consistently on social media as a musician.
Constantly being in front of people makes it infinitely more likely that they’ll continue to pay attention to you.
Hopefully you’re getting the message here.
You want to shape your environment so you focus on the right stuff.
But it’s not just your physical environment…
The content you consume drastically impacts your focus.
If you spend all your time looking at bad news, guess what your mind is going to focus on?
All that fear—mongering is going to keep you trapped in a negative state of mind.
If you watch, read, and listen to things that will improve your life, improve your skills, and get you motivated to act… you’re probably going to get a lot more done, right?
In my most focused, productive times—the times where I’m operating at what feels like a peak level—I’m cutting a lot of that bad shit out.
I’m in distraction—free spaces in the morning when I work.
I’m consuming tons of educational, interesting, mind—expanding stuff in the afternoons.
I’m ignoring confusing bullshit advice that keeps me going around in circles, and I’m talking to successful people who light me up and make me want to be better.
And that actually brings me to another thing that is hyper—important when it comes to shifting your focus in a positive way…
Who you hang around matters a ton.
Because how they are subtly rubs off on you.
And over time, if you hang around them long enough, the impact they’ve had on you is not so subtle anymore.
One of the best things you could possibly do in your life is to hang around people who make you want to improve yourself.
Put yourself in spaces where complaining and negative thinking is silly, because the people around you don’t operate like that.
You want to be around people who have high standards for themselves, and for you.
You want to be in environments that encourage high standards.
Do this long enough, and you will automatically start to raise your standards.
This can change your life in ways you can’t even comprehend.
I was a pack—a—day smoker for 12 years…
I tried to quit countless times.
I never could, no matter how hard I tried.
Until I met my wife and we moved in together.
Suddenly I wasn’t in an environment where it was so easy to smoke.
She hated the smell, and how unhealthy it was, so she put the pressure on me to stop.
At first I resisted it.
The change was too uncomfortable and I was really addicted.
But over time, as she persisted, it started to become a lot less frequent.
There were too many things in the environment making it hard to smoke.
As our shared commitment to health got more serious, it became more and more difficult…
And eventually, it became ridiculous to smoke. It wasn’t even an option.
Now I haven’t smoked for maybe 5 or 6 years.
Every attempt to quit before this didn’t work.
I was always in environments that would make it too hard to properly give up.
I was completely addicted, literally smoking a pack a day.
But get me in the right environment where smoking isn’t ok, and keep me in it for long enough, and I overcame it.
It wasn’t about willpower or discipline…
Maybe a bit, of course, because you still need it.
But more than anything it was about environment.
And this doesn’t just apply to smoking.
If you want to level up in any area of your creative career or your life, environment is one of the single biggest things you should work on.
Pick a goal—a really good one—and set yourself up for success with a good environment.
- Put yourself in front of the right people.
- Put yourself in the right places.
- Put the right cues in your line of vision.
- Consume the right stuff, and remove all the wrong stuff.
This will make you superhuman.
Conclusion.
Working on focus has been one of the biggest needle—movers in my life.
More than anything else, it’s how I’ve been able to make progress in areas that are important to me.
It’s how I help musicians in my coaching get real results when they work with me.
I don’t let them focus on distracting, unimportant things and encourage them to focus the big important stuff.
Real focus is how you can take your marketing from 10% to 100%.
It’s how you can take your creative skills from average to pro.
It’s how you can feel clear and motivated, and like you’re making real progress on things that matter to you.
This is a topic I’ve become deeply interested in and it excites me to talk about it.
I know it’s not the most groundbreaking concept: Just learn to focus better.
But like many things in life—including building your creative career—it’s doing the simple things well that give you the best results.
So if you made it to end of this, please take this seriously.
It will change your life.
- Brutally cut down your todo list so you can focus on just one or a few things at a time.
- Close those open loops floating around in your mind so you can get more clarity and be more productive.
- And shape your environment in all the ways so you can basically guarantee success in whatever you want.
These alone will transform you.
Ok, a final note:
If you’re a musician looking to get started building your online presence, or you’re a musician who’s been trying to do this for a while but you’re not getting anywhere with it…
..on June 24th of this year I’m opening up a group coaching program to help you with exactly this.
Over 8 weeks we’ll be going through a series of live trainings on branding, content, social media growth, and more.
I’ll also be offering live feedback, and you’ll also get access to a heap of extra video trainings that will help you gain a deep understanding of these topics and more.
This includes things like releasing music, productivity, starting and growing your email list, and other stuff.
This is something I’m only going to be doing twice a year.
So if you want to be one of the musicians in this round, I highly recommend you jump on the waitlist so I can notify you when doors open.
You can do that by clicking here. 🙂
Ok, hope this helped, all the best with your focus, and talk again soon.
—Alex
