Let’s start the week off strong! Today we dive into eliminating distractions in your day like social media and what it can me for your productivity and overall wellness. We also recap the weekend and set ourselves up for another great week. Check out the website for more content www.bcbousa.com
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Full Recap:
Hello and welcome to BCBO Daily. It is Monday May 10th, and I’m your host Dan Murch back for another fun-filled week of activity and excitement and positivity and motivation and whatever other stuff I can fill your brains with as we go throughout the week. I hope everybody had themselves a wonderful weekend, a wonderful Mother’s Day. If you are a mother I hope you were celebrated, pampered and all the good things you deserve. If you have a mother I hope you gave her all of those things. So, it was a great weekend for me. Great weather, got to be outside a lot. Spent a lot of time with Tucker and Emma and time with family yesterday. The cake I made turned out pretty good if I might say so myself. All-in-all just a really really good weekend. I really enjoyed it and now I’m ready to jump back into the week we got another jam-packed week ahead of us.
Friday I had a meeting that I had mentioned in the podcast last week with a potential partner I guess for lack of a better word down the road. They are a software company out of Canada that deals with cash flow management. We had a really long conversation. Everything that they do and how we could impact our current existing client base, how we can expand our client base with some of their functions and help some of their existing clients that are having issues with some of their bookkeeping functions. So a really good conversation and have some more planned for later on this week and we’ll see where it takes us. Spent some time looking at the big picture stuff on Friday and working on that working towards our vision and our goal and that was great, that’s always nice to be able to do that so all in all last week was great. This week is shaping up to be awesome too so really looking forward to it.
One thing I want to touch on today is something that I brought up a little bit in the past but it kind of struck me over the weekend as I was going through stuff is the distractions and everything that goes on throughout the workday and things like social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the Big 3 and how they can really impact your day. I was listening to a podcast and it was talking about how your brain kind of fragments your attention span so if you are working on something you are really locked in and focused and if all the sudden you grab your phone and you decide to scroll through Instagram real quick you’re breaking your concentration. You’re breaking your focus, you’re breaking the momentum that you created. To get that back to get back that level of focus and attention can take off upwards of 20 to 25 minutes before you get that back. So throughout the day if you’re constantly grabbing your phone during any down moment that you have and you’re checking something on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or something like that, anything – Snapchat, Tik-Tok whatever you kids are using these days, you’re constantly not only just breaking up your day, You’re breaking your focus. You think it looks like I got 30 seconds in between you know this next thing I need to do let me scroll through my phone but you’re breaking your concentration and affecting your work for the next 20 minutes. If you’re doing it all day long you can never really get that locked in zoned focus that sometimes you need to get through certain tasks or to be as productive as you can be.
I think I mentioned a while ago I took Twitter off of my phone. I just completely deleted it. I figured if I want it I can just re-download it, put in my password again and use it but I made it harder for me to do it. For the first week or so it was a little awkward. I never was a post person on Twitter, I never posted anything but I love to scroll through it. I follow a lot of comedians, sports people, I follow writers and analysts, things like that. It was a place where I got a lot of my news so at first it was a little bit awkward to not use it but after a couple days I realized it’s not so bad. So maybe three or four times I downloaded it and used it and then I would delete it and go about my day. I found that my productivity throughout the day because I wasn’t constantly just grabbing that and scrolling through to see what somebody had said when I had five minutes while I was making a cup of coffee was going up. And my stress levels were going down. I wasn’t feeling so anxious and feeling like I was constantly doing something. I had these moments of peace and calmness in my day even if it was only 30 seconds that I didn’t have before because I was constantly filling my attention span with something.
So I haven’t downloaded and looked at the Twitter om probably 2 or 3 weeks now and I don’t miss it at all. I still get whatever news I need to get in the morning and in the evening, I check the major websites and see what’s going on and I’m not filling my brain with that stimulation that I don’t need. In the last week or so I decided to kind of do the same thing with Instagram and Facebook. Instagram I haven’t checked in a couple days now. I was never somebody who posted on Instagram very much, but I was trying to use it more for a business purpose. Tucker and basically notifications of any podcasts that were coming out, things of that nature. But I don’t like doing it, so I was doing it for a little while and then I slacked off on that and I hardly ever go on now. I haven’t been on in a few days. There are people that are my friends and family that post on Instagram so I don’t know if I’ll ever kind of totally cut out of that completely the way I have Twitter because there’s personal connections there, but I don’t check it everyday. Facebook I basically just use as a business tool. I post podcast notifications on there, but I don’t really post too much with Facebook and I don’t check it throughout the day. I check in the morning and then I’ll check it again maybe later on the evening just to see if there’s been any comments or reactions from any of our listeners or who have reached out with any questions. Which, by the way, not through Facebook but I received an email from a listener with a question last week that might be a topic of conversation later on this week.
I’ve noticed that again because I’m not constantly searching to fill my brain with stimulation that my anxiety levels are a little down. I am not feeling so stressed and tense. I have enough going on with work, I don’t need to be constantly filling my brain with other stuff that doesn’t need to be there and it’s really helped me throughout the day. With as busy as we are and everything that I’ve been saying over the last few weeks I need to be focused and be able to give 100% of my attention to the work. So I cut out some of those things and it’s really made a difference in my day. So, again when I go to make a cup of coffee or you know use the bathroom, whatever, I just keep my phone in my pocket and go about my day and that 30 seconds to 90 seconds of just silence and calmness is nice. It feels nice and then when I get back in front of my computer and I start working again I’m still focused. I’m still locked in because I’m not breaking my train of thought into something else. I’m not watching some funny video about a penguin or whatever and now my brains on that and not focused on work.
So again, if there’s anything in your day that you can kind of cut out that’s just unnecessary do it. When you’re at work, focus on your work. Focus on your goals and really put the effort into doing that and you will notice a difference. You’re not going to miss anything. The world is going to still be there when you look at your phone later on in the day. You don’t need to be on Facebook 20 times a day. You don’t need to be on Twitter 20 times a day. It’s just not necessary. Focus on the work you’re doing. You’re still going to get all the information that you need when you need to get it and you’ll be a happier person. I truly believe that. You can always get it back when you need it. Let’s start the week strong and give ourselves the best opportunity to succeed. Let’s be 100% focused on our work and really go after it and get things done.
Ok, it’s Monday people, let’s do it. Let’s jump in with both feet. Let’s go pay the rent on our success. Let’s start the week off great and strong and working towards our goals. Let’s make sure we have prioritized everything that needs to be done today and have a good understanding of what our schedule is. Let’s go over our calendars, reminders list, and all that good stuff that we always talk about and really start the week off strong.
Let’s ask ourselves that question – how would the person I want to be handle the thing I am about to do? Let’s keep putting ourselves in that forward thinking mindset, keep pulling ourselves forward towards our vision and our goals and let’s keep moving forward. Just keep moving forward one step at a time.
It happened every day last week, and is going to happen every day this week – things aren’t going to go as planned a hundred percent of the time. It’s going to be ok. We’re going to figure it out. Let’s limit the negative self-talk. Let’s try to not beat ourselves up every time something goes wrong. There are going to be obstacles, but we’re going to overcome them. At the end of the day let’s reflect on how things went, make adjustments where necessary, but seek out and celebrate our successes. We are working hard. We are good people. We deserve to be happy and deserve good things.
Lastly, as always, go check out the website bcbousa.com. That’s you can get all the good good. Let’s go have a great Monday and start the week off strong and I will be back again tomorrow. Thanks for your time, have a great day. Bye!