How To Get What You Want In Life By Implementing 3 Strategic Principles

Cal Newport said focus is the number one skill of the 21st century. In his book, Deep Work, going deep is what he refers to as being able to focus on one thing for a long period of time. Being able to get into a flow state. Being able to accomplish more and more. We have all of this amazing technology to be able to produce better and easier results, but the problem is that the same technology is incredibly addictive.

Most people are focused for less and less periods of time. I'm going to break down the science of how you can actually create flow and focus very easily and accomplish a lot more in a lot less time, because you don't need more time. Being focused has a lot to do with being in a flow state. 

Being in a flow state has a lot to do with recovery. So it's actually about working less, but working on better things. Focusing on one outcome at a time rather than multiple outcomes at a time.You can and must train your mind to focus exclusively on the things you desire. 

The challenge for most of us is that we spend much more of our time focusing on what we’re afraid of. We focus on what we don’t want to happen. We spend lots of time conjuring up Plan B’s, C’s, and D’s, in case what we want doesn’t work out. As a result, we are focusing on how things could go wrong, or why things aren’t going right.

This is bad mind-training, because what we focus on expands. What we focus our attention on we create more of.

Therefore, you need to focus on what you want. You need to be very specific in what you want. You must “begin with the end in mind,” as Stephen Covey put it. Getting clear on the specific outcome you want is essential for not only training your attention, but for powering-up your motivation. Let’s start with a few psychological principles.

Principle #1 - Selective Attention

The first one is called Selective Attention which is an idea in psychology that says that whatever you focus on expands. You can only focus on one thing at a time. But your brain is always looking for the things that excite it. Your brain looks for things that matter to it.

For example, if you're driving on the road you probably notice other people who drive the same car as you or cars you like. Your brain is focused on what's relevant. But you can train your brain to focus on what you want by having clear goals. You can grow 10 times faster by writing about your goals, by being public about them and then by actively focusing on people who are where you want to be. That's one of the key principles of high performance - knowing where you want to be and regularly looking at that and then making that a part of your identity. Your identity is who you are and how you see yourself which has a lot to do with your view of your future. 

Research shows that you can train your brain to focus on whatever it is you want to see. One way to know what you're focusing on is to notice what you see. What are the things that pop up in your news feed? What are the things you pay attention to? What you see the most has a lot to do with how you've trained your brain. 

Your mind is like a garden and you plant seeds in it all the time. Those seeds either grow fruit or weeds but you want to cultivate that garden which is something you do through meditation, journaling and prayer. You also expand your focus by planting the specific types of seeds you want. 

Selective attention proves that whatever you focus on expands and you can train that focus through journaling, repetition and speaking your wants out loud. That's the first key of focus. What is it you actually want to focus on? What is it you want to drive your brain towards? What are the outcomes you want to accomplish? Who is your future self?

“What you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it.” — Oprah Winfrey

The next concept is called strategic ignorance. This is the idea that you don't want to be informed about everything. A lot of people have FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) these days and they want to be informed about everything. They want to know what's on the news. They want to know what's on people's social media feed. The truth is that you want to be ignorant of almost everything because almost everything is a distraction. 

As Greg McKeown said in the book Essentialism, you cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. Almost everything is a distraction. You don't need to be informed about most things. 

In fact, if you have clear goals and if you have clear values and if you actually have a life you want to become informed on less and less, then you need to obviously be informed on things that really matter. But there's so many things you're aware of that you probably shouldn't be an expert at.  

A lot of people are experts at things like sports, and celebrities. What are you an expert at that's ultimately not driving your future self? What are you an expert at that's ultimately a waste of time? You might be an expert at what your high school friends are doing because you spend so much time on social media. What are the things you should be ignorant of that you just don't even need to enter your brain? 

There's a great quote from Zig Ziglar. He said “your input determines your outlook and your outlook determines your performance.” Whatever you're letting into your brain is shaping you. Garbage in equals garbage out. Whatever you let in literally shapes your brain. It shapes your desires. It shapes your interests. 

There's a lot of things you want to be ignorant of. You definitely want to be ignorant of notifications. The key aspect of flow and focus is creating an environment where flow is organic, where flow just happens. You want to shape your environment.

There's a quote from Marshall Goldsmith. He said “if you do not create and control your environment, your environment will create and control you.” One of those things is obviously removing things that hit your conscious attention that you shouldn't be aware of at least right now. Having rules and standards for how you use technology is the starting point. Keeping your smartphone on airplane mode for longer periods of time especially during focus times. 

If you want to focus for two minutes at a time, your phone should be away from your body. It should be on airplane mode so that you're not seeing notifications. You want to create just a little bit of friction so that you can’t reach for your phone as James Clear teaches in Atomic Habits. 

You should have rules for when your phone is not on airplane mode and when you're going to use it. You need to have standards for how, what and when you use your phone. You definitely should not use your phone for notifications and things like that during the first minutes of your day. 

Your brain is at an optimal state for creativity, for decision making and for learning first thing in the morning. If you're looking at your phone and plugging into notifications, then you're wiring your brain for scatteredness. 

However, if you wake and you meditate, you pray, you journal about what you're trying to accomplish and then you take needed action on the number one thing you're trying to accomplish that day, you’ll get into a flow state.

Then if you get into a state of actually being used to being focused, being used to being in flow and you actually knock something out significant during the first few minutes of your day, then you've already created a more balanced and more focused approach to your day and be less frenetic. 

Most people wake up and they're letting so many ping pong balls enter their brain. They're also opening themselves up to other people's agendas. When you first wake up and if you open your email or if you open your social media, it’s like walking into a casino. You don't know what you're actually looking at. You're going into an environment where you're expecting to be ping-ponged around. 

You don't know what's going to be in the news feed. You don't know what's going to capture your attention. You don't know where you're going to get stuck on a video for five to ten minutes. You're literally putting yourself into an environment where you don't know what the outcome is going to be and you're just being the ping-pong ball. That's not how you create focus. 

If that is your habit, then that's how you're going to be for the rest of your day. But if you wake up and move slowly, keep your brain moving slow by meditating and reflecting in your journal and be purposeful about one key outcome, you’ll own your day. 

There's a quote that says most people overestimate what they can do in a day but underestimate what they can do in a year. Most people are trying to accomplish so much in one day they have so many items on their to-do list and they're trying to knock out all sorts of stuff. When you do that you're moving different directions in a single day. If you had a key outcome you were trying to accomplish and you focused on the most important thing and if you knocked that out, then you would make more progress over a year. 

You can make huge progress over a year or over five years, over a decade if you're taking the right actions, if you're taking the most focused core actions moving forward. The problem is that most people are trying to do too much at once and they're moving in no direction at all. Getting to the end of your day and realizing that you still have so many to-do’s unfinished puts you in a failure frame of mind. You may criticize yourself for missing so many items on your list. That’s not a game you can win! 

There's a very powerful quote from Robert Brault. He said “we're kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to lesser goals.” That's how most people live their life. They're not moving towards their goal because they have too many unclear paths to lesser goals. They're trying to do too many competing things at once and because they're scattered - they're not experiencing flow. They're not experiencing focus. 

They're looking at their phone, their email and they're trying to do dozens of things at once. Instead you want to have less things. That's why strategic ignorance is so powerful. But in order to actually apply strategic ignorance, you need to have values, beliefs and goals that actually matter to you. 

Without knowing what doesn't matter to you, then you can't define things as unimportant. But if you define what's important, what you value and how you want to spend your time (what's worth investing in) - if you've defined your future, then you can create an environment that shields you from almost everything else. You can create an environment and create rules where you're not letting so many things push you off course.

Principle #2 - Totalitarian

There's another powerful concept that comes from physics that will help you learn how to focus better. It's called the Totalitarian Principle. According to this principle, anything that is not forbidden becomes compulsory. What that means is if you don't create rules to stop something from happening, it will happen. 

If you don't have rules for your phone or for your social media then you're going to act out of impulse or out of reaction. You're not going to actually be Smart. You're not going to be intentional. Instead the world's going to be happening to you. You're going to be reactive to your environment rather than creating your environment and proactively acting. 

One of the ways to apply the totalitarian principles is to define what you want. Find the change you're trying to make and then create an environment that supports it. One of the things that I'm doing is not having my phone on my body less when I'm with my wife and my three kids. That's one of the things that I've actually told them. My goal is to have my phone on airplane mode and in another room so that I’m paying attention to them. I've created an environment of accountability so that my kids can actually call me out when I'm not applying my rule.

A key aspect of applying the totalitarian principle or making any change is that you want to define the change you want and then become public about it. You want to lean on the people around you and ask your environment to support you on that change, because it's something you really want to do. You want to make that thing forbidden or at least forbidden during certain periods of time. You want the environment to also believe that that thing is forbidden to you.

In my case, when I'm home and in the kitchen or living room, I want to be fully present with my wife and kids. So I've told them that's my goal and that's what I want them to hold me accountable to. It is forbidden for me to have my phone on me for certain hours.

Another problem that most people have when it comes to focus is that they actually try to work for way too long. It's like exercising for five hours a day. You don't need that much. Most people are actually overworking themselves and not recovering enough. Instead you only want to focus on like three to five really good hours a day and then you want to step back. If you want to become results-focused, then you need to give your attention to the outcomes you want. 

There are two economies in the world. There is the ‘results economy’ which is the economy that focuses on getting the desired result in the most effective way. Then there is the time and ‘effort economy’ (which is where most people are at). Their economy thinks that you're being successful if you're putting a lot of time and effort into something. It's not about how much time and effort it takes. It's about getting the result as effectively as possible. 

If you can set your environment up and know the one thing that will create the biggest result and you're clear on your goals and values and if you've created an environment that keeps you from distraction - then three to five hours of work a day is really all you need. If you're producing massive results and you're in flow by not getting binged and tinged from all of the notifications, you’re focused and getting things done.

There's research that shows that if you're pulled from flow it usually takes you about two minutes to get back into flow. Every time you get a notification and get pulled from your focus, it takes you time to get back into the depths of flow where high performance is. That's why you want to block things out and really focus for two minutes because as you go deeper into flow, you get better and better performance. It becomes more subconscious and more powerful. 

The problem is that most people never actually get to that level because their environment is intruding on them, because they're not clear on what they want and not applying strategic ignorance. They're certainly not playing the totalitarian principle. The solution is not to go for too many things and don't work yourself to death. Don't work too long. Instead focus on performance. Focus on results not time and effort and then give yourself ample time for recovery and rest. 

Principle #3 - Recovery

The final principle is recovery. There's a lot of research on the concept of psychological detachment from work and the idea that unless you fully detach yourself so that you can recover, you can't actually get yourself into a flow state. You can't absorb yourself and get back into full absorption unless you fully detach. You must give yourself plenty of time for recovery, plenty of time for hobbies, plenty of time for relationships. Full detachment means not only are you away from work but your mind is away from it. 

Think of your your phone like a magnet. If you're close to it or any form of distraction, you're like the metal. It will suck you in! No amount of willpower will stop a piece of metal from getting sucked into a magnet. In order for the magnet to have no power over the metal, the metal needs to be far away from the magnet. If it's far away, the magnet has no power. That's how willpower works. If it's out of sight, it's out of mind. 

You need to remove work, technology, and even food sometimes like fasting. When you remove certain things so that you can fully recover, fully enjoy the other aspects of your life - and if you give yourself time for more recovery, first off you'll come into work and treat it just like a workout. It's actually why you're recovering from a fitness standpoint. Your body grows and gets strong while you're recovering. 

When you recover from your work, your brain is actually creating all sorts of incredible connections and your subconscious is actually tying it together. Then when you get back to work, you'll have way more to put into your work. When you go into it you'll have way more to work with, you'll have way more energy, you'll be way more clear and you'll do it from a focused flow-based standpoint. Then you get better results. You focus for a few hours and then you recover and while you're recovering you're actually growing immensely. 

This is how you create results and how you can accomplish more over a day than most people do in a week because most people are trying to accomplish too much. They're being pulled in too many directions. Ninety percent of their time is spent distracted. They're never getting into a flow state. Their sleep isn't good because they're not actively recovering. That’s how you focus.

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An action step you can take today…

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