Multitasking Is a Myth

What is something that comes up more often than the rest when you speak with these quite successful entrepreneurs that are running companies with millions in profits, that kind of thing? And also, does that relate to focus? Because I know you learned a lot about focus, and is that something you can transfer to them? Yeah, I would say a lot of these entrepreneurs, these people that own companies, are very focused.

They're very clear business-wise, where they want to take their companies, what they want to achieve. They're very clear that way. They're not clear about their personal life. They've never invested that much time figuring out what their purpose in life is.

Where are they going as an individual? Do they have a plan for their future? That's one thing they're not clear of. Another big thing I see happening a lot these days is that the employees or their team members

can't focus. We've got a generation of human beings now that are growing up that are trained to be distracted. So now they're coming into the workplace.

I was in Kenya a month and a half ago in Nairobi, speaking in an event. Business owner came up to me and goes, yeah, my employees can't focus. Do you think you can help them? And go like, have you ever thought them how to concentrate?

And the answer was no. And I go like, that's where we need to start. We need to start by teaching them how to concentrate. Because what companies do is they bring in processes and systems to stop them from being

distracted like turning off social media. Well, you're patching the problem, right? You should rather be teaching them how to concentrate, so then you don't have to turn off social media.

You can leave it on, but they know when to focus and when to shift their focus. So I think that's a huge problem I'm seeing a lot nowadays in the workplace, and a lot of businesses do approach me asking them, asking me to help them teach their employees how to focus on how to concentrate.

Because I always say, you know, Brian, you've heard me say this before, when we grow up, We get told to concentrate, and then we get taught how to, right? Did you get formal classes in concentration when you were growing up? But you probably got told, focus on this, concentrate on your homework.

But nobody teaches us how to do it. But then when you want to learn the piano, you want to learn how to drive a car, play tennis, we take lessons, we learn how to do it, and then we practice it to be good at it.

And if you don't practice it, you don't become good at it. So people don't learn how to concentrate, and they don't practice concentration. So if you don't learn it and you don't practice it, how would you be good at it? Why are they good at distraction?

Because they practice it all the time. If you practice something 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day, after six months, you'd be an expert at it. Which is what you were doing in the monastery.

You were focused on every single activity. That was really the meditation in disguise. Exactly. That was the preparation for meditation.

I wouldn't call it a meditation. It was the preparation for meditation. Because meditation is born out of a prolonged state of concentration. So you need to learn to concentrate first.

When you can concentrate, then you can meditate. Meditation comes out of a prolonged state of concentration. So we learned concentration throughout the whole day. We practiced it, everything that we did.

So when we sat down, we were ready to get into a state of meditation. How can we learn how to concentrate better? I would say one simple way. Normally I go through a process of teaching people how their mind works first.

Because once you know how the mind works, you can control it. Once you can control it, you can focus it. But since we're doing an interview and time is of the essence, I would say a simple way what most people can do is practice doing one thing at a time.

So if you're speaking to somebody, give them your undivided attention. If you're driving, focus on driving. Go and text on drive at the same time. If you're doing emails, just do emails.

Don't be on the phone and doing emails at the same time. So if you bring this method of just doing one thing at a time throughout the day, you learn to concentrate. And you actually become so much more efficient.

Multitasking is a myth, it doesn't exist. That's true. Yeah. So just do one thing.

So I bring that into my whole life. If I'm having a cup of coffee with someone, my phone's in my pocket, it's not sitting on the table having a cup of coffee with the other phone. And I give that person my underburdened attention.

And I do this throughout the whole day. And I practice concentration. So then eventually you just become good at it. You become good at whatever you practice.

also doesn't have the ability to discriminate between what's good and not good for you. Whatever you practice, you become good at.