Thread by @wise_chimp

"How training my brain to focus helped me to build two profitable businesses" 🧠🎯
(Read this thread if you're struggling with your monkey mind.)

🧵 Thread Time: 👇

Back in 2016, I couldn’t even sit still on my chair for a few minutes, never mind keeping my attention long enough to get my monkey mind to focus on a single task. 🐒

Between bottomless Instagram scrolling and trying to do at least some work here and there, I was spending my entire day staring at a screen.

Yet when I got home in the evening, I felt exhausted and nervous.

And guilty.
Guilty of not having achieved anything.

French mathematician Blaise Pascal was right:

"All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

For me, identifying the root of my attention problem marked one of the most crucial turning points in my journey.

I want to share my system with you.

A system that gradually took me from not being able to sit still on my chair for even 15 minutes to effortlessly working in hours-long, deeply focused stretches.

1. Taming the monkey mind 🐵

I remember my old monkey-mind.

I owe this dramatic transition to the one daily mind-training practice.

Building an ability to choose boredom over aimless distraction begins with awareness.
Awareness of our inability to sit alone with our thoughts.

You need to train your brain to catch yourself every time your monkey mind drifts off and becomes a slave to the aimless stimuli.

And if you stick with your practice long enough, the whole process becomes effortless.

1.1. How can I actually train my mind?

You don’t need any fancy tools to get great results.

All you need is to make time regularly, undistracted and alone, in self-reflection mode.

A pen and paper will do it.

Some people follow a daily journaling practice, while others prefer retreats, walks in nature or other self-reflection methods.

What worked best for me has been meditation.

If you want to test this method I recommend reading this thread by @Naval:

https://twitter.com/naval/status/1261481222359801856

1.2. How long does it take to see any progress?

Training the attention muscles is a long game.

But to give some examples from my experience, I began meditating daily in July 2016. It took me around two months just to get comfortable with sitting down alone with my thoughts.

2. Tracking and improving your ability to focus for longer sessions

This tracking involves writing down each uninterrupted session you are able to work in full concentration.

I recommend not setting ambitious goals at the beginning — in the early weeks, my sessions used to average around only 20–30 minutes.

2.1. Protecting your time: enter “untouchable hours”

“I can buy anything I want, basically, but I can’t buy time." — Warren Buffett

These are the hours where I protect my most precious asset; the hours where even the closest people in my life have a hard time reaching me.

“Focus isn’t a willpower effort one does in the midst of distractions; it’s the act of removing distractions and effortlessly doing what’s left.” — Luca Dellanna

Also, consider this simple trick: "To find your untouchable hours, find your prime time."

2.2. Decluttering your system

“A busy calendar and a busy mind will destroy your ability to create anything great.
You should be too busy to do coffee while still keeping an uncluttered calendar.”— @Naval Ravikant

When the host Charlie Rose asks Bill Gates what he has learned from Warren Buffett, Gates points to Buffett’s almost entirely empty calendar. “There’s nothing on it,” he says.

One of the things I’ve learned on this front is that the best way to get things done is to have fewer things to do.

Derek @Sivers has an interesting framework for saying YES or NO:
sive.rs/hyn

Final words:

Whatever controls our attention controls what we are capable of.

After all, we learn from the silences, not from what makes the most noise on the surface.

Once we cross that initial barrier, we realize boredom really does provide its own stimuli.

We begin getting curious about the present moment.

And not surprisingly, the present is also where we have to do the focused work.

🔸 Thanks for reading.

🔸 If you find this thread valuable follow me ( @wise_chimp ) for more FREE content like this.

🔸 And retweet the first tweet to share with others:

https://twitter.com/wise_chimp/status/1375386572225449985