Do I Resist Temptation? Yes, and Here’s Why It’s Worth It and How to Instantly Fix It

Can I ask you an important question?

Like, a REALLY important question?

Have you ever seen people say that they will achieve something?

If so, how many of them actually did it?

And also, do you ever notice that when they actually do the work, they somehow get lost?

Do you want take a guess as to why they got lost?

I don’t know about you, but if I had a guess, it’s probably because they got distracted somehow with a temptation.

You know, the type where they just go check their emails randomly and they waste like 30 minutes just going at it and then the next thing you know, they don’t know what to do when they get back to work?

Also, known as the lazy types.

The types that when you see them do this, you are like “Ugh, here we go again!”

Based off this analogy, the answer to the question “Do I resist temptation” is a resounding YES!

Do you know why?

Because temptations like multitasking and looking at those emails every 30 minutes really harms your work and your day.

It does take away from what matters most, getting the job done.

And as a result of these temptations, do you know what these “lazy types” give up to pursue the pipe dream that is “going on a 30-minute coffee in the employee lounge vacation?”

Their focus.

And that focus is the cornerstone of getting great work done and getting it done so fast that you don’t even realize that you got it done so fast.

Do you want to know what this focus actually allows you to do that you can’t do otherwise to become a productivity ninja warrior?

Keep on reading to find out; and grab a pen and paper; you’ll need it for those notes! Talk about delicious food for the brain!

1. You’ll Actually Knock the Task Out

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Let’s face it. When you focus, you will knock the task out. Period.

You won’t be “busy” in an unproductive way.

Instead, you’ll be redirecting your attention to what is important, and that is, to get the job done.

One thing that is really bad is diversifying unnecessarily.

When you do that, you are investing your time into so many things.

What will happen is that you will do those things in a short time period, and the result will be that you will not have the time to complete your main task, so hence, you will fail on everything!

Who wants to do that, right?!

So when you focus, this won’t happen.

You’ll actually laser in on what you need to do and disregard everything else pretty ruthlessly.

Your mind will become obsessed with getting this task done and, quite frankly, it will see no need to engage in other activities.

In other words, your mind will become a productivity animal!

And as a result of that, you’ll actually get to do something that I bet you REALLY love most of the time, which is this:

2. You’ll Work Less

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“Are you serious Evan?” you might say.

Yes, I am serious and here’s why.

When you get rid of distractions and focus, you will not waste any time.

All of your attention is on that one task and that one task only.

And as a result, you will commit to getting it done as soon as possible and before you know it, you will be done!

Then you can do whatever the heck you want afterwards!

Let me give you an illustration so that you can see this point more clearly:

Suppose that you have to prepare for a presentation and you only have 1 day to prepare for it.

Let’s run you through 2 scenarios:

A) You prepare for the presentation while getting distracted

B) You prepare for the presentation without your distractions

In the first one, say that you are preparing for the presentation, but you stop every 5 minutes to check your email and to check if anyone texted you back.

After the five minutes are up, you try to get back to rehearsing, but then you realize that you stumble so much and you are lost in what you need to say.

So every time, you have to go back on a loop and prepare over and over again without actually preparing since you keep checking your phone.

Then, 1 minute later, someone offers you to get a coffee and you are like “OK, we’ll get coffee. We’ll get back to this later!”

So you get coffee in an encounter that was supposed to last 15 minutes, but then you guys kept talking and talking and this conversation lasted for an hour.

So at that point, you just spent an hour away without anything in return.

Talk about losing money in the process.

So you come back to practice again and you stumble and stumble and stumble without even getting through the first slide.

And now, you want to go see that thing on Instagram that your friend just told you about and said “Check it out! That guy is eating all of that ice cream with 13 cats!”

So you check it out and you spent what was supposed to be a 1-minute encounter, 120 minutes gossiping on it.

So now what?

You haven’t even gone through the first slide and it is time to go to bed.

And in the morning, you wake up, it’s one hour before the presentation and you have to “cram prepare.”

And guess what happens?

You flunk.

And that reveals the problem with distractions. You invest so much of your time elsewhere that you fail to accomplish what you set out to do in the beginning!

Now of course, this doesn’t mean just quit your job to work on your dream all day.

That is so not the case, and in fact, I recommend against that. If you have to have a job in order to survive, then by all means do that.

What I’m saying is that if you are in control of the situation and you are letting in these distractions like it’s no problem when you have something to finish, then that is a big red flag.

Like for instance, watching TV at night when you want to work on developing a skill that can improve your income.

That’s a distraction and it needs to get cut.

Now let’s go onto case 2 here:

You get the task of preparing for this presentation 1 day before it is due.

You say “Ok, it’s due, let’s not let anything get in the way of its completion.”

And then you create the plan of attack.

You say this:

Slides 1-10 = 8 am – 10 am

Break with no distractions = 10 am – 10:30 am

Slides 11-20 = 10:30 am – 12:30 pm

Lunch = 12:30 pm – 1:15 pm

Slides 21-30 = 1:15 pm – 3:15 pm

Break with no distractions = 3:15 pm – 3:45 pm

Rehearsal = 3:45 pm -5:45 pm

Dinner = 5:45 pm – 6:30 pm

Rehearsal = 5:45 pm – 7:45 pm

DONE!

And in the next morning, you rock that presentation out like a champion!

How does that sound?!

You get through it and you are done.

Less work, it’s out of the way, thank you and good bye!

That’s what I’m talking about if you ask me!

And that is the true beauty of cutting out those distractions.

You get to focus on that one thing and just slay that dragon!

And then onto the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and before you know it,

“WOW! I got a lot done! Now let’s ball out!”

And there you go with less work and more done!

Now are knocking the task out and working less the only benefits to resisting temptation?

Oh no way friend! There’s more to it that puts the icing on the cake.

Here they are and stay tuned for the Free How To Eliminate Distractions Guide at the end!

3. Your Work Will Be High Quality, if not, the BEST!

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You heard that right!

Remember the story of the presentation?

Did you think that the latter one would be high quality?

Oh yes it would, considering the time constraints of course.

In fact, the results from one particular case study back up the high quality thing completely.

According to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, one of their professors produces at an extremely high level as a result of realizing and implementing the principles of a concept called Deep Work.

Deep Work is a concept in which you work on a single task without distraction for an extended period of time.

As a result, you do not experience a loss of attention and focus as a result of switching from one thing to another without finishing the task at hand.

So this professor specifically did a few things to make his schedule work so much while not cramming everything into each semester.

For starters, he split up his teaching and his research into different parts of the year, with the teaching in the fall and the research in the spring and the summer.

Additionally, for research, he specifically closed his office door and shut off his email until he was finished working, which believe it or not, is unheard-of in universities.

As a result though, he literally put his colleagues to shame.

He became the highest rated teacher at Wharton, which means that students thought that he was the best professor, and he published a record setting number of papers compare to his peers.

You can read more about him here if you’re interested.

This story though completely validates my point though in that when you focus on a single task completely with zero regard for anything else, you will produce the best work. Guaranteed.

Lifetime warranty or a $100 Amazon Gift Card sent to your doorstep.

And as a result of this high quality work, you will naturally get something else, and that is this:

4. You’ll Develop Supreme Confidence in Yourself

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Congratulations, you are now the Supreme Order of the World!

This one really comes as no surprise.

When you are kicking butt like that with that high quality work, you are going to naturally become confident in what you are doing and in any situation related to your task, you’ll approach it with unthinkable ease.

This is what I’d like to call the dividend of focus.

It’s essentially passive income on top of the main work that you have already done.

Now that’s sweet if you ask me because when you go up against anybody else in your line of work, they will not be able to touch you!

And that’s an even sweeter feeling knowing that you’ve got this in the bag 🙂

Of course, do not underestimate them; that’s a bad idea and if you do that, you will lose guaranteed.

Instead, treat as if they are an obstacle and when you see it do one thing, you will do a certain thing to best deal with it.

And you do it with such focus and understanding that when they make that move, you know from experience that this is how it needs to be done.

Now that’s unbreakable confidence at its finest.

And with that, you get another dividend off of it which goes like this:

5. You’ll Be Motivated to Achieve More

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When you are doing something that is giving you terrifically great results, you tend to get a sense of good feeling inside.

As a result, you would want more of that good feeling.

And to get that good feeling, you would crave to do the thing giving you the good feeling.

And that thing giving you the good feeling is the thing that’s working, which in this case, it’s getting something done without distractions.

That good feeling is honestly something that you can’t do without. It’s like eating a delicious ice cream for the first time and then always craving for it again and again because it is so good!

And that is what focusing on one thing without distractions gives you. Except this time, it’s not hurting your body and satisfying your taste buds, but rather, it is improving every aspect of your life.

Really.

And you can’t get enough of it.

So when you eat that delicious ice cream called massive results from extreme laser focus, you are get excited once. And then you will buy it again.

And again.

And over and over and over again.

Because it is just too good to put down.

You get euphoric, you get pumped up, you are winning, you are obsessed, you, well, just can’t stop the show.

Because it’s working.

And when it’s working, why put it down?

Just kick it up a notch and keep pounding it!

The Free How To Eliminate Distractions Guide

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OK my friends, so now you know that focusing ruthlessly on one thing at a time until completion is the talk of the town!

Now how do you actually do it?

Here’s how!

A) Work in a Quiet Room with No Noise

This one is really the most important one.

I don’t think that I need research to prove to you that if you are working in a room that is noisy, you aren’t going to get much done and you are going to get distracted BIG TIME!

In a quiet room, it is just you and your thoughts without anything else interfering, or if you are working with a group, it’s just you and the group working productively and having meaningful discussion without outsiders barging in and saying “Would you guys like some pizza down in the company cafeteria?! It’s free!”

You: “Uh, no, I’m working.”

Now the next two complete the first one here, so please pay close attention!

B) Turn off the Phone Completely

Yeah, you heard that right.

Turn off any phone that can produce a distraction.

Now, should you have a phone in the work area?

Yes you should if it is part of the task or you need it in case there is an emergency.

But, if it’s not one of those two, the phone’s gotta go.

It’s just not worth bringing it on board!

C) Close the Door Completely

This one really tells the pizza people to go away!

This will tell people to go away when it is time for you to hunker down and get that task done.

And as a bonus, you can put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door with a “Work In Progress” statement on it that’ll REALLY tell them to go away and talk to you later when you are done.

Genius works without interruption; and without pizza for that matter unless your task involves pizza!

D) Have a deadline and Stick to It

OK, this one will set you straight. Without as deadline, you are too prone to take it easy.

You must be on the hot seat to some extent so that you can get the sense of urgency to get the task done super fast.

Let me ask you this. What usually happens when the professor assigns an essay at the beginning of the semester and says “It’s due on the day of the final?”

You can scream it out loud in front of the screen with me if you want because the answer might be very obvious to you.

Almost everybody waits until the last minute to do the essay!

Why?

Because there is no sense of urgency in the beginning since they sense that not doing it now will not be a big deal and hence, they become lazy.

So to add onto this, when you have the deadline, start the work right away and don’t take your foot off the gas or you’ll fall into the trap!

E) Commit to Not Using Social Media for Recreation

This is, ugh, the biggest distraction from what I see in most people considering that they have their eyes exclusively on the smartphone screen!

I’m sure that people at school or where you work always want to see some sort of cat video or whatever it’s called and they stop what they’re doing to see it.

I think you already know from earlier what happens when you do that!

So simply put, just don’t do that. I double dare you.

F) Turn Off Your Email and Don’t Look At It

How many people do this at work?

They see the notification and at that instant, they stop what they’re doing, even if it’s super important, and they check their email just because it’s a notification.

In most cases, uh, really? Really?

You’re going to do that even though you know that you will lose so much focus as a result?

Not smart chief.

So do yourself a favor starting today. Shut off email when you are working. You’ll be better off as a result.

You’re welcome.

And if you aren’t sold on that, read this to find out the real truth behind checking those emails. And multitasking for that matter. You’ll be quite shocked by what you find.

There You Go

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And that’s your guide folks. The Free How To Eliminate Distractions Guide and the reasons to ignore that phone and just focus!

If you do have any questions or comments about this post, please leave them down below and I will be more than happy to help you out.

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Catch you later!

Until next time,

This is Chief Islander Evan signing off.