The no-B.S. system I created to stay focused every day (its stupidly simple)

Lately I’ve been falling off track at a time in my life when being focused and locked in is basically a matter of survival.

I don’t really have the luxury of being constantly distracted because I took a risk by leaving my job moving to a different country, and going into entrepreneurship.

So it should come as no surprise that I need to be absolutely locked in on my work as well as a few other life goals and opportunities that, at this stage of my life, I am uniquely positioned to capitalize on.

Maintaining a focused lifestyle is difficult. Yet I think it’s one of the most underrated life skills because when you’re not focused, by definition you are distracted, and distractions are the root cause of most problems in life.

So, I recently created a very simple system that I’m using to stay focused on my goals and my vision for life, especially during this time of year where the opportunities to get pulled in every different direction are endless (I’m writing this in the summertime).

If you also find yourself struggling to keep your life on track, or you get distracted, or you find yourself lacking the discipline and focus to stick to your life goals, then I want you to literally just copy this framework because it really might be that small change that makes a massive difference for you.

So read closely.

Living in Portugal, especially during the Summer, means that almost every day I’m invited to pool parties, beach clubs, dinners, rooftop events, and festivals.

These things are fun for sure and I think it is super important to have a healthy social life, especially since I uprooted my life, quit my corporate job, and moved to a different country where I didn’t know anybody.  However, I do also need to balance it with building a business, and making sure my health remains a priority.

If I were to hazard a guess, then I’m probably not the only person here who has high and aspirational life goals, but gets easily distracted by things that are counterproductive to achieving one’s goals.

I’ll spare you the specifics about my vision for my life, but I’m living here in Portugal now, and so I have a goal to learn a foreign language as an adult, making now a prime opportunity for me to actively learn Portuguese, while I’m currently immersed in the language.

I’m also pursuing my goal of solo entrepreneurship, and I want to level up in my calisthenics which is connected to a bigger mission of being as healthy and physically capable as I can possibly be.

But with summer in full swing, I find myself spending a lot more time, money, and energy than I probably should, doing things that might be fun in the moment, but actually hurt me in the long run by causing me to spend my resources in ways that aren’t really aligned with my life goals.

The thing is that I know exactly what I need to be doing, but the problem, as with most people, is in actually doing what needs to be done.  

So, I started to search for solutions, and in this search I have landed on really embracing the power of repetition, and using it to one’s advantage.

“The more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce it.”— James Clear

Long Term Potentiation is the mechanism by which habits are reinforced through repetition. With each repeated action or thought, the neuro-connections associated with that behavior gets stronger, and with a bit of time and consistency, a person can rewire their brain to block out the noise and default to being more focused on pursuing their purpose.

So, if I can find a way to repeatedly remind myself about my purpose, my values, my vision for life, then I will gradually rewire my brain to consistently make better decisions that are more aligned with the goals that I’ve set for myself.  

If you don’t know by now, The Focus Algorithm is all about finding methodical approaches to cutting through the distractions of modern society so you can lock in on the things that matter most; the things that are actually going to propel your life forward.

In this case, that’s what I did. I created a simple approach for leveraging the concept of Long-Term Potentiation through repetition which strengthens the relevant neuro-connections in my brain to help me stay focused and block out distractions.

And if you don’t mind I’d like to share it with you, because I think you’ll find that it is super effective in helping you remain focused on your purpose and staying the course toward your life vision.

It all comes down to 2 core steps:

1. Commandeering your mornings

2. Automating your process for introspection

If you can get these two simple steps right, then you should also be able to kill the distractions in your own life, and begin to rewire your brain for better focus.

Let’s briefly go over each.

Firstly, is commandeering your mornings.

I use the word commandeer intentionally because for most people, society has a way of covertly stealing your mornings from you.  Whether it’s scrolling on social media, listening to the morning news, sending the kids off to school, or rushing off to work, society injects itself into your mornings and it leaves you with little space for prioritizing yourself first.

Commandeer means to “take by force.”

And so in this case, you must take your mornings back, forcefully if need be. You must reclaim your morning time for yourself because I’ve learned over the years that the morning is by far the most important part of your day.

Specifically, how you spend the first hour after you wake up sets the tone for the rest of your day.

“Your morning routine generates a 10x return in how you show up for the rest of your day—and ultimately your life.” — Brendon Burchard

“If you want to be happier, healthier, and more successful, start by owning your morning. It’s the one part of the day most people still have control over.”— Hal Elrod

The average human, in western society at least, makes about 35,000 decisions every day. Every decision that one makes requires processing power, and so the brain uses valuable energy every time you make a decision, small or large. 

Imagine a sort of cognitive battery in the brain and every time energy is spent on a decision, the battery is depleted more and more.  As your cognitive battery runs down, your ability to make sound decisions also diminishes.

You are far more likely to make your best decisions earlier in the day than at night.  Just think about how the later hours of the day is when we tend to do the things that we know we probably shouldn’t be doing, but we decide to do them anyway.

You know your own personal vices, it’s different for everyone, but think about the more unsavory things that you’ve done in your life, and you’ll probably realize they disproportionately happened in the later hours of the day rather than first thing in the morning after you woke up.

The other important thing to consider when it comes to commandeering your mornings is to religiously block out unnecessary distractions, and dedicate the first hour of your day to the highest priority activities for the day. 

If you’re trying to get into the habit of working out consistently, then it’s best to do it first thing in the morning when your cognitive battery is full, and you’re most likely to make responsible decisions.

If you’re trying to stack your money so that you can finally make an exit from the corporate rat race, then spending time in the morning reminding yourself not to unnecessarily spend money will reduce your likelihood of making impulse purchases.

So the key takeaway to remember here is that you should wake up early enough (which also means going to sleep early enough) that you have at least an hour of personal time available to yourself before you have to start your day. That first hour should not include any social media, or entertainment, or any other sources of instant gratification.  Instead use that first hour to make your most important decisions of the day.

If you can’t do an hour, then do 30 minutes, but it is essential that you start your mornings off prioritizing yourself and doing a bit of reflecting so that you can stay focused on manifesting your vision.

But no matter what, you should include 10-15 minutes of self-reflection, introspection, and setting your intentions for the day, which is a good segue into talking about the second step.

As mentioned before, the second component of the system is automating your process for morning introspection so you can be more intentional about how you go through your day.

Until it becomes a habit, most people are not going to remember to remind themselves of their vision and their life goals every day. In a perfect world, you could have a friend or a coach call you up every morning and give you a pep talk, encourage you to stay focused, and to stick to your life plan. 

But this is not a practical option for most, so a similar solution is to get artificial intelligence to do this for you.

Using this approach you’re not doing random affirmations that may or may not apply to you, but instead because you’re using A.I. you’re actually getting custom tailored advice and encouragement that is specific only to you, every single morning.

So I came up with a solution to this by using A.I. to document your purpose and vision, and to send out highly customized daily reminders based on the information that you provide it.  Then you follow up on these reminders by stating your intention for the day.

What I find is that the process of being repeatedly reminded about your purpose in life, and then actively committing to daily actions that are aligned with your purpose makes a massive difference in whether or not you remain disciplined with an ability to make prudent decisions.

This is Long-Term Potentiation in effect.

So you can use A.I. to set this process up by giving it a very specific set of instructions, and don’t worry because you don’t have to create the instructions yourself, you can just click this link to download a free copy that you can paste directly into ChatGPT, or into CerebriX which is the custom GPT that I created specifically for using in this way.

With these instructions you’ll be asked to create a recurring calendar event with a link to the existing chat, and then you’ll be prompted to answer a few questions about yourself.

After answering all of the questions, on a daily basis you’ll receive a customized set of advice, affirmations, and reminders to help you navigate through the distractions that will inevitably arise throughout your day.

I am actively using this process for myself.

So now every day, I receive a notification first thing in the morning to open the chat, and I receive a sort of action plan for the day with a reminder for why I am doing what I do.  I’ll also get words of encouragement, along with a word of caution to avoid succumbing to distractions that are common for me, and a daily affirmation to stay focused.

You can see for yourself a small sampling of what the output looks like in the screenshots below. I personally find this to be super useful in keeping my mind in the right space, and preventing me from getting too far off-center.

It’s obviously not foolproof, we cant be perfect, but it is definitely better than having no system at all or haphazardly relying on willpower alone to stay the course towards our vision. Because we’re all human and we can quite easily give in to distractions that offer short term gratification.

The final piece of the output is an instruction to do just a tad bit of journaling by jotting down 3-5 sentences stating my intention for the day.

So you can see here I’m saying that I’ve spent the past few days socializing at the expense of making progress on my business, my calisthenics, as well as my language learning. Then I note that today my intention is to say no to all distractions or request to meet up with anyone, to finish this essay, and to make sure that I spend some time practicing Portuguese and calisthenics.

Going through this exercise every day, I am making a conscious and intentional decision first thing in the morning to stay focused, and since the decision is already made, I’m far more likely to stay on task and avoid doing thigs that may not necessarily be “bad” but are certainly not aligned with the goals that I should be prioritizing in my life at this moment.

So this is just a simple system that I’ve been using, and you may want to consider doing the same thing.

Once again if you do want to follow the same approach as I use, then download the free GPT prompt that I created for this workflow and use it to create your own automated process.  But remember, to first take back control over your mornings so you have the time to go through these exercises on a daily basis.

I also recommend trying this out using CerebriX, which is the custom GPT that I created specifically for helping people like yourself take a structured approach to getting laser focused on your goals, and finally break away from your 9-5, get back to focusing on your health, and start living on your own terms.

Also, check out the “Self Reinvention Cheat Code” which is a field manual designed to help you break the inertia and get started in your lifestyle transformation journey in just 60 days.