The Fastest Way To Ruin Your Focus

This 1 thing you do every morning is destroying your focus for the entire day.

And when I stopped doing it, not only did my focus skyrocket but I was able to build a multi 6-figure business in under 4 hours a day.

So in today’s Self-Mastery Letter, I’m going to show you;

• What this thing is that’s destroying your focus

• And 2 simple steps you can follow to not only reverse the effects but to take back control and unlock laser like focus.

So what is the 1 thing that you’re doing every morning that’s destroying your focus?

Well before I show you, for any of it to make sense, you need to understand how focus works.

So your focus is largely tied to your dopamine.

If you imagine your dopamine to have a constant level in your system, when that level increases, your focus tightens and when it decreases, your focus fades away.

When you sit down to work on a hard but meaningful task, your brain will find pleasure in that work and in the effort (as you experience positive emotion when moving toward a goal) and so it will increase dopamine levels by say 5 units.

That number is made up, but it gets the point across.

When you wake up in the morning, your dopamine is at your base level, and so if you get out of bed and the first thing you do is start working, your dopamine increases and so you both enjoy doing the work and find it easy to focus on.

But what if before you started working, you did something that caused your dopamine to increase by say 10 units?

Well, when you sit down to work, your dopamine levels will fall to 5 units.

But here’s the problem.

Dopamine is addicting.

So if you drop from 10 units to 5 units, your brain screams “What the fuck bro” because it’s like an addict and because it got a bigger fix, it will continue to want that level of stimulation.

For the rest of your day - when you’re working, when you’re in the gym, when you’re eating your dinner - your brain will always be looking for the thing that gave you the big fix.

And so you struggle to focus, you’re easily distracted and you can’t get anything done.

The funny thing is, the vast, vast majority of people do this every morning.

They wake up and ruin their focus because the first thing they do is grab their phone and start scrolling.

They bombard their brain with massive amounts of light, stimulation and dopamine - so much that everything else seems boring and unappealing.

And when you finally sit down to work, you can’t focus and so you reach for your phone, creating a never-ending cycle.

But you can fix this.

You can take back control and unlock laser-like focus, you just need to follow these 2 specific steps.

The first one is what I like to call:

The 4-Hour Rule. 

You see, how you start your day, sets the tone for your day.

When you start your day scrolling, you set yourself up to repeat that behaviour for the entire day.

And so, instead of trying to break the habit once it’s already built, stop the damn habit from happening in the first place.

And look, you could use willpower and discipline to do this, sure, but why make it harder than it needs to be?

If you don’t want to spend your day struggling to focus and constantly looking for your phone, put your phone in another room every night before you go to bed.

Now I can hear you shouting “But I Ross, I need an alarm clock” - they buy one for $10 on Amazon.

This way, when you wake up, you literally can’t make the first thing you do be scrolling your phone.

Meaning your dopamine levels and in turn, your focus, don’t get screwed straight away.

But it doesn’t stop there, because you could just get up and go into the other room and get your phone.

So instead, do this 1 specific thing:

Commit yourself to spending the first 4 hours of your day without your phone.

This way, your focus isn’t getting fucked about with massive amounts of stimulation as soon as you wake up, giving you the chance to do step 2 so much more easily.

And in fact, doing step 2 also makes spending the 4 hours without your phone so much easier as well.

So what is step 2? Well, I like to call it:

Facing The Dragon.

Remember how your dopamine starts at a base level?

Well, whatever you do first thing in the morning, sets the level of dopamine that your body will expect for the rest of your day.

So if you start your day on your phone, your brain will expect this insane amount of dopamine that almost nothing else can give it and so it fights back against everything else you try to do.

Meaning when you sit down to work, you can’t focus.

But what if the first thing you did each morning was something that made the level of dopamine you get from doing the work the standard that your brain expects?

Well, you’d find doing the work and focusing pretty damn easy, fun and enjoyable, wouldn’t you?

So why not start the day, how you mean to go on?

If you want to reverse the effects of ruined focus, start your day by doing your hardest task first.

This way, not only do you set that standard for what your brain expects for the rest of the day, but everything else feels easy.

You start your day on a win and you maximise your focus.

You’re in a hyper-productive state backed by momentum and wins, so then you can do all of your other important tasks in the most productive and focused way possible, and they feel easy because you’ve already done your hardest task.

If you start your day as you mean to go on, by doing your hardest task first, you’ll get the vast majority of your work done in the first 4 hours of your day thanks to an insane level of focus and momentum that you can’t get by starting your day on your phone.

You’ll feel good, you’ll feel proud and you’ll forget you even have a phone.

— Ross

Now, of course, there’s more to focus than just avoiding your phone.

So if you struggle with focus, I go deep into both the science and actionable strategies to help you master flow and focus in my elite productivity course FOCUSED.

Click here to check them out.