11 steps to achieve insane

focus and live the life you

really want
By
 Lachlan Brown
 -
March 10, 2018

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The famous motivational speaker, Tony Robbins, once said:

“One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never
concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything
in particular.”
How much does this quote resonate with you?

Is there something in your life that you might have been an expert at by now, only if you had put in
the time and effort to master it?

Are there passions that you failed to pursue, simply because you let other things like laziness or
boredom get in your way?

Here’s the biggest thing that stops us from mastering what we love:

Distractions.

The modern world is filled with distractions—smartphones, laptops, mobile apps, TV shows, bright
lights, loud music.

Everywhere you turn, you can get lost in a maze of distractions that can eat up another day you will
never get back.

The solution then is to fight back against the distractions.

Here are 10 ways you can reclaim your inherent insane focus and turn away from the distractions of
the world:

1) Overset Your Time Expectations

One reason we never get anything done is because our expectations for time management are always
too low.

We believe that we can start going to the gym simply by squeezing an hour into our overly-packed
schedule.

However, when we start failing the hour-long expectation, we end up letting it fall to the wayside.
So overset your time expectations—if pursuing your passion takes an hour everyday, then clear up
two hours from your schedule.

2) Don’t Check Email in the Morning

It may seem counterproductive to your day, but this is one of the best tips out there.

Doing your email in the morning means you start off everyday slow and unproductive.

You spend an hour or two sending replies out, only to feel like you haven’t actually accomplished
anything by the end of your morning.

The first thing you need to do when you wake up is accomplish something, and replying to emails
isn’t an accomplish, big or small.

3) Stop Multitasking
Multitasking means you never give anything your all. All your focus, all your attention, all your
energy.

You end up going through life half-assing everything, meaning the work you produce and the
experiences you create are never great.

So stop your multitasking today, and just tick off your tasks one at a time.

4) Pursue Your Passion Before Anything Else

Every day is a new day and a new challenge. The longer you put off pursuing your passion every
day, the likelier it is that you will put it off for tomorrow.

So don’t let yourself fail by forcing yourself to get it out of the way as soon as you wake up.
Whether that’s writing, reading, starting a business, painting, working out, it doesn’t matter: do it as
soon as you roll out of bed.

5) Choose 2-3 Tasks Everyday That Have To Be

Done
We have so many tasks in our lives that we often end up getting overwhelmed and doing none of
them.

Counter this by singling out two or three core tasks that you have to do every day; if these tasks
aren’t done, then your day isn’t complete.

6) Take Some Days Slowly

We burn ourselves out when we schedule a task for every hour of the day. It’s counterproductive
because you end up tiring yourself out, feeling like a lifeless machine.

So learn to spend some days working slowly—schedule half the number of tasks or activities for
these days, so that you can experience days where you can just breathe in and relax while staying
productive.

7) Email Just Twice A Day

Email is one of those small things that we never consider when we think about the distractions in our
life.

But it leads us to a bad habit—instead of helping us manage our time, it takes away our time by
serving as a stop-start in the middle of anything we might be doing.

Don’t reply to messages as soon as you get them; save them for a set and scheduled time.
8) Turn Off Notifications
Notifications are the bane of the modern world. Do you really need to know every little update as
soon as it happens?

For more important projects, then yes, but for everything else in life? Of course not. Put your phone
down and get back to what you were doing.

9) Stay Offline Until Core Tasks Are Done

Remember those core tasks? Dedicate yourself to their completion, every single day. The Internet
and TV are the biggest distractions stopping you from completing those tasks, so help yourself from
staying offline until they are done.

Use it as a reward, if you have to—when your core tasks are complete, feel free to check your
messages.

10) Know What Matters

The final and most important point: identify what matters in your life.

You need to give yourself the time to focus on your passions, but that also means taking away time
from things you don’t need.

What can you cut out; what doesn’t matter in your life? Figure out what these things are, and cut
them.
7 keys to success that
nobody wants to admit
By
 Lachlan Brown
 -
March 9, 2018

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Many of us find contentment in our average lives, but why is that? We are happy being just who we
are, without striving to push ourselves further.

A huge part of that is caused by a sense of fear—fear that if we try to be more successful, we might
fail.
Though we might not admit it, there is an underlying belief in many people that successful people are
successful simply because “That’s what they were born to be.”

But success isn’t something you are born with (unless you’re a child star or royalty, of course).

Success is something that anyone can achieve, with the right combination of hard work, dedication,
and a few other factors.

More specifically, there are 7 life changing ways you can start your path to success today. Implement
these points, and within no time you will be a much different person than you currently are:

1) Have a Vision
Success is all about having a vision. After all, you can’t go down a road if you have no idea at all
what your destination might be.

There must be an intimate understanding of what exactly you are looking for, of what success means
for you.

Is it being the CEO of a company? Is it founding a startup? Is it writing a bestselling novel? You
have to know where you are going if you are to have any shot at all of getting there.
2) Commitment and Determination
What successful person have you ever seen that wasn’t absolutely committed and determined to their
craft?

Here’s the cold hard truth: you may have a dream, but there are thousands if not millions of other
people who have the same dream as you.

You have to prove that you can accomplish your dream in a way that others can’t.

This means committing yourself completely towards your pursuits. Pushing for what you want more
than anyone else around you.

On obstacles where everyone else would give up and put their guns down, you have to find a way to
overcome them.
3) Fail, Fail, and Fail

No one has ever succeeded without failing a thousand times. Success isn’t a straight path between
where you are and where you want to be; success is a long and winding road, with twists and turns,
bumps and walls, and every obstacle you could ever imagine.

There are going to be thousands of ways you will fail on your road to success. You will stumble
again and again—people will reject you, people will tell you your ideas are bad, people will use you
and make fun of you.

Every successful person in the world has gone through this, and when faced with adversity they have
all turned around and said, “I’m going to keep going.” With every failure comes more experience,
and with more experience comes a greater shot at reaching your goals.
4) Practice Absolute Excellence

Many people are happy with “just enough”, but when have you ever loved any product that was “just
enough”? Was your favorite movie directed by someone who did “just enough”; was your favorite
book written by an author who wrote “just enough”?

Of course not.

Successful creators go above and beyond. They do absolutely everything to achieve perfection,
getting as close to perfection as they absolutely can, even if it means working until their hands bleed.

Give yourself standards that you can’t reach, and then work hard enough until you reach them.
5) Exercise Your Will
Will, desire, willpower—all mean the same thing. It means how much you want something, and how
far you are willing to go to achieve it.

We have a limited amount of willpower that we can use per day, so making sure that you use your
willpower on the right things is important.

Don’t waste your willpower on activities that add strain to your life; push forward on your path to
success every single day.

There must be a burning desire inside of you to see yourself in your vision. Are you ready to do
whatever it takes to get there?
6) Dare
Playing it safe is for people who never achieved anything substantial in their lives. Dare to do the
impossible, what others say that can’t be done. Dare to reach out and become more than anyone ever
expected of you.

Dare to get out of your comfort zone and expand what you know. Dare to become a bigger person
than you ever thought you could be. Dare to be the dream you want to be, because that’s the only
way it will ever happen.
7) Go To Success
And finally—go to it. You know where success is. You’ve identified what needs to be done, what
you need to do to get there. So ask yourself the question: are you going to do it?

If the answer is no, then give up now; success was never yours to begin with. If yes, then go for it,
right here, right now.
Why Bad Guys Win at Work
by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic ; 4 mins read
 

“Not all psychopaths are in prison – some are in the board room,” Robert Hare famously said
during his aptly titled lecture, The Predators Among Us.

Psychopathy is one of three “dark triad” traits, the other two being narcissism and
Machiavellianism. It should be noted that, unlike clinical personality traits, these traits are
normally distributed in the population – e.g., you can score low, average or high – and perfectly
indicative of normal functioning. In other words, just because you score high doesn’t mean that
you have problems, either at work or in your personal life. And despite the antisocial
implications of the dark triad, recent research has highlighted a wide range of career-related
benefits for these personality characteristics.
Psychopathic individuals are generally more dishonest, egocentric, reckless, and cruel than the
population average. Machiavellianism is somewhat more related to superficial charm,
interpersonal manipulation, deceit, ruthlessness, and impulsivity. People who score highly on
this trait are morally feeble and likely to endorse the idea that “the end justifies the means” or
agree that “it is hard to get ahead without cutting corners here and there.” Narcissism relates to
unrealistic feelings of grandiosity, an inflated – though often unstable and insecure – sense of
self-worth, and a selfish sense of entitlement coupled with little consideration for others. As the
term, and the legend of Narcissus, suggests, narcissistic individuals are so self-indulged that they
may end up drowning in their own self-love – this makes it harder for them to focus on others.
Narcissists are often charming, and charisma is often the socially desirable side of narcissism:
Silvio Berlusconi, Jim Jones, and Steve Jobs personified this.

In a recent study on representative German businesses, narcissism was positively linked to

salary, while Machiavellianism was positively linked to leadership level and career satisfaction.
These associations were still significant even after controlling for the effects of demographics,
job tenure, organization size, and hours worked.
Previously, an impressive 15-year longitudinal study found that individuals with psychopathic
and narcissistic characteristics gravitated towards the top of the organizational hierarchy and had
higher levels of financial attainment. In line with those findings, according to some estimates, the
base rate for clinical levels of psychopathy is three times higher among corporate boards than in
the overall population. This is also consistent with earlier conceptualizations of psychopathy
among businessmen. In his classic 1940’s book The Mask of Sanity, Hervey Cleckley noted that
the psychopathic businessman works industriously and appears rather normal, except for his
periodic sprees of “marital infidelity, callousness, wild drinking, and risk-taking”.

So why do these bad guys win?

In part, because there is clearly a bright side to their dark side. As found in a study examining the
overlap between positive and negative personality characteristics, extraversion, openness to new
experience, curiosity, and self-esteem are generally higher among dark triad personalities. In
addition, dark triad traits tend to enhance competitiveness, if only by inhibiting cooperation and
altruistic behaviors at work. In addition, studies have shown that psychopathic and Machiavellian
tendencies facilitate both the seduction and intimidation tactics that frighten potential
competitors and captivate bosses. This explains why individuals with these personality
characteristics are often great actors, as well as succeeding in (short-term) sexual relationships.

Yet it is important to understand that all these individual gains come at the expense of the group.

Although there is clearly an adaptive element to the dark triad – which explains why bad guys
often win – their success comes at a price, and that price is paid by the organization. In
evolutionary terms, dark triad personality characteristics constitute the essence of the freeriding.
And the more polluted or contaminated the environment – in a political sense – the more these
parasitic personalities will thrive.

Not surprisingly, a number of studies have linked the dark triad to higher incidents of bullying.
Moreover, meta-analytic studies have shown significant associations between the dark triad and
counterproductive work behaviors (theft, absenteeism, turnover, sabotage, etc.). In an impressive
analysis of all the scientific studies published between 1951 and 2011, Machiavellianism,
narcissism, and psychopathy were all positively linked with counterproductive work behaviors
and poor organizational citizenship, and Machiavellianism and psychopathy were also negatively
linked to actual job performance (as opposed to career success). As reviews have highlighted,
“Ponzi schemes, internet fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, corruption, and malfeasance” can
all be attributed to dark triad personality traits.
But as the saying goes, everything is better in moderation (except of course moderation). For
example, studies have shown that an intermediate – rather than low – level of Machiavellianism
predicts the highest level of organisational citizenship, perhaps because Machiavellian
individuals are politically savvy and good at networking and managing upwards. In another
study that examined military leadership, the best leaders displayed the bright-side features of
narcissism while inhibiting its dark-side traits: they were high in egotism and self-esteem but low
in manipulativeness and impression management.
 So perhaps one may think about dark-side tendencies as overused strengths – tendencies that are
fairly adaptive and conducive of short-term success, but may nonetheless lead to problems in the
long term, especially if one is not aware of them. That is, the dark side represents the toxic assets
of our personality. You can certainly turn them into career weapons, but the group will generally
lose the more you win. Furthermore, when the primary goal is to ensure that a group or
organization outperforms its rivals, it will be generally advantageous to minimize the incidence
of dark triad leaders. Personality is an important career lubricant, but dark-triad traits are
effective at the individual rather than group level.

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