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#053:The Most Important Skill in the

21st CenturyJune 30, 2014

________________________________________________Introduction

●The 5 am Miracle - Episode #053: The Most Important Skill in the 21st Century

[Play Interview Bumper][Intro Song]

●Good morning and welcome to the 53rd episode of The 5 AM Miracle.

● I am Jeff Sanders and this is THE podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

●My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

●In this week's episode I discuss the one skill that trumps all others today, and likely will for a very long time.

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●What is it?●Stick around and find out. ●But first, let’s go Behind-the-Scenes!

[Fade Music Up and Out]BEHIND THE SCENES

●Last August I was on a long trail run and I had to stop early because my right foot was in severe pain.

●I saw 3 different doctors and discovered that my foot was either broken, severely bruised, or totally fine.

●To make a long story short, my foot is still not 100% healthy and I have not been able to run consistently for almost a year.

●I love running.●Not being able to run has seriously cramped

my style, but I’m not giving up the fight.●In just 4 weeks I will be turning 30 years old

and I decided that it’s time to get my first bicycle since middle school.

●Now, I don’t know anything about bikes, so naturally I was overwhelmed when I started looking at all of the models, prices, and options online.

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●So, this is where you can help me out.●I am looking for recommendations.●What kind of bike should I buy?●A hybrid?●Road bike?●Mountain bike?●How much should I spend?●What kind of accessories do I need?●As you can tell I have a million questions

and I’m not sure where to begin.●So, if you have any expertise in cycling and

would like to contribute to the “Make Jeff Less Ignorant About Cycling” Fund, email me or leave a comment in the show notes.

●I would love to know your opinion so that I can enter the world of cycling with more knowledge than I have now, which is none.

●The good news here is that I have always wanted to one day compete in a triathlon, and possibly even an Ironman in the distant future.

●So, buying a great bicycle is the first step in that process.

●Thank you in advance for all of your great advice!

●Now, let’s jump to the Tip of the Week!

[Opening Night Music]

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●Now, this week’s Tip comes from a quote that I ran across from Mark Twain:

●"I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened."

●As soon as I read this quote I realized how impeccable the timing was because I was in the process of planning out my schedule for the next few months and things were looking hectic.

●I was imagining the worst case scenario and stressing myself out.

●I think it’s natural to look at a challenging situation and assume the worst will occur.

●But Mark Twain is spot on when he says that some terrible things happen.

●More often than not, the worst case scenario never happens!

●We live out these disasters in our minds but the outcomes are normally great, not terrible.

●Planes just don’t crash very often.●Waking up late for work doesn’t always cause a

catastrophe.●Missing a workout won’t cause your muscles to

shrivel into twigs.●Bad stuff doesn’t happen as often as we

imagine.●Last fall, when I went skydiving for the first

time, I was imagining a million different ways I would die.

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●I thought about the plane crashing, my parachute not opening, my heart stopping as I literally scared myself to death, lighting striking me on the free fall down, and 140 mph air rushing into my lungs and causing them to explode.

●And how many of these scenarios came true?●That’s right, none!●I lived to tell the story about how I successfully

fell out of the sky and didn’t die because worst case scenarios just don’t happen.

●So, my recommendation is that if you are panicking about something awful that you are sure will happen, pause, take a breath, and realize that you’re fine.

●Good things happen in life.●Great things happen. ●Normal, boring things happen.●But really terrible, rip your guts out of your

stomach kind of stuff, yeah, that’s not going to happen.

●Everything will be okay.●Now, let’s get to the feature segment!

[World Music Interlude]

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●A few weeks ago I attended a SUPER SUCCESS Webinar with Darren Hardy, publisher of SUCCESS Magazine.

●Darren was launching his “Insane Productivity” system and he lured me into his sales call with a very catchy title.

●The name of the webinar was The Greatest Skill in the 21st Century.

●Now, I have been a huge fan of Darren for years, but did he actually know what the #1 necessary skill would be for the next hundred years?

●Eh, I was skeptical.●But, I tuned in because Darren is awesome and

I trust him.

●Well, I was blown away!●Not only was I convinced he was right and had

the skill nailed down perfectly, but I was so convinced I knew I had to share it with you on the podcast.

●Here on The 5 AM Miracle we talk a lot about daily habits and productivity, all with an assumption that if we simply know what the right things to do are, we will follow through and do them.

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●But, what we don’t often talk about is the simple fact that none of our goals would be possible if we lacked the one skill that kept us consistently on target towards those huge goals, without falling off the wagon, and losing sight of what we told ourselves we really wanted.

So, what is the most important skill in the 21st Century?

●Focus!

●Without a doubt, our insanely busy lives are only getting busier and more distracted every single day.

●New technologies, means of communication, and 24/7 accessibility to media that never existed before has created an abundance and an overwhelm of possibility.

●The doubled-edged sword of technological progress is that getting more done is both easier and harder than ever before.

●Paying attention to what matters is likely to be

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your biggest challenge, not just in the big picture sense, but literally paying attention to what matters most today, right now in your life.

●I ran across another great quote yesterday from Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism.

●The quote reads, “If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.”

●I love that quote because it answers so many questions I have about productivity.

●What should I do now?●Does this task matter?●Where am I headed?●How much time should I spend on this?●Is there a better use of my time right now?

●I think the real power of knowing what to say yes to is that you can immediately know what you’re saying no to, which is everything else.

●Paying attention to what matters is the skill of saying yes only to the one thing that absolutely deserves all of your attention in the present moment.

●Saying no feels wrong.●It hurts to let go of doing something that is

productive, or even fun.●But saying yes to the most important priority

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immediately feels right because we know deep inside that it was the right choice -- that we will be better off for having taken the harder path.

●Because of the Internet, smart phones, social media, and the incredible technological age we live in, focus is the one asset that most people are losing sight of, which means learning how to maintain focus in all the noise is what will separate the most successful people from everyone else.

●If you ask me which iPhone app is my favorite, my answer is going to be an app that I found years ago, not yesterday.

●As attached as I am to using technology, I don’t know what the latest gadgets are or how to use them.

●I am not as savvy as a 13-year old and I don’t plan to be.

●Why?●Because I’m not trying to impress my friends or

climb a social ladder.●I’m trying to get more done, to accomplish my

bucket list goals in life, to do the important work that matters and not simply react to the stimuli that pop up every day.

●Don’t get me wrong, if I was 13 years old right

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now, I would definitely know every single cool app on the planet.

●I would own 5 cell phones just to make sure I knew everything about everything.

●I get emails all the time from listeners who want to know my opinion on a new app, or productivity software, but I always disappoint them because I’ve never heard of that program.

●I don’t know what it is -- and unless I have to know, I won’t.

●Focus is about selection.●It’s about having a clear objective and killing

off all tangents, distractions, and shiny objects that try to keep you from your goal.

●Steven Pressfield, one of my all-time favorite authors, said that doing the work you know you need to do is one of the hardest things in life.

●It’s the most difficult job in the world to simply do what matters because doing what matters is always HARD.

●When I refer to cutting distractions, I am most often referring to getting rid of things that are FUN!

●Facebook is fun.

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●Twitter is fun.●Binge watching House of Cards of Netflix is

fun!●But, turning off your TV, phone, and computer

to read a book that could change your life -- that is surprisingly one of the hardest things in the world to do.

●I don’t want to forget to mention the second biggest distraction that prevents all of us from focusing on what matters: other people.

●People are great.●Being surrounded by intelligent, smart,

ambitious people is an honor, but it’s also a huge liability.

●Smart people have ideas.●They’re talkative.●They want to hang out with you, pick your

brain, and go to the movies.●People want to distract themselves and YOU

from the hard work and go do all the fun stuff, which is awesome --- IF --- hanging out is the next most important thing for you to be doing.

●In my crazy productive life I have to be very intentional about which social engagements I agree to and which I turn down.

●It’s so easy to float from one fun activity to the

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next without realizing that your whole weekend disappeared and you didn’t make any progress on your big goal.

●During college, when I was slowly training for my first marathon I had to work hard to convince myself that I had to say no to my friends every weekend and go run 15+ miles instead.

●That’s a hard decision.●It’s not easy to turn down great things for other

great things.●Focusing on my marathon was seriously more

difficult than grabbing a bottle of wine and heading to a party.

●At that point in my life I was just beginning to learn the value of focus, but I had my big epiphany in my senior year of college.

●For the first three years of school I only set foot in the library twice: (1) the first day of school during orientation and (2) one random day during sophomore year to use the bathroom.

●But, in my senior year I discovered something amazing: the library had cubbies -- dark cubbies tucked away from everyone else in a Quiet Zone where you couldn’t hear a thing.

●On a whim, I grabbed all of my books and

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headed to the dark cubbies to see if I could get more work done than I was in my fraternity house, which was the most useless place to ever accomplish anything.

●Two hours later I had completed more work than in the previous two days.

●I was stunned at home much reading I completed, how much material I covered, and how much I learned in such an incredibly short period of time.

●For the rest of my senior year I made the dark cubbies my second home.

●I spent as much time there as possible, and I desperately needed it because my schedule was incredibly packed and I believe the only reason I graduated without a major hiccup was because of those dark cubbies.

●The focus I achieved in the cubbies rivals any location I have ever been since.

●When your physical environment allows for the zero distractions, you can’t be distracted without causing it yourself.

●In the dark cubby I didn’t have a cell phone, no one knew I was there because I lied about where I was going, and no one could find me because most people in the library didn’t even

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know these cubbies existed.●Sometimes, that’s what it takes.

●In the decades to come there will be challenges that can only be faced with extreme focus.

●Creative juices can only flow when nothing else stands in the way.

●Brilliant insights, getting tons of work accomplished, and feeling incredibly satisfied with your progress are all possible when the right pieces are in place.

●The fascinating part about focus is that all of us have the ability to do it, but we stop ourselves.

●We turn on devices and say yes to activities that inhibit our ability to do our best work.

●We agree to social contracts that work against our own self-interest because we are unwilling or unable to stand up for our own commitments, to see our grand goals through to the end.

●If you want to achieve more than you ever thought possible in the 21st century, I recommend putting as much time, money, and energy as you can into focus.

●Focus is the one skill that will make the difference between you checking off the bucket

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list goal or simply wondering how it will ever be possible.

●You have the power right now.●You have what it takes to let go of the forces in

your life that are holding you back from success.

●It might start with 15 minutes a day locked in your bathroom, or one hour a week in a dark cubby, but it will happen.

●You just have to make it so.

Now, here are my Top 3 suggestions for gaining more focus in your life, regardless of what your current goals are: 1. Create Boundaries

○Focus is best achieved with rules, boundaries, and clear markers about what will happen, where it will happen, and how it will happen.

○In other words, be very specific about exactly what you want and write it down.

2. Turn Off Technology○As much as I love technology, it has to be

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controlled to be useful.○Decide ahead of time when you will check

and reply to emails, when you will accept phone calls, and when you will turn everything off before you go to bed.

○I turn off my phone every night before bed and charge it in a room far from where I sleep.

○In other words, there is no way I will be checking email or replying to a text at 2:00 am.

3. Slay the Myth of Multitasking○I grew up believing that the smartest

people could multitask, which why they got so much done.

○Now, I know better.○Multitasking is a myth -- it can’t be done.○If it can, it won’t last long.○The best way to get a lot done is to do only

one important thing at a time.

[Fade In Music]Announcements

●Just 2 quick announcements here at the

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end of this episode.●First, if you have not yet joined The 5 am

Club, you can easily do so today for free.●When you join the club you will get a free copy

of The 5 AM Miracle eBook, which shows you exactly how to wake up each morning with vigor and make enormous progress on your biggest goals.

●To join The 5 AM Club AND jump start your morning - visit 5amMiracle.com.

●My 2nd announcement is that in next week’s episode of the podcast I will be discussing the top 10 energy boosters for the chronically fatigued.

● If you just never seem to have enough energy, tune in for practical tips to jack up your energy right away!

Final Thoughts●As always, I would be grateful if you would rate

my podcast in iTunes.●That helps tremendously with keeping my

podcast visible so that people who have never heard of it can discover it.

●I created a quick 2-minute video that shows you how to rate and review any podcast, which you can watch at JeffSanders.com/review

●Or, just head on over to JeffSanders.com/itunes to leave your review

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right now.●Also, if you would like to see all of the

resources I mentioned in this show, please visit the show notes page at JeffSanders.com/53, as in Episode 53.

●Well, that's it for this episode of The 5 AM Miracle.

●Until next time remember, you have the power to change your life, and the fun begins bright and early.

[Fade Out Music]