Episode 251: Stolen Focus
We are all getting more scattered, and more distracted. In today's episode, Fiona shares tips that everyone could benefit from reading this book, particularly small business owners. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Hello and welcome to episode 251 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today, it is a tip episode, and that's really a 10-minute or less episode where I share a tip, tool, or tactic that you can implement immediately in your business. And today it is a tool, and it's definitely one that has impacted me, gosh, a lot, especially over the last couple of months since it came into my life. So I wanted to share that with you. Before I do, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the beautiful land in which I get to live and record this podcast, and that is the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional custodians of this land and pay our respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. We acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. The other thing I wanted to mention is that it is coming into the Christmas gifting, Hanukkah, Diwali, and all the things seasoned at the end of the year where there tends to be a lot of gift-giving happening.
Whether you celebrate any of those, whether you don't, whether it's just like, let's give ourselves a gift for getting through another of the twenties, because my God, it is been 2020, 2021, 2022, we're still in the mess of the pandemic, and I think that's worth a gift to give that to yourself or to a friend just for getting through the year. So whatever the reason is, you may be looking for gifts and you might be looking for gifts for people who have a small business. And I just want to let you know that we do offer a gift voucher over at the My Daily Business Coach Shop. So you can find that at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop, and people can get that gift voucher up to any amount that you want, and then people can use that to buy anything from one-on-one coaching through to any of our courses or anything else like that. It has a 12-month expiry date on it. If you need help with that, you can find beautiful Yricka, who is my assistant at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. Or you can literally just buy it online at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. All right, let's get into today's quick tip episode.
I am a big reader, and you might have guessed that if you have listened to this podcast for some time or you've been on my Sunday email where I might send a list of the best books that I'm reading at the moment. I always have. I'm laughing because it is way too big. I always have a massive stack of books next to my bed. Sometimes it's this tower that my husband just laughs at thinking, "Do you really need to have them all there at once?" But I'm someone who likes to dip in and out of books, and sometimes I'll even start reading a book and then listen to the rest of it on Audible, or I might start it and put it back and then come back to it. And that's exactly what happened with the tool that I wanted to mention today, which is a book.
I actually bought this book in physical format when it first came out. I think that was around at the very start of 2022. The author, Johann Hari, wrote the book Stolen Focus. Prior to that, he'd written another book, which is called Lost Connections. I had Lost Connections, and I have to say I read half of that and then stopped. He's a great writer, so I thought I'll buy Stolen Focus. I Bought Stolen Focus, started it again and put it down. And then I happened to be listening to a podcast interview, oh, a while back where he was interviewed by somebody, I can't remember which podcast it was for the life of Me, but I really liked his voice and I thought, Oh, I wonder if he has this book on Audible.
I'm imagining that they do since it's been such a popular book. Then I had a friend in the UK post about it, and then literally in the same week, it was like the universe was literally hating me over the head with, You need to get back to that book. I had a coaching call with one of my lovely clients, Andrew Mitchell, from the Design Coach, and he said, Have you read that book? It's so good. And we had this whole conversation. I was like, No, I need to get back to it. And so between Andrew, my friend in the UK and his podcast, I thought, That's it. I'm going to find out an audible and listen to it. And I was addicted to listening to it. It was one of those things like watching a TV show that you really want and you've got to find out what happens.
I just found, the way that it's narrated by Johann Hari, who is just a great writer and storyteller, and then obviously the substance that was in it. But right from the get-go, I was just so into this book and it just aligns with so many ideas that I have about work and life, technology, and social media. And I just found it such an incredible tool, and I've been thinking about it. It's one of those books that's really had an impact on me. It is basically the premise of Stolen Focus is that we are really we are not in control of our own attention. And obviously, I've worked in marketing for a long time and I understand that attention is the currency of marketing. And social media has done a huge job of reminding people of that, although sometimes I think we all fall prey to just being on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, whatever, and just staying on there and forgetting that we are the commodity that people are selling a lot of the time or not people these platforms are selling and that it's our attention that the biggest thing that brands are looking after.
And on one hand, I totally understand that. I have worked in this space for a long time, but on the other hand, I think the addictive nature that is in so many social media tools is really, really harmful. And I've talked about that, Stolen focus, obviously he's not the first person to come out with this, and this isn't the first episode of this podcast where I've kind of talked about my love-hate relationship with social media. On one hand, I think it's an incredible tool and it has allowed brands and small businesses, particularly so much access that they previously wouldn't have gotten without having to spend so much cash. But on the other hand, I know for myself, I've had to really put monitors in place. I've had to shut down my apps. I'm actually blocked from them after 20 minutes on Instagram and 15 minutes on Facebook a day.
And I know that might be alarming to people that I work in marketing and brand and content and work with all these small business owners. And I'm not on social media all day, but I knew in my own life I started to see how much it was impacting negatively being on social media. Not just things like comparison, but just the sheer kind of hatred and things that you'd started to see that kind of really made you angry and seeing people just fight on there. The book is really interesting. He talks about the words that the most traffic on a platform like YouTube, and they're all really negative and horrible, and yet we seem to flock towards those much more than say, a positive news story or a positive video. So yeah, it was a really interesting book, not just about social media, but in general how our focus is just getting further and further and further away from us.
If you are feeling like that in your own life, if you feel like you are maybe not sleeping as well as you normally did, maybe you're just feeling overwhelmed by things. It's a really interesting read because it's not just about the individual, but it's really about society as a whole. And really just that we are all getting more scattered, more distracted. We can't seem to sit still and read. I know I have a lot of friends who love to read and they're sort of saying, I can't seem to keep focused at the moment. And I think we are all full of so many things going on. And I often say instead of saying, Oh, I'm busy, I'll say, Oh, I'm really, everything's full at the moment, It is full. And that can be really amazing and positive that your life is full, but also it can be hard and stressful at times.
I just found this book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, Just such a breath of fresh air. A lot of it may be things that you've heard before, but he goes into quite a lot of detail and he works with a lot of experts and authorities in different spaces and scientists and big academics to go into detail about some things. Some of it you may not agree with completely. And I do think, I mean, I know there's a lot of reviews where people are saying, Oh, it's so lefty and it's so one-sided. But I actually do think he gives quite a balanced view of things wherever he says a particular way that he thinks he tries to actually get the opposite viewpoint in as well. So I do think that anyone could benefit from this book.
The way that I have benefited from the book, besides it just being a really interesting book, is I actually went back to blocking apps on my phone. So what I used to do is a while ago I would block, say social media apps on my phone, so they actually turn off and I can't turn them back on. Then I decided to just put the limit on through the app itself, say through Instagram. So then it would pop up with a message saying, You have now spent your 30 minutes on Instagram. And I have to say that in the last probably six to eight months, especially when my back was really bad and I was just spending a lot of time in bed, I would just ignore that and I would dismiss it. But I've gone back to 15 minutes on Facebook, which includes Facebook Messenger, and 20 minutes max on Instagram a day.
I felt that I was actually wasting quite a bit of my time on those apps and that it wasn't benefiting my business, it wasn't benefiting my social life, and my real-life relationships. I could easily call people. And so I, I went back to doing that and have to say all the better for it. And I think that is purely a result of reading this book. I've also changed certain things in my personal life. I've also changed certain things in the way that I work. I just think everyone could benefit from reading this book, particularly small business owners. So that is it. That is the tool. It is Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, and you can find it everywhere. And if you are in Australia, like me, always know that you can go to your local library and ask them to order it if they don't already.
If you're trying to not clutter up your house or if you're trying to watch your pennies, it's always available as a library book. The other thing that I've been looking at lately a couple of times every so often if I wanna buy a book is Apple Books because they tend to be a lot cheaper on there. And also you can just read it anywhere, but again, you're on a screen. It is really nice to have a physical book. Anyway, that is it for today. We'll leave a link to that in the show notes, which you can find over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/251, as this is episode 251. And if you have read Stolen Focus and I know lots and lots and lots of people have, please feel free to send me a DM and let me know what you most took away from it. I'm @mydailybusinesscoach on Instagram. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. Bye.
