Ashley Brown 0:00 [Intro]
The greatest way to make progress in your life is by staying focused on what's important to you. Distractions can make this difficult to do, but it's not impossible. In this episode of the routine and things podcast I share three ways to keep what's important top of my tune into here how to eliminate distractions and stay focused on what matters
Ashley Brown 0:35
Hey girl, listen to this. You can't enjoy life if you're stressed from managing it. This is why I am so excited to share the great news. The routine and things planner is on presale. The routine and things planner is not your average planner. It goes above and beyond to help you get organized and in routine, so you enjoy the heck out of your life. If you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed and looking for a simple way to get organized, you're going to love this planner. The routine and things planner will help you organize what matters while also helping you incorporate healthy routines into your life. This planner is different than anything you've experienced. It uses routine blocking a planning method where you organize tasks into routine categories is a very simple planning method for organizing your week with ease, staying focused on your priorities. And keeping top of mind what matters including you. Imagine enjoying your life because you're able to manage what's on your plate without feeling overwhelmed by it. The routine and things planner is the solution. The planner will be on presale from now to July. But listen to this. If you order your planner in the month of May you get the early bird special, which includes 10% off the planner and free attendance to all of my 2023 routine classes. This is only available during the month of May. So don't miss out to be the first to order the routine and things planner, go to routineandthings.com\plan or click the link in the show notes.
Ashley Brown 2:21
Hey, girl, welcome back for another episode of the routine and things podcast. In today's episode, we're talking about how to eliminate distractions and stay focused on what matters. I am freaking excited about this because last week, we talked about three ways to stay organized and on top of things. And one of the ways I share with you is by staying focused on what matters to you. So we're taking a deeper dive today, we're gonna dive deep into this because I know that some of us struggle with distractions. We struggle. We struggle with getting distracted stuff just pulls our attention. And then we find ourselves doing one thing when we wanted to actually do another thing.
Ashley Brown 3:01
And this can really get us off course it can cause us to fall behind on the things that we want to accomplish the things that we want to get done. And so I'm going to share some ways and some things that can help you stay focused on what matters stay focused on what matters to you. Because one thing we're not going to do is compare or look at someone else's life and say that needs to be important to me, because it looks like her life seems great. So I need to be doing what she's doing. Right, we can get inspired by others. But we don't want to just focus on someone else and then try to do the things that they do. Without intention behind it. There are so many similarities between us all.
Ashley Brown 3:47
And yes, we're going to have some similarities when it comes to what matters to us. But you really want to think about you and stay focused on you cut out the distractions or the comparisons when it comes to focusing on what others need for their life and focus on what you need for your life. They're super important. So I'm going to share three things that can help you stay focused on what matters. The first tip I have for you is you first have to understand what's important to stay focused on but you have to really be able to identify what matters to you, what matters to you in the season of life that you're in, because let's be real in certain seasons, things matter more than others, right? If you are postpartum, you just had a baby.
Ashley Brown 4:28
What matters to you may be different than the mom who has two teenagers that are in high school, what matters is probably going to look a little bit different, slightly different. You're going to have some similarities, but it depends on what season of life you're in. Okay, so having a clear understanding of what's important to focus on in your season of life is one way to stay focused because when you clearly understand what matters to you. Distractions don't happen as often when you can say this is what matters to me and this is why it matters to me in this season of life in this moment, you won't get so easily distracted. Because when something does try to take your attention, you can say, Oh, wait, I wasn't focused on you, though. I'm over here in this season of life.
Ashley Brown 5:13
And this is what matters to me now, what matters to you when you stay focused on what matters to you it eliminate stress in your life. Because you know, you are in alignment with what you need in your life you are paying attention to, and giving attention to the things that matter to you in your life. And we feel good when we're doing that. It's like if you want to keep a clean home, and you look over the course of a month, and you're like, Wait, I've been able to keep a clean home around here, like I'm proud of myself, you feel good, because a clean home makes you happy, am I the only one? A clean home makes you happy. So staying focused on the things that matter to you is a strong way of focusing on what matters or staying or eliminating distractions. But you first have to identify what's important, have a clear understanding of what matters to you in this season of life. That's number one.
Ashley Brown 6:03
Number two, in order to stay, focus and eliminate distractions, have routines that help to keep you focused. Have routines that help you stay focused on the things that you identified that matter to you. You can build a routine around things that matter to you, if you want to keep your home clean and tidy. There are routines you can build for that that directly align with what you need in your life. If you want to be able to stay on top of physical exercise for yourself, there's a routine that can be built around that that can support you with that, if you want to make sure that you are engaging with your children in a very intentional way and being present with them consistently. There's a routine, there's routines that you can build that can help you with engaging with your children.
Ashley Brown 6:49
So routines can help you because as I shared on a previous episode, I think was episode 123 123, I shared about how routines are action oriented, when you have routines, you are taking action in your life. And I spoke about this episode 123 about the difference between routines and planning and routines are action oriented, you're taking action. So if you want to be able to eliminate distractions, take action on the things that matter to you. And one really, really just simple way of doing that is by having routines that help you do that haven't routines that actually allow you to take action on the things that's important that matter to you. Because when you're taking action, you're not getting distracted, when you're taking action on those things that are important to you that you know, you want to stay consistent with. You want to keep up with, you want to stay on top of you're not as easily distracted.
Ashley Brown 7:45
Because you're in the action, you're in action, you're in movement, which means the distractions aren't going to pull you so much things aren't going to take your attention so easily. So having routines that keep you focused on what matters is a huge way to eliminate distractions in your life. Third thing, and this one, I feel like I mean, I'm telling you listen to this. Third thing is set limits and boundaries with your actions. Let me say that, again, set limits and boundaries, that keyword is boundaries with your actions, you have to be able to decide what you will and will not do on any given day, you have to decide what you will and will not do on any given day. When you just decide what you will do. And you fail to decide what you will not do. Distractions are gonna pop up for you.
Ashley Brown 8:41
Because you think it's enough to decide what you will do. You're like, I'm gonna do this today. And I'm gonna do this today. That's not enough. If you're trying to really eliminate distractions, you also have to tell yourself, what I will not do is let me put an example out here for you. When I'm scheduling something in my day, I may say, okay, so I want to make sure that I clean the kitchen, I also want to make sure that I make dinner. But what I will not do today is I'm not putting the kids to bed. No, that's what I will not do. And I also will not when my kids get home from school scroll is keep scrolling on my phone. That's also something I will not do. But what I will do is the things that I just said is so important that we think about both. That's how you set limits and boundaries with your actions with your time, your capacity, you have to be able to say this is what are focused on today.
Ashley Brown 9:37
And this is what I'm not focused on today is not enough to just write down in your planner which are focused on you also sometimes have to write down what you're not. You have to decide what you're not focused on. That's one thing that I love about the routine and things planner is it uses routine blocking which is a great format and it has four routine categories. You can organize your task and so for any given day you can decide okay, the four categories are self care children's/family cleaning and cooking. And so you get to decide what in those four categories you're going to give attention to, versus which categories you are not giving attention to. So maybe self care and children's/family is what you're going to give attention to on Monday, but you're not touching the cleaning and cooking on Monday.
Ashley Brown 10:21
So you can X and cross those out. When you are able to set limits and boundaries with what you will and will not do, it opens up so much mental space for you. And it also helps you live your life with more ease. It allows you to not get distracted in ways that are going to pull you outside of what you need. And what you want to focus on. This one is huge begin to set limits and boundaries with your time. And for some of us, we may have to have conversations with those who are in our family, our partners, our spouses, other family that live with us, we may have to have conversations, because when you're setting boundaries, when you're not accustomed to setting boundaries, or you haven't been doing it often, it can be a little bit jarring for those around us. But communicating and having conversation can help to ease that but this is so important for you. So important.
Ashley Brown 11:18
So those are the three things I want to share the three tips this is how you stay focused on what matters and eliminate distractions is by one having a clear understanding of what's important to focus on in the in the season of life that you are in two having routines that keep you focused on what matters. And then the last tip is to set boundaries and limits with your actions. Was this helpful? I know it was helpful for me. Right always sip my own tea. I'm always like sip your own tea Ash. And so I hope that this was extremely helpful for you go grab the routine and things planner. If you are looking to get organized, get into routine, so that you enjoy your life to the fullest. Go grab it. The planner is simple to use. It's very easy to use. It is very different, unlike any planner that I've seen in a great way is going to help you stay focused on your priorities, organize your weeks with ease, and it's going to help you keep top of mind what's important in your life, including your self.
Ashley Brown 12:29
Right now you can get the early bird specialist 10% off the planner as well as free attendance to all of my 2023 routine classes. They're going to be the bomb.com You know I love teaching. So that's it. That is it for today. I hope that you do something for yourself today. Be sure to share this episode with someone also leave a rating and review of the show if you would be so kind to purchase the planner to go ahead and get it while it's on presale. You can click the link in the show notes or go to routinethings.com/plan. But until next time, continue to enjoy wherever you are, whatever you're doing, stay happy and I will talk to you next week.
Ashley Brown 13:10 [Outro]
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, take a screenshot and share it on social I would love to know you're listening and for tools to help you start maintain and enjoy your routines. Be sure to head to routineandthings.com Here's to staying happy