Dan Martell - How to Be So Productive it Feels ILLEGAL

00:00:00.000 The most productive people in the world,

00:00:02.420 they don't rely on discipline and brute force

00:00:04.260 to stay focused.

00:00:05.100 They've found hacks to trick their brain

00:00:07.120 into this superhuman level of productivity.

00:00:09.860 So I'm gonna share with you 10 hacks

00:00:11.400 that will make you more focused,

00:00:13.320 even if you have crippling ADHD like I do.

00:00:15.780 These are the strategies that I use

00:00:17.720 to go from an ADHD mess to a hyper-focused CEO.

00:00:21.620 You can start using these today

00:00:23.360 to stop fighting against your brain

00:00:25.500 and start using it as a superpower.

00:00:27.540 So with that being said,

00:00:28.520 These are the 10 hacks to unlock insane focus.

00:00:31.460 Starting with hack number one, make a not to-do list.

00:00:34.980 Here's my philosophy.

00:00:36.600 Focus is a filter, not a muscle.

00:00:38.940 Stop trying to brute force yourself into focus.

00:00:42.520 Decide what you don't wanna do

00:00:44.440 so that you can make decisions quicker.

00:00:46.600 If every new decision comes into your life

00:00:48.600 and you have to sit there with the mental overload

00:00:50.360 and brain powder, try to make a good decision

00:00:52.300 because you haven't set up a filter,

00:00:53.820 it's gonna drain your energy.

00:00:55.260 To me, a new yes is a no to your dream

00:00:57.920 and a no is a yes to your goals.

00:01:00.320 If you think about the most successful people,

00:01:02.640 you see that success is a subtractive process,

00:01:05.520 not an additive process.

00:01:07.280 You don't do more to win, you do less,

00:01:09.980 but you make the things you say no to the right yeses.

00:01:13.020 So when people ask me like,

00:01:14.300 hey, Dan, what did you do to be successful

00:01:16.020 to drive those cars or fly around on your plane?

00:01:18.560 It's what I don't do.

00:01:19.760 I don't drink, I don't gamble, I don't play video games,

00:01:22.440 I don't vape, I don't do a bunch of stuff

00:01:24.460 that would impede me from winning

00:01:25.980 and it requires that to have the level of focus

00:01:28.700 we're talking about.

00:01:29.540 The way I think about it, you know that game Plinko

00:01:31.460 where you have like these balls you drop at the top

00:01:33.760 and it hits all these different pins

00:01:34.900 and it goes all over the place.

00:01:36.100 That's how most people live their life.

00:01:37.900 What I want you to do is break out all the other options,

00:01:40.520 which is those pins, drop the ball,

00:01:42.180 go straight to the middle.

00:01:42.940 If you think about each one of those

00:01:44.120 as being a energy unit of focus,

00:01:46.220 then you would just literally focus and stack

00:01:49.140 and focus and stack instead of spreading yourself thin

00:01:51.880 across so many different options.

00:01:53.180 So what goes on the not to-do list?

00:01:55.980 For me, number one is low value tasks.

00:01:58.540 Anything that can pay anybody else to do

00:02:00.420 for a little bit amount of money

00:02:01.420 or just use an app to get brought to me or get done,

00:02:04.100 I'm not doing it.

00:02:04.980 Number two is bad habit and vices.

00:02:06.660 Some of you guys have bad habits 1.00

00:02:07.860 of not confronting people that say shit about you. 1.00

00:02:10.320 Some of you have vices like you literally lay in bed 0.99

00:02:13.260 and hit the snooze button 15 times

00:02:15.060 before you get out of bed.

00:02:16.000 Those things have to go.

00:02:17.360 The third is energy vampires.

00:02:18.720 When I'm interacting with somebody,

00:02:19.840 they either give me energy or they take my energy.

00:02:22.120 The people that take my energy, see ya.

00:02:24.280 Which brings us to hack number two, create focus triggers.

00:02:27.940 Most people wait for inspiration to do work

00:02:30.720 or hope they'll magically get in the zone randomly

00:02:34.000 to start doing the work.

00:02:35.340 I create a structure to get myself into flow

00:02:38.480 so that it is by design, not random.

00:02:40.980 See, flow state isn't random, it's designed.

00:02:44.160 And when you're in it, guess what?

00:02:45.500 I don't think about going to the bathroom.

00:02:47.220 I don't worry about what other people think of me.

00:02:48.940 I don't worry if my work's very good.

00:02:50.380 When I'm in flow state, it produces the best work possible.

00:02:53.140 The way I quickly get into flow is I create focused triggers.

00:02:56.760 So for example, the location, the chair that I sit in

00:03:00.240 to do my reading, to outline my goals, to ideate.

00:03:03.800 I mean, even when I go off sites with my wife to plan

00:03:06.480 or quarterly planning or year in planning,

00:03:08.380 those are triggers for us to focus on designing our future,

00:03:12.440 not worry about what happened this week or next week

00:03:14.940 or anything like that.

00:03:15.820 The second is sound.

00:03:17.020 When I need to focus, I have to have music playing.

00:03:20.380 It's a vibe, it's a strategy.

00:03:22.580 Deep work, I'll sometimes put on playlists

00:03:25.160 that have no words,

00:03:26.140 or I'll use a special app that uses binaural beats

00:03:28.840 to actually improve my ability to focus.

00:03:31.380 Headphones are a must

00:03:32.620 because I can't be distracted with other people's noise.

00:03:34.920 And the last one is routines.

00:03:35.980 When you look at world-class athletes

00:03:38.380 and you think about how they visualize,

00:03:40.300 how they warm up,

00:03:41.360 the way they structure their day, their week, their month,

00:03:44.020 it is a rhythm.

00:03:45.060 It is a rhythm of success and it is a routine.

00:03:48.400 And a lot of people think, well, that would be boring.

00:03:50.280 You know what's not boring?

00:03:51.320 having the resources to do what you want,

00:03:53.740 when you want, with who you want.

00:03:54.860 And if that requires some level of routine, sign me up.

00:03:58.080 Which brings us to hack number three, start on hard mode.

00:04:01.240 This one is wild,

00:04:02.900 is that a lot of people try to start easy.

00:04:06.100 Let's make it easy.

00:04:07.920 Let's build momentum.

00:04:09.420 How about stop trying to create momentum with easy wins?

00:04:12.660 I think if you want to focus and get things done,

00:04:16.000 attack it, like go all in,

00:04:17.920 like literally start on hard mode, make it hard.

00:04:20.660 If you do everything that's easy, it's kind of like starting your meal with dessert.

00:04:24.340 Sure, you might enjoy it and it might fill you up, but it's not going to give you the

00:04:28.380 nutrition you need to actually build your body and you'll be too full to eat the real

00:04:31.680 food.

00:04:32.080 So to me, we start with the thing that's the hardest, not the easiest to do.

00:04:36.100 In many ways, the hardest task is to stop picking the easiest task.

00:04:40.420 So to dial this in and really get your focus, we have to do a few things.

00:04:44.260 First off, we have to choose the one thing.

00:04:46.580 What's the one thing?

00:04:47.860 For most business owners, it's marketing.

00:04:49.720 For most individuals, it's working out.

00:04:51.460 But what's the one thing that if you do first,

00:04:54.320 as soon as you wake up or you sit down at your desk,

00:04:57.020 that it will set you up to win,

00:04:59.340 that it will build that confidence to create momentum,

00:05:02.340 that will give you the vibe of success.

00:05:05.820 That one thing, if you just nail it out of the park every time,

00:05:09.680 it's kind of like that first domino

00:05:11.640 that you know if you get that right,

00:05:13.880 the rest of the dominoes will fall down.

00:05:16.000 That's where we start.

00:05:16.880 then what we do is we do deep work blocks for me it's first thing in the morning i used to be a

00:05:22.680 late night guy and you can do that too but as soon as i had human alarm clocks aka kids my mornings

00:05:28.000 became my most precious time because that's when i create connected to my creator when i think of

00:05:32.560 like writing outlining these videos creating videos coming up with new ai companies to start

00:05:38.220 strategy work it has to happen first thing in the morning in my deep work blocks and it all happens

00:05:44.160 before checking my email social media or anything else i can't tell you how my energy is affected by

00:05:50.480 the things i consume and if i accidentally go down a rabbit hole and see stuff or check things and

00:05:55.680 all of a sudden oh i have this like oh crap feeling and now i'm supposed to go dream ideate

00:06:01.440 design something cool but i'm in this headspace of like oh no you know what i mean my day is going

00:06:07.920 from bad meeting to bad mean i love the people i work with but nobody brings me anything other

00:06:12.720 than problems to try to resolve so i can't check my email before i do the right work you can't be

00:06:17.520 like reading comments on your social media feed about what people think of you before you go sit

00:06:21.760 down and create more videos to help people because you're going to be like oh screw that person i'm

00:06:25.280 not even doing this video anymore see the challenge with that which brings us to hack number four

00:06:29.120 be hard to reach when i was sitting down and editing my book buy back your time i had my

00:06:34.480 buddy chris and we got in my car and we drove to the mountains there was no internet there was no

00:06:39.200 connectivity and we stayed in a cabin and we got our laptops out and we edited literally for 16

00:06:44.640 hours a day we did it for five days we had a rhythm of working out editing lunch editing dinner

00:06:50.160 editing pass out the reason we're able to do that is because we're disconnected from distractions

00:06:55.760 see some of you make it too easy to be interrupted the notifications are going off the phone's going

00:07:01.200 off your inbox is like blowing up i mean your inbox is nothing more than a public to-do list

00:07:07.040 of other people's priorities on your time my philosophy is you want to be easy to find all

00:07:12.160 over the internet but hard to reach the only way to make that work is to use these strategies the

00:07:16.640 first is turn off all your notifications i mean go into the app under notifications and i dare you to

00:07:22.160 swipe them off the only two people in my life they can get through to me is my wife and my assistant 0.91

00:07:28.240 other than that everybody else can wait second thing is a scheduled time to respond see i do

00:07:33.040 reply to people text messages etc i have it in my calendar so it's dedicated that way it's a

00:07:37.800 forcing function if i got 60 minutes i'm spending that 60 minutes heads down i was standing in the

00:07:42.440 hot tub behind me earlier replying to all my text messages so call that net time no extra time

00:07:48.460 post-workout hot tub sitting there text messaging creating momentum in my life figure out how to put

00:07:55.480 both of those together the third is use focus signals so for me i have my headphones on please

00:08:01.000 don't talk to me. Unless it's an emergency, I do have a rule that if you come in my office and I'm

00:08:05.620 on a call, you then have to present on your call. So my kids have been on board meetings. They've

00:08:09.880 been on pitch meetings. They literally, if you're in the room and you're asking me a question, I'm

00:08:13.360 not going to introduce you to the people I'm talking to. My kids are my priority, but they

00:08:17.300 know if the doors close and unless it's an emergency, they don't come in. It is so hard for

00:08:22.480 me to focus, to get in the zone that when I'm in it, I got to protect myself. And the fourth one

00:08:28.560 to just remove yourself. I have team members that choose on certain days. I don't want to come to

00:08:32.700 work because I'm going to sit at home. No distractions, no conversations, no taps on the

00:08:36.940 shoulders, no got a seconds, no nothing. Just boom, get it done. Other people, they go to coffee shops.

00:08:42.160 Here's an advanced move. Don't take your power cable with you. That way, when you're there and

00:08:45.780 you know your battery is slowly dying, slowly dying, slowly dying, it'll force you to get that

00:08:49.520 work done. But coffee shops are great. Other offices are great. You can literally go to your

00:08:53.600 buddy's office and say, hey man, can I hang out in your conference room? Which brings us to hack

00:08:56.980 number five turn up the pressure so imagine this you've got to move out of your place but you got

00:09:01.960 three months to move out think about how you would approach that you would probably take your time

00:09:05.700 walk around slowly get distracted easily to pack sometimes you wouldn't move with a sense of

00:09:11.340 purpose but if i told you had three days to get out of your place or lose all your stuff you

00:09:15.600 wouldn't waste a minute that's what it means to turn up the pressure there's two ways that you

00:09:19.680 can do this to yourself before the world does it to you the first is to shorten the timeline you

00:09:24.620 see, there's this thing called Parkinson's law that states the work will expand to the available

00:09:28.820 time given to it, which means if you give yourself a lot of time, you'll take a lot of time. When I'm

00:09:33.300 talking to people on my team and they're like, yeah, I'll get that to you at the end of the day

00:09:36.760 or the end of the week or the end of the month. I'm like, no, no, no. Why not 3 p.m.? Why not

00:09:40.720 Wednesday? Why not the 10th of the month? Most people default to just giving themselves arbitrary

00:09:46.140 timelines that don't force the creativity and the focus to get more done. The second is to increase

00:09:51.900 the stakes what happens if you don't see then you don't have an out there's this woman on my team

00:09:57.920 jen who wanted to lose weight she was sick of it she told the whole team she asked me for my help 1.00

00:10:03.220 i said do you want the real steak she said yes i said cool this is how it works if you don't hit

00:10:07.900 your goal by a certain date you can't stay on the team if you don't hit your goal you can't stay on

00:10:15.040 the team shake my hand hold on no make it a non-negotiable and she went oh no well that's

00:10:21.980 what i'm saying is like i care about you i want to see you win you ask me for my help that's real

00:10:26.580 stakes see most people don't have any downside if they don't do and because of that they don't do

00:10:32.780 which brings us to hack number six train your algorithm what i find fascinating is the billion

00:10:38.480 dollar tech companies these giants hire the world's best psychologists to design software

00:10:45.000 with one purpose and it's to distract you to get you to come back in the app i'm talking they run

00:10:50.520 split tests on the red for the notification jewel they'll run a b tests on the message of the

00:10:55.700 notification they send to your phone all to get you back and distract you however you can fight

00:11:01.660 against it see i actually use my social media feed to feed my brain and this is how i do it

00:11:06.640 First off, I teach it my preferences.

00:11:09.200 I search for things I wanna learn about.

00:11:11.200 I leave a comment on the videos that I find interesting

00:11:13.720 and that tells the algorithm I'm engaged.

00:11:15.680 Second is I unfollow any account or mute friends

00:11:19.020 that are not contributing to the areas

00:11:20.920 I wanna learn or get better at.

00:11:22.640 And I'm unapologetic about it

00:11:24.100 because my feed works for me, I don't work for it.

00:11:26.740 And the third is integrate what I learn.

00:11:28.520 So there's one thing to learn something,

00:11:30.520 see something, save thing.

00:11:31.700 I'm saying share it and more importantly, teach it.

00:11:34.600 when you teach other people,

00:11:36.160 you will learn completely different.

00:11:37.740 Which brings us to hack number seven,

00:11:39.540 design your perfect week.

00:11:40.840 This one is gonna shatter some of your beliefs,

00:11:43.200 but multitasking doesn't work.

00:11:45.400 It's crazy, but it takes 23 minutes on average

00:11:48.520 to refocus after your distraction.

00:11:50.860 So when you're doing work,

00:11:52.140 you gotta fight for that focus.

00:11:54.260 The funny way I like to think about it is multitasking.

00:11:57.480 It just means screwing up multiple things at once.

00:12:00.720 So this is what I suggest to create your perfect week.

00:12:03.100 The first area is start with the big rocks.

00:12:04.860 These are the non-negotiables.

00:12:06.080 These are the things that you know that if you get done,

00:12:08.780 everything else will be good.

00:12:10.240 This is the date nights, the workouts, the reading time,

00:12:13.140 the strategy meetings, the weekly rhythms with your teams,

00:12:15.740 the best practices for the best life.

00:12:18.300 The second area is understanding that theming your days

00:12:21.160 for different things like marketing, sales, strategy,

00:12:25.520 one-on-ones will help you understand

00:12:27.140 where to put things in your life on what days

00:12:29.540 so it's not a decision every time.

00:12:31.000 The third area is batch and block tasks together.

00:12:33.900 That ability to take your content creation

00:12:36.600 or all your conversations and batch them together

00:12:39.100 and block it in your calendar

00:12:40.260 into 30 or 45 minute meetings is a game changer.

00:12:43.520 And the most important is plan around your energy,

00:12:46.240 not just your time.

00:12:47.220 I know there's certain types of tasks I do in the morning

00:12:49.540 that fuels me to the next level of tasks,

00:12:52.240 that fuels me to the afternoon,

00:12:54.200 that fuels me to the nighttime with my family.

00:12:56.860 And if I did them out of sequence,

00:12:58.460 I wouldn't be good for anybody.

00:12:59.560 I wasn't gonna do this, 0.59

00:13:00.780 but it would be probably pretty shit of me not to do it.

00:13:03.500 Essentially, if you want my perfect week template,

00:13:05.560 what I used to structure my week every day,

00:13:07.940 just find me on Instagram, message me the word perfect,

00:13:10.640 and I'll send you the direct link to the doc.

00:13:12.940 No opt-in, no email, my gift to you.

00:13:14.980 Which brings us to hack number eight, gamify your work.

00:13:18.020 The reason why video games are so addictive

00:13:19.900 is because they have levels

00:13:21.540 and you visually see your progress when you're playing them.

00:13:24.500 And what I've learned in life, new levels, new devils,

00:13:26.800 and it'll make you want to progress

00:13:28.760 when you understand you're getting better.

00:13:30.540 So design your life where you can measure the wins.

00:13:33.440 You don't get distracted because you're bored.

00:13:35.600 You get distracted because you can't see your progress.

00:13:38.520 Progress is happiness.

00:13:40.620 Anybody that's struggling in life right now,

00:13:42.280 I know that if they made a little bit of progress

00:13:44.220 in their life, they would just feel better.

00:13:45.760 So let's gamify our work

00:13:47.840 so that we show up with focus and attention.

00:13:50.200 Number one, we gotta track our streaks.

00:13:52.520 Jelly Roll came out with this great song

00:13:54.280 about winning streaks, and I just love that philosophy

00:13:56.920 that if you measure yourself doing something

00:14:00.000 and you can go day after day after day

00:14:03.020 and just make it a simple win that day,

00:14:05.560 if it's 10 sales calls a day,

00:14:06.920 how many days can you go in a row?

00:14:08.800 My buddy Ben has been working out,

00:14:10.860 I think he said the other day,

00:14:12.520 1,200 days in a row he's worked out

00:14:14.920 and he's done his unrequired workout.

00:14:17.380 That's wild.

00:14:18.480 The second is you gotta create milestones for the rewards.

00:14:21.020 This is my favorite

00:14:21.880 because I like to buy things and go on trips.

00:14:23.700 I like to use milestones as a marker for rewarding myself

00:14:27.740 like vacations with my family or my friends

00:14:30.100 as a way to have something to build towards.

00:14:32.680 The third is make it visual.

00:14:34.020 I'm a fan of technology, but I will tell you

00:14:35.920 when you have that in front of your face

00:14:37.700 as a poster on your backdrop on your computer,

00:14:40.320 put it on your whiteboard.

00:14:41.240 I don't care where it is, but get it outside of your brain

00:14:43.340 and put it out in front of you

00:14:44.460 so you can see it every time.

00:14:45.720 That makes it fun.

00:14:47.000 The fourth is do it together.

00:14:48.660 The more people you can enroll into the process of winning,

00:14:52.900 you will create focus around your outcome

00:14:55.600 like you've never felt

00:14:56.500 because the truth is,

00:14:57.340 is you'll do more for other people,

00:14:58.760 especially if you're the person

00:14:59.900 that got them to start that competition

00:15:01.620 or that weight loss thing,

00:15:02.740 then you will do for yourself.

00:15:04.060 So having that group of people to do it together with

00:15:06.440 is a pro move.

00:15:07.600 Which brings us to hack number nine,

00:15:09.340 manage your energy.

00:15:10.560 Exhaust the body, tame the mind.

00:15:12.860 If you follow me on Instagram

00:15:14.080 and if you don't, you should

00:15:15.220 because I'm a good time.

00:15:16.100 You will see me post almost daily,

00:15:17.800 exhaust the body, tame the mind.

00:15:19.080 For me, my energy is a by-product of my habits.

00:15:22.000 and if I've got things going on in my mind

00:15:24.520 and I need to focus, I gotta first exhaust my body.

00:15:27.320 My morning routine is where I create

00:15:29.440 my proactive energy boost.

00:15:31.500 The first thing I do is focus on my process

00:15:34.220 for how I wake up, what I've decided to do.

00:15:36.580 It's in my calendar, I move my body, I read my books,

00:15:40.040 I ramp up my focus so that I can get my best work done.

00:15:43.800 I'm all about energy and there's two ways

00:15:46.000 that I make sure that my day gets the best of me.

00:15:48.480 First off is a proactive energy boost.

00:15:50.520 that is how i proactively start my day this is my morning routine this is the philosophy of

00:15:55.400 prioritizing the pump getting it on the calendar making sure my stuff's prepped if i got to work

00:15:59.960 out i put that stuff out the night before so when i wake up it's ready to go i don't have to have

00:16:04.360 decision fatigue the other one is reactive energy boost this is when i feel drained maybe my eyeballs

00:16:10.280 hurt i don't know why sometimes that happens and i just got to reset i mean the other day i was

00:16:14.040 giving a talk and a guy asked me he's like hey man how do you deal with like feeling lethargic

00:16:18.760 and tired and like you've got the weight of the world on you and i'm like dude get up front do

00:16:22.940 some push-ups and i did the push-ups with them and we sat there and i said keep going keep going

00:16:26.880 keep going until he failed and when he failed i said on your knees and he went on his knees

00:16:31.340 and then we're all done i said now how do you feel he's like nine out of ten i said that took

00:16:36.040 46 seconds most people don't realize they can reset their energy because you don't have energy

00:16:40.580 you create energy i can prove it if i told you you had 10 million dollars cash in the bank taxes

00:16:46.040 paid how would you feel that feeling where'd that come from up here the other thing i love to do is

00:16:51.960 walking meetings or scooter meetings all my one-on-ones are done on a scooter why a lot more

00:16:56.640 fun which brings us to hack number 10 find your flow you see i grew up thinking i was broken i was

00:17:02.400 told i was broken needed medication put on ritalin when i was 11 and what i've realized it wasn't that

00:17:09.280 my mind was broken is that i just needed to find a different way to work that worked for me so here's

00:17:14.480 what I know your journey will be very unique nobody else can tell you how to do it I can give

00:17:19.420 you some thoughts but you got to figure it out for you take the time to reflect journal what

00:17:24.740 you're thinking about what's working what's not when I did this I felt really good and then

00:17:28.720 constantly tweak that's what I do I look at my calendar because it's designed I said that felt

00:17:33.520 good and some things used to give me energy that was very productive and all of a sudden now based

00:17:38.440 on where I'm at in life it doesn't work for me anymore and you're allowed to iterate you're

00:17:42.740 allowed to take stuff out and try new things on like new clothes? Does it fit well? If it doesn't

00:17:48.140 take it off, go find something different. The big idea though, is don't give up. Don't give up on

00:17:53.020 you. I know that if you master the ability to find your energy, your focus, and your flow,

00:17:58.560 your dreams exist on the other side of that. Now, if you want to learn the eight habits that

00:18:02.640 will fix 98% of your problems, click here and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - May 30, 2025

How to Be So Productive it Feels ILLEGAL

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