In this video, the presenter discusses how to make significant progress in a short amount of time by focusing on a single goal, or focal point. They emphasize the importance of identifying this focal point and eliminating anything that doesn’t align with it. The presenter suggests multiplying the actions that contribute to the focal point and doing them more precisely. They also encourage creating an environment that supports the goal and recommitting to the execution of the plan whenever focus is lost. Ultimately, the presenter believes that by following this approach, individuals can achieve more progress in one week than most people do in a year.
Key Insights:
- Identify your single focal point – the one goal that matters the most right now.
- Eliminate everything that does not align with your focal point. Cut out obligations, friendships, and habits that are not relevant.
- Focus on the actions that are relevant to your focal point and do them more precisely or multiply them.
- Make your environment as conducive as possible to your focal point. Invest in items or changes that support your goals.
- Visualize your ideal day and create a schedule that aligns with your strategic goal.
- Recommit to your plan each time you come back into awareness. Forgive yourself for losing track and refocus on your focal point.
- Keep faith in the process, even during the boring and repetitive days, as breakthroughs will eventually happen.
Transcript
Okay, where am I? I’m in a car. I’m driving. No, wait. I’m running. I’m running, and it’s cold. I’m running because I’m at war with Father Time, and I’m losing. Books, the internet, refining your ideas. These are assets I can use. These…I’m chasing something, but I’m afraid it’s something that can never be caught. Who is this guy, is your business partner? Trust him. You need a system, because of my condition. It’s hard for me to remember what I’m working on, what’s most important to me, and what I’m going to do to achieve it. You feel like an unreliable narrator all the time. It’s even hard to keep track of the days and the weeks. They all just sort of blur. But as soon as you remember who you are, you catch these moments. You’ve also got to remember your process and somehow have faith in it, because if you can do that, then where was I?
Alex Ramosi recently put out this tweet. He said, „One of the most common mistakes I made in my early entrepreneur days was doing the right thing, but either at the wrong time, not enough times, or for not enough time. So, contextual advice is King.“ And for most people, indeed for myself for many years, the biggest mistake I made was not pursuing the right goal, considering where I was in life. If you can do that, you’ll make more progress in a week than most people do in a year. And if you don’t, you’ll kind of just be at the same place for years on end. It’s like playing a game like Legend of Zelda. You can walk around the full map, but you can’t access certain temples until you have the right item from a previous temple, from like a previous portion of the game. So, you can’t take on Gerudo Desert or the water temple without a slingshot and a boomerang. And to get those things, you need to go through the Forest Temple first. And people so often in life, they try to do the water temple or Gerudo Desert before they do the Forest Temple, or even before they pick up their sword. You have to play the right area of the map for where you’re at in life, right? But if you can figure out what to focus on at your current stage in life, then you can genuinely make more progress in one week than the other person makes in a full year. And that’s what I want to cover in this video: how you can make more progress in one week than most people do in 12 months.
So, the first idea I want to share with you in regards to this is identifying that single focal point. The focal point is one of the most fundamental elements in interior design. Put simply, it’s like the star of the room. At least, I think this comes from architecture. It’s the first place viewers‘ eyes should land when they enter the room, and it’s the emphasis point around which you build the rest of your design. Now, our lives have various focal points, and there’s that one lever that you need to focus on first. Gary Keller in his book „The One Thing“ would call this your one thing. The one thing that you achieve by which everything else becomes easier or unnecessary. Or Greg McEwen in „Essentialism“ would say the same thing. You need to whittle down to the single most important thing. Or one of my friends, Anthony, he put me onto this quote by Marcus Aurelius in „Meditations“. He says, „If you want tranquility, do less“, which gives a double satisfaction of doing less but better. So instead of having five goals that you’re working towards or even three, literally what if you were forced to whittle it down to just one? And the one single goal that matters the most right now. In a previous video on how to glow up as a guy, I call this your next strategic move. And in this season of my life, the idea that I believe most strongly in is like, „What is that single next strategic move?“
Examples of a focal point. Your next strategic move could be gaining a certification that will make you more money, taking on a new habit that will help you with your fitness goals, structuring your day in a new way to do more meaningful work, or finding a new inspired location. It’s crazy how much one location or one space that you add into your life can dramatically change everything about how you feel about your life in existence.
So, my own strategic move that I’m working towards right now, I’m like one month into it and hopefully that goal will be accomplished by June, is to get to sub-10% body fat. I’m sitting at around 13% right now. I’ve been really committed to this diet, so I have been leaning out. It feels almost overly selfish to set this vanity metric as a target, but I came to realize one of the things that had held me back a lot in my pursuit of any film or TV work, or even working as a director, was the fact that in the last few years, I’d sort of put on some weight. And it wasn’t even that much. Like a year ago, I was probably at 20% body fat, even as of this December, probably 19% body fat. But the camera is so punishing on someone who isn’t quite lean, like super lean. And the world that I want to work in is such a visual medium that there are all these hidden advantages to being lean. In fact, my star YouTube client, Anthony Vecino, who I have been working with for six months, in fact, in six months, we got him to a hundred thousand subscribers from 200 to a hundred thousand subscribers, just over 11 videos. I had actually told this to him at some point. I was like, „The fact that you, in the midst of making videos with me, you got super, super lean. Like he got down to like 6% body fat, 6-7%“. He just started looking so great on camera, and every shoutout would get, he just looked so correct for the camera that even his thumbnails, like all these subtle qualities, looked really on point. And it was really easy for me to make like banger thumbnails for him. And so his views started getting like really amazing. And I was like, „Dude, I think this actually has a huge correlation with your success“. And so in no small kind of measure, he sort of inspired me to go for the same because I realized in a world that is visual and in the visual medium that I work in, where I do want to work on big commercials and make short films one day, a big thing that had been holding me back is that I didn’t look super svelt and like great on camera. So anyway, that is my current focal point. And I have goals after that that are more business-driven, less health and fitnessy, or even like vanity metric-wise, but I actually deduced that this is probably the best thing I could achieve for myself right now. And that’s the other thing. The focal point you achieve usually isn’t life-changing, it’s just pretty good. Like, „Okay, that would be cool“. Like from 13% down to sub-10%, it’s not that much different. But it is like very achievable, and it is a notable improvement. And so wherever you’re at, you’ve got to find that one thing. And you have to find a way to get yourself excited about that one thing, even though ultimately what you may want is something much, much bigger. But you have to get yourself excited about that one next level that you’re trying to get to in three months and put all of your energy into that.
So maybe this means you make $40,000 a year right now, and you know you’re three months of study away from making like 70-80K. You could take a tech boot camp or take a digital marketing course online, or even complete some college classes and graduate and put all of your effort into applying for the right positions. Maybe your strategic move right now is getting from $20 an hour, $40K a year, to $70 or $80K or if you’re at $70 or $80 to cross into $100K a year. You could probably achieve that within three to six months if you just learn the right skills and apply for the right positions or present your business in a way where you can get work to get you those rates. And while you immediately might be like, „Yeah, that’d be great. You know, anyone who’s already making 80 to be then making 110“, most of the time you’re kind of just like, „Alright, that’s nice. You know, that’s good“. You’re not like overwhelmingly pumped about it. You know, it’s not like being a millionaire or making like a hundred thousand dollars a month. But it is that next thing that you can achieve in three to six months. And so you’ve got to find that thing, whatever it might be for you, and go for it. And this doesn’t just have to be money or health. If you’re super lonely right now, you don’t have any friends or you feel really disconnected, you don’t have a sense of community, your one move right now is probably finding a space, like an organization, that you can take part in in person and then immersing yourself in that culture and being someone in that culture who can be socially competent. It can be anything in life. It’s whatever is just on the cusp of super achievable, very, very achievable, but still a little bit exciting. If the goal you’re setting, if the focal point you’re setting is too exciting, like, „Oh, that would be unbelievable. Oh my God, that would change my life“, it’s probably too big of a goal. It’s probably actually not the next focal point.
The next idea I want to share with you is eliminate everything that does not line up with this focal point, and be willing to be radical about this. You might not realize this right now, but once you have identified the one thing that you need to achieve in the next three months, maybe five months or six months, your life is probably full of a ton of stuff that you’re doing, obligations that you’re keeping up with, friendships that you feel like you need to maintain, even the mental pressure of having someone in your life that you feel like you need to text them back because you owe them a response. It could be like a low-ticket client, it could be any number of things. Aside from maybe the fact that if you have a wife and kids or family responsibility, like you genuinely have responsibility, you should eliminate everything that is not a responsibility. If you don’t owe someone anything, cut them out. If they’re not a part of the focal point, and this is where the sacrifice part of this comes in, because not only for our own goals, but for the sake of having a varied, interesting life or feeling kind of like keeping up with people or keeping up with hobbies, you feel like you should keep things on. You feel kind of bad for taking things out of your life. But you found your one thing. Just do the one thing. And if you can really commit yourself, get rid of the stuff that isn’t that thing.
Examples of things to get rid of: Number one is dating. It can be an asset at times to date around, but a lot of guys are really interested in sorting out the romantic lives. But if other elements of your life you have identified as the focal point first, then probably it’s one of the best things to get rid of. It can be exciting to date, but for instance, if fitness is your number one goal, if your goal like me is to get leaner or maybe even to put on muscle, whatever it might be, it’s hard to eat well when you go out. Maybe you know you are successful and you have a great interaction, maybe you like end up being intimate with someone. Usually, that means a late night and a bad night of sleep, and that destroys your next day of productivity. It genuinely just takes away from your focal point or worries about texting someone, them texting back, and then logistics coordinating something. And for a lot of people, you know, myself included for a long time, it’s like this thing you can’t help but be obsessed with. But if you get rid of it, it’s like you’re taking off the brakes on your life. The next thing is travel. I don’t understand the appeal of travel, really, outside of work and health. I have no interest in just going somewhere to see a building or a rock, or even like a concert, unless it really means something to you. But I would only travel for either business, like I’m being paid to do something so I’m going somewhere, or for health, maybe I’m leaving the brutal Minnesota winters for a little bit of time, so that I can run more and be healthier. But a lot of people, you hear them say, like travel, like they love traveling and they want to experience new things. To me, that kind of implies a lack of focus. Like you don’t really know what your next focal point is. Maybe travel and experiences will be relevant at some stage in my life, after I’ve achieved everything I want, but if your goal is health, fitness, money, I don’t think travel, for the most part, helps most people.
The next one is fake friends, or just kind of like those friends who are okay, but you don’t adore them. This is a really hard one because sometimes we have lingering friendships and we want to be accommodating, and it’s kind of nice to have people in your life or people want to meet you. But in my life, I guess at the stage that I feel like I’m in currently, I have a lot of people reaching out to me for different things, sometimes to hang out, sometimes because they want help with their YouTube channel. When I ignore or say no or don’t engage with people who aren’t relevant to my focal point, I feel kind of bad. At times this is definitely a tough one, but I’m reminded of this song from Soldier Boy. I think it’s called „Yacht Trick Ya,“ where he just talks about people coming up to him as Paparazzi, and they’re like, „Hey, Soulja Boy.“ And he’s like, „Ah, get out of my way, get out of my way.“ Like you have to almost be mean-spirited to take those people who are time-sucks out of your life so that you can just focus on what is relevant. The highest status, the most high-achieving people you know, they probably don’t make themselves super available to everyone. They’re not texting back right away because they’re so dialed in on their one thing that if you’re not relevant to that one thing, they don’t really engage. And you kind of have to be willing to be that ruthless.
And one thing I have to tell myself all the time when I feel this way, when it feels like, „Uh, I’m not engaging with people and I should have gotten back to this person,“ is like choose yourself, choose yourself and your focal point. It’s tough, but it’s okay to feel like a jerk or an asshole because you can’t get back to everyone if you’re really dialed in on your one thing. And then the last one is bad habits. So you probably do have some bad habits that are holding you back from your focal point. You probably already know them. So it’s not useful to necessarily say, „Okay, just get rid of your bad habit.“ I found that it’s actually best not to attack my bad habits directly, but rather fill up my schedule with so much good stuff, like stuff that is related to the work I want to do. Just literally fill my schedule up to the brim that it leaves me very little room for that bad habit. Back in the day, especially like high school and college, it was pornography for me. That was a bad habit. I would engage in it, and the seasons of my life where I am just not even a part of my life at all, you know, it was like the habit was kicked for a long period of time, it’s because I was just busy. Like I got myself busy. I got myself really immersed with my work. Like I personally have not drank any alcohol in like three months. And unlike last year, this year, I’m not trying to be sober. I’ll have a drink if the occasion calls for it, but it just is so not relevant to my goals that I don’t even think about alcohol or drinking. Like my schedule is completely filled up to the brim with stuff I have to do. I’m like, „Oh, I can’t really drink. Like, I have to train. I have like two training sessions tomorrow. I just can’t do this.“ Which brings me to the next idea. Identify the actions that are relevant to that focal point, the best actions that are relevant to that focal point. And find ways to either multiply them or do them more precisely.
So, multiplication, just doing more of the good stuff, is gonna get you faster results. And that’s completely relevant to the quote that I got from Alex Ramosi at the start of this video. Doing the right thing, but just doing more of it. If you can get yourself to cut out the actions that are not relevant to the focal point, then you can have the space to just do the right stuff. And do it more. Now, the other thing that you can do with the extra time or the mental bandwidth that you would have from eliminating things that are not relevant to that singular focal point is to do things more precisely. Precision is actually enormously valuable. And this is the part of the video where a proper pitch for my YouTube coaching Academy will come in. One of the reasons that some of my clients have gotten like insanely good results is because when they’ve worked with me, their precision about the right things has increased. In fact, my most successful clients, they only upload twice a month, two videos. Maybe three videos a month. But those videos are incredibly precise. It’s one reason why my star child, Anthony Vecino, we got him to a hundred thousand subscribers in just 11 videos, six months and 11 videos. And now, in just a little over six months, he is sitting around 125,000 subscribers. The average views per video is around 300,000 views a video. And the reason we were able to get him such great results is because each video was incredibly precise.
You know, I have a strategy, a formula that I try to execute on to get good views for myself and for others, for the people who work with me. And most people, especially people who play the volume game of YouTube, you know, short-form content, long-form videos, lots and lots of videos, they’re also on Tick Tock, they’re on Instagram, they’re doing reels. There’s no precision. It’s like this splatter paint method, like you just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall. Maybe something will stick. Whereas I think it’s better to be like a sniper, where you just really, really decide what your target is. You hone in, you laser focus, and then you hit that one thing to the best of your ability. Even if it doesn’t hit every single time, that precision compounds over time, where someone with a YouTube video at initial upload, it only got 2,000 views, and it stayed at 2,000 views for four months. But because that video was made with such incredible precision, with time, it actually trickles up in views. It actually catches up. You would see this on my channel, especially in good seasons of my channel. It’s very precise. I’m not like uploading a ton. I’m just uploading very tactically and trying to make YouTube videos that I’m proud of. I’m scripting very tactically, and that precision becomes very powerful.
By the way, if you are interested in coaching with me, either through our group coaching Academy or one-on-one, there’s an application form in the description box. At this point, we’ve gotten a lot of people great results.
Hey, my name is Jed Hearn. I’m a fantasy author, and I run a writing advice YouTube channel. And Captain Sinbad’s YouTube coaching program has been life-changing for me, easily the best investment that I’ve ever made. And I’ve recently had a month where I’ve crossed over $10,000 in revenue. And that has really come from the business development strategies that are inside the program as well. So not only are you learning how to become a really good YouTuber, and in fact, the very first video I had in the program got over 200,000 views, which is really awesome, but you’re also building out a really strong, robust business back end. Our coaching teaches both the getting of the views and working on a strong business back end. We’re very selective about who we let in. You can apply for coaching with us in the description box. And if we think you’re a good fit, we will reach out to you.
So, whatever your focal point actions are, figure out what those things are, and then try to have as much of your schedule just be those actions. You will know that you’re doing the right actions. You will know that you are on task with what your day should be looking like when your days feel repetitive, boring, but also satisfying after a little bit of completion. That’s the key to success with all of this. Your life will feel extra boring. It’ll feel like you’re doing too much of one thing. You have very little balance by comparison because you’ve gotten rid of so much, and you’re just very aggressively working on a couple things. It feels like, „Dang, is this all I’m doing? Like, I do so much of this every day. Shouldn’t I be, like, going to Bingo night with my friends or something?“ But that’s how it should feel. Because if you feel that way, if you feel like your days are repetitive and boring and you’re just doing those focal point actions, you know you’re making great strides. You know you’ve just cut out so much stuff that takes away your time and your energy and your focus. You’re just doing the right actions so violently, so often, and so precisely that you know three months from now, you’re gonna have a big breakthrough. And that’s what this whole process looks like. It feels like repetitive, boring, repetitive, boring, repetitive. And then three months later, boom, you break through a huge plateau.
Focal point actions for me based on my current goals: hypertrophy lifting, strength lifting, running, sleeping eight hours a night, getting the right groceries, and meal prepping. Meal prepping is actually a huge part of my process right now, which I feel so stupid, like going to Trader Joe’s and picking up the right groceries. But based on my current goal, it’s a very, very relevant activity. Logging my calories in MyFitnessPal, drinking a gallon of water daily, coaching my clients, delegating tasks, doing a weekly planning session with my team. Those are my focal point actions. I’ll tell you, my life right now is more boring than it’s ever been. And that’s how I can truly feel that I’m making strides, I’m making progress.
The next idea then is that you need to make your environment as conducive as possible. So, the average age of the person who watches me is between 25 and 34. So, I understand that every person is going to have different amounts of time and energy to, like, making their space feel inspired. And for anyone whose money is tight or if you have, like, lived with roommates or your parents still, it becomes difficult to use your money or your time to make your environment good. I would always feel frustrated when I would watch YouTube videos and people would talk about changing your environment, and I was like, „Dude, I mean, I live with two roommates, or I live with my parents, and, like, I just can’t change my environment that much“. So, fair enough. If you’re in that situation, you live in a small apartment, you’re trying to just make ends meet or something, fine. But to the degree that you’re capable of, you should try to make your environment where you do your work 100% conducive to that one focal point. Make it as conducive as possible. And if you set the intention, you can actually do this no matter where you are in life. You know, like, if you’re a college student and you live with a roommate, make sure that your roommate has the same values and actions that you do. And if he or she doesn’t, get rid of that roommate. Make sure that the dorm hall you’re staying in, you know, people don’t stay up late partying every night. If your number one goal is getting good results, getting good grades in college, you probably shouldn’t be staying in that party dorm. Like, make a fit. Like, be really mean, complain to the right people, to get out of an environment that is not conducive to your goals. If you live at home with your parents and your Indian mom makes delicious Indian food with canola oil and she only cooks with seed oil, she has her own theories about what’s healthy for you and everything she feeds you is delicious, but it just makes you fat. Maybe you need to leave home. Okay, that’s what I had to do. I love my mom, man, and she’s an amazing cook, but it was very difficult for me to make any progress with my fitness, really living at home. Maybe the environment change is getting your own place that feels nice and inspired. And if that’s not an option because of money, well, your strategic goal right now probably should be to make more money, assuming you are someone who has a little bit of control over his or her environment. Do what you can to make it super, super conducive. Invest in items that move you towards your results. For me, some of the items that actually help me that I’ve been invested in over the years is wardrobe. Like, I invest in a good wardrobe now. I dress really well, especially in my loungewear when I’m at the gym, because that’s where I spend most of my time, either wearing nice loungewear or at the gym. And it makes me feel like a CEO or an actor or a model, like an attractive fitness guy when my apparel is correct. You know, it sounds superficial, but there have been a lot of studies that say, like, the wardrobe you wear really affects the way you think and the way you perform. And then the other one is tech. You know, invest in good equipment for your work. If you’re a software engineer, ideally, you should have a great desk, a great monitor, a robust computer, a really fast internet connection. For a lot of my YouTube coaching clients who have their own places and a little bit of disposable income, I tell them, you need to invest in having nice interior decor. Make your space look as attractive as possible. In fact, one of the reasons why so many rooms in my house are now painted like charcoal walls or dark blue walls is because off-white doesn’t look as good on camera. But a little bit of color, it just makes your skin pop even more. If the place is well decorated, it’s clean, then it’s easier to film footage. You know, it’s easier to film B-roll. The video’s perceived quality becomes a lot better, despite the fact that it’s just the vibe that feels correct. So do what you can to invest and make that environment as good as you possibly can.
A thought exercise that could be very, very useful for you at this point. If you want to just literally pause the video and go through this. Ask yourself, for the strategic move for that one focal point that I am working towards, what should my ideal day look like? I’ve got obligations, but I’ve also got just like a day, I’ve got some amount of agency. What should my days look like? So for whatever strategic goal you are working towards, I want you to visualize what that ideal person does in a day, and then write out their schedule. And then bring in like visuals and descriptions of just how that person conducts him or herself and what spaces they have in an environment, like what does it look like to be the most imbalanced, like all-in version of committed to this focal point? If you take 15 minutes to brainstorm and visualize and really seep yourself into the reality of someone who’s just living out this one objective for the next three months, see what you come up with, even with your current circumstance and current environment. You’ll realize there are so many micro tweaks that you could be making that’ll make the progress towards that goal so much faster.
And then the last idea I want to share with you here is that you need to recommit to the execution of the plan each time you come back into awareness. The problem with what I’m saying here is that there’s always some chaos in the universe that eventually gets in the way, especially for the step of eliminating things that are not that one goal. And it can be super mundane. Your process, your focal point action was to learn some programming language, but then you just got hungry and sleepy and you took a nap. Maybe you worked out too hard in the gym. Like, you know, you did hypertrophy legs and then you’re just kind of in a haze the rest of the day and you can’t focus well. The key with all of this is to come back to awareness as soon as possible. Because you are going to lose the awareness of this goal. It’s like that movie of „Memento“. Even though the character knows his purpose and what he’s working towards is extremely emotionally charged, right, he’s trying to find the guy who killed his wife, he still has to come back to awareness. And so, even though you can repeatedly get excited about that one focal point that you’re working towards, you’re gonna come out of a haze in life every once in a while. You cannot rearrive in this moment all the time. And as soon as you’re back, you have to kind of forgive yourself for losing track and then just recommit. Like in that moment, boom, like, „I’m here now, recommit to the plan.“ You’ve got to remind yourself of your strategic goal once again. And then on a piece of paper, just write down what you need to do three hours to get back on track. If the achievement of the goal is three months out, you’re gonna fall off track. But as soon as you come back into awareness, if you can just refocus completely as if everything that happened in your life before that moment doesn’t exist anymore, you just have this moment, you’re starting again now. You will achieve that focal point. And I found that when you live this way, it’s a process of faith because it’s just so boring. You know, like, on any given day, it’s so boring and you feel like you’re constantly doubting yourself, you wonder if you’re wasting your time. But you find that every three months, this breakthrough does happen. Like, you have a huge breakthrough, and it’s how you end up accomplishing more in a week. Like, those weeks where you feel like nothing is happening, actually a lot is happening. It’s just under the surface. And then it only reveals itself every once in a while. And the fun part of this is that, you know, once you achieve one, you get to pick the next focal point. And just like in The Legend of Zelda, you got the boomerang, you got the boomerang. So you realize your next focal point is that you get to do the water temple. You do get to do the next thing. You get to reset these seasons of your life where you’re actually working on something new, in the next level of something every once in a while. But on any given day, it’s just completely dialed in. It’s just like very monk mode discipline. And so for those of us who are willing to pare down to that one essential goal for today, for the season of your life, and then just go all in on it, to us, I say greatness awaits.
