Monk Mode - What It Takes To Win.

so ladies and gentlemen i don't actually need that what does it actually take to win that is what we're going to be covering in today's bonus module now this module comes directly from agency navigator which if you guys don't know what agency navigator is well let me remind you [Music] you ready to begin let's do it i'm a little tired i'm gonna get me started i put so much on the line for this thing and i'm about to find out very soon whether all of this was worth it i really had to go back to

the drawing board and not only think about how i can make the program the best in the market because we went ahead and accomplished that last year but i just had this gnawing feeling inside of me at the end of 2018 that like i wasn't really doing anything groundbreaking was i i had a course that was it i didn't have an education company i didn't have a mission i didn't have a team we didn't have a common collective vision i had to dive deep into how do my students learn best why do some get results

why do some not and i wanted to build a platform that would fundamentally change the way our students learn [Music] when you're trying to build something that's better than all the learning platforms that are out there it's just hard you're going up against some of the biggest competitors in the industry who've had years to do this and we're trying to turn this around in like months [Music] it's been a long expensive and grueling 13 months but i know this thing will be worth it anyways just a friendly reminder that you only have until midnight on

sunday to get your 500 discount for agency navigator back on to today's bonus episode for week two of whale season i have been doing monk mode and i guess i only really started calling a monk mode a year year and a half ago but i've been doing monk mode in various different forms ever since i was 14 so for the last seven years uh going through these sort of intense bouts of just focus and just blocking out all distractions and um you know really today i'm going to give you the science that and as i

said really show you what it takes to win and succeed at this game so without further ado let's go ahead and roll today's special bonus episode of whale season so ladies and gentlemen there are certain words there are certain phrases that just stick and when i started talking about monk mode in 2020 i would have people sending me like stories or posts from people like three months later they weren't even following me talking about monk mode oh i'm about to i'm in monk mode i'm in this i'm in that i would have people literally sending

me stuff from twitter about threads and people mentioning oh this is my new monk mode protocol et cetera et cetera and for me like i was so happy to see that um because i think there's such immense power in just like even stating to just putting it out there right even if it's kind of to yourself that hey i'm in a period of my life of intense focus maybe even isolation right and it's it's i'm in this phase that's all-encompassing and that's really what monk mode is so i know most of you guys are gonna

be very very excited to uh you know for me to kind of unpack some of the stuff that comes as a part of monk mode um you know really how to get to a place where monk mode works for you and also how to almost build out your own monk mold protocol because that's one of the biggest issues i've seen with other protocols out there is they're so rigid so with no further ado let's get straight into it [Applause] today's teachings clearing distractions so focus prevails make your workhorse usable clear out your phone optimizing your

work environment the natural flows of life and how to bend time monk mode and its use case and then finally how to develop your own version so so one of the things i'm known for is my monastic focus which is kind of how that whole monk mode thing came about you know really just my uh unwavering focus and over the last four years i've tried everything right and we'll talk a little bit more about that in the next module um but i've spent you know over two hundred thousand dollars on just like health optimization sleep

nutrition detox et cetera et cetera you know outside of that 200 000 i spent all my health i probably spent another 150 000 on like different desk setups and computer setups and different keyboards and mics and and different office setups and just in you know really optimizing my environment and optimizing my work output and the conclusion i've arrived to after four years is that truly less is more now i'm gonna show you all of the the little uh tricks and tactics you can use to have incredible unwavering focus but before we get into that really

a lot of what focus is is just starving distraction look ladies and gentlemen there are distractions everywhere whether it's some dummy like me shouting at you when you're trying to watch youtube or having your room be messy or constant notifications on your phone whatever it may be most people just have too much [ __ ] in their lives when they try to go online and learn a new productivity system you know they try to download a new app and what they do is they add even more clutter to their lives ladies and gentlemen you need

to remove clutter from your life and then safeguard your energy from distractions because they're everywhere the reason horses have blinders on is actually to protect themselves from outside factors the only way they can focus is to literally minimize their line of sight and that's what we need to do so we're going to start off with some very easy wins to begin with and then from there we'll go on to some of the bigger moves and bigger changes that you can make and the best place to start is you know the thing that you'll be spending

most of your time on which is your computer because you know it's funny right out of the box your computer actually isn't very conducive to work so the first thing that we are going to do is we're going to implement facebook feed eradicator now it doesn't matter who you are you should be implementing this and even if you want to just get to a five figure year earner like this is so important so facebook feed eradicator is a chrome extension that allows you to use facebook on your desktop without seeing any ads or seeing anyone's

posts ladies and gentlemen this is a must there is quite literally zero value in checking in on what other people are up to on facebook now the next one is unhook and this is remove youtube recommended videos now once again everyone should implement this and this is if you're even just trying to get to five figures a year now this extension will allow you to block all youtube home and right side recommendations as well as comments now youtube can be a decent source of light information and entertainment but the best thing to do is to

subscribe to 10 to 20 channels that aren't full of fluff and just look at that the other thing that i do personally is i actually have um home recommendations turned off i have right side recommendations turned off but actually leave on comments because sometimes i find it interesting to read what the comments are saying in a video and by the way i used to use a different chrome plugin and then they got like you know they're no longer around so just in general if you look up on the chrome store if you just look up

remove youtube recommendations you know there will be a few options that come up but unhook should still work next thing is focus for mac okay and once again this is everyone should be using this and once again this is also even if you just want to make fi gets a five figure year earner you should implement this now it's not enough to say that you're not going to go on youtube or facebook etc you have to put systems in place to ensure it doesn't happen so i use focus which has an amazing hard lock mode

okay so as i said just look up focus for mac um and with this hard lock mode you select what websites you want to block and then the time frame and then it just locks it okay so you won't be able to access the website after that so you can actually set specific websites so you know you can for example you can go on everything except for you know like let's say for example you're running ads for clients you know the business manager that you'll be able to go on because it's like business. facebook but

like facebook.com you won't be able to go on or um let's say you don't want to go on instagram or youtube right but you need to be able to go on facebook let's say you're doing some lead sourcing or let's say you have a profile funnel and and you know you're messaging people on there whatever it may be the point is that you can have the flexibility to choose what websites you go on and what websites you don't go on now if you said if you're prospecting leads or doing outreach obviously do not turn on

focus okay like if you're uh prospecting through uh instagram and facebook like obviously don't turn it on okay but when you're watching this course turn it on because there's no reason for you to be able to access youtube facebook or instagram while you're watching this course okay now when you're setting up your website or you're building out your onboarding or working on getting your uh your client's results or you know doing hiring like anything that's like some a part of systems right also turn it on right because the thing is you won't you don't need

instagram or twitter or access to youtube while you're doing this stuff okay now sidenote you can actually block the main facebook url as i said and just leave the facebook url which means you'll be able to use it even when you're using focus next thing brain dot fm now you know even you know everyone should be using this as i said even if you're making zero and if you want to get the five figures a year earner now i have spotify blocked using focus and you can actually block apps um when i work because you

know working to rap or other music is the worst idea ever and it's funny because sometimes i'll even have tasks that are maybe a little bit more menial and i'm like oh you know what it's fine i'll just play this album like even if it's not rap or anything like i'll just play this classical rock album and just the lyrics mess with you so that's why i use brain fm and brain fm only and there's many tracks on there and um yeah as i said the main issue with spotify is that main home screen can

hook you into listening into someone's new album uh because the thing is they'll give you notifications about people you know artists that you like and when they've got new music coming up so as i said you can spend time doing that or the other issue is you know you might spend so long trying to find the right hi-fi beats playlist so instead use brain.fm it has tons of good research backing the results people get while listening to their stuff and as i said it's the only thing i listen to now when i work and i've

been using this thing for three yeah going on three and a half years now the next thing is to fully clear your desktop okay fully clear it now the way that i organize my desktop is i have a triage folder so triage you know when you go to hospital you get sent into triage first that way they know where to put you so i have triage and that's my main folder so within that i have subfolders so everything kind of goes in there and then outside of that uh on mac you can put and i'll

get tristan to like find some clips from online or something and lace it in you can actually do stacks so you can turn on the stacks option on mac which means that like if there's it almost categorizes things for you like you know music or like audio uh video uh files right so that way if anything ever ends up on your desktop it's not cluttered it actually kind of compresses it and then puts it into subfolders and then you can put it into triage and organize it the way that you want so i said i'm

not going to tell you how to organize your desktop but the point is there should never be more than six items on your desktop like there's there should never be a reason and that's the case so i said clean your desktop but you know usually i find people with um really messy desktops also usually have very messy minds so the next thing to talk about is unplugging from your phone and wow do people struggle with this ladies and gentlemen the most important thing about your phone is that it's organized okay minimalism if you don't use

it every day then don't have it on there okay also do not have anything on there that could potentially distract you next thing is screen time so make sure you add the screen time widget to your home screen as a widget you know on your iphone and i know on android they do this as well this is the first step in realizing you have a problem all right because this will bring your screen time to your attention and for a lot of people their screen time will be eight hours a day right even while you're

trying to build your agency okay most people don't realize how crazy their screen time actually is so when you've got your screen time sitting there right in front of you um on your phone then it'll really start to bring it to your attention mindful okay so stay aware of all the time that you're spending on different platforms and what you should do as well especially on iphone is you can set limits on certain apps so let's say you do like using twitter right and you you get some good information from twitter or you know you

do like to you know you still don't want to drop instagram entirely or you're not ready to you know maybe you you start uh tapering down so if you look on your screen time and you see that hey on average i spend an hour and a half a day on instagram maybe you taper that down so you know for the next two weeks or for next week it's an hour and then from there you put it to 30 minutes and you set these screen limits right and i said you can do that on iphones uh

and use case right in general as an agency owner you don't really need to use your phone for much your phone and social media will most likely be the single biggest detractor to your success if you let it okay so if you're gonna use social media for prospecting and for reaching out to clients just use it for that and the best part is even with instagram you can do all the stuff on your computer now like you don't even need to open your phone to prospect so so for that reason pull out your phone type

in instagram and just delete it no god you know there really is no purpose for instagram for 70 of you guys you're not going to use instagram for outreach for the 30 of you that do as i said now the the desktop version of it is so good that you can just do it on your desktop and that way you know when you're not between work periods you're not checking your phone every you know every 30 minutes like a like a frantic i don't even know what to call you so um as i said just

go ahead and delete off your phone there's no reason for it the next thing is open up facebook and just go ahead and delete it off of your phone because once again it is great for prospecting but the um desktop web version is very good and they even have a like a app version now like an actual dedicated application so there's no reason for you really um to have facebook on your personal phone so really a long story short is avoid using your phone as much as possible and also understand the moment that you turn

it off of airplane mode or you turn it on in the morning and it's funny because for 80 000 people their phone is already on like it's on throughout the night in my opinion and from my experience you lose 50 of your focus instantly right it's funny like i have two phones people know that i have two phones one with literally only four applications on it no one knows my number so that's just so you know from like when i wake up 6 30 until uh 1 pm when i turn on my other phone it's

got everything else on um you know if for whatever reason i need to get an uber i need to order something or like i need to search something on my phone for whatever reason right i've got something that's non-distracting so i've got a few key apps on there and it's funny even when i turn on my phone uh at 1 pm and before like even like i even turn it on right and notifications come in like i feel that rush of cortisol because because i know that there's something on there that is gonna rob me

of my focus so i even feel that cortisol come up so that's that as i said i have two phones obviously you don't need to get two phones or if you do just make the other one like just get like a really cheap used phone for like 150 bucks or 200 bucks right i guess you can even use an ipod um and if you don't do that then at least you know just you know start off with a challenge for the first hour of waking up don't turn on your phone right or have your phone

on airplane mode and just keep pushing you know keep kicking that can down the road right and get it to a point where as i said you could wake up and you know in my case for the first six seven hours of the day sometimes even eight hours my phone isn't turned on because there's just no need for it like i don't need my phone to run my business and the challenge that i want to give you is get into this mindset of like getting addicted to seeing how low you can get your screen time

like just just see how low you can get it um and this and make that a little challenge to yourself my next instruction to you is something that i know you're gonna throw a hissy fit about but i want you to delete youtube off of your iphone and then let's say if you have a tablet like an ipad and by the way guys look you're never gonna do any productive work on your ipad or your iphone in terms of watching youtube anyways like if there is a use case for youtube which there is the use

case is sitting down at your desk right and you know having like a notion or a note-taking app and or you know google drive and typing notes on specific videos that you add to your watch later or if it's light entertainment than just specific channels so i want you to do that then i want you to go to youtube and i want you to unsubscribe from every single channel except for 10. you're allowed 10 channels and i think i'm subscribed to okay i will say i've broken that rule but also i have a lot more

uh you know i have a lot of self-discipline so i'm subscribed to maybe around 15 channels and by the way guys feel free to unsub for me i don't mind okay i see so many people i think youtube does so much good but i also think out of all the platforms is probably the worst for entrepreneurs because so many entrepreneurs and i know so many people in this program you get stuck in the cycle of watching youtube for hours and hours as they form a procrastination a lot of times you'll be watching business entrepreneur stuff

maybe podcast interviews and you're watching and you're like oh i'm like i'm doing good right like i'm learning and no you're not and you need to understand that 99 of stuff on youtube 99 of the stuff that you're watching is dumbed down stuff right and and usually it's for another person's benefit you need to understand even my youtube you know 70 of the content that i have to make 78 is i have to drive lead flow for gradiency.com now there's you know i still like to do in a way that's authentic to me where i'm

not really dumbing down concepts um and there's 30 of stuff that i do just because like i think it's such an interesting video i don't really care how it ranks and stuff like that but you need to understand even with me like i'm doing it for a business i'm doing it for the health of my company for grading c.com so look don't get me wrong you can find some gems on youtube but it's funny the gems on youtube are usually the ones with you know a few hundred views right like they're interviews with software company

owners with uh like really high level entrepreneurs but you know these interviews because they're not very like click baity or this that usually they don't get many views so they said you can find a lot of gems on youtube but for the most part most of it is junk now you are in the most advanced education program on earth or at least in the internet marketing space okay and you have countless and countless and countless hours of paid content between not only the program which you can re-watch four five six times but also all the

additional bonus courses that we add multiple times a year and then not only that but then also all of the q a call recordings i mean really you have more content than you know what to do with and ladies and gentlemen this is the paid stuff so there's no um you know there's no like a marketing message there's no like here's the thing like you've already paid you're a customer okay like i don't need to spend 70 of videos trying to like you know backhandedly sell you on something or like you know hold something behind

so you buy something like you mean like you guys get everything here so so specifically the main course rewatch again and again any additional bonus courses that we add throughout the year q a call recordings as well as all the student interviews that we have you know the the dozens and dozens and now probably even hundreds of student interviews you can just revisit those again and again now if you do use youtube you want to use it in a very intentional way right so if you have a topic that you want to learn about look

it up add it to your watch later and when you watch youtube always have um you know notion ever know whatever you know side by side and be making notes on it okay so that way when you're on youtube it's very intentional and you're actually there to learn something so i guess long story short is most people are just you know [ __ ] around on youtube and really just using it as a form of procrastination so let go of it ladies and gentlemen now let's talk about optimizing your environment now one thing i want

to talk about is justified expenses so when you're first making money spend it on making your life more pleasant and easier not buying gucci to impress people who you don't even care about the priority should always be to spend money on improving the quality of your life before materialistic crap now 80 of what i'm about to share with you is business expense okay so you can write it off as one which means you'll pay less tax and potentially be able to get the sales tax back depending on how your taxes are structured that said no

matter if you're a business or you're a sole trader you should be able to write these expenses off but obviously please speak to your accountant first though now most people sign a client and go buy something that loses 60 70 of its value instantly or go out with their friends and end up spending 200 on drinks all stuff that you can't business expense instead along this journey reward yourself by improving your equipment making your office nicer and improving your quality of life with some of these services now you'll be rewarding yourself but doing it in

a way that is tax efficient if you can a business expenses as well as doing it in a way that makes you actually more excited to work and more focused ladies and gentlemen most people don't realize that it's not about like the issue isn't buying the tv right or buying the playstation or the issue isn't like for example people ask me all the time eman why don't you buy a car guys for me the issue isn't buying the car yes i can buy the supercars i can buy many many supercars that's not the issue for

me the issue for me is i will have a supercar sitting outside of my house that i have to pay insurance for that i have to you know every time i drive it the value of it goes down because there's a mile counter and also here's the thing like i don't really i don't really like of course i leave my house every day usually i go to the gym um but like i don't really leave my house like there's nowhere i'd drive to right so i'd have this expensive uh liability that i feel bad for

not using okay and you know that's also the reason why a lot of people wonder why do i spend so much money on watches because you know there's no mile counter on this i can wear this as many times as i want and either way before it gets sold on or if it gets sold on you know it gets polished so you know as i said that's why for me and you know sometimes i'll travel abroad and i'll be in london for three months and i've got and i've got over a million dollars sitting in

my safety deposit box and and there's no running costs on that except for you know just a safety deposit box but that's it so as i said yes when you make money you can go spend on a nice upgraded tv system or like uh you know maybe a car or this or that but you're not thinking about the consequences that come with that which is when you buy a car you want to use it and you want to drive it and that takes away from your business right when you buy a nice tv with a

sound system you want to then use that thing even when it comes to stuff like clothes like if you buy nice clothes right and by the way it's no secret that i like nice high-end clothes granted without any branding and like pretty much most of my stuff like i'd be wearing a it's very expensive outfit and you know you would never know and that's kind of the way i like to do things but even with that right like i don't like if i was buying stuff that was like branded right i would probably want to

go out and wear those clothes so that way like i could you know enjoy it right whereas when i buy a black t-shirt from battega or laurel and it's like 400 it's like no one's gonna no one's ever gonna know how expensive it is right so for me then i'm not inclined to like like i don't feel so i need to wear it out to like you know justify my purchase so as i said when it comes to things you're buying be very careful not of just how much money you're spending on it and the

fact that you can't business expense it also be careful of like how that purchase changes your day-to-day routine or what you would normally do now one of the first ways you should look to reward yourself is a really good desk and a really good chair people always ask me where this chair this desk is from it's from a company called fully i believe um and it's just like it's their highest end one i think it cost me around a thousand dollars which is very expensive but it's also a stand-up desk so it's very good for

my health and just like and just this thing is like super thick like i've had other stand-up desks before but this is like by far the highest quality and obviously you can tell it's it's quite large right like you can look at my wingspan and it's quite large so this desk is a thousand dollars my chair is a fifteen hundred dollar ehrman miller uh aeron i believe it is uh they called the rolls royce of chairs um and as i said this is not stuff that you need to buy immediately okay you don't need to

sign one client immediately go out and buy an expensive desk that's you know don't do that but this is stuff that probably do once you hit your first five thousand dollar month okay another massive one and i guess just kind of coming on this point like ladies and gentlemen obviously you know i'm moving very soon so i won't be taking desks with me abroad and actually the chair like i'm actually trying to move and just move my entire life in six suitcases you know kind of try and do like a little bit minimalist cleanse but

but if i was staying in london this desk would be with me for 10 years this chair has already been with me for three years okay and as i said in fact this chair has a 10 year warranty anyways if anything happens right so think about the amount of time you're spending at your desk and at your chair over the space the next five 10 15 years of course this stuff is worth it one other thing i want to mention is your computer you know if you've got a crappy computer or computer that has issues

or overheats you know for me i always have the nice like the fully specked out macbook pro and i buy a new one pretty much every single year because for me it's like there's no higher roi on a thing now obviously you guys don't need to do that right like definitely don't do that but for me there's no higher roi so every year i just get the the new one get fully specced out and um you know in that case you can just go ahead and sell your old one i usually give it to a

member of my team or one of my friends because your computer is your work horse so of course it makes sense to invest as much as you can into it now i'm going to play you a short clip from the full office tour video i did and this will give you an idea as to how i've structured my desk setup and just how selective i am about the things in my vicinity and my space as you can see right here this thing comes up my chair now i have the herman miller aeron chair it's a

bit pricey i think it's around a grand but worth every single penny when you're working as much as i am so when i bring the desk up right so this is my call height number three number two this is like my standing desk height when i'm actually typing and doing work and then obviously number one is when i'm sitting so this what this actually does it's got a little like um it's got little like bumps in it so it's meant to mimic like the forest floor if you're walking barefoot on the forest floor okay it's

just nice to like kind of massage your feet while you're standing up and getting some work done so while that is up that goes there and then when i'm sitting down this goes back tucks in perfectly under there and this comes down now a little bit about this desk as i said this is this is actually a fully hardwood desk now it took a little while to get to this point with the setup initially i had my desk right over there like wedged in here and i actually ordered the fully laminate desk took a big

l because laminate you end up getting fingerprints so tristan my creative director for gadgey and obviously videographer for the youtube channel he had to install the whole thing because i'm i basically have zero practical skills whatsoever um so he had to assemble the whole thing i didn't like it so he disassembled it but at least he got a stand-up desk out of it and i ended up ordering this bad boy say the same thing from fully i've had so many compliments and so many people ask me where i got this desk once again a little

pricey i think it was 1100 pounds but to me worth every single penny and i got the this the medium size like there was one even larger that you can get than this but honestly you don't really need the space so this is a desk now almost on my desk i've got yellow paper i don't know why i think it was is it roll doll you know the author matild yes is that how you say yeah rolled off i think it was roald dahl or someone like that someone uses yellow paper and i remember hearing

this back when i was in school and i was like that seems really cool um so ever since i just only write on yellow paper so red on yellow paper with my trusty mon blanc once again a little pricey but um i know just anything that you can do to make your work environment better at this stage of my life where i've been running my agency for four years and i've taken it to a pretty good level for me these little expenses are insignificant because this is my temple this is where i get my work

done so the little driver behind this monitor right here this is the 16 inch uh fully specced out i think except actually this has one terabyte of storage rather than two didn't need two so this is the almost fully specced out is the fully specked four terabytes or two terabytes i think it's four then i think this is two okay no actually i think this is two terabytes in the full expectation i look either way point is a 16 inch macbook pro and i love this because when i'm traveling and you know even earlier this

year i was in cape town for seven eight months um this thing is awesome great screen real estate and to me the best laptop out there this monitor right here ladies and gents i've spent probably upwards of seven eight grand on different monitors i've tried them all i tried them all to arrive to this point so what i wanted from a monitor is first of all one with an integrated webcam yes i know you can get a webcam separately this i understand but i wanted one with an integrated webcam with just a single wire setup

so you can see right here whenever i you know let's say i'm off on business or let's say you know i happen to take the computer off the stand and you know use it as a laptop when i come back all i have to do is single wire plug in and my entire setup is back to normal you know i've got this i don't use any external speakers or anything honestly i think the speakers on here are more than sufficient so this is actually lg 5k this is this was their collaboration with um apple for

monitor before they actually released a new xdr display this is a 1080p camera right there which is more than sufficient for sales calls and stuff like that i don't you know honestly i can't really tell the difference between that and like the 4k ones and this and that so i said when i plug that in i've got my monitor my incredible monitor i have my keyboard and my trackpad already connected i have a monitor with a camera inside of it and said i don't use any external speakers just i don't just because i don't feel

as though there's a need and then i already have things hooked up to this right here now this is the shure sm7b definitely a bit of uh definitely a bit of uh overkill in terms of the microphone side of things i used to use just a um a blue yeti but this right here is wired if you can see down here this is wired into a scarlet interface so you can see right there and then that is wired in once again incredible cable management down here uh down to tristan once again thank you for saying

all this up oh another thing you'll notice down here is i have a little headphone hook i use these right here which is the bose quiet comfort twos i actually bought their new ones like they're super stealthy looking but i actually prefer these so uh those are lying around and covered somewhere so that is that so i said this scarlet actually ends up wiring right back here to the back side of this monitor and i think it's that cable right there so there's multiple thunderball ports so for example i could add extra storage and this

is basically a hub and controls [Music] press that in uh this is a hub and controls everything so with this one wire it connects straight to my macbook with this wire my shirt sm7b is always plugged in and always set up and uh when i'm not using it i just push it back there and as i said there's plenty of real estate for me to work do my thing now in the right side here what you'll see is a 12.9 inch macbook or sorry 12.9 inch ipad pro i actually picked this up a couple days

ago i had the old one the 11 inch i was like you know what let me just pick up the new one and see how i like it so far i actually don't have an opinion on it yet i think i might actually even like the old one a little more i'm not sure how i feel about this um new magic pro keyboard or whatever the hell they call it uh because sometimes you know my mac my ipad's laying down and i just want to open up and see what's popping on slack it's a little

tough so really the only way you can use this thing is in this mode which is you know i don't know how i feel about it also another thing to mention is my ipad is never ever in this room i just have it here i said just because i've been fiddling around with it um usually my ipad is downstairs i i'm gonna be honest i run a pretty successful business i just don't understand or trust those people who have like six monitors and an ipad and this and that like how the hell do you get

any work done and then they have notifications and they have an apple watch and everything's pinging on and they have their phone my phone is never ever in my office ever as i said unless it's later on in the day i'm taking some team calls i'm doing more chill admin work outside of that my phone is never in my office my ipad is never in my office all that stuff is downstairs locked away and i have one screen and that is the only screen that i need i don't need these multiple this that one screen

good size 5k focus and that's all i need now the next thing is some good headphones now airpods or airpods pro are great but when you're 30 minutes into a brain fm work session right there is something very powerful about headphones like it just it has way more of an intense effect right so for me personally i use the air pods pro max right so the over ear headphones um they're super nice but i think they're like 600 so they are overkill um the ones after that i'd say are pretty much same sound quality and

i think even a little bit more comfortable it's just obviously the apple ecosystem is so great between switching between stuff is the bose quiet comfort twos or i think they even have a new version but like the bose quiet comfort that line those are by far the second best headphones that i've ever found super comfortable you can work for hours and hours on end with them now with this item i recommend you do this when you get your first or even second clamp right because it really solidifies this positive feedback loop all right you sign

a client and then you reward yourself with something that makes you even more excited to work and then you sign more clients from there okay so even when you sign your first or second clan think about getting a nice pair of over uh over ear headphones so that way when you work you're just um you're really zoned in the next thing is pick up some incense sticks now not everyone likes incense and sticks but 80 of people i've spoken to and i absolutely adore them i've always got them burning now i know some people have

been like oh what about like the health issues like i know it's not absolutely detrimental for your health um and you know for me it's such a massive benefit in my life it's like same thing with like the bluetooth right i know that the ems from there aren't the best but you know uh airpods are such a massive um contributor to my life that to me it's worth it right and i you know with that with them it's it's not as much of an issue as you know when you're sleeping you want to remove all

emfs from your bedroom so anyways on my point of incense sticks um you know very easily on amazon you can get a nice incense stick holder for 20 get creative there's some really cool ones and you can get a pack of 50 50 incense sticks um for literally like 10 bucks 15 bucks so um order that i've got incense on all floors of my house i've always got them burning and they really get me in the zone because obviously they force you to kind of breathe smell and then that gets you really present and gets

you really focused from there the last thing when it comes to optimizing your environment is cable management now you would have seen from that office tour video that i basically have no cables showing and in the same way you want to keep your desktop clear to have a clear mind you also want to keep your physical desk right your actual desktop right and as well as the underside of your desk like i see some people with just like horrible horrible cable management when it comes to their their setup and for me it's just uh you

know i i couldn't focus like that so as i said after this and just you know set some time tomorrow after you're done with your work today or tomorrow just go look on youtube some cable management videos uh you know order some stuff on amazon and you can just you can clean things up you know it doesn't need to be perfect like it doesn't need to be like there's no cable showing or only one cable showing like there can be a couple cables it's not an issue right don't stress out over it but just clean

it up as much as you can now that we've cleared distraction and actually made room for focus it's time to get into monk mode now as i said monk mode came about in 2020 when i would refer to extended periods of kind of focus time as monk mode now i didn't really kind of flesh out a protocol or anything for it until v1 which was right at the beginning of 2020. i was in cape town for six weeks and i decided after the first week which was kind of my birthday celebrations i went all right

i'm in monk mode and for me monk mode was um no caffeine no alcohol um you know keto carnivore uh no more than 60 minutes a day of screen time uh and yeah i think that was it and then 45 minutes a day of exercise you know even on saturdays which is usually when i take off just did a nice brisk walk then the next version of monk mode that i did i actually implemented an hour a day of meditation which was extremely hard that monk mode the v2 was extremely extremely hard so i was

actually the v2 of monk mode that i did and since then with each monk mode that i do there's some things that stay constant for me right no alcohol no caffeine uh screen time limited sticking to the diet so you know for me that means strict keto uh and then from the other ones like i can add or i can remove stuff so sometimes i've even done once a day prayer uh and for those of you guys are asking i'm not religious with a specific religion but i do believe in god but not specifically a

person um and i'm very very spiritual so anyways that's that uh and then i've also done periods like uh you know meditation like meditation is part of it so really there needs to be constants which we'll talk about in just a second i'll give you guys a month mode protocol and then you add your other variables and that's what's so important and that's the issue that i found with other protocols and i mean i've had so many people ask me hey can you write a monk mode book can you make an app and you know

maybe i will in the future but the biggest issue i found is you know things like 75 hard which is something that's very common you know with that one it's a 75-day program and it's very rigid you know it's like you have to train twice a day like you have to exercise twice a day um you have to drink like a certain amount of water you have to take a progress pick and like a couple different things but like let's say for us entrepreneurs right it's not really beneficial to train twice a day right so

with monk mode i do 45 minutes a day and sometimes i've even done periods where i remove that because i know naturally i exercise five times a week for 45 minutes anyways right there needs to be some non-negotiables and we'll get into that but then really the thing with the protocol is being able to add things that are important to you so for you you know your monk mode uh maybe 10 looms a day or for you maybe an hour of out uh prospecting per day no matter what even if it's saturday you know really

just to keep that momentum going another thing is i think it's important for you to set your own time frame for month mode because there have been monk mode periods where i've done for 60 days and somewhere i just need to do it like a really focused 21-day burst with monk mode and when i come out of monk mode it's not like you know i go you know i'm you know messing around and you know not sticking to my routines it's just you know i'll do really intense like really strict 21 days and then kind

of take my foot off the gas slightly so this is really the power of monk mode and this is why so many people have taken this monk mode concept and have run with it so in today's module and you know really the plug and play that i want to get into i just want to show you how to actually build this thing and kind of build your own monk one you know we're both still doing mug mode together you know we're still you know we're on the same team here and we've got some we both

have some non-negotiables we must do but then we can kind of build out some of our own specs as well so yeah let's go ahead and build out your own monk mode protocol so ladies and gentlemen let's get into monk mode so as i said monk mode is a period of immersion that you commit to unlike other protocols you create your own variables aside from the few that are set for you there are three variables that you need to abide by no matter what and then two which you select your own so as i said

monk mode is five variables because if you start adding too many as there's ten things you need to abide by every single day then it just gets too much okay so non-negotiables are meditation ten minutes per day now you can do any kind you like but it must be at least 10 minutes a day and it must be every day okay so you can also do you know i've done monk modes where i've done an hour a day all right so minimum 10 minutes per day you can do more you can do less and you

can do any kind of meditation you like next thing is exercise 30 minutes per day now this can be a gym workout yoga run basketball or even a brisk walk point is to get your heart rate up and it must be every day now on days where you fear over training just do a long walk okay like a long walk is not gonna strain you next thing is no alcohol or weed simple not even a beer cut it and i know for some of you guys you're saying hey i i still work very well like

i can still smoke a joint at night and be totally fine in the morning like i don't care i don't want to hear it cut it okay now in terms of variables you can add no caffeine now this is a personal favorite of mine okay so i always do no caffeine as well next thing is stick to diet this is also a personal favorite i do obviously i do keto next thing is pray one time a day this is also a personal favorite of mine the next thing is do x amount of x type of

outreach or you can just say hey i need to do two hours a day of outreach no matter what the day is next thing you can do is screen time of less than x per day so whatever that is for you and the next thing is delete instagram off phone and computer so those are just some variables that you can add but you can do as many uh additional as you want now when it comes to tracking i want you to write down your month mode protocol on a whiteboard or save it as your desktop

wallpaper so that way it's visible to you every day all right so you're going to look at it every single day and at the end of each day you're going to keep a track of how many days streak you have accomplished so you want to aim for 21 days in your first cycle because this is such a intense you know this is such a this will be a bit of a shock to the system so do 21 days maybe take a week off and then try 30 days all right and you can kind of work

up from there right because if you go straight into a 60-day pelt then you know it just might be a little bit too much for you to handle and ladies and gentlemen just on that time frame thing is that that's one of the issues and this is not to criticize like any other protocols or this that but just for us specifically because the thing is we need to tweak it for us as entrepreneurs to do what we do like we need to have a protocol that works well for us as i said i said for

us many times but um that's why you know 75 days is very very intense it's a long commitment so i think 21 days for the first cycle in a case where you may not have the strongest discipline i think is a very very good idea to begin with so let's get into the action step so today's action step is i want you to write out your monk mold protocol three set and two variables that you add and then share it in the community respond to your own post 21 days later when you've completed the first

cycle of your monk mode so you can just go ahead and reply to the thread and you know it'll be an awesome feeling for you so ladies and gentlemen that is monk mode it is time for you to build out your own monk mode protocol we're in the same journey together we're gonna be you know in the same immersion program together um but and you know we've got some set variables that we both share but then you can add some of your own variables as well so i hope you guys have enjoyed and i'll catch

you in the next one