The RNDM: Longform

Hello and welcome to The RNDM: Longform, a weekly newsletter which consists of articles written by the RNDM team.

Each week we'll aim to share more in-depth articles written by our team on the same interesting topics as we cover in our usual newsletter.

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The Chocolate Cake Dilemma

Willpower is overrated.

Imagine having a chocolate cake in front of you while trying to eat healthy. It's going to be hard to focus on anything else completely. Before long, you might give in to the temptation and have that delicious chocolatey goodness.

Obviously this isn't something you would put yourself through but we do something similar when trying to focus. By keeping your phone either in view or in your pocket you're essentially doing the same as having a chocolate cake in front of you while working.

Even if we have the best intentions of focusing, just the presence of the phone can make it difficult to stay on task. Your mind can't give its full attention to what you're trying to do because there's still a part of the brain worrying and waiting in case your phone gets a notification.

This is where we try to will ourselves to work through the distraction. To push ourselves five more minutes before checking our phone. This can be easy at the start of a day but as the day goes on this gets harder to keep up. As research has recently proven, willpower is a finite resource. The more we try to use it through the day, faster it will deplete and before you know it you've given in and are 30 minutes into a TikTok binge.

I've found one small change to your working environment can make a difference and help you fight back against phone focus failure.

Put your phone on silent and place it on the other side of the room from wherever you're working. Better yet, put it in another room.

It sounds really simple but i think it helps in two ways.

1. Out of Sound, Out of sight, Out of Mind

As soon as your phone is out of sight, on silent and knows it's not going to buzz or bing then it's not going to be committing some of your mental resources to expecting any notifications. Eventually you won't even remember your phone is nearby to check as you'll be too focused. As the saying goes; out of sight, out of mind.

Of course you still might have the urge to check your phone, just in case you missed an "important message". This is where idea number 2 comes in...

2. Laziness > Digital Urge

The effort required to get up and check your phone when it's all the way on the other side of your room is greater than the energy required to keep working. Essentially your laziness will overpower your urge to get up and check your phone. Pushing your attention back to the task at hand and staying productive.

By implementing this small changes, we can create a more focused environment that allows us to work without unnecessary distractions. By doing so, we'll be able to conserve our willpower and stay productive throughout the day.

So, the next time you find yourself struggling to stay on task, try implementing these simple tips and see the difference they can make in your productivity.

Play Punch Buggy

With so much information in the world today it's easy to get overwhelmed and lost in a plethora of ideas and what you want to focus on.

One novel way to get over this is to focus on one core idea and let that drive your goals. While some may think, negatively, that if you only have a hammer then you'll only see nails, in some cases this can be a gift rather than a curse.

Many of you, as I did and still do, will have have played the game "Punch Buggy", where you try to spot a yellow car and if you do you punch the person next to you in the arm. What you would have noticed when playing this game is that you, almost without realising, begin to notice more and more yellow cars than you would have generally noticed if you weren't playing the game. This same idea applies when focusing on one core idea from which others stem.

A successful and well known example of a person who has practiced this with some positive returns is Richard Barton. Richard focussed on one idea, "Power to the people". With this core idea Barton founded Expedia, Zillow and Glassdoor. Richard's focus on bringing the power of Information to the people underpinned all three of these successful companies.

By removing the middle man Barton brought important data to consumers in a useful way so that they could make better decisions on travel (Expedia), real estate (Zillow) and jobs (Glassdoor). Prior to such platforms existing the data and information behind these industries was largely opaque.

Richard made generally hidden, obscure or not easily accessible information related to travel, property and jobs available to the masses in a user friendly and useful manner so that they could decide if that company they were interviewing for was a good fit for them for example. He had almost exactly the same motivation for Expedia and Zillow, opening opportunities to users to be able to search travel, hotel and properties data and get useful information to help them make decisions.

With that motivation in mind, go find your idea, commit to it and run with it. You may just fine your "why" and this could be the start of so many interpretation and realisations of your core idea.

For a more in depth look at this topic make sure you check out David Perrels great video on it here:

Until next time.

Kash.

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