Accomplish More With Intentional Distraction And Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)

The Fountain of Youth World Summit with Tellman Knudson, a NOP expert hypnotist with a personal and professional interest in ADD and the founder of Instant ADD Success.

Kevin: So intentional distraction, let’s talk about that again. And just if you can run over and maybe what sequence that is? How do you intentionally distract yourself is the question.

Tellman: OK. Well, what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you maybe two examples.

Kevin: Um.

Tellman: OK. One is going to be a local household example; one is going to be an entrepreneurial example.

Kevin: Got you.

Tellman: OK. Kevin, give me something you just hate doing and when you try to do it around the house you get distracted.

Kevin: Uh, clean the house.

Tellman: Alright, clean the house. I’ll tell you what, my opinion, clean the house sucks. I do not like that at all. It’s just not something I enjoy, so but sometimes you just got to do it, right. It just has to be done occasionally. So, how do you make this happen? Well, what you want to do is you want to bombard your senses. Bombard your senses with things that will occupy different parts of your brain so that you don’t get distracted. Now, how can you do this?

Tellman: It’s so late and the temperature is, you know it’s kind of warm. So, the first thing I might do is I may go up throughout the entire house and open all the windows. Start freezing my butt off. Then I might take off my T-shirt and put on a pair of shorts.

Kevin: [laughs]

Tellman: OK. The next thing I will do is I will take off my shoes and take off my socks so I’m walking around barefoot. Now if I’m used to walking around the house bare foot, I might put on a big pair of conky boots.

Kevin: OK.

Tellman: Now, I would crank up, in my case, some really hard heavy metal. [laughs].

Kevin: OK.

Tellman: And then I will set a timer for 15 minutes and pick a room to clean. Now, it sounds a lot of fun if you ask me, right. It’s called sensory bombardment. And the reason you want to bombard your senses is because if you give your physical body a whole myriad of experiences, if you give your ears the auditory experiences, if you give yourself olfactory and taste and smell experiences, Ok, you change the temperature of your environment, your brain is going to start processing all these new things that are coming in.

Kevin: Um.

Tellman: It will not be able to get distracted to something random. Now we also put the time limit on it, that’s key. 15 minutes to clean the kitchen. OK. Go! And you get as much done in 15 minutes as you can. Now whether you are done or not within 15 minutes who cares? Then I’ll go out, may go for a walk for 15 minutes. Come back home do it all over again. This time I close all the windows, crank up the heat to as high as it would get, Ok. Put on pants, sweater, right.
Kevin: [laughs]

Tellman: Throw a couple of ice cubes in my mouth, OK, [laughs] and we switch it up. Drink a glass of coconut milk or something, right.

Kevin: Yeah!

Tellman: Why? Very simple; I’m giving my brain and my body a whole range of different experiences, 15 minutes to clean the living room. Go! Right, I put on some motor.

Kevin: Yeah!

Tellman: [laughs] Right, totally different experience. Now the reasons for all this is to give your brain something else to process. Now, how can you apply this entreprenually? Very powerful, very powerful. Ok, here is how you do it. Let’s say, you got to get your taxes done, something most people don’t enjoy. Now, first of all, if you possibly can, outsource it.

Kevin: [laughs]

Tellman: Rule number one is don’t doom yourself. Pay somebody 50 bucks to go do them. If you can get rid of some of those things that you hate to do just ask somebody else to do them and spend more of your time doing things you love. I mean, that’s my first cause of action always. But if there’s no way out you have to do something, like your taxes, like some paper work, like paying your bills, right? Something you generally procrastinate on, this is a great, great way to get things done. So, you want to write down three parts to getting your taxes done, three distinct tasks that you are going to need to do. OK? One; you are going to need to get the right forms. That might be online or might be offline. But one way or the other you need to get the forms. Number two; you got to get your receipts [laughs], right?

Kevin: Sure.

Tellman: Again, whether you doing them quarterly for your business or whether you are doing them just for yourself or whatever, get out all your receipts they are your expenses. And they are actually more than three in this case. Another one will be, get all your income tallied, right?

Kevin: Um.

Tellman: You know, all your income, so one way or the other find out how much money you earn, whether that’s making phone calls to find out the grand total of what you got paid for from an employer or whether it’s adding up. You know deposits that you made into the bank if you have a sole proprietorship, whatever it is. And then you can also, of course, go ahead, and a fourth thing in this case might be actually filling out forms. We are not even near to getting to filling out the forms yet, right. That’s the part that really stinks.

Kevin: Yeah!

Tellman: We’re just going to talk about the prep work which most people avoid, OK. So what I’d like you to do is set aside three hours of your time. If you can’t stand three, do two. Two hours of your time, OK. And for the purpose of this exercise, we’re going to do 10minute chunks. Now, we had the first 3 things, the other thing you have to do is you have to come up with three things that you absolutely love doing. Three things that are more fun than anything else in the world, OK?

Kevin: Um.

Tellman: Kevin, what do you like doing in your free time?

Kevin: Running.

Tellman: OK, you love to go running. What else?

Kevin: Let’s see, listening to music.

Tellman: What kind of music?

Kevin: Uh! Jim Crouchy

Tellman: [laughs]. Alright, very good. What’s number three?

Kevin: Playing guitar.

Tellman: Playing guitar, you said Jim Crouchy.

Kevin: Yeah!

Tellman: OK. I don’t know Jim Crouchy, but I probably should.

Kevin: [laughs]

Tellman: OK. So here we go. Playing guitar, Jim Crouchy and running, right?

Kevin: Yeah!

Tellman: OK. Cool. So here’s what we are going to do. You are going to set aside three hours. I’d like you to pull out a little posted note and preferably a fluorescent colored posted note in a perfect world, OK? And you are going to write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Down in a column. And number one is going to be something fun.

Kevin: OK.

Tellman: That’s going to run. Number two is going to be getting forms, getting the tax forms. Number three is going to be listening to Jim Crouchy.

Kevin: OK.

Tellman: Number four is going to be gathering expenses receipts, or we can either say gathering and organizing expenses receipts.

Kevin: Um.

Tellman: Number five is going to be playing the guitar. And number six is going to be finding how much money you actually made. Whether it’s pay stubs, deposits into the bank account or current employers for that year. Now the key to making this whole thing work is a egg timer. It’s a digital egg timer. And you can get those at most grocery stores. If you can’t get it at a grocery store you can get it a radio shack and if you can’t get it at a radio shack go online, go to Google and type digital egg timer and go buy one, OK? So now you’re going to set three hours aside to do this. So you unplug your phone, you turn your computer off or at least you make the decision you are not going to be surfing on the internet or anything else like that. Turning your computer off would be a smarter move. You set your alarm for 10 minutes. Go! Get the forms. How are you going to do it? Maybe it’s going online and getting those forms online, OK? Maybe it’s driving down to the post office. Then you got 10 minutes.

Kevin: Right.

Tellman: You got a hassle. Maybe it’s just calling the post office to find out how or if they will open that day, okay. That’s step one, OK. Maybe it’s calling a friend who lives next to the post office. It doesn’t matter. You need to get those forms, you need to get them in 10 minutes. 10 minutes happens, you stop what you are doing even if you are in the middle of a phone conversation you tell them you’re going to call them back. Now it’s time to go running for 10 minutes. There! 5 minutes off, 5 minutes back. You’re back, OK? Is your blood flowing?

Kevin: Sure.

Tellman: Are you feeling better? You probably are. At least you are winded right? The energy is flowing, right?

Kevin: Right!

Tellman: Good. 10 more minutes, go get some receipts baby, and do it fast - 10 minutes is up. It’s time to crank Jim.

Kevin: [laughs]

Tellman: Jim Crouchy you’re on, OK? And you just going to hang out and listen to Jim Crouchy and close your eyes. Sit back. I don’t know Jim Crouchy but you know that’s it. 10 minutes you need to figure out how much money you made that year. You keep on going through this process until either 3 hours is up, or each of those 3 tasks that you decided you were going to do is crossed off your list.

Kevin: Wow

Tellman: Damn. Intentional distraction. You give yourself distraction time to things you enjoy doing so you don’t get distracted just at random because you are trying to avoid the things that you need to do anyway. You can let yourself do thing that you only want to do. And get things done that need to be done in the first place.

Kevin: Wow. There is some powerful disassociations with that too.

Tellman: Huge, huge it makes it a lot easier to get that crap done in the future. You end up just getting a lot of stuff done. Very, very, powerful.