Focused Thinking (Part 1)

Maxwell Leadership Podcast

John Maxwell

Business, Leadership, Education, Johnmaxwell

4.8 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2019

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As a high-energy, high-capacity leader, John Maxwell has a natural bias for action and has to be intentional to develop his focused thinking skills. He committed to put in the effort, and since then his effective practice of focused thinking has had a global impact.

In this episode, John shares some of what he has learned to help us maximize our focused thinking skills. The starting point, he says, is to verbalize and visualize what it is that we’re going to focus on. He goes on to provide a process for thinking through any idea.

Mark Cole and Jason Brooks share how they’re applying what John teaches, and they address some of the common challenges to consistently being a focused thinker. Mark encourages us to be intentional in scheduling both proactive and reactive thinking time. The episode ends with a challenge to take an hour to practice focused thinking before coming back next week for part two of this series.

Our BONUS resource for this episode is the Focused Thinking Worksheet. You can access the worksheet by visiting MaxwellPodcast.com/Focus and clicking “Download the Bonus Resource.”   

References:

The John Maxwell Leadership Podcast Survey

Thinking for a Change by John C. Maxwell

The John Maxwell Online Store

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, thanks for joining us today on the John Maxwell Leadership Podcast. Mark Cole here,
0:12.7	and I'm joined with Jason Brooks, and we're going to break down how John talks about
0:18.8	staying focused in your thinking. Now, if you want the show notes and you want to get
0:24.0	the notes and fill it in, the blanks as John talks, you can go to MaxwellPodcast.com forward
0:31.4	slash focus, click on the bonus resource button, and you will have the notes. I hope you'll
0:37.6	get ready to learn about focus thinking. Here's my friend, John Maxwell.
0:52.7	This week I want to talk to you about unleashing the potential of focused thinking. How can
0:59.3	you and I tune out distractions and metal clutter that come around us and concentrate
1:06.7	with real clarity on what the real issue is going to be. Now, I love teaching you on focus,
1:12.8	thinking, and here's why. As a kid, I had more ants in my pants. I was always moving around.
1:20.6	They didn't call me ADD. I don't think they knew that then. I probably wasn't, but I
1:24.4	just know one thing. I was full of energy and focus was not in my game plan at all. I mean,
1:30.5	I was a little bit everywhere all the time. In fact, my grandpa Maxwell, when we go down
1:37.2	to Georgetown, Ohio, my brother and I, especially grandpa would sit us down. He'd get two folding
1:42.9	chairs side by side in the living room. He'd hold up a quarter and he'd say, Larry and Johnny,
1:50.0	if you can sit in this chair for five minutes without wiggling and getting up, I'll give you a quarter.
1:58.4	I'd get in my chair and my brother be beside me. I'm telling you for that first, I don't know,
2:03.1	30, 40 seconds, I just was sitting completely still. But then pretty soon, I just had itches
2:12.4	and wiggles and I was starting to move around. Grandpa Maxwell would do one thing would be for certain.
2:19.7	My brother would sit perfectly still and collect the quarter every time and I would wiggle and move
2:25.7	around and I would never one time collect the quarter. And that's the guy that's teaching you
2:32.8	focused thinking. I tell you that story because I think a lot of times when I teach, I want to make
	...

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