A legitimately life changing system

Happy New Year T+P crew! Time to launch into 2025. If you could learn and implement one thing this year… the Focus Funnel would be it.

Over the past 8+ years, this concept has been giving me more and more of my time back. Every year I find new ways to apply this same life-changing system to greater degrees. And now you will too!

• ✖️ MULTIPLIES YOUR TIME by catching things you shouldn’t be doing.

• 🔍 REVEALS essential tasks by REMOVING others.

• 🌟 Enables you to FOCUS on what is TRULY SIGNIFICANT.

The Focus Funnel is a tool created by Rory Vaden (TED Talk) and it looks like this…

Everything that you do goes in the top… but not everything makes it out the bottom. In a world where we are inundated with “things to do.” This is the only way to survive and thrive.

Multiplies Time ✖️

Productivity often gets reduced to mere prioritization. When you only prioritize you end with the same amount of tasks that you started with. So, no time saved… just time spent in a particular order. The Focus Funnel adds SIGNIFICANCE to the equation, and seeks to remove tasks that don’t add value.

This means that you end up with LESS TASKS than what you started with! This multiplies time to your future self. If something takes you 5 minutes to do a day, but the Focus Funnel catches it, you now have saved 5 minutes a day for the rest of your life!

Let’s pretend you only have 50 years left to live… that would be over 63 Days worth of time given back to you! And you’re not catching just one 5 minute task in the Focus Funnel… The total impact will be even more potent!

Reveals Essential Tasks / Removes Others 🔍

Significance is revealed as the various filters in the funnel catch tasks, removing them. So let’s start at the top.

ELIMINATE - These are things that you should stop doing. They don’t add value, they can get replaced by a different tool or process, they don’t fit your job description at work, etc. Regardless of the qualification of removal, remove it!

AUTOMATE - These are things that should get systematized so the task does not have to be done again. Whereas with elimination we got rid of the task, automation adds a little extra work on the front side to engage a system, but we do it knowing that we get a “return on investment” as it pertains to time multiplied to our future selves (think about the example above with the 63 days of time saved).

DELEGATE - These are things that need to be done, but they don’t need to be done by you. In personal life this looks like outsourcing (paying landscapers, grocery delivery, etc.) and in work life looks like work distribution based on roles.

Now for the remaining items that were not caught in the Focus Funnel… We have to ask ourselves, “Should I do this thing now?”

Yes, do it NOW = Do it

No, DON’T do it now = You now have “permission to procrastinate” - This means you won’t do the task, AND it will stay “on a loop” potentially getting caught by a layer of the Focus Funnel at some point in the future.

Focus on Significance 🌟

By this point you can see conceptually how the Focus Funnel enables you to DO LESS so you can be PRESENT MORE, doing what is actually significant. But “significance” might still be abstract.

Above I mentioned how the filters already work to catch things that are not significant. Should this task just not exist… then eliminate it; it’s not significant. Can that thing be automated… then automate it; not significant. Should someone else be doing this… then delegate it; you guessed it… not significant.

*Please note that we’re defining “significance” as it pertains to what YOU SHOULD do. So that thing you delegated is not something completely worthless (that should get eliminated), it’s something that another SHOULD do, but you have something else that needs your unique attention.

The last, understated way the Focus Funnel reveals significance is by getting you to not do things that still made it through! You’ll give yourself permission to leave certain things undone, only to come back to them later and say… “I guess I really don’t need to do that thing at all,” and then you just delete that agenda item (Elimination filter for the win!).

The point is that sometimes you cannot tell what is insignificant until time has passed doing things that are TRULY significant, and then you’ll leave the other stuff behind. The Focus Funnel enables that without you picking the wrong things and becoming a procrastinator. Instead, you will now be a productive person who gives themself permission to “procrastinate” properly.

🌟 TOP PICKS

First Things First

How do you give yourself permission to procrastinate and not just lose track of everything!? My friend, you need a good task manager/to-do list… or better yet, good protocol (Check out our Anatomy of a To-Do List issue HERE).

If your tasks are unorganized, it will be really hard for the Focus Funnel mental model to kick in. But if the things that NEED to be done are automated to ping you, and the rest sits in a holding spot waiting to be scheduled, then you’ll periodically filter through the remaining items. Remember the underrated purpose of the Focus Funnel: To take your focus off the insignificant and put it on the truly significant… you’re supposed to forget things… it shows that they were not significant.

Now for some automation ideas!

These are the ones that people usually need the most help with. They also give the biggest return: You need an automation because the thing comes up regularly, and if you can automate it, that is time saved over and over again.

• Bill Pay - Life is too short to spend minutes every month paying bills. Go to whatever the online portal is for your bills and make it happen.

• Amazon Subscribe & Save - For things that are regular enough, run the math, figure out the rate you’ll need a refill. You won’t only save time, but you get a discount as well (even when you pause/skip deliveries).

• Templates - Email, text, work messenger, whatever it is regularly, save it for use later (use a note app to keep them in a spot for universal use).

• Fixed Scheduling - Why plan the essentials of your week from scratch over and over again? If you can create a fixed schedule you’ll get a lot done and stay committed.

  • Regular days working out.

  • Regular meals that make scheduling and shopping easier.

    • Don’t worry you can switch this up seasonally and not get sick of anything 😉

  • Regular times when you stay hydrated.

  • Regular times when you take in developmental material.

  • Regular blocks of time that are free space to do whatever!

• Focus Modes - Filters for phone notifications that will auto sort what is truly significant based on various parameters you set (time of the week, location).

• Siri Shortcuts - Easily make scripts for doing essential things from your phone.

  • Pull up podcast/audio book when you hop in the car on a weekday.

  • Directly open up a specific photo album instead of navigating the interface.

  • Turn a picture into a PDF and auto email it to your work email.

🎬 BEHIND THE SCENES

We often underestimate how little automations save us HUGE amounts of time in the long run. The absolute king of simple automations for me is a tool called RAYCAST. Presently, Raycast is only for Mac, but they are opening up beta testing for Windows and iOS soon!

Eventually this year it will get it’s own issue of T+P. But for now, check out this engaging overview of 101 things you can do with Raycast 😎

What are you waiting for! Snag the free version HERE (I used it for over a year before upgrading to Pro), and start saving time!