There is so much information from different sources about how-to-make-yourself. From my experience, most of this information is just typical internet noise. I use this term for all kinds of information, which spreads on the web, repeated by hundreds and thousands of gurus, lifestyle bloggers, endless YouTube bloggers and etc.

The key thing in that information is that no one knows from what source this information started to spread. No one really knows if this information is worthy or not. People just heard this information, then tell this information to someone else, and it spreads, spreads, and spreads. After that some kind of blogger summarizes this information in a compilated video “Top Ten Secrets Of The Millionaires”, and even more people start to consume this “priceless” information, and then spread it. And this is an endless circle consume-spread-collect-consume… runs and runs.

As for me, I decided to start from a logical side. Which things can improve my current situation? It seems like I have to work harder to reach my goals. That is an obvious improvement. If you want to receive some kind of result, you have to perform some work. Otherwise, something could happen only by an accident. So, the more work can I perform, the more likely my goals become closer to me. Ok, nothing is easier, right?

Wrong. I started by measuring my performance. And I was surprised, that in reality I work concentrated only 30-35 hours a week, and the major part of this time I spend at my job. So it turned out that I spend so much time just literally doing nothing. I read something on my smartphone a little bit. Then I read Twitter a little bit. A little bit of news, a little bit of YouTube. A little bit, a little bit, a little bit… And when I summarized all those “a little bit”, I understood that I just waste my life and performance for nothing. That was an unpleasant surprise.

When I revealed it, I told myself: from the next week I begin to work hard and concentrated. And I failed. The reason was simple – I just couldn’t work concentrated. I never really learned to work in this style. I had so many little distractive habits, which constantly broke my concentrated work. For instance, I worked(and still working, at least at this moment) as a game developer. When I do some code changes, it usually takes a small amount of time for the game engine to reflect those changes. During this process, the engine does not respond to any input. And I had not the best habit to switch this time to Twitter or my smartphone, or news. And like many of us, I got involved much more in those side activities, that I planned. And after 10 or even 20 minutes I discovered usually, that the game engine finished compiling changes ages ago, and I wasted so much precious time. Well, I think most of us are familiar with those situations. I decided to change it. What I have done?

• Removed all my followings on Twitter, except only very few, which I really need
• Spent some time marking my Twitter feed as irrelevant. It really helped me to engage significantly lesser
• I revisited all blogs and sites, which I use to read, and threw away most of them. I left only the most relevant. I did the same with my YouTube subscriptions. Now I have very few of them. I unsubscribed from almost all E-Mail subscriptions.
• I started to use my phone only when it is absolutely unavoidable
• I established a special time in the day when I check the news. I established a special time in a week for checking YouTube and blogs
• And the major change which I did: shaped my schedule. And for now, I know what I will do at every particular moment of the week. This helps me to stay very concentrated during each moment of a week 

I have to mention, I wasn’t able to perform all those changes at once. This was very iterative process. I improved my lifestyle step by step. I tried and I failed. I tried again and again. And I have to admit, that I get some good results. Now I able to concentratedly work for 60+ hours a week. And this is my screen time report for a week in phone

As you can see, I made a lot of progress here.

Do I receive any benefits from this? I think yes. The first and main benefit – finally, first time in my life, I was able to constantly work on my own project. I have developed my own game for 9 months every day almost without interruptions. Also, I constantly learned according to my plan. I put things in order in my to-do list and for the first time in my life, this list is a real to-do list, not a write-and-forget-list. I even found a little time to start this blog. So, at this moment I can say that I never was so productive in my whole life. So, now I definitely can say that I really CAN perform concentrated work. And I think that it is a habit that I always wanted to have.