Why 90 Minutes of Focus Beats a 10-Hour Workday

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Why does it feel like you’re working all day… but nothing important actually gets done? In this episode of Maximum Lawyer Live, Tyson breaks down the real enemy of execution: engineered distraction. From social media and news cycles to emails, chats, and notifications, the modern workday is designed to fracture your attention. Tyson makes the case that focus isn’t a personality trait or an ADHD problem—it’s a systems problem. If your environment is noisy, your output will be mediocre, no matter how hard you try.

Tyson exposes the hidden cost of distraction, including the fact that every task switch can cost over 23 minutes of lost focus. That’s not inefficiency—that’s sabotage. He shares practical, no-nonsense fixes: aggressive notification control, phone Focus modes, muting keywords and people, and intentionally designing your workspace so it supports deep work instead of constant interruption. As a law firm owner, your job isn’t to respond faster—it’s to think clearer and design better systems.

The real takeaway is uncomfortable but freeing: most exhaustion doesn’t come from work—it comes from mental noise. Tyson shows how to replace mindless consumption with intentional action, protect your best thinking, and focus on what actually compounds over time. With the right systems in place, as little as 90 minutes of uninterrupted deep work per day can outperform scattered 8–10 hour workdays. Less noise. Better decisions. Real progress.

• 2:27 Task Switching and Deep Focus
• 5:34 Engineering Your Own Distractions
• 7:50 Optimizing Work Environment and Notifications
• 9:40 Managing Social Media and Information Inputs
• 12:31 The Psychological Impact of Negative News
• 14:37 Quality of Thoughts and Algorithmic Influence
• 17:50 Scheduling Focus and Task Lists
• 18:44 Investing in Relationships and Time Blocking 
• 20:37 Minimizing Distractions During Deep Work
• 21:25 Stop Feeding What You Can’t Affect
• 26:13 Email Management and Weekly Goals 
• 27:14 The Power of 90 Minutes of Deep Work
  
  

Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here. 

Creators and Guests

Host

Tyson Mutrux

Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson Matrix 00:00:01 Good morning and welcome back to Maxim Lawyer Live. I'm Tyson Matrix and I have a really, I think, a really important episode today. today we're going to be talking about tuning down the noise. I don't think you're able to tune out the noise completely, but tune down the noise so that you can actually execute on what needs to get done on a daily basis. Because the reality is, is that, I mean, politics is everywhere. there are distractions everywhere. Not just not just politics, but everything there's feeds screaming for attention. it's one of the major reasons why we moved the association, which used to be called the Guild. We you we moved the association off of Facebook, out of the Facebook group into a separate thing by itself in circle. It's a lot of it has to do with just distraction. I can just tell you from from my perspective. I, I hated going on to Facebook to get into the guild because inevitably, I would get on there and I would see something else, and I would get distracted.

Tyson Matrix 00:01:16 That's why, Becky even found something to help block my feed on my desktop. that's how that's how bad it was. but my goal for today is that maybe I can give you some practical tips to to help tune down the noise a little bit and, and remain focused because and I talk about compounding a little bit, I wouldn't say quite a bit, but a little bit whenever it comes to your actions. And the more you can stay focused, the more those things will compound. And, you know, ultimately, as as the years go by, you will you will have gotten much, much more accomplished. So that's my goal for you. it's because focus. I think a lot of people, you know, people talk about ADHD and a lot of people claim to have ADHD and, you know, they it's undiagnosed. Who cares about it like that crap. focus is not a personality trait. it really comes down to whether you have a system. That's really what it comes down to. So, and I'm not discounting anyone that does have ADHD, ADHD.

Tyson Matrix 00:02:27 I'm not saying it's not what I'm saying, whether you have it or not. If you have a system, that's what will help help you fix it. Okay. That's my point. and a lot of this comes down to and I, I've always been really interested with the whole idea of task changing. And, whenever we redesign the new task system and everything for for Zoho, a big part of it was based on a world without email. And what's really kind of interesting is, is like, because you want to have everything inside of of that task when you're doing it, but when you change from task to task, it takes about 23 minutes and 15 seconds. That's that's how long it takes to change to another task and regain deep focus. I mean, that is how crazy is that? 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back into deep focus. That's why like, I don't like I'm I have all these things turned off on my phone like like so I guess is maybe one of the the first practical tips is that, if you don't have focus turned on on your phone, I highly encourage it.

Tyson Matrix 00:03:39 and you can change the different settings. Some calls can get through, some don't. But if you and this is really for Apple users, but I'm going to assume that anyone else, any other smartphone has a similar, function where if you just go on your phone and I'm doing it right now, there's a, there's actually a, a section called focus, if I remember correctly. Yeah. It's called focus. And then you go through and you can kind of see mine here. I've got Do Not Disturb. That's where like nothing gets through. Okay. Rarely do I have it on that. Okay. Because I want to be notified of some if there's some sort of an emergency. I also have a driving focus. I have a family time focus. I have focus, focus. I, I think that may be the built in one. I don't remember creating that one. I have a mindfulness one. That's whenever it's for like if I'm doing like meditation or something, I have a personal one.

Tyson Matrix 00:04:32 That's where if I'm at home, it's the defaults to that. I have one for, reading. I have one for reduce interruptions. I think that was a built in one. I don't remember doing that one. I have one for sleep. It's an important one. I have one for work, the one for, personal and the one for work. And then the driving. Those are automatically Activated based on where I am or what I'm doing. So when I get to the office, it's it's geo. That one's geo targeted. when I get home, that's geo targeted. actually, I take that back work as time based. So work is time based. The personal one is geo located. driving is based on my movement, so it automatically, automatically picks it up and it tunes out a lot of distractions for me. I do miss sometimes. I miss an important call by important call. it's what I mean by that is, is that it wasn't an emergency. Wasn't something that, you know, would have been either devastating if I didn't answer.

Tyson Matrix 00:05:34 Is more like, you know, I might have wanted to answer the call. That's. But you can you fine tune it over time? Okay. So, and of also, if, you know, an important call's coming through, you just turn off the focus. Right. That's That's the simple term. That's the simple solution to that. So that's one of the ones that I really that's, that's that's going to solve a lot of your problems right there all by itself. I guess another thing to point out is, is that, I guess distraction is something that is engineered. Okay. It's not an accidental thing. And many times we're the engineers of it. Like, we're the ones that, have created this environment that we exist in, that, that, that create all these distractions. Like, like if you just think, like, the average person, they check their phones 140 times a day, I mean, 140 times a day. So you factor in 140 times a day, and then you also think about, having an interruption where it takes about 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get into deep focus again.

Tyson Matrix 00:06:46 Because and as. As a law firm owner, I mean, you should be really trying to spend as much of your time and defocus as possible. it really should. Because you you were the strategy person. You're the person that's really trying to figure out, all right, how are we? How are we going to configure these trains? Right. You have other people to make sure that the trains are on time. You you're configuring the trains. You're setting up the tracks. That's what you're doing. You're the engineer. But sometimes what we do is we we set up our lives in a way where it is distracting. your your workplace, your work set up needs to be set up in a way where you're not always distracted. I'll give you an example. I have I have three screens up right now. I always have three screens up. on. Well, at this desk, I'm actually at my regular work desk. there was an issue with the mic this morning on the other, my other workstation, which is over there for, for that's my usually my podcast recording set up, and that one has two screens, but this one has three screens.

Tyson Matrix 00:07:50 And so if you're working on any particular tasks, the screens need be set up for that task. That's that's just the reality. But they need there should not be some like three different things going on at one time because that's that's really going to it's going to distract you. So you have your calendar on one screen and you know, you're doing one thing or maybe of your chat, that's another one. I would I would highly, highly recommend that if you if you don't have office hours integrating office hours, but more importantly, don't have your chat up all the time. Most firms at this point have, you know, slack or something similar. We use Zoho Click. Having that chat up all the time is going to distract you all the time. Even with we have office hours, okay? But we still have things that come through in the click as like reports where like if a lead comes through, it automatically comes through, so I can. If I have it up, I can see it.

Tyson Matrix 00:08:48 So it's it's one of those things where you if I didn't do that I would be engineering. Remember. If so, if you're doing this you're engineering your own distractions. That's what you're doing. You're creating them yourself, that there's no one to blame. It's not the person that's sending the message that's to blame for that. You're the one to blame for it because you have it up and you're the one checking it. And if you're getting alerts on your phone from it, that's also your fault, too. You should turn those alerts off. That's another tip. Turn those alerts off. Do not get alerts on your phone for emails. Do not get alerts on your phone for chats. Do not get to learn. Do not get alerts on your phone for text messages. My my text messages. I do get them for some things, but it's based on my focus. So if I'm at work, I don't get notifications unless it's for Mami or my parents. I get upset for my parents too.

Tyson Matrix 00:09:40 I think there may be a couple other people that have got it set up for, but for the most part don't. I don't get text messages. so, I recommend that you turn those off. one of the things that you can do, so that's what's kind of cool, is you can, you can adjust these different settings and different different softwares and different apps like on the X you can mute keywords. on Facebook you can mute certain people. So maybe you don't want to unfriend them, but you're sick of seeing all the all the posts that they're, they're putting out, like, I jokingly like so we're, we're hiring a marketing person at Maximum Lawyer. We're hiring like a full time marketing person. So we're gonna do all of our marketing inhouse, and we're really wanting to to level up things. And, I really kind of, I suckered people a little bit. I put up a Facebook post and, it was about, you know, no one cares. Everyone thought it was about politics, you know, and I it was kind of set up.

Tyson Matrix 00:10:39 And then once you clicked Read More, it was about the job. It was actually about the job posting. But, the, the it was kind of funny because it was there was a line in there, but like, I don't care about your politics. You shouldn't care about mine either. And, that's kind of the reality I don't give. I don't care about your politics. So if you put a bunch of political stuff on Facebook, I'm just going to unfollow you, because I don't care, I don't care, I don't want to hear about. You're not going to change my mind. I'm sorry. You're just not. I think most people think that way. And the way, the kind of the way I view social media. It's like, germs. Like, if you think about, if you're spreading happy stuff, you're going to be spreading happy germs. If you're spreading spreading negative stuff, you're going to be spreading negative germs. That's just kind of how how I view, social media in general.

Tyson Matrix 00:11:29 And there's and I for a while I thought it was just maybe my algorithm was like, maybe what am I, what am I, you looking at it as making me get all this political junk and I don't. I just don't think that's what it is. I think it's just everyone is posting about political stuff, and I just, I just I'm sick of it. I'm so tired of it. I was watching Tim Ferriss is on The Sean Ryan Show this week. It's an amazing episode. I highly recommend that you that you listen to it. And he was just I can tell he's just done with people. He's just completely like, you know, people will be people. And it's just kind of how kind of how I feel lately about politics. I just feel that way. Like, gosh, I just don't care. so anyways, but when it comes back to, like, muting, you can mute keywords, you can mute different people. I highly recommend that you do that. and you can also just unfollow accounts.

Tyson Matrix 00:12:31 That's another thing to like. Another way, a way of looking at it is unfollowed cans that feel important but that never really change your behavior. All right. So you it's like oh it's there, but you don't follow any of the advice okay. You don't take any of that advice. Do you really need that in your life? garbage in, garbage out. That's another way of looking at it. So if it's garbage. Right. So if you're taking in garbage, you're usually putting out garbage. So if you think that maybe it's just garbage, you need to unfollow that account, move that account, tell whatever social media platform that you're on that hey, don't want to get any more of this content. That's that's important part of it, too. another thing you could do is turn off all breaking news, notifications, turn off the news. that's that's another one you can do where you got to remember much of what you see on the news. You cannot change. All right? There's nothing you can do about it.

Tyson Matrix 00:13:35 So the information that you're taking in is usually negative. The news is usually negative. There's the reality of what it is because that is what draws people in. It's just human nature. So you're generally taking in just negative information and like you're you your body and your mind, you're taking all that in. Okay. and do you really need it? There's nothing you can do about it. That's another thing to think about, too, is if that's why I'm just so sick of the the political stuff. Because there's nothing you can do about it. There's, there's, there's, there's unless you're going to go run for office or going to go campaign for someone or lobby for some cause. There's certain causes you can lobby for that's certain, certainly something you could do. But on I mean, posing about the social media is not going to do it. You can go and go to your state capitol and you go lobby there. I believe in all that. I think that's important. I think political political activism is important.

Tyson Matrix 00:14:37 I don't think on social media you're going to make any you're going to change any minds. so, The kind of the something that I think about, I try to have to try to, like, remind myself. And I wrote this quote down. It's the Marcus Marcus Aurelius quote. The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts, okay? The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. So if all of your thoughts are negative, right? If all of your thoughts are about bad things, then think about what the quality of your life is going to be. it's something that Jason Selke talks about a lot in, in his books, where, you know, what you focus on is what expands. All right. And that's part of the reason why the algorithms really work, too, is like if you focus on one topic, your algorithm will feed you more of that topic. So what? The more you focus on a thing, the more that thing expands.

Tyson Matrix 00:15:37 So if it's positive, it's going to. Positivity is going to expand. But if it's negative that's also what's going to expand. So those bad inputs are going to guarantee bad outputs. So the more good you put in, the more good you spread, the more happy that you are more likely to be. It's no guarantee to it, but it's just the reality of what it is. So, that's why I'm going to try to I'm gonna try to pass on more good and less bad or. Yeah, far less bad. I don't and I don't generally put on put bad stuff on social media. I think I've put on negative posts before. So I'm not I'm not completely, innocent of this, but I generally try to put things on there that are positive because I don't. I just know that I'm not going to change any minds. And I also know that, yeah, these posts are like germs. They do spread. So whether it's good or bad. All right. Another thing to think about is noise.

Tyson Matrix 00:16:37 It can feel like work. and then it's weird because sometimes focus can feel like risk, almost like you're missing out on. Like, so if you're focusing on work only, you're missing out on what's going on in the world. It's kind of a weird thing. and so that's why we kind of stay glued to the noise a little bit. That's why it's why I understand why people want to watch the news, and why they want to get on social media and check out all the different things. And it gives you the illusion of control and participation. But what the key thing is, is that it's it doesn't require commitment from you generally. So you're just kind of consuming all this garbage without you having some sort of a commitment. Okay. And if you think about it from that standpoint, is it really worth doing then? You know, so what I would encourage you to do is instead of you just kind of mindlessly scrolling or mindlessly getting on social media just because, you know, if you if you feel the urge to just open your phone, get on social media just to check things, I would I would encourage you to not do that.

Tyson Matrix 00:17:50 One of the things that you can do is a schedule focus first. So schedule your focus first, not last. So have things on your calendar to do. Make sure like if you look at my calendar, Justise does an amazing job of making sure that I've got things to do. All right. So they are on my account that I can look at it now and just it'll I know exactly what's on there and I've got gaps. I also have my backup list, my attack list, that. And that was something that I developed. Jason and I kind of put together. It was like, okay, when you have a couple extra minutes, what do you do? Like the most elite executives in the world, they don't waste a minute. So they have it down to a minute. So if you have like a minute of time, okay, these are my one minute tasks. If I've got five minutes, here's my five minute task. You know, if I've got an hour, here's my hour tasks.

Tyson Matrix 00:18:44 Really really helpful. So if you can divide up your tasks by that, that's really, really slow. It's kind of like you have it ready so oh sometime frees it up. Boom. Go to this boom. I can go to my my tasks really quick. These are my five minute tasks. Let me knock out one of these five minute task. Boom. Get it done. Okay. Not to say you don't need rest sometimes. Sometimes you do need rest. That's important too. Another interesting thing that came out of that Sean Ryan Show episode with Tim Ferriss was and I really liked this, and I don't know why I've never thought about this, but, and he talks about he, he wants to start focusing more on relationships. So to just Book all of that well and in advance. So you know, and spend the money on it. So and make it hard for you to cancel it. So you, you know, you've already booked that time well in advance. You you're going to do it.

Tyson Matrix 00:19:35 So buy those tickets now for whatever it is and it I'm not. The more tickets is more of a of a metaphor than anything else, but put an investment in whatever that thing is and set aside the time for it. So book it on, put it on your calendar, obviously, and then put some sort of down payment on it. Put makes put some commitment into it so you can't back out of it. All right. I love that whole idea. I think it's a great idea where you're you find out who the who are the most important people you want to spend more time with. Book time with those people make it almost impossible to back out of, and you're going to be way more likely to do it, and then you're going to be doing those things as opposed to mindlessly scrolling on your couch on the weekend. Right. so that's I think that's really, really important. And another part of this too, is and this is a I think this is more of a basic thing for people to listen to Max more, that the same thing applies to, to big projects and work and time blocking and all that.

Tyson Matrix 00:20:37 So time blocking ultimately is really, really important. I'm not going to get into tie blocking because I've talked about time blocking so much, but that's another this is a way of time blocking, but it's more for your personal life and people you want to spend more time with or, you know, professionally. Let's say you want to spend more time with certain professionals because you want to get better in a certain area, make that investment, do the same thing. Pay the pay that person to spend time with them. Say, hey, I want to come out and spend a week with you, and I want to pay you to do it. Let me let me send you a check. That's another way of doing that. Okay. I guess one more thing about time blocking. If you're if you're doing something important and you don't want the distractions, put your phone in another room. Okay. That's I think that's a, that's an important part of this to or close down everything on your screen where you're just focusing on that one thing.

Tyson Matrix 00:21:25 And if you do have three screens, like just put something on these other screens that are blank. That way you're not distracting. Okay. You gotta keep the main thing. The main thing. I don't remember who who said that, but keep the main thing. The main thing is what you want. I don't know if that's an athlete or who that was from, but. All right. we talked a little bit, and I've got my own kind of basic outline that I was going to go through with this episode. That's why I'm just going to make sure I hit everything. We already talked a little bit. Sometimes. I don't know if you know this, but sometimes I get off on these little tangents and I started to talk about other things that are outside of my outline. So I kind of skip ahead a little bit. And we talked a little bit about, stop feeding what you can't affect. So that's I think that's a really important concept where, most mental exhaustion comes from obsessing over things we can't act on.

Tyson Matrix 00:22:16 Right. Like, just think about think out how much effort and time. And maybe this doesn't apply to you. Maybe it does, though. But sometimes I do obsess over things that I can't control. And so I have to, like, really force myself like, hey, you, that's not something you can control. I'm sure some of you are the same way, and it's so exhausting. It can really where you out? I mean, let's say that you let's say something comes up in the news, some big event, and we're spending all morning focusing on it. By the afternoon, you're probably exhausted. You probably don't realize it. You've probably not checked in with yourself to realize it, but most likely you will if you just kind of step back for a second and check out your day. The reason why you are exhausted at the end of the day is probably because of all that junk you consumed in the morning, right? It's not. It wasn't eating the donuts. Maybe you ate healthy.

Tyson Matrix 00:23:07 It was meaty. It was. It was eating those mental donuts. although I love donuts. Don't tell anybody, but I. That's like, my biggest advice is doughnuts. I think doughnuts are amazing. But I try to I try to limit that intake as much as I can. so one of the things you can do is create because like when it comes to like things like this, create a concerns list. And so write down all the things that you're concerned if you're concerned about. And if it's not something that you can act on in say 30 days. leave it there. Leave it there on the page, okay? It just dies there on the page. You don't need to worry about it anymore. It's on the page. You wrote it down. If it's something you can act on, it needs to go to a different list. And you can. You need to go act on it. You need to go into your action items list, but you can't act on it. The next 30 days it goes and dies there.

Tyson Matrix 00:24:06 And if if it's something that you can do in six months, okay, well, it'll resurface in six months, but maybe regularly sit down and create that concerns list and just let it die there. I think that I think it's a good way of dealing with it. the reality is like usually if if the new and this is usually the case, if news doesn't change today's priorities, it doesn't deserve today's attention. All right. So if news doesn't change today's priorities, it doesn't deserve today's attention. And it really shouldn't. You just gotta keep moving on. Just keep moving on. So. All right, just a few minutes left. So I'm going to start to wrap things up, but I do want to get, a few more things in to replace that mindless scrolling with intentional clicks, meaning build more of an information diet. And so if you feel like you have to to sort of consume something, which is fine, it's just nothing wrong with that, I think. I think getting better replace that with maybe a book either.

Tyson Matrix 00:25:11 You know, it could be a paper book. It could like a hard copy. It could be audiobook. Maybe you're okay. Listen to a more of an educational podcast. Something. Something like, like, like Maximum Lawyer or something that is more like hormones or something like that where you are, you're learning something, you know, you're not just taking in garbage, you're actually learning something. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. As long as you're going to go, then listen to that thing, or watch that thing or read that thing and then go take action on it. I did an episode months ago about stop reading more books, and the whole idea of that was, it's not that you shouldn't read books, it's that most people read a book and they don't do anything with it. They the the knowledge that they gain from it is not used at all. So you can consume these things with intent, with the intent of I'm gonna go ahead and take action on it. I think that's an important part of it, too.

Tyson Matrix 00:26:13 So no news before work. Get the work stuff in. First. The work content first. your best thinking should not be downstream for that stuff. Okay. Your best thinking needs to be downstream from the good inputs. Very good. That's a very good, rule. All right. I don't really have the time. A lot of time for this part, but the email, make sure you're having you have a set of email rules and then use those email rules aggressively. Get out of your email completely if you can. If someone else can do it, let them do it. And then you get out of it completely. That way you can focus on other things. Replace that noise with direction. Okay. So you by you removing all this other noise, all these distractions, that's going to allow you to really focus on the more important stuff, some more practical advice. You're the, you know, the one goal for the week and then five for each day or that. That's one of those things.

Tyson Matrix 00:27:14 Mine's more one and three now. It used to be one and five. But your big goal for the week, and then, you know, up to three tasks for the day. That's really, really, effective for me. Have your process goals. So the things you need to be doing on a daily or weekly basis to help move the ball forward, those are really, really important. The, the one weekly action is really that's a really important in my opinion. In my opinion. If you can get this, this is hard, okay? 90 minutes of uninterrupted deep work per day. That is it. It. Every study shows it consistently outperforms scattered eight hour, 8 to 10 hour, workdays. So like that. And let me put that in another way. Many studies show that if you just worked 90 days under 90 minutes a day, uninterrupted. Just nine minutes. You outperform a scattered 8 to 10 hour day. That's insane. Okay, so think about that. So you read that focus time is really, really important.

Tyson Matrix 00:28:16 Okay. I think I've given enough. I the whole idea is to really do do more of an attention audit with this episode where you kind of step back, okay, where am I being distracted? What are some things I can do to to better it? I try to put as many practical tips into this as possible, because I want you to have some good takeaways from it. So, create some sort of system for your day, some sort of process for your day. Filter out the junk and I think you'll be better off from it. But have a great week everybody. We will be seeing you. See you.