How to Focus in a Noisy World: when feeling overwhelmed with "all the things". Systems for Success.

Are you clear on what really matters—or just busy?  

This episode is your permission to hit pause, zoom out, and get focused and what really matters to you.  

Because clarity doesn’t magically appear—it’s built.   

One question, one insight at a time.  

I’ll take you behind the scenes of what’s worked (and what hasn’t) for clients and leaders who finally broke free from overwhelm and started making progress that actually felt meaningful.  

You’ll hear:  

• 🎯 Why Oprah was right—knowing what you want changes everything.  
• 🧭 A simple, repeatable system to figure out what truly matters—without needing to have all the answers right away.  
• 📚 The 5-step framework to improve any skill (yes, even learning itself).  
• 🔄 How to turn reflection into results—with systems that work when your willpower runs out.  
• 💡 What James Clear and the Stoics have in common about success, and how it might just rewire how you approach your goals.  

You’ll walk away with stories, strategies, and a free Clarity Stack worksheet to help you cut through the noise and take focused action.  

🎧 Tune in if you’re ready to stop reacting—and start building a life that’s intentional, skillful, and deeply yours.  

Transcript

Introduction: Success Depends on Knowing What You Want

Speaker 1 0:00

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. Changing days, not in years that's our motto, our aspiration, and together I am Angela Sharina, executive Coach 360. These days I'm in Culture Transformation and Change Leadership as a consultant and coach. Leadership as a consultant and coach. So I myself, and together with my guests and you guys, we are learning about most useful, applicable, interesting, cutting-edge, just coming out of labs and books, very often brain-body-work tools that will help you to change better, change faster and create a better version of yourself, of your life, creating the life experience that you absolutely love living. We're here, in one word, about fulfillment and getting to that fulfillment stage every day. You know, I personally believe that each of us, no matter where in our growth journey or achievement journey we are, we can make every day feel fulfilling, like it's on purpose, like it matters, as long as we are. Well, that's actually what this podcast is all about. So let me jump right into it.

Creating Clarity Through Intentional Systems

Speaker 1 1:29

A quote from Oprah. I hope you know who Oprah is. If no, I'm not going to hold it against you. Look it up Oprah in a conversation with Trevor Noah, fellow South African. Well, I'm kind of a South African now, at least for the time being. Oprah said successful people get where they want to go, and by successful I mean people who achieve what they started, what they wanted to achieve, and they have fulfilling life and career. So those are our successes, our North Stars on this podcast. So Oprah said successful people get where they want to go because, ta-dam guys, because they know what they want. Successful people get what they want because they know what it is they want.

Speaker 1 2:18

And we're not talking about knowing what you want for breakfast or how much money you want to make in the next month or next year. We're talking about big stuff. They call it big rocks in psychology sometimes All the stuff that you know. If you look back at your life, or your month or your week or even your day, you're like, yeah, you know, because of this, my life actually felt like it mattered, like it was meaningful. That's the kind of stuff that we're talking about. And, yes, I love my eggs for breakfast, but they're not the ones that make my life feel meaningful. So, what it is you want. But more specifically, folks, today it's Friday episode and we're talking about systems, and if this question what it is you want, the big thing makes you sweat, make you anxious, make you feel like an imposter in your own life, like you're unqualified somehow to live your own life. Have you ever felt this way? I definitely have, and a lot of my clients did also, and we go into this place of messiness and uncertainties all the time, myself and always my clients.

Speaker 1 3:21

So the point I'm trying to make here actually that clarity about big stuff you create not because you stumble upon it. You create it purposefully, intentionally, by doing self-reflection, one question at a time and a little surprise for you that I'm going to announce fully at the end. I just created a tool for that to do self-discovery, this reflection, on a regular basis, ask yourself the right questions, and right questions not from my perspective, but from all the coaching that I did, from dozens of books that I've read, from the gurus that I've listened to or have a lucky moment to actually talk to right All these amazing people and human knowledge. I put it together with the help of ChatGPT and we've created this worksheet that I call, with ChatGPT, clarity Stack. But the point of this again, actually that everything that you want to create in your life, this meaningful and purposeful things, they come down to the level of systems. There is another great quote by Stoics and people like James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits we don't rise to the level of our aspirations and goals. We fall to the level of our aspirations and goals. We fall to the level of our systems and our training.

Speaker 1 4:47

And if you want big things like purpose and meaning, et cetera, we need to create systems to get there, step by step, and figuring out your big stuff in life that help you to stay focused in a noisy world. Creating this filter that helps you separate the noise that doesn't matter from the, fulfilling the meaningful stuff. So, knowing your purpose, your big stuff, allows you to do that to focus in a noisy world. And in order to get this clarity about big stuff, you don't just land there. You use systems, regularity, regular practices to self-reflect. And again, there is a tool for that, and I've created it with AI and the best thinkers of our generation and generations before, and you can download it absolutely free following the link in the show notes Clarity Stack, right. So check it out, share it, let me know how it worked for you. There is a beautiful process, it's amazing. I'm proud of it. So check it out clarity stack in the show notes. The link is there, but let's get back to this idea that everything big, meaningful and there's small loss as well it's all about the systems that you put in place.

Speaker 1 6:06

Here's what I also mean. Let's say you want to get better at learning, and if you have not been living under the rock, learning how to learn better, upgrade your systems, upgrade your knowledge and change as times require. This is the skill of this era. If you're not constantly upgrading yourself, if you don't know, don't have a system how to learn, how to get better, you've already lost in this era. Nothing is more true than this. I'm 200% that's possible, or 1000% confident in that. So how do you get better at learning? Again, back to the system. So here is a beautiful framework that's been developed by coaches and different strategic leaders, people in self-improvement and self-leadership. This is what you do when you want to improve at any skill. Learning is one of those meta skills which will allow you to get better at many other skills, like, let's say, you want to improve the way you learn.

Speaker 1 7:13

So what do you do? First of all, you define where you are. Where are you starting? What's the starting point? How do you define that? So the first step is defining your step A or your position A. Where are you? And then you define where do I want to be? Let's take a small step. Where do I want to be in a month? I want to get better at learning in a month, so where are you?

Speaker 1 7:41

What qualifies, in your world, as being better at learning? Is it remembering more when you read a book or go through any material? Is it being better at actually putting that into application in real world? In real life, into things that matter to you, like what it is? Is it actually remembering what you just heard, listened to or read, instead of reading a page of the book and then not blanking, like what did I just read? Or you heard someone or listened, or you were in a conversation and the person said something really good and you had this understanding or it was good, but I don't remember the specifics.

Speaker 1 8:23

What it is you want to get better at? Do you want to improve your memory in some way? Do you want to improve your focus, attention? What is it that you want to get better at? How do you define that? And it is important because then you can define the starting point, place A, and then point B or point C, whatever you define, and then you need to create a system to track progress. Well, first of all, even before that, actually now, what are the practices?

Speaker 1 8:51

And you can brainstorm it with chat GPT, obviously, or not. Obviously, you can ask what would you suggest, like, what practices you would suggest for me to do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, to get better at X, to be better at focus, to be better at remembering stuff, to be better at remembering what people say to me? Right, and ask chat GPT, how would you practice that? And then it will give you a set of practices. Okay, you get a set of practices, you read through them and you're like, okay, this couple of things sound like it's something I want to do, I want to put into practice, I want to do my you know the authors of law, or deliberate practice, or how to get talented and how to get really good at something they say deliberate practice. So, what it is, I'm going to practice in order to get better at learning, at learning this meta skill that will allow you to get better at all of the other skills. Right, what are the practices?

Speaker 1 9:53

And then the next step you put it into your schedule. Okay, when am I going to practice? Is it every day for 20 minutes? Is it two hours at the end of the week? Spoiler alert doing every day a little seems to work better for learning. It's kind of like squatting or moving a little bit versus just doing I don't know. Two, three hours of fitness on the weekends.

Setting Up Feedback and Accountability Loops

Speaker 1 10:17

So you schedule it, you put it in your schedule and if you don't, the practice is not going to happen. You're always going to have more stuff. If you still think, oh, there's going to be a time in my day, in my life, in my history, when I'm going to have all the time to practice all of that I want, I'm going to get all of this free time, it's never going to happen, guys. It's never going to happen. Unless you seriously commit with your schedule to something never going to happen, you never going to get more time. There are going to be more and more things that will demand your time. So if you don't define in advance what it is you put on your schedule and don't put on your schedule spoiler alert, or there is a tool for that Clarity Stack in the show notes. You can define those meaningful things which you say yes to, and then all the noise that you say no to.

Speaker 1 11:06

So, getting back to that, put practice on your schedule and then also put on your schedule reflection points when you're going to sit down and you're going to evaluate your progress. And so this is the next step you schedule feedback time so you could evaluate your progress Even better. It's actually a lot more better and that's been proven by researchers of expertise, of talent and how to get super good at something, having external accountability and feedback. Basically, let's say you are practicing your learning skill and you defined that remembering more from what people say is going to be the skill that you're working on. So you need to set up accountability points. Let's say, maybe a family member or maybe a co-worker and you schedule time to have conversations with them and then they would ask you different questions about what they just said and you'll see how well you do, how many questions you answer or how much detail. Or maybe ask the other person to evaluate your performance, how well they remembered what they just said.

Speaker 1 12:26

So you set up those feedback or evaluation loops when you have a trainer, when you have a coach, when you have someone who does the learning for you, the deliberate practice, like a tutor. That's where it gets really good, because that person is always there and they help you to evaluate progress, whether you're getting better or getting nowhere. But it is very important, if you want to get better at learning, to have this feedback loop and have the points where you evaluate yourself or with this accountability person, am I getting better? And also the other person is better because they're more objective. They're not in your head, they don't have this bias, you know, sitting in your head and evaluating that promise subjectively. But the most important part is creating this feedback point where you're going to evaluate whether you're getting better or not and what needs to be adjusted in your practice. So you evaluate practice. Also a bonus if you can evaluate that progress against something meaningful.

Speaker 1 13:30

So, let's say, this ability to get more out of conversation that you have is meaningful, because then you build professional relationship, let's say. And so when somebody will have another conversation with you, you're like, ah, you know, remember you told me this and based on this, we could work on this project in that way, right? Or you told me this and maybe you put it in your next presentation and you might say, all right, what I learned from this person and you mention them, especially if they're in the room. They're going to be so proud and feeling so I don't know socially good that you're going to become like a superstar for them. So building relationships, expanding your expertise and simply just knowing more stuff, because all of a sudden your memory got better from all the useful things that your professional network can be communicating to you that you never just remember. There are so many benefits.

Personal Example and Episode Summary

Speaker 1 14:32

But back to that. So if you link your progress to something really meaningful, like your career advancements, then your brain going to create this, it will release that dopamine which will amplify your ability of getting better. This is a beautiful thing. That's why you don't want to just be getting better at things for the sake of getting better. You want to link it to something meaningful. That's where you get the dopamine boost and your learning process will accelerate. And that is all based on neuroscience research how learning process works, right. So then you evaluate you're progressing, you're not progressing. There are points where you could be getting better with your practice, and then maybe there are additional skills that you need to look at to develop different abilities and you get back into the loop of okay, what's next? What's the next practice, how I'm going to schedule it, how I'm going to evaluate my progress and until you get the result that you want. And that is back to the idea of having a system.

Speaker 1 15:40

My personal example I started to get better, more confident at cold outreach, basically talking to strangers and proposing business. I started getting more replies, better replies, more calls scheduled, more opportunities to present my offers. I started getting better at it quite recently because I created a system to evaluate my own progress, to evaluate my practice. So now I would send messages and, for example, the ones that worked, the ones that got response, I will look at them like what did I say? How did I say it? And then I would test it out again against the next cohort of people, of cold contacts, and then I would evaluate that again which messages got the most reply? And then I would evaluate that again which messages got the most reply? And then I would tweak it. And then, you know, I would try something new. But I created a system of this feedback loop where I would evaluate what I do, what works, what doesn't work, what I need to work on, or perhaps something doesn't work at all. So then I would ask myself what can I try? And then I would ask GPT and other people, and then I would set the time to practice this new way of reaching to people, to then evaluate progress and get better.

Speaker 1 17:01

And the point is the whole point of this conversation, guys, is that you need to have a system for improving in any arena, whether that's improving your clarity and focus. You need to have a system of self-reflection. That is how it's done. If you want to understand yourself better, you want to develop self-awareness in order to understand what things are important to you at each level and which are not. So you could then focus on the important and say no to all of this noisy stuff.

Speaker 1 17:30

It's kind of like imagine a supermarket with all the food choices. If you know exactly what you stand for when it comes to your health and nutrition, a supermarket becomes this marketplace where you just can very fast pick and choose the stuff that is aligned with what you're trying to do. For majority of people who have no clarity, that becomes like a huge pile of mass where they just grab random stuff and get random results in their health and fitness. And randomness in our world of food means usually getting more obese and getting all kinds of diseases. But that's just to give you an idea what it means to have clarity. It allows you to be very choosy and very effective at making choices and getting results, versus being overwhelmed, choosing the wrong stuff and not getting where you want in life at all, and one day maybe waking up and like how did I end up here? So we don't want that and that's why get the Clarity Stack exercise.

Speaker 1 18:37

It's a worksheet with a bunch of questions based on dozens of books. I've read all the people I listened to and talked to on my podcast. So, guys, get the tool and build the systems. To sum it up, how you can also get better at any skill. First, what it is the meaningful result you're trying to get getting more customers, getting career advancement, getting, I don't know, better mates or a life partner. You figure out a set of skills one or two skills that you need to get better at. Use ChatGPT and all kinds of artificial intelligence to help you choose a skill schedule.

Speaker 1 19:17

It create a system of evaluation and tracking progress. External accountability is really a superstar here. A friend, a coach, a family member whoever that is who will go through the process of evaluating your progress with you, a person who is more proficient in that arena maybe if you work in your relationship with someone who has great relationship that you want right, working with them going to be very beneficial or a coach who helped a bunch of people achieve the result that you want to achieve. So feedback, accountability. Create a coach who helped a bunch of people achieve the result that you want to achieve. So feedback accountability. Create a system for that, evaluating your progress and then track your progress and redesign the process or keep it the same to keep getting better. So the point, the main point have a system for everything you want to achieve in life, whether that's getting better at learning or creating more clarity in your life, so you could focus easy in a noisy world and achieve what you want.

Speaker 1 20:17

That's the end of today's podcast. I hope it was useful. Today is Friday and on Friday we're going to focus more on systems for achieving different results in a better, smarter way with AI and all and just better thinking and decision-making models. Let me know if you liked that and you got a lot of value. Please do let me know. Let me know how I can get better at providing more value to you, and don't forget guys to share this episode with at least one other person who you believe is going to be hugely beneficial.

Speaker 1 20:47

Maybe they've been shooting at one goal and they haven't been successful, so maybe they didn't have a process, they didn't have a system or distracted by too many things. In each case, please do refer them to this podcast and don't forget, in the show notes there is Clarity Stack Worksheet which will help you to do what Oprah said Successful people get successful because they know what they want. So do you, dear listener, know what you want? So clarity stack worksheet, linked in the show notes, will help you to do just that. Absolutely free share, give me feedback, give me praise and acknowledgement and let's together get better and create an amazing world all around us, growing and using all of our gifts and potential. Have an amazing rest of the day and we'll hear each other very, very soon.