Winter holidays have come and gone and we’re only a few days away from New Year’s. If you haven’t already, now is the time to sit down and outline some goals for yourself during the upcoming year. Take a moment to reflect on 2021 and look forward to what you want to accomplish in 2022.

One critical aspect of setting effective goals is ensuring you can measure your progress. If your goal isn’t measurable, how will you know whether you’re on track to reach it or not? 

Some goals are easy to measure and track. Things like financial numbers or business milestones are straightforward and measurable. You can see precisely how close you are to accomplishing what you’re working toward.

When it comes to your porn addiction recovery, though, setting measurable goals is a bit more difficult. Many brothers are tempted to measure their success by their porn-free time. Sure, counting days is the easiest way to measure but it’s the least effective way to track progress. I’ve always been very vocal about encouraging men in the Porn Reboot program to not count days. I believe that porn-free streaks don’t matter, nor do I believe they are a true measure of your progress.

Counting days means nothing. What is the point of not masturbating if you aren’t going to make any other changes? Why would you not bust a nut for months and months but remain the same cranky, irritable, emotional person you’ve always been? If you remain undisciplined, isolated, and lack determination, then who cares how long your streak is?

There are better ways to measure your reboot goals in 2022.

Measure your improvement by recognizing whether you’re still acting out in ways that lead to slips. Measure your improvement based on your emotions and behavior. Measure your improvement by tracking the coping skills you implement or reboot capital you gain. Measure your improvement using the strength of your relationships.

These are all far more useful indicators of success than the number of days since you last jerked off or watched porn.

The Porn Reboot program is not for men who only want to overcome their pornography addiction. It isn’t for men who are concerned with their porn use or masturbation but not the other areas of their lives that are falling apart. It’s not for men who aren’t willing to make drastic changes in their lives to leave their old ways behind.

Instead, the Porn Reboot program is for men ready to dedicate their time, attention, and energy to becoming the best version of themselves possible. It’s for men who are tired of living directionless, pathetic lives that center around watching porn and masturbating. The program is a pathway to help you not only overcome your compulsive sexual behavior but to enhance your entire life.

If you want an easy way to measure your porn addiction recovery goals in 2022, I encourage you to sign up for our free “Best Year Ever” training program. It’s my gift to you for being part of the Porn Reboot community. Whether you’re new to the blog or you’ve been reading for a while, I want to offer this free blueprint that will help you start the year strong as a way to thank you for joining us here.

Once you sign up, I invite you to join us in the free Porn Reboot Facebook group if you haven’t already. We’re a group of hardworking, high-performing men dedicated to helping every man who wants to overcome his behavior with porn and reframe his life. If that sounds like you, sign up for the free program, join the group, and let us know that you’re starting 2022 strong with us. 

Looking forward to seeing you, brother.

The post How to Measure Your Reboot Goals in 2022 appeared first on Elevated Recovery.

I’ve noticed that a lot of us are pretty hard on ourselves even after we start gaining a hold on our out-of-control behavior. We spent so many months and years consumed by pornography and compulsive sexual behavior that it’s difficult to look at how our lives panned out.

I remember I hated myself when I was still struggling with my behavior. I was very hard on myself because I’d become the type of guy who said I’d do something but never followed through. I was also the type of guy who could see that I was doing something that was hurting me but I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

I can’t tell you how many times I promised myself that this would be the last time, that it wasn’t going to happen again. Then I would relapse and end up back where I started, or in an even worse place, over and over again. Eventually, I lost trust in myself because I continued doing this week after week, month after month, year after year.

Imagine depending on someone who tells you they’re going to do something, but whenever the time comes they have an excuse. Every single time you need them they let you down. This person you depend on has some reason or another to let you down each time you look to them to follow through.

It’s pretty hard to love this sort of person especially when the things they mess up are important to you. But that’s exactly the type of person that many of us believe ourselves to be. We’ve let ourselves down time and time again so we’ve lost faith in ourselves over the years.

You have to build that faith and trust back up if you want to be successful in your reboot. It’s not easy at the beginning when you have little reason to believe that this time will be different, though. One tool you can use to get yourself through these lulls in belief is self-compassion.

The idea of being compassionate with yourself might sound silly or even impossible. You might think it’s cheesy or woo-woo science. But today I ask that you leave behind whatever preconceived notions you have about self-compassion.

I started using a very specific technique to practice self-compassion in my life. Think about the way your grandmother views you. If you don’t have a grandmother around, consider the typical ways grandparents treat their grandchildren. 

More often than not, grandparents don’t carry the burden of raising their grandchildren so there’s some space between them and that responsibility. This is why you see the stereotype of grandparents who spoil their grandchildren; they love endlessly and often lack the weight that comes with raising you themselves.

Think of the compassion your grandmother or grandfather holds in their heart for you. They have so much love, compassion, and forgiveness. They want what’s best for you and want to see you do well. No matter the mistakes you make, your grandparents will continue loving you through it.

I still struggle with the self-compassion aspect of my reboot to this day. It’s not easy to cut myself some slack or give myself a break. I expect myself to be a high performer at all times. So I adopted this practice of viewing myself as my grandparents would in the last few weeks. I’ve been working on it as a way to allow myself to be more compassionate toward myself.

When I look at myself as a grandparent would, I feel endlessly loving and forgiving. I feel like I wouldn’t give up on myself. I would be patient with myself. No matter what happens, I would always find love for myself despite the circumstances.

I’d love for you to try this out and let me know what you think. If self-compassion is difficult for you to achieve like it is for me, this practice may be useful for you, too. After trying it for a few days, hop over into our Porn Addiction Recovery – Reboot Facebook group and let us know about your experience!

The post How to Be Compassionate with Yourself appeared first on Elevated Recovery.

This is a widespread opinion. 

And as a result, many people decide not to even try to be monogamous – they think they’ll never make it. This applies to pornography addicts as well.

Now, I’m not going to lie and say that there isn’t a small element of truth to this opinion. But it doesn’t take into account one factor:

There are many men who had a lot of casual sex. But that was before they got married and stayed committed for the rest of their lives. 

These individuals have an advantage over others because they’ve had their fill of sexual experiences on purpose.

But what about men who recover from sex addiction and get married?

Well, that doesn’t mean they’re actually ready for marriage. Most of the time, that goal’s been set for them and conditioned by society.

These men then feel like monogamy is the only way to go. So, they end up in relationships and just play along because they feel like that’s what they’re supposed to do.

But in doing so, they most likely won’t become a happy, fulfilled person. It’s because whatever issues they had with women and sex won’t just go away because they’ve become monogamous.

Now, you might wonder why don’t more coaches and therapists talk about this. 

Well, apart from myself, I have yet to meet a non-religious counselor, coach, or mentor who wasn’t a sex addict and had an active and healthy sexual life involving multiple women.

While some therapists have recovered from their addictions, none of them put themselves through a structured method regarding women.

But that’s what I did. Porn Addiction Recovery is our hope

I had a structured plan of meeting women, developing authentic relationships, and having healthy sex with them. 

The point of this method is that when you repeat the process dozens of times, it becomes a part of your nature. 

And then you can leave it behind and move on to a monogamous relationship. 

The post Monogamy for Recovered Sex Addicts appeared first on Elevated Recovery.

That’s the reality.

6 years of recovery mentoring and a few hundred clients in, I’ve seen men in their mid to late twenties who choose to keep on watching porn enter their thirties and totally f**k their lives up.

While, as a professional, my clients do have the highest porn addiction recovery rate out of all the options out there, I still fret and stay up late trying to figure out how and why some clients don’t recover. Not everyone can be saved and this frustrates the hell out of me sometimes.

Not to sound all “zen” and deep- but today, during my morning meditation, I figured out a few reasons why. (this also means that my meditation session sucked, lol)

Don’t get me wrong, though. This process took about 5 years and today was the day I experienced my “revelation”.

The first thing to understand is that YOUR BRAIN DOES NOT WANT TO CHANGE.

The older you get, the tougher it is to recover. If you are over the age of 26, your brain has made enough sense of life and society that it doesn’t really need to change that much. You’ve created mental models for most things in life and complacency sets in. The human brain naturally resists rewiring of any sorts and prefers comfort and familiarity.

This process is called homeostasis.

This is one reason why recovery from porn addiction is not as easy as “staying away from porn for 90 Days”.

There are MANY things that our brain doesn’t want to change- not just watching porn and masturbating to it. I’ve compiled them into three main things which I call the three enemies of recovery.

Enemy #1: Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the way your brain goes through information and discards anything which doesn’t fit the way you see the world. Remember- the brain resists change. Confirmation bias keeps us comfortable and prevents us from rewiring our brains neural pathways.

You can see confirmation bias demonstrated online where different people have polar opposite reactions to a video or article.
Another example is religion or some sort of ideology. Your ideology comes from two things: your beliefs and emotions.

Your beliefs are formed from a neural pathway in your brain being used over and over again- for years. Your emotions are neuro-chemical reactions. When combined, you get an ideology- like a religious conviction, political belief, radical feminism, socialism, radical veganism (this is apparently a thing), and so on.

The problem is that confirmation bias makes it difficult to analyze anything which is different from your belief or emotions. This is why many men cannot accept the fact that they are “porn addicts”. Your idea of an addict is not linked to pornography. Your beliefs about quitting porn hold you back.

Here’s an example you can probably relate to:

When you are experiencing a streak of not watching porn and masturbation, you begin to believe and tell yourself that “I’ve got this under control”- then you start getting sloppy with the things that kept your off porn in the first place and next thing you know, you are relapsing to something like a very light sex scene in a movie.

This happens OVER and OVER again…but you never change. You never change and keep thinking you have it under control because you haven’t changed your belief to something more realistic such as: “I don’t have this under control until my brain rewires itself AND it takes more than a few months to recover from porn addiction.”

Enemy #2: Technology

Many men- especially millennial men, use technology irresponsibly and there is a price to pay for that. The cost is damage to their ability to synthesize information and to think independently.

My research into my clients revealed a few things:

The more you watch T.V, the less likely you are to recover from your porn addiction. Men who watch T.V, Netflix, and Youtube as entertainment for more than 10 hours a week have a HIGH relapse rate.

Men who are most likely to relapse consume information via technology without discipline. They look up anything they don’t know on their phones before thinking for themselves. They would rather watch a video than read a book about recovery.

See, the majority of modern humans cannot deal with boredom or lack of satisfaction in their lives simply because every time they feel bored, they tune into T.V, Social Media or….porn.

We have not trained ourselves to sit and think in silence. As a result, many men cannot sit still and evaluate their emotional state- a necessary step in recovery.

They don’t THINK enough and as a result are not only prone to relapse but are prone to being unfulfilled and unsuccessful.

In our current world, success is not determined by how much manual labor you can do, or how hard you can work. It’s predicted by your ability to think and be creative.

Enemy #3: Lazy Thinking and Beliefs

Lazy Beliefs are basically beliefs which you formed to make life easier for you and make you feel better when you don’t achieve your goal.

Easy thinking makes you soft and fragile because it often puts the responsibility of your situation on someone else.

Here are a few examples:

a) “This time will be different because____________ will happen!”

This is the belief that something positive will happen in the future that will change your life without any effort on your part. For instance:

“I’ll stop watching porn and masturbating when I have sex /get a girlfriend/to get married to the right woman .”

“I’ll become more attractive/ stop being stressed when I get a good job/ become very successful ___years from now.”

“I won’t slip or relapse this time because I got a therapist/ recovery coach/ joined a group.”

b)”I’m ___________ therefore ____event probably won’t happen to me.”

This happens when you believe you are exempt from something happening to you because you are “special”.

Let’s start with my favorite:

“I watched 70 videos about not fapping on Youtube and I am a Level 5 Black Belt with 500 Days of not fapping. so I’m going to recover for sure!”

Reality: You can remain in the early stages of recovery from porn addiction with no relapses for months and even YEARS only to relapse 2 years later because you still haven’t rewired your brain or dealt with the underlying issues that made you addicted to porn in the first place.

The ugly truth is that many men who claim to have recovered from porn addiction have not. They simply regressed to a stage of their addiction where they can go months without watching porn or masturbating- but they eventually slip and binge for a few days, then get back on the horse. This pattern will likely continue throughout their lives.

“I’m a strong Christian/Religious person- my faith and belief in Jesus Christ/ religious deity will pull me through”

Reality: God helps those who help themselves. Faith is an amazing thing to have in your arsenal against addiction, but Faith without a realistic goal, faith without doing the necessary recovery work, heck, even faith without a filter installed on your devices will NOT work.

” I won’t be unemployed and lonely in my thirties because I’m in college now and I have some friends.”

(Actual quote by a twenty-something-year-old porn addict who is an “introvert”, has no close friends, is failing his sophomore year in college and is broke because of his severe addiction to live cam sites).

Reality: As I mentioned earlier, I have followed the lives of dozens of my clients over the years. If you don’t fix your porn addiction and any other unhealthy behaviors in your twenties, it only gets tougher as you get older.

It is heartbreaking to speak to men in their 40’s who literally watched all their dreams slip away because of their effects of pornography on their lives:lack of focus, complacency with their career, lack of friends and an encouraging network, never attaining any form of financial independence, never being in a fulfilling long term relationship, or choosing porn over their one relationship.

“I can’t wake up early because I need at least 9 hours of sleep to function”

Reality: Sleep is important, so sleep as much as you need, but if you consistently go to bed at 2 am because you’re up watching Youtube videos, catching up on TV series, edging to porn or juggling 5 dead-end conversations on Tinder, you are only fooling yourself. Try going to bed at 9:30 PM if you can and see how many hours you really need. Some of you will literally solve 90% of your problems by being in bed by 10 PM every night.

“I would be more successful/ have more money if not for the____(blame someone else) who keeps me down!”

Reality: Who is the scapegoat in your life? Your parents? Your wife or girlfriend? Trump? The porn industry? Take 100% responsibility for your life.

Here’s what I mean by 100% responsibility: If my car gets rear-ended while I’m rushing to an important meeting and I am late as a result, its MY responsibility, not the idiot behind me who was texting and driving. If I wasn’t rushing and had left 30 minutes earlier, I would not be the victim in the accident.

If I am in a bar with friends and some drunk pick a fight with me and I get knocked out, it’s 100% MY RESPONSIBILITY because I could have

1) Not reacting in a way that resulted in a fight

2) Not been as easy to knock out (taken my martial arts training more seriously)

3) Not been drinking in a bar

One last one since I’m on a roll (this will probably lose me some subscribers- but whatever): if you are in a relationship and your girl cheats on you, its 100% YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.

1) There were probably warning signs that she was not long term material, but you ignored them because “she was the One”.

2) You got comfortable in your relationship and didn’t give her what she needed, so another guy swooped in.

3) Your relationship game wasn’t great/you weren’t experienced enough and some other guy who was better suited to her seduced her. In which case, she wasn’t long term material in the first place and most likely not the right woman for you.

The point is- take full responsibility for your life and trust me- you’ll be a much happier man.

There you have it- the three enemies of recovery.

It is my hope that bringing these to your awareness will prevent you from falling into this trap.

Your brother in this struggle,

J.K

The post 3 Enemies of Recovery From Porn Addiction appeared first on Elevated Recovery.

I’m going to blow your mind with something today.

Would you like to know the ONE thing which everyone who has been trying to quit porn for over two years misses?

If you haven’t been struggling with this for up to two years- no worries, this will be helpful to you as well.

See, when I was trying to end my habit with porn, I always assumed that a combination of willpower, discipline, spiritual faith, perhaps a filter and my BIG goals would be the solution.

I tried everything because I BADLY wanted out of my porn hell. I was so sick and tired of sexualizing every single woman I came across, tired of feeling like a pervert 24/7, tired of a life that revolved around my next masturbation session.

I was so scared that I would end up being a fuck up in life. It’s so depressing to KNOW that despite what the outside works think of you-you are truly a FRAUD

At one point, on the outside, I was viewed as a charismatic, well-spoken, 21 year old with lots of potential in my career and in college. Inside, I was the guy who spent an entire lecture staring at girls in class and wondering what sort of face they would make if we had anal sex.

The funny thing was- at that point, I was still a virgin.

Well, I tried all of those approaches mentioned for a few years and if you did as well, you can probably relate to some of these results:

Willpower: This could get me through 30 Days, but I’d always end up edging or touching myself and eventually masturbating. A typical example was once when I was so sexually frustrated after 30 Days that I ended up waking up one morning and kinda rubbing myself against my bedsheet until I orgasmed. In my mind, the justification was “You didn’t touch yourself, so you didn’t masturbate”. Of course, I felt really bad as soon as I was done and ended up watching porn a few days later. Have you ever experienced that before?

Discipline: This is pretty good. You have these moments when you are super focused on killing it in your career, and you make sure that NOTHING gets in the way of your progress. Often, you might be too busy to masturbate. Unfortunately, you don’t know how to sustain self-discipline. After all, it’s not a part of your lifestyle just yet. Eventually, you get stressed and feel like you deserve to relax. At that point, you either break a boundary with your diet, some substance or your time management, “chill out” and end up watching porn again.

Filters: Nothing much to say here. We bypass it, use a different device, download another browser, or uninstall it when our “addict” takes over. “The filter sucks” is our excuse every time.

Goals: Ah…. our goals. Whether its dating goals, financial goals, career goals, self-improvement goals or relationship goals…you believe that you want that goal bad enough to quit. You tell yourself over and over again “This is SERIOUS, man! I NEED to achieve this- there is NO TIME for this porn BS!”. All to no avail-your addiction was present in your life BEFORE your goals.
There is only one way for your big goals to bypass your porn habit. That way is ROCK BOTTOM. Totally screwing up your life thanks to porn.

Spiritual Faith: I was raised as a Catholic. Though I am no longer religious, at one point, my porn addiction was so intense that I dropped to my knees and prayed to every saint I could remember to deliver me from my behavior. Some of you do the same thing. Then your promptly binge on rape-themed porn for two hours.

As I told a client this morning: “Jesus only saves 5-9% of addicts. The rest gotta save themselves”. (That’s an actual statistic and there’s a very interesting story behind that. I’ll tell you about it another time.)

O.K- enough foreplay for now, lol.

The ONE thing that every man who’s been trying to quit porn over two years misses in his porn addiction recovery toolkit is ACCOUNTABILITY.

We don’t use accountability because we are fucking MEN.

We think we’re so damn capable of ending our porn use on our own that we will go for DECADES without ever IMAGINING that someone else knowing about your addiction could be the ONE thing we’re missing.

The dictionary definition of accountability is:

“The obligation of an individual to account for his activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.”

This means to tell people who have invested in you what you have achieved. It is your DUTY to demonstrate your effort, your responsibility, your achievement and your progress.

You don’t HAVE to be accountable.

You GET to be accountable. Its the SUPERHIGHWAY to quitting porn.

Please read those last two statements again.

There are three parts to accountability:

1) Visibility: When others know what you want, you can all appreciate your goal together.

2) Clarity: Know what you want allows you to move towards it with PURPOSE

3) Activity: Others knowing your goal allows for action because when you take a step towards your goal, they get inspired to become better accountability partners!

Here’s the magical thing about having these three parts of accountability present during your journey to quit porn:

Visibility + Clarity = FOCUS. You know what you want and you actually see it become a reality.No more self doubt.

Clarity + Activity= PROGRESS. You are clear about what you are doing and never waste time with useless action.No more browsing forums, reading a ton of books and watching endless videos to put it all together.

Activity + Visibility=ENCOURAGEMENT. Others support you, and give you positive feedback as you move forward.

Author S. J. Scott lists seven benefits of accountability in his book The Accountability Manifesto.( great book!)

Accountability when quitting porn gives you better performance under evaluation.
* Your slips are further and further apart-sometimes you NEVER relapse when you have accountability.

Accountability when quitting porn allows for honest feedback from others.
* You can’t BS yourself any longer.

Accountability expects you follow through on your commitments to quit.
* No more excuses. You told someone clearly that you would do something. So you do it.

Accountability establishes firm deadlines for tasks in your recovery.
* You become a FINISHER. If you’ve been following me for awhile, you know that almost all porn addicts are incapable of finishing long term projects. Your prefrontal cortex which regulates this has been damaged. Accountability gives it a chance to rebuild neural pathways.

Accountability keeps you grounded in reality.
* No more fantasies. No more low self esteem based on false perceptions of yourself.

Accountability helps you learn from the success and failure of others who are trying to quit as well.
* John went on a business trip and didn’t call the hotel front desk and tell them to block the adult channels. Well, I certainly won’t be making THAT mistake!

Accountability prevents little problems from becoming big problems.
* No porn fantasies moving from tube sites to chatrooms to cruising for partners in real life.

Accountability is NOT a “drag”. It is a wonderful opportunity. The missing ingredient in the actions of many men who are on this journey. Finding a good accountability partner is often the ONLY thing you need to quit.

One of my earliest mentors was Mark Manson ( before he became famous).

About 12 years ago in Austin, Texas as we ended our coaching day in a bar ( yes- I literally paid his cash money to get coached in a bar over a few pale ales) he said:

“You know J.K, if you just did three things in order of importance- quit watching so much porn, move to a cooler town, talked to 10 women a week and had someone keep you accountable, you’ll solve 90% of your problems within 3 months.”

He was right. He kept me accountable and I unlocked another level of my recovery.

I truly hope you find the courage to include accountability in your recovery. It just might make the next few months the best of your life.

The post One Thing Missing In Your Recovery appeared first on Elevated Recovery.

Dealing with an out of control behavior with porn, sex or masturbation can be tough and it definitely affects your life in negative ways.

I know many men who follow Porn Addiction Recovery Reboot have been trying to quit for a long time- there are moments when you are doing very well and times when you’re just deep in it binging, feeling shame, guilt, and loss of control.

But this does not mean that your life should fall apart. In fact, the main reason I do this is to help men realize their dreams and potential. And I don’t mean potential in some sort of bullshit motivational way. I mean- you have goals- there are things you want in life- in your career, your finances, your relationships, your health and much more. You are only here because pornography is holding you back.

When I quit porn over a decade ago, I literally entered a new reality.I took advantage of it to create the life that I wanted and I am determined in my small way to help you get there.

Pornography robs us of productivity and if you are an ambitious man, today I’m going to share with you 10 steps to increase your productivity while struggling with quitting porn.

While I struggled with porn and masturbation, I was still able to maintain very high levels of productivity in TWO careers simultaneously. This is how I accomplished that.

Step 1: Look in the mirror

Realize that as a man and as a man struggling a with a porn, sex or masturbation problem, while there may be people who support you, you are the only one who can change your life. No rehab, no counselor, no coach, no guru can impact your life the way you can. When men get on the phone with me- I always say- I just want to help you become an expert at yourself. You control your time. You may not be able to control your sexual urges as much you’d like to- YET, but the remaining hours of the day are very much in your hands-even if you feel fatigued and demotivated after hours of watching porn. Nothing is physically stopping you from doing the work.
So look in the mirror and tell yourself. “No one is coming to save me. I must save myself.” I take responsibility for my life. This one of the most empowering things you can do for yourself.

Step 2: Keep track of your time

One of the biggest time wasters for men is social media. Personally, I believe that if you are not running a business or your career does not involve social media, you really don’t need to be on it . Especially when you are recovering from porn addiction. Spend a day recording how you spend your time. Find out how much time you spend on checking email, commenting, participating, sharing, being entertained on social media. Once you find out that you’re spending hours on tasks which are not related to your number 1 goal, move them to the least important part of your day

Step 3: Fix your inbox

Many of us have a habit of making our email inbox a to-do list. You had your plans for the day, but the moment you logged into your email, suddenly random people are dictating your day. So here are some things you can do to avoid this situation.
1) Don’t check your email first thing in the morning. I don’t remember where this quote is from, but it says “The fastest way to time travel to 2 pm is to check inbox first thing in the morning”

2) Turn off all alerts on your computer. No facebook alerts, no nothing.

3) Put your phone in silent mode when working. Personally, my phone is on silent and in another room when I am writing or mentoring a client or running group sessions . Now, I do have long term clients who sign up 24 hour accountability. I never take more than 3 of these a year, so I let them know that for a certain block of time I will be unavailable.

4) The next thing is unsubscribe from anyone or anything in your inbox that you are not actively using. Be very aggressive with this .Everyday there people trying to sell you something- a product, a service or an idea. You only have so much energy to devote to these people. Not to be a hypocrite-myself included. If you are not opening every email from this person. If you are not excited to see their name in your inbox because they bring value to your life- unsubscribe. This includes me. Many of you know that I start off many of my emails with a big unsubscribe statement. Only deal with people who are engaged and invested in you.

Step 4: Create Gates

In your professional life, set up walls, gates or boundaries for certain projects. I break my years year down into 4 periods of 90 days. I have set goals for every 90 days. If during that period someone reaches out to me to collaborate on something, or speak at an event, or coach them. My staff will review the request and if its accepted- we will let them know that we will check back with them in 90 Days. If the offer expires within that time, thats o.k. The point is, I am protecting my number one goal and priority during any given 90 Day period. No distractions.I suggest you do the same. You may only have three or four major things to accomplish this year, but if you create boundaries around these periods of times, you will achive A LOT by the end of the year.

Step 5: Say “No”

Learn how to say no to people. Learn how to say no to things that take away from your time.

For instance, everyday when I open my inbox , there will be dozens and dozens of emails from men and women asking for help or feedback tor guidance with a porn, sex or masturbation related issue. Now, when someone has the courage to reach out for help with an issue like this, it usually mean that they have hit rock bottom and nothing is working. However, 9 of 10 times, the answer to their specific question is in a video or is in one of my free courses. So I send them to that resource. Sometimes, people don’t want that resource-they want someone to give them the solution or the answer-sometimes they want me to speak to me or email back and forth about the subject. If that’s the case, they are redirected to an application page to fill out an application and set up an appointment to speak to me based on my availability. Unfortunately, some people don’t want to go through any of that and demand an answer right away. At that point I say NO.

And you have to learn how to say no as well. Whether its to friends and family that want to hang out during your productive hours or people involved in your career who are asking for more than you can give. My natural instinct is to help everyone and I used to try to do that, but I realized that I had the most impact on helping people quit their porn and masturbation problems when I focused on a small group of committed people.

Step 6: Block Your Time

I believe it was Grant Cardone who said- “You wanna meet the devil? Show me white space on your calendar and I’ll show you the devil”. Block off times on your calendar for when you are most efficient. Some people are more productive in the day, and some are more productive in the evening. You know yourself. During that time or during those days put aside for important work, don’t schedule anything with anyone else. For almost a decade while I was running a training company- my parents, my family, AND my friends knew that I only took calls from them on Sundays unless it was a serious health or a life or death emergency. The rest of the time was spent on my work. If you have a family, or if you are in a relationship, I highly recommend blocking off time to spend with them. Don’t let anything come in the way of either time spent with your loved ones or your friends or with work.

Step 7: Focus

Do one thing at a time. Multitasking does not work. Some of you are reading a book, responding to a text thread, checking if a girl messaged you back on a dating app and looking at the number of likes you received on your last Instagram post. Each time you take your attention away from your ONE focus, it takes more energy to refocus. Eventually, you find yourself unable to complete the task or exhausted. So pick one thing, give yourself a time limit like 45 minutes or an hour and just go at it, till your timer goes off. Then set another timer to focus on other non-work related activities like responding to texts from friends or family. You’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish.

Step 8: Take Care of Your Body

To keep it simple, how much you rest, what you eat how you exercise affects your productivity greatly. In terms of sleep-honestly, I’m hardly a role model because I’m used to 4-5 hours of sleep and have trained myself to do thrive on these hours over many years.. However, ideally during recovery while you are trying to quit porn and be productive, 7-9 hours is great. When you recover, feel free to cut down on your sleep hours if you desire. The earlier you go to bed the better. When you go to bed early, you’ll wake up earlier and that gives you time to start your day right. There is a huge difference between going to bed at 1 am and waking up at 9:00 am and going to bed at 10 pm and waking up at 5;30-6am. In the former, the morning is almost over -its difficult to generate a sense of accomplishment when you wake up that late. On the other hand, when you wake up at 6, you can get more done before 9 am than most people will in an entire day- I know I do. And that gives you momentum to have a great day.
What you eat is fuel for your body. I advocate eating as clean as possible because it allows your body to function like a clean, efficient machine. If you eat fast food or a lot of processed food, its going to slow you down not just physically, but it will slow down your thinking as well.
In terms of diet, find out what works for you. Personally, I fast and skip breakfast. My most productive time is in the morning and I find that when I eat first thing in the morning, I get slightly drowsy because a lot of the blood which should be going to my brain instead goes to my digestive system to digest my breakfast. I also workout in the morning and doing so on an empty stomach helps me burn fat and get my body ready for the day.
The important thing to remember is that getting adequate rest, eating clean and exercising daily is crucial to productivity during your recovery.

Step 9: Purge

Clear your life of everything which is unnecessary. The barometer to measure whether something should be in your life or not is whether you love it and if it brings you happiness. This applies to your office, your work and to your relationships. Once a year, I go through my offices and I get rid of everything I have not used for the past year. Random notes, ideas which I will never act on-even my books. Now I have a huge library, and if you are an ambitious growth-minded professional, you probably do as well. And it can be very hard to let go of some books.

Part of purging for books is going through your library and getting rid of books which you have never read and are older than 6 months. This includes those language books you bought when you thought you were going to learn a certain language, self improvement books which you are sure you will read “someday” , books which you bought on a whim and books which you only read once and never again referred to. Ask yourself- does the thought of this book or the knowledge I will gain from reading it bring me happiness? If it doesn’t, let the book go. It’s amazing, but when you reduce clutter, you create so much peace of mind. Its one of those things which you have to actually do to truly experience that sort of peace of mind and clarity.

The same goes for relationships. I have some of my clients at a point in their recovery, go through their phones and delete all contacts that they have nothing to do with anymore. Some professionals have thousands of contacts. Whether it’s for coworkers or employees from a past career, women whose numbers you got 10 years ago, random people you met while traveling, business contacts who are no longer working with you, acquaintances from college- delete their numbers if they are no longer relevant to your productivity and happiness.Keep the relevant ones.

When it comes to people in your life, the same concept applies. Are there people who are who are taking away from your schedule? If there are people in your life who are not contributing towards your growth or happiness, let them go as well. Now this sounds harsh, but remember- this is for recovering porn addicts who want to be productive. You are already struggling with quitting pornography-which is costing you a lot of time and energy. People who are in your life simply to hangout, party, entertain you, or get something for you are a waste of your precious energy. Remove them from your life and become very selective about who you bring into your life. Make sure its people who increase your happiness, are growth minded, people who are positive, people who have their own goals. Just because someone is exciting or entertaining or beautiful or “cool” does not necessarily mean that they are a positive contribution to your life.

Step 10: Positive Routines

Routines are so important to your productivity because they save you time and energy. When you have a routine, you don’t need to think. You brain is on autopilot and frees up energy for other things.
There are many things in your life which you can “automate” or make routine. For instance- your mornings. Prepare for the morning the evening before. This means, have the clothes which you are going to wear the next day laid out. Some very productive people have their meals prepped for the next day. So you wake up in the morning and you don’t need to think-you roll out of bed, put on your workout clothes and go running or go to the gym, when you come back, you shower, change, have breakfast and start the day- the same way everyday.

Compare that to waking up every morning, not knowing what you are going to do. Not knowing whether you brush your teeth first or your look at your phone first, or spending 20 minutes figuring out what to wear, sitting on the fence as to whether to go to the gym that morning or in the evening. By the time the most important tasks of your day begin, you have expended so much mental and sometimes energy on simple tasks which could been routines.
Introduce positive routines into your life.

There you go! The 10 Steps to being productive while recovering from a porn addiction!

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