A wealth of information, a poverty of attention.

In 1971 social scientist Herbert Simon famously said “What consumes information is rather obvious.  It consumes the attention of its recipients.  Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

This statement was made before smartphones, social media, texting, and email.  Today it is more important than ever.  

In a world filled with distraction, attention is our competitive advantage.  

Stop deli-slicing your attention and limiting your ability to focus deeply.

Do great work by eliminating distractions.

What are you trying to accomplish?

“The most basic form of stupidity is forgetting what you are trying to accomplish.” – Freidrich Nietzche

It’s a great question to ask yourself from time to time – 

All the things you do…all the stuff you bought….all the things you learned…

What are you trying to accomplish?

Surround yourself with people who believe in you.

Nothing is more damaging to a child than to grow up with people around them that call them stupid, don’t believe in them, and try to hold them down.  Of course for the culprit, this has nothing to do with the child, and everything to do with them.

But let’s take an audit of the people around us adults.  Are we around people who don’t believe in us and our potential?  Are we around people who tell us we can’t?  Are we around people who like us because we are living small and struggling like they are – and who would not like it if we improved?

(Are we one of those people to others?  Ut-oh.  Different subject!)

Nothing can take the foot off the brakes of happiness and growth in life than to get away from heavy negative influences like this.  And while it can be difficult, in the end, it’s simply a choice that takes courage.

It’s not about arguing or proving them wrong.  It’s getting your physical body away from them.  

Stand up for you.

An insecure future – good for you?

Here are some words that may whack you upside the head like a frying pan –

“Nothing is more damaging to an adventurous life than a secure future.

Better to have a short life doing what you like doing than a long life doing what you don’t like.

Playing it safe to live longer by doing what you don’t like is stupid.”

Wow.  Love it!

What do you think?

Comment with the orange button!

Being Extraordinary

Being average is not hard.  Just do what everyone else does.  Take advice from average people doing average things and living average lives and copy them.  For me, it’s okay to be normal in some areas of life.

But if you want to be extraordinary, you can’t be normal in all areas of life.  You have to get around people who are not normal.  Learn from them.  Think differently than most.  Look at what everyone else is looking at and see what nobody else sees. 

Then, you have to do what few others will.

That’s extraordinary.

My Philosophy for Living

I am attempting to write down my philosophy for living here.  I hope you will try to write yours.  This is without thinking very long and hard about it.

First, I’ll say that the older you get, the more mature and wiser you get.  Your philosophy may change as that happens.  

Next, there are so many dimensions of life, that I decided to create individual sentences to address different ones.  Compartmentalization is my specialty in such endeavors anyway.

1) An extraordinary life of shared experiences.  (That is my personal mission statement).

2) My life will never outperform my character.

3) Do it now.  Life is short.

4) Be nice to people.  It will make things much easier.

5) People, including myself, have much more potential than they are using.  Endeavor to bring it out of them.

6) Freedom is most important for people to thrive.  Talk about it, protect it, and defend it.

7) Step in front and be a leader.  As a leader, you are a steward of others.  Do not fail them.

8) Take “risks”, but don’t be reckless.  

9) Help and serve others by using the gifts you have been given.  That’s why they were given to you.

10) The best way to make a better world is to be a better person, and to take care of your family first.

11) Spend less than you make and invest the difference, no matter how small.

12) Turn your talent into skill and skill into achievement with continued effort.

13) Tune out voices that will not help you, and tune into voices of value as much as possible.

14) Just because everyone, or a lot of people, are doing it, doesn’t make it right.  I’ll decide how I behave.  

14) How high and far can I go?  I’ll keep going and find out.  It’s a long game.

Without writing a book, and spending fifteen minutes on it, this is what I have. 

What is in your philosophy?

You need a philosophy before goals

This post is around a comment by subscriber Willis Ponds.  He put it better than I did when talking about the futility of very long-term planning.  When thinking about what your life (or business) will look like in five years, ten years, or longer, you can’t help but make many assumptions.  In an unpredictable fluid world, you will much more than likely be wrong.

Instead, Willis tells us, you need a philosophy for living.  Then strive to live by it and take opportunities as they come.  When presented with a choice, follow the paths you love.

Philosophy.  Jim Rohn talked about it a lot.  

What is your philosophy for your life?  Good question.  I bet you never thought about it that way.  Tomorrow I will try to express mine for you.

You gotta have a system to stay organized

An active high performance life requires you to stay organized, plan your days and weeks and years, and not drop any balls or let people down. 

 Let me tell you how I do it.  I use a planner book.  The one I use is the Jim Rohn One Year Success Planner. (You can get one on Amazon.)

I can hear some of you young whipper snappers now – “Paper and pen?  OMG.  So old school!”

Ok, maybe, but you have to find something that works for you.  This works for me – really well.  It is also a big part of my liberation from screens.

It’s simple.  I can plan my year, my weeks, and my days.  I use the boxes at the bottom of each page to write in calls I have to make.  If it’s a hard appointment I write it in and draw a rectangle around it.  I put stuff to do first thing at the top of a day (column) and afternoon stuff toward the bottom.  When I complete something I highlight it with a yellow highlighter.  Of course, I use different color ink when I write things in to separate on thing from another with color.  

The only downside is if I lose my journal I am in a bit of trouble.  But I do not get a constant barrage of notifications and reminders about things I wrote in, and I don’t need or want them because I have the habit of carrying my planner home and back to work all the time and following it.  It works for me.  I will continue it.  I solved this challenge long ago.  I love it.  

I know there are many ways to stay organized and some have benefits.  Which one you choose is not the point.  That you have a system that works for you is.  

What is your time planning system?

From the Inner – the Outer

“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary

From the inner – the outer.

Your life, in all it’s dimensions and results, is because of what is going on inside your head.  That voice you think is you.

You don’t come with an instruction manual.  Work on you.  Understand you. 

Understand what emotions are there, why, and what you need and don’t need.  What you should act on and what you should not act on.

Become a different kind of person inside – a different kind of thinker.  Become the kind of person that attracts and manifests what you want.

It’s an inside job, and you are the only one you have to be concerned about.

What makes you come alive?

“Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive; because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

I have this theory that we are all made differently; each equipped with a combination of talents, interests, and characteristics that humanity needs to get it all done.  We are not all the same.  God has this figured out.  But we need to understand ourselves and find a path that matches who we are.  Then, get in your zone and be the best version of yourself that you can be.

When you are doing something you are inherently good at and interested in, you will be happier and go farther in that field with greater ease than if you were doing something you did not like.