Most Important Things

If you’re anything like me, you have a to-do list a mile long.  Some of the items on the list are important, many more are trivial.  So if you’re looking at that list of things to do first thing in the morning, what are you most likely to do?  Again, if you’re anything like me, you won’t choose what’s most important – you choose whatever is easiest.

We like the little wins.  The low hanging fruit – it’s like candy for the wants-to-be-productive part of your brain.  There is definitely something satisfying about checking things off from your to-do list.  It doesn’t even matter what it is.  You could put things on your list that you were going to do anyway – brush teeth, take shower, make breakfast – and when you check them off, it still feels good.  So it’s no wonder that you when you’re looking at your list of things to do that you choose the easiest one.  You get all of the satisfaction of accomplishment without any of the…you know… actual hard work.

I’ve long used a program called “Things” (not being paid by them, just an honest plug- Apple only) to organize my different projects and provide me with a to-do list each day from all my different areas of responsibility.  I used to stuff it with 4 or 5 things per day from my normal routine, stuff I would do anyway.  Things like “balance my checkbook,” “empty my home inbox,” “fold laundry.”  I even had items on my to-do list to remind me to make another to-do list when I got to work.  In other words, I set up a bunch of reminders to do simple maintenance tasks and stuff I would be doing anyway, not actual work on stuff that was actually important or pushed my life forward.  At the end of the day, if I checked off 12 of 15 things, I’d feel good about myself.  As long as I got most of the things checked off, I’d just carry over the last few things to the next day.  Except I noticed that the same few things were getting carried over from day to day.  The hard things.  The Most Important Things.  

I’m not arguing that you get rid of your to-do list – I couldn’t function without mine.  What you (and I) should do is organize our to-do list in terms of what is most important, not what’s easiest, and then force ourselves to go in order.  I just started deleting the smaller things from my lists altogether if I felt I could get them done without reminders and began leaving only important things on the list.  It’s a work in progress, but I’ve realized that finishing one “Most Important Thing” means a whole lot more than a dozen checkmarks next to little things on the to-do list.

Zen Habits on Focus

Today I am directing you to check out a post at Zen Habits, chosen as one of Time Magazine’s Best Blogs of 2010.  In this post, called Monk Mind: How to Increase Your Focus, Leo brings together so many of the ideas that we’ve talked about here at Mastermind. 

The problem he describes is one that plagues offices worldwide in the internet age – the constant compulsion to check email, Facebook, CNN and the million other distractions we have at our fingertips when we should be doing work. 

Leo’s advice on this is almost like a concise combination of several different blog posts over here.  His first step to increasing your focus is to Start Small.  Then he talks about how your brain has to build up tolerance to focus for longer and longer periods, and you gotta exercise your brain like a muscle to get it there.  Then he talks about building up your focus periods for longer and longer periods until you can work straight for a half hour, and then take a 5 minute break, ala Pomodoros. 

 Love this post – and as the minimalist he is, he’s said what I’ve been trying to say for weeks in one column.  Must read.

Birds of a Feather Flock Together

A lot of us are confused about how we become the people that we are. We would like to think of ourselves as completely autonomous beings who make conscious and informed decisions about our religion, our politics, our beliefs, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, how much we drink alcohol, and a whole host of other things. Even if we are in control of nothing else, we would at least like to believe we are in control of ourselves. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul, right?

The scary truth is that many of these things that we think we choose for ourselves, are actually heavily influenced, if not chosen for us, by the people around us. As a child, most of our belief structure is essentially chosen by our parents, or the other people in our household. Studies have shown that once you hit junior high, your circle of friends are more influential than even your parents. Once you move out of your parents or guardian’s home, your circle of friends becomes even more important.

The further removed we are from the people who shaped our upbringing, the influence of your chosen circle of friends intensifies even more. If your group of friends in college or at your first job go out and drink every night, that lifestyle will appear perfectly normal to you, even natural. If your friends order pizza or eat fast food nightly, that seems normal to you as well. Meanwhile, there is a group of triathletes living one block away from you that would find your lifestyle abhorrent and totally abnormal.

If you step back and take a look at your friends, you will probably notice they have a lot in common with you. It is doubtful that your 5 closest friends are teetotaling church-goers if you’re waking up and hitting the crackpipe every morning. There are probably similarities in how much you weigh, what your drinking/partying habits are, what TV shows you watch, how many TV shows you watch, your politics, etc. And it’s a true chicken and the egg scenario: you choose to hang around people that are similar to you, and in turn you adopt more of those people’s characteristics. You continue reinforcing each other’s beliefs and habits until you and your friends live in a nice comfortable bubble of sameness.

What we do with our close friends, is we enable them to be more like us. Whatever you are like, you are giving your friends permission to be like that too. It’s comforting. If you are eating a cinnabon for breakfast every morning, and the 5 other people in your house are eating egg whites and spinach, you would probably feel guilty. But if you’re eating a cinnabon for breakfast, and everyone else is having 2, you feel like a model of self-restraint. You create your own world of what is considered “normal” by the few people you choose to spend most of your time with.

We are all enablers whether we realize it or not. The question is, what are you enabling the people around you to do? And how are those people enabling you? Would your closest five friends look at your strange if you decided to start going to sleep at 10 and waking up at 5 to work out or work on your novel? Would you be called lame if you turned down a night of drinking to go to the bookstore? Does it seem totally foreign to your social circle to not keep up with the personal lives of celebrities plus your favorite 5 (or 10? 15?) TV shows?

I would like to tell you that you can be a positive enabler to your 5 closest friends and push them to improve along with you. I wish I could tell you that you could change your 5 cinnabon eating, nightly beer-chugging, waking up just before work, barely doing enough to get by in life friends into unbelievably accomplished go-getters who are taking from life what they want rather than accepting what life gives them. But you are just one person. And the truth is, you can only change yourself. You may have some influence by living by example, but other people change only when, and if, they want to.

What I am compelled to tell you is that if your five closest friends are enabling you to continue a lifestyle that you are unhappy with, you may need to look at spending more time around different people. You will have to rid yourself the complainers, whiners, blamers, and pessimists. Find people whose qualities you admire and want to see in yourself. Make an effort to spend time with folks who think it’s normal to shoot for wild and outlandish dreams. Seek out friends who think eating spinach is normal, who believe in contributing to a 401K before hitting the mall, and people who when you tell them your loftiest aspirations, tell you to aim even higher.

Birds of a feather flock together. Go choose your flock.

Shakespeare was Wrong

Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once. – from the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare.

I’m not too sure about Mr. Shakespeare’s quote and his view on cowardice. Sure, I lost thousands (maybe millions) of battles by the time I reached 9th grade. I wasn’t invited to any parties, I kept my nose in every book, I had braces, glasses, a horrible haircut, and I was overly polite. I also lacked the courage to change my wardrobe, ask the cool girl out, learn how to drive, or meet different people. However, my personal struggles with cowardice always seemed like one prolonged death rather than a succession of many deaths. It felt like the coward (and not the valiant) gets to taste death once. As a matter of fact; death is the only thing that a coward can taste.

I first tasted death as I bit into Eden’s apple and opened my eyes to reality. I always knew that I was different, but the apple made me care that I was different. You see…a coward has to care about the triumphs of the valiant before he can understand the despair of his own cowardice. The fact of the matter is that I used to be happy in the 9th grade. I didn’t have the courage to change my wardrobe, ask the cool girl out, learn how to drive, meet different people, or enjoy my high school career- but I was very okay with this. Death occurs when a person bases their happiness on accepting a reality rather than choosing it. I was subconsciously accepting my cowardly losses and defeats as just a part of my nerd existence. I knew better than to think that every nerd or outsider was a coward. I knew plenty of happy nerds that wanted nothing to do with sports, parties, the opposite sex, or gossip. I knew many nerds who were confident with themselves and went on to become happy and successful adults. The problem wasn’t that I was a nerd. The problem was that I cared and I couldn’t do anything to change it. I was definitely a nerd and outsider, but not by choice. I was accepting a life of fear rather than living a life based on choice. This is the life of a coward.

This turning point changes the harmless type of outsider into an angry and spiteful person who hides their insecurities with good grades and accolades. I actually convinced myself that I was valiant because I had overcome the obstacles that lead many students astray. I stayed out of trouble, didn’t party, and kept my nose clean. My demeanor was steady, calm, and responsible- but I’m dying one long death on the inside. I’m dying because I’m not overcoming these obstacles…I’m avoiding them. The coward is mild mannered, but extremely implosive on the inside. The coward comes off as being nice, but is actually very keen and conniving. The coward might always be smiling, but they are very unhappy. A coward angrily doggy paddles in his or her pool of inadequacy while reflecting on the world. This allows a coward to alter their view of the world and compensate for their own shortcomings. A coward thinks, “He’s just a dumb jock. He’ll blow out his knee in college and never make it to the pros.” A coward also might think, “She isn’t that pretty. She’ll be single, ugly, and have three big-headed kids by the time she’s 21.” The craziest part is that the coward starts to become his or her own emotional bully. We beat ourselves up for being ourselves, but we also beat ourselves up for not being other people. The coward is aware of his or her cowardice, but feels unable to change it. The coward never gets to live and die many times during this cycle of self abuse. Instead, the coward only tastes and accepts the bitterness of one long death.

The good news is that it only takes one win to live. It only takes one taste of victory to know the ugliness of failure and death. A winner doesn’t always win, but the valiant are always going to try. Just take time and talk to that good looking guy or girl the next time that you see them. Go ahead and try out for a sports team. Buy some clothes that accentuate your personality. Get into the gym every now and then. Take care of your body and understand that physical appearance is not just superficial hogwash, but it is actually an important part of human evolution (nerds should understand this). You don’t have to get the hot date, but you can’t be afraid to ask. You don’t have to be in the best physical shape, but you should try to be in good shape. You don’t have to dress a certain way, but you should dress in a way that makes you happy. Just do SOMETHING to break the cruel cycle of accepting your cowardice but being too much of a coward to change it.

Please listen to me because I’ve been through enough to know that Shakespeare was wrong. Cowards do NOT die many times before their deaths. Cowards never have a chance to die multiple times because cowards never live. The existence of the coward is actually one long and continuous death. Death is all the coward knows. The heroes and the valiant die thousands of deaths. They put themselves on the line everyday and face failure, loss, and even contempt. The courageous and valiant will overcome many obstacles to get what they want. They get to live and die many deaths- NOT the coward.

Therefore, I say this to Mr. Shakespeare:

Cowards experience the taste of death- once and forever. Only the valiant get to live and die many times before their deaths. For only the valiant ever get to live.