#1194 DEEP THINKING
The practicality of confirmation bias is a tool with a dull edge. My hope today is that I help you drag yours across the whetstone of your brain,
Marcus Aurelius ran the Roman Empire for 20 years. It was an empire estimated to have had over 40 million people. He managed to do this while getting news updates via courier every few days at best. His meditations in Stoic philosophy are among the best written and are my favorites. He was known as one of the few “good and kind” Roman emperors. Epictetus trained him incessantly to consider issues from many angles and think deeply. He was taught to maintain composure in the face of adversity because his thinking would be flawed and his reaction inappropriate in any state other than calmness. His training, if it had one thread that ran through it, was in character.
I wonder what he would have done with a 24/7 news cycle and constant streams of information invading his mind.
“Unplugging” has become a thing. It’s become a defined period of time, perhaps on vacation, when one tries to ignore the pings and pops of news flashes, social media updates, text messages, and emails. It’s said to be healthy and cleansing. If that’s true, why is unplugging only done occasionally and for short periods of time?
To me, that’s akin to wading in a polluted river every day, coming out to cleanse the pollutants off only occasionally, and believing that the cleansing negates the damage of wading in the stuff in the first place.
A large part of what I teach individuals and teams that I coach is planning. Planning takes a clear mind, quiet space, and unconstrained reaches to the various edges of one’s universe of work, play, family, friends, and personal development. It can’t be done while wading in the river.
Far be it for me to rain on your parade. If scrolling Instagram for hours a day is your vibe and you love it, have at it. Of course, most addicts love getting high and usually believe they are handling it well.
I believe that reading the news once a day should suffice. Unless you’re running a hedge fund or a precinct, I don’t think minute-by-minute updates are helpful. As far as FOMO, if someone you know is celebrating a birth, marriage, career milestone, or mourning a death, you’ll find out about it in plenty of time to address it.
This constant stream of information (much of it bad) is about as healthy as being awakened every fifteen minutes after you’ve gone to bed. Deep sleep for uninterrupted periods of time is a huge contributor to overall health, as is being present and having uninterrupted time to think.
I’m not suggesting that we go back to sending missives via carrier pigeon or a fleet-footed courier. I like and use many of the technological tools and information-sharing platforms available to me.
However, I don’t allow interruptions which my phone calls notifications. Various programs ask me if I’d like to be notified. That’s nice, isn’t it? They’re offering to notify me. How considerate. What if it said, “Would you like to allow interruptions”? How many would click yes to agree to “push interruptions”?
Own Your Sales Gene…and your mind.