Execution

The Discipline To Not Pay Attention

Reading: A Brief History of Intelligence.

In Part One, I shared my vision for the next eight years and ended with four questions:

1. What’s lacking?

2. Who is the person I need to become to fill that need?

3. Can I make it happen right where I am?

4. My values & needs are likely to change in predictable ways, what are those ways?

Those questions were framed with intent.

Whenever you feel stuck, search for a pattern of thinking:

• Someone other than myself needs to change…

  • …then I’ll be satisfied, happy, or content.

• Somewhere else will offer me a better life…

  • …if I could only get there then I’ll be satisfied, happy, or content.

The first one is a focus on THEM.

The second one is a focus on SOMEWHERE ELSE.

I’d encourage you to look into your past. Has enduring satisfaction ever come from other people changing? from moving around? from your victories?

I fooled myself, for years, until I caught myself in these patterns.

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In Part Two, I pointed out that desire will follow action and environment.

The most important environment is the one nobody sees. The one in our heads. What’s going on up there?

Who are the people, and websites, that reinforce my worst habits?

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Taken together, Parts One and Two are about vision, mission and motivation. I wrote those articles to help you arrive at a place of clarity.

• Clarity doesn’t mean we have life completely figured out. What we are seeking is clarity on an aspect of our lives.

• Clarity means we have identified a basic need that’s not being met and have figured out what we need to change, in ourselves.

When we make progress in a single area of our lives, the noise that surrounds us fades into the background.

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The Winter Olympics are on.

What’s one trait shared by every Olympian?

Olympians have the ability to focus on a single thing, for years.

• Relentless focus is quite a drug.

• The ability not-to-focus is a skill.

Let’s explore what I mean here.

In many fields, the requirement for success boils down to daily practice and continuous learning.

My last book was about sport. I use sport to teach methods we can bring into our larger lives. With that in mind, we started our book by explaining the requirements of a life with meaning:

1. Do Work - Am I «training» consistently?

2. Enjoy The Process - Do I enjoy my life structure?

3. Endure - Is my workload sustainable?

4. Correct Errors - Do I have a system for better decision making?

To build a life with meaning, we need all four: daily work, enjoyment, sustainable, and error correction. Call these the Big Four. We set them up so they run on habit, not willpower.

Discipline is required with removing choices, and attitudes, that screw up the Big Four.¹

• My Choices.

• My Attitude.

Those who crave success often want to be told what to do. We seek coaches and gurus to explain the way. The formula is simple: enjoy daily work, set it at a sustainable level, and correct errors. That approach will lead us towards better.

But success isn’t satisfaction. For satisfaction we need connection.

The difficulty lies in the skill of not-focusing. Not-focusing on what?

• For execution, I wrote you an article. See the section on avoiders.

• Not-focusing runs deeper than execution. It’s why I asked you to search for situations where you are THE person for the task at hand.

The most miserable people I know, the folks with chronic anxiety, those with muddled thinking… all of them, spend hours a day focused on areas where they have no impact.

Personally, I like to focus on my one thing while keeping an eye on health, fitness and friends. This means there will be many areas of the world, many tragedies, many injustices, many price moves… where I will not be informed. When I die, there will be articles unread, videos not watched, wrongs not righted…

But…

I will have done a tremendous amount of good and enjoyed the process.

1. Please read my article about Choice Theory. Perhaps, it will be a spark that leads to better outcomes.