In June of 2016 I published a blog post titled “Sifting through the Noise.” In essence, the short essay is about distractions and execution.
I’d argue that most of the time when I fail at something it is not because i was not good enough to be successful or that my idea or thinking was wrong. Most of the time it comes down to one thing: execution.
In a lot of ways, you can think of life linearly. There is you on one side and whatever you want to get on the other. Of course this is a metaphor, you should want multiple things out of life, but play with the simplicity for a moment. To get to what you want, there are lots of obstacles. Some, of course bigger than others. To me, the biggest obstacles are not the hurdles in the beginning or the last parts of the climb. No. I actually most enjoy those parts. I most enjoy thinking of ideas and I most enjoy completing/publishing them (in fact I do it every single day). The hard part is the middle. The middle is where the execution happens. The middle is never shown in the movies because it is most of the boring stuff. Think of it as sending emails, typing words, doing pushups…whatever.
Now getting “distracted” is actually not a bad thing. I’ve come to realize that you can learn when you are distracted and find out more about yourself.
But getting distracted will not help you get to your goal. And a lot of times people fail and put the blame on things other than pure distraction.
I have spent the past few years focused, yet distracted. I have been “open” to opportunities and new things. I read tons, listen to hours of podcasts – spending a significant amount of time a day exploring my curiosities. This process has helped me learn a lot about myself – what I like, what I hate, etc.
In doing so, though, I have exposed myself to tons of “noise” – distractions. And I spend a lot of energy filtering.
I want to reduce the amount of noise that comes into my life so that I can execute on a few simple, foundational principles. I am not sure the exact steps for this yet, but effectively I want to minimize “pointless” distractions. Caveat this does not mean not have any fun, it just means getting rid of clutter and noise that I do not like in my life.
I will do this programmatically, cutting out things with technology. More updates to come on this.