Don’t Overwhelm Yourself

Of course, the new view came from a podcast in this case The Diary of a CEO with Marie Forleo, where she states that helped over 100 million people to improve their life (a bold statement). This thumbnail hook made me start watching the video and a new idea came handly. Besides explaining her own life, and her struggles, she shares her techniques to improve herself, which for me is amazing, because I do like to improve myself all the time, but what came to me during her podcast almost at the end (over 1:20 min of the podcast) was one simple rule: measure the time of your day very meticulously. She was talking about some basic numbers of how people spend time in America, I am not 100% sure about the exact numbers (please watch the video for total veracity), but if I can remember correctly the average American watches TV around 7 hours a day, which is insane, then she said, check yourself and see how much time you are spending on things that bring no return.

New View

I Thought I Was Good

I told myself, you are good, you don't watch TV or fake news, you only improve yourself, by watching podcasts, listening to books, or learning new skills on youtube (and yes, when I am very tired mentally, I may watch some neutral content on youtube, but not that often). As YouTube is my main app for content I went to the weekly time spent on YouTube and I had an average of 5 hours a day, almost 40 hours a week watching content! By the way, not bad content, good content, however, look at her next insight. Don’t load yourself with new ideas. She said a thing that made me stop the video and go to bed right away, that the excess of content and other people's ideas, stop you from having or “downloading” your own solutions, it may be slowing you down due to the excess of information to be processed (my interpretation of her view), and she mentioned that normally good insights came when you are relaxed, doing nothing, as taking a bath, or walking in the nature.

I was Trying to be Occupied All The Time

I noticed that every single “spare time” I would be loading myself with some random content, even to walk from my office to my car, I would turn on something to listen, then would connect to the car and be distracted all the time by a new content, which is very engaging as I tend to watch very good podcasters. I was always struggling. I wasn't aware that I was struggling to keep my attention on the normal day issues to be solved, I thought it was all normal until I stopped to put in new information, The next day I already saw improvement, I was solving all the annoying small tasks, and engaging in tasks that I thought I did not have time for the last 2 months.

My Take On It

I believe the simple fact of stopping putting several hours of new content into my brain, gave it more “RAM memory” to process my problems, and now I am able to organize and process all these new ideas, I am actually able to use everything that I learned in some sort. Another podcast that listened to (I don’t recall which one was), said that the amount of information that we absorb and see in 1 day is more than the entire life of people 500 hundred years ago, making it difficult for our brain to be calm, as we were not evolved naturally to have this abundance of information. Learning is not wrong. I am not saying you should not learn, and study or stop reading books, I will get back to my old habit of listing books, but I will keep about one hour a day, however I will try 2 weeks of purging process, with almost nothing new, unless necessary to get some task done.

I am Impressed With Myself

I am engaging in tasks that demand a lot of mental processing, developing a new business idea, and pushing people around to get stuff done. My simple technique is doing nothing, meaning, no listening, no learning, and not using social media. If I get bored, just stay still, and let the thoughts come and go, mostly during the evenings, then the next day, everything seems more simple and less threatening. Letting my brain breathe and process the entire day is a good thing. Final thoughts – Besides all the benefits, I feel I am more present and paying attention to small things, such as nature and animals around me, and taking care of important tasks that I was neglecting.

Where could you use this extra “RAM memory” to solve issues? Keep in mind the technique is doing less not more, but still a challenge!

References:
[1]: “World Leading Life Coach: 3 Steps To Figuring Out ANYTHING You Want: Marie Forleo | E184” YouTube uploaded by The Diary of a CEO (Oct 06, 2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEAMi3p1hO0.