A week ago I wrote a post about how the mind stakes its claim on our attention by feeding us very convincing stories about all the bad things that will happen if we have the audacity to ignore it.
🙄
I got the ball rolling with one of the Giles Ego Construct’s 📦 favourites—“I won’t get anything done”—and it was quite popular with you all. If you missed it, you can catch up, here:
Giles P Croft
I finished it with a question, sent out to readers: What story does your mind come up with in this scenario? …and some of you have been kind enough to furnish me with answers, so I’ll give you my take on how to see through each one in turn.
These are Reader Ego Constructs 📦 auto-completing the sentence, “But if I ignore my thinking…”
1️⃣ “… I’ll forget, or miss, something important!” 😩
This was the most-cited one from all of you. And in today’s busy, always-on, stuff-to-do world that we live in, it’s maybe to be expected. It’s like the bastard child of “…I won’t get anything done,” isn’t it? – we overcome inertia, only to be slammed with a feeling of overwhelm instead!
(Honestly, minds – you can’t win! 😆 #quitthegame)
But it’s also the easiest of the mind’s objections to tackle, because—from where I’m stood, at least—this is a straightforward resource allocation issue.
Back in the 1950’s psychologists looked at how many bits of information the mind can hold in short term memory, and concluded it was somewhere in the region of seven. With later studies, that’s since been revised downwards to more like 3 or 4.
The mind is demonstrably not capable of holding on to all the important bits of information you’re trying to juggle mentally, so it’s no surprise you feel exhausted trying – you’re using the wrong tool for the job!
The solution
Get stuff like this—‘important things’—out of your head and into a trusted system. I’ve spoken before about David Allen’s Getting Things Done, and how in tune it is with the inside-out understanding, so if you were one of the people writing in with this particular problem, maybe it’s time to explore at least some sort of similar system?
I have written more on this topic here:
- The paradox of planning
- In praise of (faux) planning
- Open loops ← especially this one
- A trusted system
…all of which have the same thing in common as the whole of this website: they include simple, common-sense strategies to help you Think Less and Live More 😘
(An aside: If you want to peel away an additional layer of this particular problem, ask yourself the question, “Important to whom?” … or should I say, to what?? 📦😉)
2️⃣ “…I won’t be able to perform at my highest standard” 📉
Oooh, a juicy one! This was couched in terms of sports performance, but I think it applies to all sorts of activities that can be objectively measured.
The solution
This is another I see as being relatively straightforward to tackle, because all we have to do is use the only tool we have at our disposal—awareness—to observe the truth behind our best performances.
When did they occur in the past? What state of mind were we in? Do we generally perform better when we’re uptight, in our heads and overthinking stuff, or when we’re experiencing clarity and relative peace of mind?
🤔
And yet the mind claims it’s the key to good performance. What tosh! 😆
3️⃣ “…the entire world will fall apart!” 🤪
Ha ha, this one made me laugh – now there’s a mind that’s going places! 😂
I suspect this is a bit of a variation on #1 and it’s tied in with juggling ‘stuff’ in our heads, so in terms of a solution, it’s the same, really.
But it gives me an opportunity to point out what all of these have in common:
- Minds are crap at juggling tasks
- Minds don’t deliver performance, presence does
- Minds aren’t responsible for anything beyond self-referential commentary and data retrieval (the latter being a flawed process too).
It’s misunderstanding that has us spinning our wheels, not inadequacy.
YOU rock!
🙌🏻
Giles
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Giles P Croft
Oh god, he’s found another paradox. It’s not really “ignoring” after all, is it?!