In order to do the things that matter or that are important, it is most important to do these two things:
- Eliminate.
- Be still.
There’s just a lot of noise. We already know this. Lots of noise. Plenty of noise. It’s one thing or another and there’s a million names for it. What I’m suggesting is that we filter things out.
No, not for productivity, but for our own sanity. Just stop doing things. Turn the externals off and turn the inner things up for a while. See what sounds come out. After dealing with the stuff that crowds the surface of your mind, keep going and you’ll see it: our worlds are in terrible disarray.
That’s not bad, though; life is busy and this disorderliness creeps on the best of us, but we have to be conscious of it or it will just continue to make us feel more stressed, more frustrated, more like we’re doing more but accomplishing less. Who wants that?
Not I.
Create a place to experience silence, then enforce that space. There’s no rules for what to enforce or how other than this: violently attack/remove anything that threatens that silence. Anything at all. Friends, email, your job — anything at all.
Then, maybe we can talk about doing something significant or, at the very least, reclaim a piece of our souls.