Welcome to Wisdom Wednesday!!! This is the place you want to be if you want to learn how to grow your mind. Now, the other days of the week we are focusing on money, relationships, happiness, and health, but this is the day we focus on your mind. No, I won’t be posting a million brain teasers and laugh as I think about you trying to figure them out. This is where I will be sharing ways of advancing your knowledge. Things like how to be more efficient, how to think differently, and how to optimize everything you do. Still not sure what I mean, well check out these one-liners:
“Less but more.”
“I can do anything, not everything.”
“If everyone is doing something, you should do the opposite.”
“Only check email once a day.”
I know, anyone can throw out quotes and how is this going to help? Well, on Wisdom Wednesday, I will be sharing quotes with stories, effective and efficient ways I have found to live in a digital world, and highlights from different books that will “free your mind.” Allow me to expand on a couple of the one-liners above to show you want I mean.
“Less but more.”
This quote came to me in a book about minimalism. I never really thought about it, but I never really paid attention to the number of things I would agree to do, put on my plate, or commit to doing. What ended up happening was that I often felt overwhelmed and just wanted to give up. It was in those times that I would shut everything down and just go to bed. Well, I would shut everything down, have a really big bowl of ice cream, and then go to bed. But when these words crossed my path, I really took them in and thought about them. I immediately started to remove things from my life. The concept is the less things I have to do, the better I can do them. Since I pride myself on efficiency, I gave it a shot and haven’t looked back since. It has changed my life. Sure I may miss out on some opportunities by saying no, but what I am really doing is saying yes to the right things.
“I can do anything, not everything.”
This is so critical to understand. We all like to think we can do anything, and for many things, that is true. But you still can’t do everything. This ties in with the “less is more” from before. Many of us are always trying to please others. We say yes to things we don’t really want to do, or want to do but are not honest with ourselves about the time we have to do them. We have to understand how many hours we have in a day and that dividing our time across a million projects is not going to render great results. Limit what you take on. You will thank yourself for saying no.
The Takeaway
I hope you get an idea of what Wisdom Wednesday is all about. It will help free your mind to look at things differently, when it comes to what to do, what not to do, and how to do it. No, I won’t be talking about how to build a new deck on your house, or give you a step by step guide to configuring your new WiFi access point. I will help expand the way you look at problems and how to tackle some of them better. Lots of what we will be talking about here is applicable across different areas of your life so you won’t be pigeonholed into one thing versus another. Though I will cover some common things that we all have to deal with.
Check out Wisdom Wednesday every week to, as Smokey in Friday said, “Free your mind…”
I find myself caught in the “usefulness” trap at work. My desire to be appreciated and found valuable to the organization causes me to raise my hands for most opportunities that hit my eMail. Now, my struggle is finding the “right” opportunity to say yes to. The queue is getting much longer and I am starting to change my approach to the value equation… because, honestly, how valuable is it if I say yes but do a crappy job? 😉
In the end, I get the sense that, at least for me, there is an art to being “useful” which is challenging for me as I consider myself an analytical and methodical person. This post is encouraging as it addresses exactly my current challenge and kind of points to the fact that its the pursuit that’s important… I may never get to “perfect”, but the pursuit may land me at “excellent”.
Thanks 5and2 Guy!
Most people want to shine and be the “go to” guy in the office. We tend to take on so many things that we spread ourselves thin and don’t do anything great. This really impacts what we learn along the way. We tend to get caught up in the finished product and miss the purpose of the journey and the growth therein.
From my experience, a great way to make yourself useful in a company is to think about what the company wants at a level above your boss. Then work with your boss on how you can be useful to deliver to that level. Instead of doing the busy work, do the things that the company is actually looking for and assess everything you take on through that lens.
Everything we do is truly about the journey and the person we become on the way to our destination.
Best of Luck!!!