“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

First, I should explain what I mean by “the news.” I’m referring to traditional news from traditional media, reporting on stories which are predominantly disheartening or shocking; job losses, natural disasters, crime, celebrity scandals, etc. That’s the type of news you should stop watching, reading and listening to.

Why? I’ll give you several reasons:

1. The news is depressing

Many news outlets try to throw in a few positive or cute stories every now and then, but I’d estimate that the ratio of negative to positive stories for the vast majority of them is at least 9:1. So every time you watch the news, you’re feeding yourself an overwhelming amount of negativity which infects your thoughts. Napoleon Hill wrote about the power of our thoughts in Think and Grow Rich:

Our brains become magnetized with the dominating thoughts which we hold in our minds, and, by means with which no man is familiar, these “magnets” attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts.

In other words, the predominant thoughts you allow into your mind actually affect your reality. Knowing this, I’m not sure why anyone would subject themselves to all the negativity in the traditional news media. If you really want your news fix, subscribe to some positive news sources instead. I subscribe to DailyGood.org and get a positive, inspiring news story every day; the type of information that makes me feel good about the world.

2. The news is a poor representation of reality

You might respond to the last point with the following: But Niall, you’re just ignoring the real issues, deluding yourself to believe that the world is all sunshine and rainbows. That’s not realistic.

Yes, I guess you could say I’m deluding myself, but no more than those people who do watch the news. I’d argue that their view of the world is just as skewed, if not more so. They’re led to believe that the world is a heartless and violent place. All that bad news breeds fear and distrust. Old people sit at home all day reading about assaults and robberies in the newspapers, and because of that they’re terrified to go outside. News consumption can easily lead to a victim mentality, the belief that danger lurks around every corner, that every stranger is a potential mugger or rapist rather than a potential friend. That’s not the world I want to live in.

Now I’m not advocating that you avert your eyes whenever you walk by a TV tuned to CNN, or recoil from every newspaper like a vampire from sunlight. No, you shouldn’t go to drastic measures to avoid bad news for fear that it will corrupt your happy reality. What I am suggesting is that you stop going out of your way to invite all that negativity into your life in the first place.

3. Everything in the news is beyond your circle of influence

“It is imperative that you learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Most are all three.” – Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week

Pretty much all the issues reported on TV and in the newspapers are beyond your circle of influence. As such, you can’t help solve those problems, and so it’s a waste of your time and energy to worry about them. You’d be infinitely better off using that time and energy solve problems in your own life and community.

I look at it like this: watching the news does nothing to move me closer to my goals, and anything that isn’t moving me closer is holding me back, so I ditch it.

4. You don’t need to stay informed

The most common response I hear to the above arguments goes something like this: I watch the news to stay informed. I like to know what’s going on in my area and around the world.

First of all, I’m not sure how anyone can “like” absorbing information that affects their thoughts and emotions in a negative way. That’s certainly not my idea of a good time. But let’s address this idea that you might be “uninformed” and “miss out” if you don’t keep up with the news.

Say you didn’t watch any news television, listen to any news radio or read any newspaper for a whole year. What would be the worst thing that could happen if you managed to avoid all that? Maybe you’d miss hearing about that massive tidal wave heading your way, and end up very wet on account of your non-conforming, non-news-consuming ways. But then, you’d have to believe that if some such impending disaster was inevitable, you’d be likely to hear it mentioned by someone in your social circle and have enough time to build yourself a raft.

Phew. Crisis averted.

5. You’ll never know it all anyway

Even if you try your best to stay up to date with all the latest news, you’ll still fall well short of knowing everything. There is so much happening in the world and so much written about it, that the most you can hope to learn is a lot about a little.

Henry Ford knew this well. During World War I, he sued a Chicago newspaper for libel after they referred to him as “an ignorant pacifist.” As part of their defense, the newspaper’s attorneys set out to prove that Ford was indeed ignorant by putting him on the stand and asking him a series of general knowledge questions. Ford admitted that he couldn’t answer most of them, but noted that he had the means to, with the touch of a button, summon to his aid people who could supply any knowledge he desired. What then, would be the use of him cluttering up his mind with such information?

6. You can catch up quickly if you need to

To find information nowadays, you don’t have to be rich and connected like Henry Ford, because, luckily, there’s this thing called the Internet that levels the playing field. Thanks to Google, rather than letting all kinds of unfiltered and irrelevant information find and consume you (as is the case when you browse news websites), you can search just for specific information relevant to your situation. Get in, get what you need, get out. Kinda like an appendectomy.

As Napoleon Hill wrote when recounting the Ford story in Think and Grow Rich:

An educated person is not necessarily one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge… Any person is educated who knows where to get knowledge when it is needed and how to organize that knowledge into definite plans of action.

Another way of finding information quickly is via a device called a telephone, with which you can converse with people who know more about the subject than you do, and ask them questions about it. It’s fun, you should try it.

…

Now that you understand the foolishness of watching the news, I hope you’ll take action to reduce your information intake. Do it and you’ll find yourself with much more peace of mind and time to spare. Enjoy.

My friend was wrong. I very much like who I am right now. In fact, I consider myself to be pretty damn fantastic*. My drive comes from a place of excitement and curiosity, not fear. I love pushing myself, finding new challenges/experiences and learning from them. I love looking back every twelve months and saying “Wow, I’ve come so far in just one year!”

I’m glad my friend raised that concern though; she reminded me to check my motivation. I think that’s an important exercise for anyone involved in personal development. Every now and then, stop and ask yourself if your motivation comes from a place of fear or excitement.

I came across a good method for testing my motivation in the book Putting on the Heart of Christ by Gerald M. Fagin, who tells of a wise spiritual director who once asked him two “why” questions, and said that the second “why” was more important. Fagin gives the following example:

Why do you want to get a PhD?

“I want to be as educated as possible.”

Why do you want to be as educated as possible? Is a PhD a condition of your worth? Do you need it because you will then be accepted and worthwhile and looked up to? Or is it because you have a love of teaching and research and you wish to minister to others through teaching? In other words, do these and other decisions flow from freedom and love or from fear and compulsion? Fear leads to compulsion and slavery. Love leads to true desires which lead to freedom.

I find this to be an effective approach, though you may need to go deeper than the second “why” to root out your true motivation for something.

Try it yourself:

• Why do you want that job or promotion? Is it because you love the work or because you fear poverty? Or is it that you crave the admiration of your peers? If the job came with minimal pay, would you still be interested? Why don’t you find work doing something that excites you? Why are you postponing fun and adventure until retirement?
• Maybe you don’t want that job or promotion. In that case, why not? Are you afraid of success or failure? Or is it that you’d rather focus your time and efforts on something more meaningful and worthwhile? Perhaps the thought of more responsibility is terrifying to you. Why is that?
• Why do you want a boyfriend or girlfriend? Are you afraid of being alone, or do you genuinely want to share love and intimacy with someone? Do you consider what you can bring to a relationship, or are you only concerned about what you can get from it? Do you think it’s in another person’s best interest to get involved with you? Why are your standards so high or low?
• Why do you go to church? Is it out of habit, or do you get some positive benefit from it? Do you just like the social aspect of being in a big building with lots of people, or do you find real truth and value in the sermons you hear? Do you cling to religious doctrine to avoid thinking for yourself? Do you even try to practice what is preached?

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. Taking time to consider them is simply an exercise in becoming more conscious of your own motivations and beliefs. I’d recommend writing out your responses to keep your thoughts organized and record any resolutions you come to. They’re hard questions, yes, but ask yourself only the easy ones and you’ll make no progress.

* Note to self: must work on humility.

Equally important, is guarding yourself against people who dampen your creativity and passion and big thinking. I truly believe that I can make a significant, positive impact on many people’s lives as long as I’m here on Earth; I can help make the world a better place. I believe, that when I die, the world will be better off from my having been here.

That’s how I feel. That’s what I work towards.

And recently I’ve been realizing that I need to surround myself with more people who feel the same way about themselves. There’s huge power in a group of like-minded people coming together, working together, encouraging one another. Many of my friends, as much as I love them, are content with settling for mediocrity. That’s all well and good if it makes them happy, but it doesn’t always serve me or my lofty goals well to be around them.

To quote Marianne Williamson:

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

Now I’m not about to ditch a bunch of my friends because they can’t help me achieve what I want to achieve. They’re good people with good hearts who I often enjoy being around. (Plus, I realize friendship is a two-way street, not solely about what I can get from it.)

What I do need to do though, is find a better balance. I need to be around more of those big-thinking people who believe they can change the world. Because they’re precisely the ones who will, and I want to be right there with them.

A friend recently asked me for advice on time-management, she having noticed that I seem to get quite a lot done in a typical week without killing myself. In this post I’ll share a few time-management tips and tricks that work for me. Many of these come from trying and testing different methods I’ve come across, most notably in books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The 4-Hour Work Week; others are common sense approaches which most people fail to use consistently.

Before we get into it, I should note that the term “time-management” is a bit of a misnomer. You can’t manage time. It keeps on ticking no matter what you do. It’s a non-renewable resource which can be used either constructively or destructively. All you can hope to do is manage yourself to make the best use of your time. That is, you can decide to spend it productively on the things that are most important to you. You can invest your time wisely instead of letting it go to waste.

On to the tips…

1. Prioritize

Prioritization is of the utmost importance. You need to figure out all your goals and give yourself some targets. If you have no targets, you’ll have nothing to aim at, and so you’ll surely miss.

I like to sit down at least once a quarter and figure out my priorities and goals. I use Steve Pavlina’s method for doing this, as described in his Truth and Awareness podcast. Basically, you write down how you feel about several different areas of your life and score each out of ten according to your level of satisfaction. This gives you a good idea of what your focus should be going forward. (For example, if you score 2/10 for physical health, you know that this is an area where you should be focusing a lot of your time and energy for the next few months.) From this exercise, I usually end up with about five things I want to focus on going forward, and I’ll rank them in order of importance so I’ll know which should take precedence during a conflict.

I can’t emphasize the importance of prioritizing enough. Once you’re clear on what your top goals are, you’ll be able to plan your time better to ensure you achieve them. Think effectiveness rather than efficiency. Busy people are often very efficient, but not always very effective. Doing something efficiently doesn’t make it important. Prioritizing helps you make effective use of your time.

2. Eliminate

Having figured out your priorities, you should now be in a better position to eliminate as much fluff as possible, keeping only the important items on your task list. The Pareto principle states that 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes, meaning that a lot of the things we do have very little impact; the majority of our investments produce poor returns. We need to weed those out.

Since I’ve started prioritizing and setting goals, I’ve found that I’m much more self-assured and able to make good decisions quickly. I just have to ask myself if the action/inaction I’m considering will move me closer to one of my primary goals. If the answer is no, I drop it and move on to something else. If the answer is yes, I plunge ahead with confidence.

For this reason, I never play video games anymore and I spend very little time watching television or following the news. Those activities don’t move me closer to my goals at all, so I mostly consider them a waste of my time.

What are the things that you spend a lot of time on? Could that time be better invested?

3. Say No more often

Perhaps even better than elimination is prevention. We can free up more time for important tasks by saying No to unimportant tasks. I’ve gotten much better at this over the years, and it’s amazing how much free time it has opened up for me. Sure, there’s often some sacrifice (and occasionally some backlash or hurt feelings) involved, but it’s definitely worth it in the long run. An example for me would be helping friends and neighbors with their computers. Because I’m “a computer guy,” I often get asked to troubleshoot various problems, but fixing computers is something I’m not very good at, nor do I get much enjoyment from it. So I started saying No, and now I have more time to spend on other, more meaningful and enjoyable activities.

If you sometimes feel guilty for saying No, realize that your time is your time and nobody else’s. You get to spend it however you like, and it’s okay to be selfish every now and then.

4. Let bad things happen

This is good advice from Tim Ferriss. To achieve your goals, you occasionally need to let bad things happen. For me, that means ignoring help requests for the Coda-Slider gizmo I built. I could reply to all the posts in the forum and to all the e-mails I receive about Coda-Slider, but that would take time away from other things I’d rather be doing.

The skill here is the ability to tell which stuff you can let slide without suffering serious consequences later on.

5. Automate

Automate whatever you can then forget about it. A simple example for me would be my finances. I used to have to write a rent check every month, but then discovered that my bank can send out a check to my landlord automatically. I also have automatic savings transfers and bill payments. It didn’t take much to set all that up online, and the result is a nice chunk of extra time (and peace of mind) each month. Here’s a good post to get you started on automating your finances like I did.

What else can you automate? Can you subscribe to a magazine instead of going to the store to pick up a copy every week? Could you use Amazon’s Subscribe and Save service to have frequently used grocery items delivered to your door? What online tools can you use to speed up your browsing activities?

6. Use lists (to-do and not-to-do)

To-do lists are a no-brainer for productivity, but so many people fail to use them regularly. I use three lists at work to help me keep on track and stay productive:

One big job list. Every job I get goes on there, and I check them off once complete. I review this regularly to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

A daily to-do list. This I prepare every day right before I leave the office, quickly writing out at least a half-dozen tasks that I want to complete the next day. This eliminates procrastination and indecision in the morning because I know right away what project to launch into.

A daily not-to-do list. Like the to-do list, I prepare this quickly every evening. It usually contains items like “don’t check e-mail until 10:30 at the earliest” and “no Facebook except at lunch time.” Essentially it’s a list of mini self-discipline challenges for the day, and it helps me cut out distractions and stay focused.

7. Set Reminders

Ever forget to do some small thing, and suddenly it’s a month later and that small thing has become a huge problem that needs your undivided time and attention? Or you’re just left kicking yourself because you missed out on a great opportunity?

That rarely happens to me, simply because I set reminders. See, I don’t trust my memory very much, and so I’ll set up regular reminders and be safe in the knowledge that I’ll be alerted long in advance of any possible emergency. I use Memo To Me and sometimes Google Calendar for my reminders. Just last week I got an e-mail from my past self reminding me to pay my vehicle registration, and yesterday I was reminded that it was about time I changed my extended-wear contact lenses.

I’ve gotten pretty good at remembering birthday’s, too

8. Set deadlines

Remember Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Back in college, we’d be given two weeks to write an essay, and the vast majority of the class would end up rushing to the printer on the final afternoon, having just pulled an all-nighter to get the damn thing finished. Of course the two-week time frame had little to do with that panic. It would have been the same story with a one week or a one month deadline. We humans just have a tendency to put things off as long as they’re not deemed urgent. And then, when they do become urgent, we magically find a way to get them done.

So, if you want to be more productive, give yourself deadlines on tasks and goals. Giving yourself a deadline forces you to prioritize and hustle. Last summer, I’d been slacking for months on getting this and my dot biz website coded and launched. Then, on September 1, I decided that I’d have the two sites completed before the calendar flipped to October. Lo and behold, what I’d been putting off for so long got done. The deadline made all the difference.

It’s important not to set easy deadlines, too. You’re looking to create a sense of urgency, to set yourself a challenge that excites you. That will get you focused. If I’m slacking at work, I’ll sometimes halve my deadlines to ensure I don’t sit around wasting time all day.

A good question to ask yourself: How would I handle this task if it had to be done in 15 minutes?

9. Be proactive

Laziness is a snowball rolling down a hill. If you sit down and watch TV for half an hour, you’re not likely to want to go and do something productive afterwards. But fortunately, productivity works the same way. Getting things done begets getting things done. Hence the saying, “if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.”

Now that’s not to say you should always be busy. Obviously there’s a lot to be said about taking time to relax and recharge (see the next point). But don’t cheat your future self. Make the most of idle moments to tidy your desk, do the dishes, send that e-mail, etc. Use those idle moments to invest in your future, even if it’s something as simple as doing your groceries during Thursday lunch so you can sleep in an extra hour on Saturday.

10. Energize

If you have more energy, you can get more done. Now how do we get energy? Mostly we get it from food, rest and exercise.

Food. Fuel for your body. Put good fuel in, get good performance out. Try to eat foods that don’t require too much digestive energy. That is, mostly plants. Cut back on heavily processed foods, and drinks like alcohol, coffee and soda. Try not to eat late at night. Pay attention to how your energy levels rise/fall after consuming different types of food. There’s no one diet out there that’s perfect for everyone, so you’ll need to experiment to find out what works best for you.

Rest. Not just sleep, but also things like meditation, vacations and deep breathing fit in here. Basically, anything that allows your mind to relax and your body to recharge. Allowing yourself ample time to rest and recuperate is crucial if you want to be able to perform consistently at a high level. There’s a fine line to walk here though; be careful not to slip into lazy territory.

Exercise. It’s easier to win the race when you’re in great shape. You only have one body so treat it well, take it out for a run every now and then, play a sport, dance, have fun. You don’t have to become an athlete, but keep your body active. It’s a sound investment. You can also use exercise as a way to socialize, relieve stress and practice goal setting/achievement.

11. Batching

Do you put a small amount of fuel in your car each morning, or fill it up once every few days? Which makes more sense? Which saves more time? Apply that logic to more areas of your life.

Here are a few examples of how I use batching to save time:

E-mail filters. One of my Gmail filters is for Facebook alerts. Anything that comes in from Facebook skips the inbox and sits in a folder waiting for me. That way I don’t get distracted by Facebook messages when I log in to check my e-mail. At lunch I’ll take a minute to go through all those alerts and be done with them. I use Gmail filtering excessively for this type of thing.

Movies and TV. I don’t watch much TV as it is, but when I do, it’s rarely in real-time. I’ll record basketball games and TV shows and watch them later, allowing me to fast-forward through all the ad breaks. That way, an hour-long TV show can be watched in less than 40 minutes. For movies, I save time by using Netflix (no need to go to the store).

Lunch. I’ve been making my own lunches and bringing them to work for a couple of years now, but just recently I started batching them. That is, I make all my lunches for the week in one batch at the weekend. So instead of getting out all the ingredients and utensils five times a week, I now do it just once.

Mail. I don’t check my mailbox everyday. More like twice a week, and I try deal with everything right there and then.

12. Measure, then manage

What gets measured gets managed. Try to boil things down to cold, hard facts. Think you might be spending too much time on trivial tasks? If you recorded your time vigilantly for a week, you’d know for sure.

If you work with computers, RescueTime is a good tool for tracking your productivity (the Solo Lite version is free). Away from the screen, you may have to resort to the old pen and paper approach. Be careful not to go overboard though. Remember that the long-term goal here is to free up more time to do fun stuff, and the payoff shouldn’t be obsessively counting seconds and stressing out for 30 hours a week.

Measuring before managing isn’t just applicable to time either; you can use it to get ahead in many other ways. For example, a few weeks ago I calculated all my financial expenses and figured out how much cash I can afford to play with each week. I now know exactly where I stand with my money, and can make decisions accordingly.

What measurements can you take to help you manage your time/finances/health/whatever more effectively?

13. Ride the wave

Go with the flow when you can. Doing something when you feel like it is much more effective than forcing yourself when you’re really not in the mood. As such, recognize when you’ve got a good flow going and ride it for as long as possible. This often applies to me when I’m writing. Sometimes the words and ideas flow out easily and other times it can be a gigantic struggle to write a single paragraph. When I feel that flow, I’ll do my best to milk it, moving things around on my schedule to accommodate if necessary.

This isn’t to say that you should just admit defeat and give up if you’re not in the zone. As Liz Gilbert talked about in her TED speech, you have to show up for work every day regardless.

14. One thing at a time

Don’t have the TV on while you’re trying to study. Don’t talk on the phone while reading a book. Don’t have one on eye on your inbox while writing an article (I’m always suspicious of people who e-mail me back in a hurry).

Multitasking has been proven to be ineffective. Some people might get more done by simultaneously juggling several tasks, but the quality of their work suffers at the expense of quantity.

Focus hard on one thing at a time. Block off a chunk of time, give that one thing all your attention and see how fast you can rip through it. Once it’s done, check it off your list and move on to the next thing.

Finish Strong

This was the mantra for the Saints all season. Quarterback Drew Brees gave each of his teammates a copy of Dan Green’s book of the same name last April, and they all took the words to heart.

From Green’s finishstrong.com website:

The Finish Strong attitude is about choice. Only you have the power to choose how to respond to the challenges before you. How will you choose to respond? Will you lie down or will you choose to fight? The choice is yours and I challenge you to always choose to Finish Strong. The great philosopher Epictetus said, “It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react that matters.”

Indeed. Everything is a choice. You can use what happens to you as an excuse to give up, or you can use it to get better, grow stronger. The Saints took all the setbacks from the past few years and learned from them. How they responded to those blows helped them triumph in the end.

Take Risks

Saints coach Sean Payton has taken a lot of heat over the years for not playing it safe. He regularly pulls the trigger on fourth downs and calls unconventional plays with the game on the line. I thought he might play a little more conservatively on Sunday’s big stage, but was delighted to be proven wrong by that on-side kick at the beginning of the third quarter.

Payton’s aggressive play-calling sometimes backfires, but I love that he’s not afraid to take those risks. He’s willing to fail and to take full responsibility if those risks don’t pan out. Those qualities make him a great coach.

The same principles apply to personal development. You can only grow so much if you’re afraid to take risks. To really make leaps, you have to push the limits and be okay with falling off the edge every now and then. People might label you obsessive and think you’re crazy, just ignore them. The vast majority of the time, those very critics are simply afraid to fail (or even afraid to succeed) themselves. Don’t let anyone project their own limitations on to you.

Demand Excellence

There are fascinating tales of the hard work and preparation Drew Brees puts in. As a recent ESPN The Magazine article tells it, Brees is the guy sprinting harder and longer than anyone else at practice, and he gets mad at himself when he botches a single pass, regardless of the fact that his previous ten throws were flawless. It’s that constant drive for excellence that separates the good from the great. Lots of players are happy just to make the NFL and collect a fat paycheck. That’s good enough for them, and that’s why their names and deeds are soon forgotten.

Do you strive to be great? Do you demand excellence from yourself? How can you be better? Are you willing to put in the countless hours of work and study required to reach your potential? Imagine the payoff if you were to make that investment. Drew Brees would tell you that it’s worth it.

Believe

A quote from Brees in January:

“The strong sense of faith in this city makes you think this is destiny, that we’re going to achieve what we set out to achieve. It’s only a matter of time.”

What Brees and the Saints had was ultimate faith in the endgame. They absolutely believed that they would prevail as long as they kept working. They laid all the groundwork, and reaching their goal had become a simple matter of persistence.

Whatever it is that you’re working towards, don’t ever doubt that you can get there. Only when you stop believing in something does it become impossible. Yes, reaching your goal may also require great amounts of time and effort, but a foundation of unshakable belief is crucial to making your dream become reality.

Have a Higher Purpose

The Saints had extra motivation to win it all. New Orleans is an unparalleled place full of great people, people who endured the destruction and heartache of Hurricane Katrina yet managed to use the tragedy more like a springboard than a stumbling block. The Saints understood that winning the Super Bowl was about more than football and trophies and rings. They wanted victory more for their fans and hometown than for themselves. They had a higher purpose.

What higher purpose do you have? Does your motivation come from a desire to be rich and famous and adored, or do you strive to succeed with the ultimate aim of lifting and helping others? Work towards something bigger than yourself and you’ll have an automatic advantage.

The dozen ways:

1. Open dynamically
2. Get rid of the lectern
3. Use direct eye contact
4. Loosen up the body language
5. Sound like I care
6. Express a controversial opinion with confidence
7. Use less notes
8. Use notes on purpose, not by accident
9. Use long pauses
10. Video tape myself speaking in front of an audience
11. Involve the audience
12. Finish strong

Perfection is an impossible goal, and you’re almost certainly setting yourself up for failure if you set out to achieve it. A much better plan is to aim for improvement. Small, constant improvements, day after day, week after week.

Don’t beat yourself up if today didn’t turn out perfectly. Ask yourself, was it better than yesterday? or was it better than this day last week? this day last year?

Besides frustration and dejection, aiming for perfection can also lead to inaction. That is, you don’t even know where to begin so you don’t begin at all. Examples of this:

• Timmy realizes that eating animal products is a pretty bad idea, but he can’t fathom the thought of eliminating all animal products from his diet. And so, he doesn’t eliminate any.
• Sally would like to help out at a local homeless shelter, but she’s worried she won’t be able to commit to helping out every Thursday night. And so, she doesn’t help out at all.

Both Timmy and Sally have analysis paralysis (also known as procrasterbation). They’re thinking it’s either all or nothing, perfection or bust. Timmy would of course be much better off if he started with something as simple as Meatless Mondays, while Sally’s help at the homeless center would surely be appreciated even on an irregular basis.

What positive change have you been postponing, telling yourself you’ll make it happen when you have more time/money/whatever? What one small step could you take immediately to move you closer to your goal?

I grew up in the Irish countryside with no sisters and very few neighbors, and I went to all-boys schools all the way up until college. So by the age of eighteen, I was terrified at the thought of talking to women. To me, women were these exotic creatures that spoke a completely different language and you couldn’t look directly at one you found attractive for fear of bursting into flames.

But I liked women all the same, and I wanted to know more about them.

My final year in secondary school, there was one woman in particular that fascinated me. I’d see her every day as d’Mudder drove me to school. We’d pass her at some point as she was walking over the Rice Bridge and up the hill, on her way to the all-girls school at the top of it. She was maybe a year younger than me at the time, had dark hair and looked more cute than sexy.

I called her Bridget, because she walked over the bridge every day.

Day after day and week after week I’d see this girl walking to school. I’d always sneak a look at her out of the car window. I started imagining what I’d say to her if I ever had the opportunity. How would I start the conversation? How would I keep it going? In my imagination, I was fantastically suave and charming, but the reality was that I always made an awful fool of myself when I tried to talk to girls, struggling to utter even one coherent sentence.

But I really liked this Bridget girl (based solely on the way she looked and the way she walked) so one day I up and decided I would overcome the terror of actually approaching a female of the species. I promised myself that the very next morning, I would join Bridget on her walk across the bridge and up the hill. I’d somehow manage to engage her in the best conversation of all time and she’d fall madly in love with me.

So, that very next morning, I got up early and spent about two hours in the bathroom making myself look the loveliest I’d ever looked. My eyebrows were near groomed to perfection by the time I was finished. I hurried d’Mudder so we’d leave a few minutes early and I’d be able to intercept Bridget at the bridge.

But disaster struck: Bridget was already crossing the bridge as we drove over it. It was a minute before I could get out of the car, muttering something to my mother about it being a lovely day for a walk, and then I was off in hot pursuit! As I rushed back over the bridge, I could see Bridget already making her way up the hill. I figured I had about ten minutes before she reached the school and my opportunity would be lost forever. Luckily, there was an old shortcut up the side of the hill, and I knew that I could run up that way and catch up with her.

So I did. I sprinted up the side of this hill like a madman, a bag full of school books in tow.

Now imagine the scene: I get up to the road, only to find that I’d run too fast, and I now had to stand there sweating and heaving for about a minute as Bridget walked up towards me. In her mind, she must have been thinking, “Oh my God! I hope this sweaty weirdo doesn’t try and talk to me!”

But talk to her I did. I turned to her as she came close and asked, “Do you mind if I walk with you?” She was a little stunned, but said okay. Maybe she was just afraid to say no, or maybe she was dazzled by my amazing eyebrows, I’m not sure. Regardless, there I was, walking up the hill with Bridget.

Happiness… for all of five seconds, after which I remembered I had to make conversation. I knew we didn’t have much time, so I thought I’d better impress upon this girl just how deep and sensitive a guy I was. So, noting the people sitting in their cars in traffic on the road, I asked Bridget, real mystically, “Do you ever wonder about the people in the cars? You know, what they’re thinking about as they’re sitting there? I mean, we look at them and form some quick judgment based on their appearance, but do they do the same of us? Are they thinking about what we’re thinking about? Do they realize that we’re wondering if they’re thinking about what we’re thinking about? You ever think about that?”

I believe her response was, “Uh… not really.”

I tried throwing a few more questions at her, but she just seemed to look at me a little more strangely each time as she quickened her pace. Two minutes later, we were at the gate of the school. And despite having just treated this girl to perhaps the worst conversation of her entire life, I somehow found the courage to ask her for her phone number. To which she replied, “Uh… I don’t think so.” With that, she turned on her heels and disappeared into the school, never to be seen by me again.

But I didn’t feel bad after that experience. On the contrary, I felt great about myself. Yeah, I’d gotten rejected, but I’d overcome a big chunk of that strange fear I had of women.

And that’s the moral of this story. It doesn’t much matter what happens when you face your fear, whether you emerge looking like a fool or a champ. The important thing is that you faced that fear in the first place. You stepped out of your comfort zone, maybe suffered some embarrassments, but discovered that the world keeps on spinning just the same.

I didn’t think that was such a good idea. In my view, having an attitude like that hurts only you.

To illustrate my point, let’s take Steve Pavlina, one of those three people who inspire me. Steve believes in and sometimes writes about psychic phenomena and the paranormal. For example, about eighteen months ago he wrote about the spirit of a dead friend helping him win at blackjack. My reaction to that article was probably similar to the reaction of most people: “Man, this guy’s crazy.” However, I wasn’t about to let that one disagreement stop me from reading and appreciating other articles on Steve’s site. Instead, I just filed it away in the “Things I don’t necessarily agree with” part of my brain, and continued on. Good thing, too, because I’ve since received many valuable insights from other articles Steve has written.

It takes effort

Writing people completely off because you disagree with something they say is nothing short of laziness. When you do that, you’re effectively saying, “I couldn’t be bothered getting to know this person completely, so I’ll just make a sweeping judgment about them based on the few things I do know.” Granted, nobody has the time or the capacity to truly know everyone they come into contact with, but we can be conscious of those snap judgments we make about others and how we may deprive ourselves of important lessons because of them.

Nobody’s perfect

It’s important to realize that nobody is perfect. If you’re holding out for an infallible mentor to show you the light, you’re in for a long wait. Consider these brief descriptions of two famous historical figures:

1. The first man was a charismatic leader and a decorated war hero. He preferred a vegetarian diet, never smoked, rarely drank alcohol and was faithful to his wife.
2. The second man died without a penny to his name. He regularly defied laws and was imprisoned many times. He often appeared indifferent towards his family and had an especially strained relationship with his son.

The first man is Adolf Hitler. The second is Mahatma Gandhi. Obviously the above descriptions are extremely selective, but they go to show that even the best of people have their flaws while the worst have their redeeming qualities. I like to believe we can learn valuable lessons from both these men — even, in the case of Hitler, if those lessons are mostly of the “what not to do” variety — and from everybody who falls between them in the spectrum of good and evil.

The Bible

Not so long ago, if you had quoted a bible verse at me, I would have considered you a brainwashed lunatic who could never teach me anything worth knowing. Then I came to this realization that everybody and everything has at least some truth. Gradually I came to see that the bible was no different. Sure, it calls homosexuality an abomination (Leviticus 20:13) and encourages you to burn witches (Exodus 22:18), but it also contains great lessons about love, truth and self-discipline.

As A.J. Jacobs concluded in The Year of Living Biblically, it’s impossible and often immoral to follow every word of the bible, but the book can indeed enhance your life if you focus on the right parts and live by the lessons contained in them. You just have to persevere through many inconsistencies and a bunch of stuff you’ll probably disagree with. You must use that mind you’ve been blessed with to separate the wheat from the chaff and arrive at your own truth.

Against the grain

If you tend to focus on the negative rather than the positive, don’t worry, you’re not alone. As humans, we’re predisposed to give more attention to the bad things in life. It’s a survival instinct. Scientists have proven that something we perceive as bad will have a stronger and more lasting affect on our brains than something we perceive as good (see author David Rock talk about it from the 20-minute mark of this YouTube video). That’s why you can thoroughly enjoy the first ninety minutes of a movie, only to have the whole experience ruined by an implausible ending. Somehow those last few minutes negate the previous ninety and you come away disappointed.

Again, it takes effort to focus on the good rather than the bad, but that effort is worth undertaking, because there’s no growth if you choose the lazy way out. With laziness you limit yourself to seeing problems instead of opportunities.

Learning from everyone

You don’t have to agree with everything someone says or does to learn from them. In fact, I’d argue that you learn the least from the people you agree with the most. Think about it: how much can someone really teach you if you’re already nodding your head in agreement before they finish a sentence?

The things you own, end up owning you.

That quote is from Fight Club, one of my all-time favorite movies. It sums up a lesson I first learned about six years ago, when I was stuck working in a department store in Ireland, having dropped out of college and dreaming of one day living and working in the United States.

Problem was, I kept making excuses as to why I couldn’t just drop everything and move to the U.S. Most of those excuses centered around material things. I owned over a hundred movies on DVD at the time. I also had a big widescreen TV, a Playstation 2, an Xbox and a nice desktop PC hooked up to a serious sound system. I knew I couldn’t bring all those possessions with me to America. What would I do with them?

For a while, I did nothing. I just stayed where I was, with all those nice things, holding me hostage.

Breaking loose

I’m not sure what triggered the change in me, but at some point I got fed up and decided to break loose from the shackles. I gave away pretty much all of those possessions and took off on my U.S. adventure. I thought I’d miss everything I’d given up, but instead I experienced an overwhelming sense of freedom. Nothing was weighing me down anymore, except the suitcase full of clothes I brought with me.

Then the airline went and lost that suitcase full of clothes, but I wasn’t bothered much. I’d already separated myself from my material belongings. They no longer defined me.

Beauty in decay

I got another lesson in materialism when I moved to New Orleans in 2007. Even though I had already come to realize that material things were overrated, I still leaned towards the new and the shiny whenever I needed to acquire something. But a few months living in the Crescent City changed that.

If you ever visit New Orleans, you’ll quickly find that most of the establishments here look a little shady and run down, the bars in particular. If I saw bars like that in Ireland, I’d steer well clear. But I came to learn that in New Orleans, you really can’t judge a book by its cover. A bar might look like a hell hole from the outside, but then you reluctantly follow a wise friend inside to find the place full of high-character people having the best of times.

After a while I found myself seeking out the dive bars and repeatedly shunning style in favor of substance.

When it came time to buy myself a wagon, I got a good deal on a well-used Jeep that oozed character. I called him Doug. The air conditioning didn’t always work and there were a hundred pins holding the upholstery together. A few months after buying, a taxi slammed into the side of Doug; nothing but superficial damage. I was delighted. Battle scars = more character.

A buddy of mine summed up that attitude quite well, noting that I’d come to appreciate “the beauty in decay,” as most New Orleanians do.

Irish recession

The recession in Ireland is real: Lots of job losses, cut-backs, broken dreams. But I see it being great for the country in the long run. Ireland had become much too materialistic for my liking. People had become overly concerned with big houses, fancy cars, the newest mobile phones and the like. You had to have two mortgages and go out on the town at least twice a week. Every child was getting fourteen different presents for Christmas, without truly appreciating any of them. People were admired more for what they had instead of who they were. TG4 was probably one step away from launching My Super Sweet Sé Déag.

A lot of that hasn’t really changed, but it’s starting to. People have no other choice now but to cut the fluff and get back to what’s really important.

Owning nice things

This post isn’t meant as a rant against owning nice things. Materialism is defined as “preoccupation with or emphasis on material objects, comforts, and considerations, with a disinterest in or rejection of spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values.” So owning nice things isn’t the problem. Identifying with them is. I’m reminded of Fight Club again:

You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.

By all means, buy nice things, but buy them for their practicality more than anything. Art and decoration is fine, but let it be an expression of you; not an attempt to impress someone or make people jealous. Buy yourself that $3000 couch, but not when you can get a $500 couch that looks just as good, is just as comfortable and will last just as long.

How to be less materialistic

You start by making a firm decision. Be sure you actually want to be less materialistic first, then try a few things from this list:

• Separate needs from wants. It’s perfectly fine to want stuff and to get what you want, but you should never confuse your wants with your needs.
• Spend stretches of time without your material goods. See if you can give up TV for a week, or see how you’d cope without your car for a couple of days.
• Never buy when you can borrow, and help other people out by sharing your own stuff. You’ll save money, reduce clutter and build trusting relationships.
• Acknowledge the emotions that certain possessions stir up in you, and ask yourself why. Try to identify what parts of your character are lacking and how you might be using possessions to compensate.
• Similarly, try to identify what possessions your friends might have that make you jealous. Ask why, explore that part of you, and try to improve on it.
• Consider how you’d feel if you lost certain possessions. Would you be able to handle it? Could you do without that computer, that TV, those new clothes? What would you do without those things? If your answers scare or depress you, you know where you need to grow.
• Be grateful for the things you already have, and express that gratitude regularly. A good way to do this is to write out three things you’re grateful for each day.
• Go on cleaning/clearing binges to declutter your house. Zen Habits has a great article on how to do this effectively.
• Request that people forgo giving you regular birthday/Christmas gifts and instead make donations to trusted charities.
• Expand your social circle and try new things – learn to value experiences, relationships and memories over possessions.

Find your comfort zone

The most important thing is to find your own comfort zone with your possessions and your relationship to them. It should be a personal journey, different for everyone. Just be careful not to use material goods to compensate for character defects. Remember the words of
Evan Esar:

Character is what you have left when you’ve lost everything you can lose.

Some day you might wake to find you have lost everything. Hopefully you’ll still know who
you are.