Honing Our Attention Down to What's Really Important

With information drowning us by the minute, it's important to hone our attention down to what's really important. This applies to both personal and professional stuff.

The personal can be tricky. If you find Youtube a good source of info for stuff like fix-it videos, then such information likely will be a boon. On the other hand, if you spend inordinate amounts of time watching Taylor Swift videos, the, well, no comment.

With a little discernment and a dollop of maturity you really can direct your time and attention to appropriate sources. Such sources - like fix-it videos - provide a demonstrable benefit. Those other sources range from the useless to the inappropriate (use your imagination) to the outright evil. But that's Youtube for you.

The key takeaway: We are created in the image and likeness of God. As His creatures, we owe Him our devotion and some modicum of attention (or perhaps some generous attention). As such, we should use our time well. 

Now on to professional stuff.

There it gets even more tricky - based on long and somewhat tortuous experience.

For example, when we work with clients, at times they will connect via email or text with something they read from some financial media. We can take the position that it's really important that we stay on top of the avalanche of info spilling from media sources into the digital universe. Of course, it's virtually impossible to be absorb everything. So that position likely leads to lots of absorption of mostly useless info - unless you're of the camp that believes that absorbing everything will somehow lead to useful insight or wisdom. If you're in that camp, good luck.

So what to do? Well - from experience - you can be selective in what you absorb. And when a client wants to know what you think of this or that, you can read it and respond. It's a bit more reasonable and workable that the previous position.

Or...

You get to the point where it dawns on you that the vast majority of purported professional stuff contains a mixed cocktail of: information from sources that talk their book; information from sources that have something to sell; information that's plain wrong; information that follows certain themes that repeat themselves over and over and over again.

Once you get there, you find that you'll develop the skill of scanning the headlines to quickly sort through what's coming at you. Having sorted through, you then quickly eliminate what will likely be the vast majority of items that will simply waste your time. A few random headlines from a sometimes decent source of info that might prove beneficial.

Almost Half Of Health Care Workers Hesitant To Take COVID-19 Boosters: Study

Ford's $120,000 Loss Per Vehicle Shows California EV Goals Are Impossible

College Fraternities Rise Up Against Marxist Protesters Chanting For 'Socialist Takeover Of America'

The Golden Age Of Disinformation Has Only Just Begun

Americans Continue To Name Inflation As Top Financial Problem: Gallup

Watch: Biden's Head Of Economic Advisors Try To Explain Government Borrowing

If any of these seem important of even interesting, you can click on each and it should take you to the article.

On this end, all of these fall into the camp of: Hmmm...Really?...Been there done that.

Not claiming any special insight of enlightened view of the world. Just basing that comment on long (too long?) experience reading stuff that really didn't yield much for the time spent.

Which brings us to what's really important.

And what is that?

Well, with this post having grown a bit long in the tooth, we'll have to leave the answer to you - with this simple observation:

You must - MUST - have some idea of what's more important than any of the stuff we reviewed above.

MUST as in MUST.

At the very least, consider taking a break from all this information and spending your weekend with those whom you love. We'll be doing just that.