The Focus Course

Assignment

Unsubscribe from one email newsletter or RSS feed, or unfollow one person from Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Why this?

I find it very easy to add something or someone to my “news stream” or “timeline.” Later on, I find out that they’re really not very helpful or interesting, or perhaps they’re just no longer helpful or interesting to me anymore.

Sometimes they’re flat-out negative or rude, but usually they’re just neutral, not positive. Each day when I see their updates in my timeline or I get their email newsletter, I scroll on past or quickly delete their newsletter instead of taking the additional 15 seconds to unfollow or unsubscribe. If I ever needed further proof of my own propensity toward laziness, there it is.

Having too many people that I follow on Twitter, and too many incoming emails, means I spend more time combing through everything. It also means there is always something there, waiting for me to check, like, favorite, read, etc. It feeds my addiction to the inbox.

What’s the big picture?

Remove yourself from the echo chamber

One aspect of doing our best creative work includes stepping out of the echo chamber.

The dictionary definition of echo chamber is “an enclosed space for producing reverberation of sound.”

An enclosed place where the majority of what you hear is unoriginal (a multi-dimensional repeating of what was once said) and whatever you say is echoed back to you.

Echo Chamber is also a metaphor. Here’s the Wikipedia definition: In media, an echo chamber is a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an “enclosed” system, where different or competing views are censored or disallowed.

By nature, each of us tend to sit in the center of our own echo chamber. 

When we get too absorbed in the platform, the new, and the feedback, then the echo chamber becomes the place where we compare ourselves by ourselves. It becomes noisy. Inspiration runs dry. Our creativity gets stifled. We grow cynical and sarcastic. And, it serves as an ever-present distraction and pacifier from doing work that matters.

When we look to the echo chamber as our sole source of inspiration, it’s like looking to a bag of chips for our sole source of nourishment. The constant barrage of our timelines and inboxes — those “little updates” — are like snacks and junk food. They will fill you up but they are not a significant form of nourishment.

How can you become a voice — how can you provide something original, unique, and valuable — when all your inputs are unoriginal echoes?

The inspiration and motivation needed for your best creative work will not come from the echo chamber. 

You don’t owe people or companies your attention

Attention is earned, not owed. Just because you were interested at first doesn’t mean you have to pretend to be interested forever. Your priorities change, your interest changes, your availability changes.

Why pay attention to negative or neutral sources of input? If something or someone ceases to be a positive input for your life right now, cut it out. Subscribe and associate only with the people and sources of input that enrich your life and give you the motivation and tools to do your best creative work.

People don’t owe you their attention

Are you a negative or neutral source of input to someone else? Are you a source of motivation, encouragement, and/or equipping to those who follow you?

If you are seeking to do your most important work, put thought into the work you publish and the words you say. Even your tweets and Facebook updates can be nuggets that motivate, equip, and encourage.

You need margin for thought

We live in a day and age where we never have to be bored. We have the internet in our pocket. Our social networks and email inboxes are overflowing — clamoring for our attention at every moment. It is up to us to be proactive about how we spend our time and to what we give our focus.

There is nothing wrong with being bored. In fact, those little moments of mental down time can do wonders for our long-term ability to create, problem solve, and do great work. Yet so often we run from boredom at every turn. Standing in line at the grocery store? Guess I’ll check email. Waiting at a stop light? Better check Instagram. Have 15 minutes of free time? Might as well scroll through Twitter.

Filling up every spare moment with some sort of pacifier is unhealthy. We need chunks of time where our minds can rest.

In my day, when I’m feeling restless or I find myself bouncing around between inboxes, I just stop and decide that it’s time for a break. I get up and go walk around for a bit. Or I lay down on my couch and listen to what my mind and imagination have to say.

My mind needs space. Your mind needs space, too.

In 2008, senator (at the time) Barack Obama spoke with Tory leader (at the time), David Cameron about the importance of breaks. The Associate Press transcribed their candid conversation (emphasis mine):

Mr. Cameron: You should be on the beach. You need a break. Well, you need to be able to keep your head together.

Mr. Obama: You’ve got to refresh yourself.

Mr. Cameron: Do you have a break at all?

Mr. Obama: I have not. I am going to take a week in August. But I agree with you that somebody, somebody who had worked in the White House who — not Clinton himself, but somebody who had been close to the process — said that should we be successful, that actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking. And the biggest mistake that a lot of these folks make is just feeling as if you have to be …

Mr. Cameron: These guys just chalk your diary up.

Mr. Obama: Right. … In 15 minute increments and …

Mr. Cameron: We call it the dentist waiting room. You have to scrap that because you’ve got to have time.

Mr. Obama: And, well, and you start making mistakes or you lose the big picture. Or you lose a sense of, I think you lose a feel …

Mr. Cameron: Your feeling. And that is exactly what politics is all about. The judgment you bring to make decisions.

Mr. Obama: That’s exactly right. And the truth is that we’ve got a bunch of smart people, I think, who know 10 times more than we do about the specifics of the topics. And so if what you’re trying to do is micromanage and solve everything then you end up being a dilettante, but you have to have enough knowledge to make good judgments about the choices that are presented to you.

From his book, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, Richard Swenson, M.D. describes margin:

Margin is the space between our load and our limits. It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed. It is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating.

Margin is the opposite of overload. If we are overloaded we have no margin. Most people are not quite sure when they pass from margin to overload. Threshold points are not easily measurable and are also different for different people in different circumstances. We don’t want to be under-achievers (heaven forbid!), so we fill our schedules uncritically. Options are as attractive as they are numerous, and we overbook.

Swenson is mostly talking here about time-management, and we’ll get more into this later on in the course. But the idea of margin for our thoughts is prevalent as well — our minds need space to breathe and room to think.

To sum it up

Being able to unsubscribe from something and/or unfollow someone is a small and simple way to reduce the negative or neutral inputs in our lives. Additionally, it reminds us just how important it is to have time to think and be bored — that we don’t have to stay up-to-date with everyone and everything.