The old adage “information is power” is no longer relevant in today’s world. Right now information is not power. Everyone has information. In fact, a valid case could be made that too much information is less power, because as more time is spent on reading and parsing information, less time is available to act on that information which could have had the most impact.

So in our times, it is more appropriate to say “the right information is power.” (And, no doubt, someone far more forward-thinking than me has likely said this very thing years ago. But let’s just gloss over that for a moment.)

My point here is my realization that the ability to sift through mediocre and good information to find the really great information, and the ability to filter out that which is not important is a skillset which is becoming increasingly necessary. I suppose much of this line of thought was prompted by a search on Amazon for books on social media. The stack of books that was thrown at me by Amazon’s “relevant titles” was ridiculous. What really freaked me out was that all the books actually looked good, were written by fairly prominent authors, and had been published in the last year. I instantly wanted to buy and read about a dozen of them. Ridiculous. “Choose one or two Aaron,” I thought.

But which ones? Is there one which will be best for me in my situation right now? So I looked through the reviews, read the excerpts, and whittled the list down to 2. I have absolutely no idea whether I made a good or a bad choice. But I did am slowly learning about the value of processing and sorting information into what will allow me to be more effective.

Is it possible that in the future, information processing and sorting systems will be so powerful, and have gathered so much specific data on us that they will be able to deliver with amazing accuracy the information and data that is perfect for us in each moment? Will we be living with predictive models so sophisticated that a search for tennis rackets will deliver those models suited specifically to my skill level based on knowing that I played on my high school varsity team, but have been an infrequent player for several years? And will we even want to live with so much about ourselves known and stored in massive data factories? Ok, that was just my Skynet/scary robots/evil computers nasty thought of the week. Apologies.

But really, about the dealing with massive amounts of information effectively thing. It’s important.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

As humans, it seems that we are genetically programmed to always want more. And I suppose there is an excellent reason for the desire to always want more, to always feel that more is necessary in order to be happy and fulfilled. As much as it sucks to lose a job and then have to realign your priorities while living on unemployment, it would suck an order of magnitude more to think you are set with food for the winter, and then have mold ruin all your grain, and then starve to death with nothing to eat. So I can understand the need to always reach for more, to feel that another step has to be taken, that your situation can always be improved.

And from this, we come to Maslow.

About 10 days ago or so at a friend’s party I ended up talking to one of the girls there – who I guess had recently finished an MBA program – and we got to talking about needs as humans. My generation has so much in its favor – so many choices, so much freedom, and often so much ease at our fingertips – yet this almost paradoxically has created seemingly greater unhappiness in our culture. Maybe it stems from this feeling that nearly anything is possible and that we all can be amazingly successful. Perhaps for many people, anything short of brilliance and achievements that set the world on fire can lead to feelings of inadequacy.

But as we talked we got onto the subject of Abraham Maslow and some of the work he did with the human condition and what people search for. He came to some really interesting (and, if you’re anything like me, really frustrating) conclusions regarding what he referred to as a “Hierarchy of Needs”. Essentially, humans are creatures that are, by nature, almost never satisfied. We have basic needs which are those we require to sustain us and keep us alive. But once we have secured enough food and water to keep up alive for a while and we are not constantly worried about death by starvation, we start to look for a safe place to live – somewhere to be sheltered from the elements or from any creatures looking to do us harm. And, having satisfied those basic needs, we don’t just stop and say “Hey, this is pretty cool, I think I’m probably not going to die anytime soon. Sweet!” Nope, we start thinking “well, I’m a bit lonely now. Some other people might be nice to have around. And women. Women! They look nice. Let’s find at least one of those.”

So, having found a group of people to interact with, and a good woman to love and be loved by, do we think we have a  pretty wonderful life? Maybe. But we’ll still probably want more. We want to feel good at something, and be recognized for that. So should we become chief or leader of our little group, with everyone looking up to us for advice and wisdom, what should we feel? Powerful? Satisfied in our place in the world? Well, it’s possible. But… what are we here for? What is our purpose? Can we leave the world a better place in some way? What if no one remembers us when we’re gone?

And so we come to the angst of my generation. Here in the United States, in this 21st century, when you look at people who have grown up in middle class or above families, no other group in history has had so much opportunity for education, for self-expression, for intellectual curiosity, and for choice. We may worry about car payments, but the chance we are worrying about food and shelter is pretty low. Most of us have a support network, and the safety net the government provides is there as well. And without the burden of so many basic needs worries, many of us are experiencing feelings of confusion, many are feeling lost knowing that there is something we should be doing, something we’ll be amazing at and recognized for, or some way to contribute back to the world. But for many of us, we lack the tools or training to figure out what the contribution can be. Rather than figuring out jobs that pay well, many of us are focusing on careers that will make us happy and leave us feeling fulfilled.

School doesn’t prepare us for that. We don’t receive training on self-actualization. School can provide an environment where accomplishment is recognized and rewarded, but once we leave school this is frequently absent.

So how does one navigate in this new 21st century reality? How do we adapt our society to one in which, increasingly, the bottom tiers of this hierarchy of needs will almost automatically be fulfilled and people’s efforts will go towards satisfying the top tier? What training do we need to be providing our children to successfully navigate this new psychological reality?

Well, hopefully I’ll have it figured out a little better myself so I can be a good example and teacher to my children (once I find my way out of this selfish phase and feel mature enough to have them, that is.)

And good luck to any of you feeling lost because your life is too easy!

I know, I know, I really have no business trying to be either transcendent or poetic. So I’ll stick to what it is that I do best… which I still haven’t figured out yet. In any event, although I got some work and research done in London, it really was much more of a vacation than I intended it to be, and as I find myself returning to my reality, I also must return to my occupation – which just happens to involve trying to figure out what I need to do on a daily basis.

So I come to the subject of entrepreneurial creativity (just as an aside, I am sitting in a cafe, and from the table 10 feet away from me, I just heard “rough sex” said rather loudly… which just completely made me lose my train of thought.) Ahem… so, creativity. And more specifically, the application of it to a pursuit entirely your own which you hope to lead to material wealth. To me, this seems like one of the ultimate forms of creative expression, because the avenues one may pursue are nearly limitless, and are not constrained by any title or job description, nor are one’s ideas molded or limited by a supervisor’s conception of what should be done.

This is also, alas, one of the great drawbacks. Because in a world or nearly unlimited possibility, where do you go?

This is the issue I have been struggling with. Prior to now, in every occupational facet of my life, I have had structure of one kind or another. Even when I ran my own lab and had complete freedom to work on projects of my choosing, there was a framework set in place to define the ultimate goals of any work I did.

One of the best sources I have discovered for new ideas and entrepreneurial creativity is simpler than you would think: other people. Sometimes we are so close to what we are doing that not only do we not see flaws in our plans, but we can be completely blind to new possibilities and avenues of exploration. Sometimes we may dismiss an idea out of hand, without really analyzing it because it doesn’t fit into the mold of what we have been working with. But another person may be able to see the potential in that idea and their support for it can make all the difference.

Other people also have completely different life experiences and will approach thing from different angles and their perspective is invaluable. What is difficult in this for me is that I attack so many problems in my life completely on my own – not wishing to rely on anyone, but more deeply I think it’s because I don’t wish to burden anyone else with a responsibility I think should be mine and mine alone. When I ran a marathon last year I could have chosen to do something like Team in Training, which is completely focused on motivation through group training and support. Instead, I went the complete opposite route and did almost 100% of my runs alone. So the realization that I can’t do everything alone took me a while to fully process.

But now that I have realized that I can rely on others I think I will be a lot more creative, a lot more productive, and quite a bit happier.

As I ascended Mt Shasta the words of John Gray, our leader, echoed in my mind.  He had told me to just keep focusing on taking one step at a time.  When mountaineering, it is of utmost importance to pace yourself, rest if you need to, and keep focused on just putting one foot in front of the other.  If you keep doing those things, you will get to the top.

Through the last few months, a continual process for me has been to refine and simplify my way of doing things.  I have had to figure out how, in the absence of external motivation, to keep myself going.  I have tried multiple organization and project management methods, and multiple programs and accessories to aid me with that organization.

The realization I have come to is this: I just need to put one foot in front of the other, and focus on that.  It seems simple really, but here’s how I have been able to apply that idea to my specific way of doing things.

Getting Things Done as a Motivational Tool

First, I have been implementing the steps of David Allen’s Getting Things Done that I discussed in an earlier post.  Far and away the most important aspect of that for me has been breaking down each and every project into specific action steps.  The are the equivalent of bite-size project morsels (damn I think I just made myself hungry for desert).  Each of these steps isn’t necessarily simple, but they all are completable within a fairly short block of time once begun.

Why is this so motivational?  For me, I no longer look at my projects and find myself lost in a sea of uncertainty about what to do next.  Every week I spend time planning what to do next, and then the rest of my time is spent doing smaller specific steps, and then checking those off my lists when I complete them.  It is intensely gratifying to me to be able to knock off several things within a day, and I feel good about myself and what I have accomplished by being able to see all the things that I have done.

I use a free online program (named Tracks) to organize and track all of my projects and action steps.  It’s simple visual layout makes seeing my next action steps and projects easy and encapsulates everything in one place.

So I am hopeful that I will be able to maintain this mindset, keep my progress going, and have great results.  I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I don’t think either of those approaches to learning apply to me, but I do strongly believe that one will never really grow in life unless that person is committed to be open to new thoughts, new experiences, and new knowledge.  So I am always trying to learn new things and to expand what I am capable of.

Generally, I think I do a pretty god job of reading, internalizing, and learning.  I am always hungry for more, which is preceisely my problem sometimes.  See, I often get so excited by the possibility of learning something new that I take on too many things at once.  It’s like I’m in an ice cream shop, and I can’t decide on any one flavor since they all look so good, and instead I try one, then want to try another, and another, and another, until I am so full I feel sick and the staff is mad at me for eating so many samples and not actually committing and buying anything and now they are giving me angry looks and all the people in line behind me are pissed off but damn it all tastes so good and I can’t stop.

Yeah, that describes my approach to bookstores, to reading things online, to new activities, etc.  Everything looks so damn cool, you know?  It would be great to be able to do everything I want to do.  So I find myself in the midst of trying to learn dozens of things at once, which I would desribe as a type of life multitasking.  And you know what?  It has been shown conclusively that those who multitask (say, splitting time responding to emails along with writing a blog post) do both things with a lower level of quality.  If I were to focus on the blog post, and then respond to the emails, the tasks would be done better and probably in less time.

So I postulate that those who engage extensively in life multitasking suffer from the same lack of quality in what they do.  If I were to focus my efforts more exclusively on learning a limited numbers of things, I would likely learn them more quickly with a better retention rate than using my current methods.

Actually, this is precisely the approach to learning that a brilliant man, Josh Waitzkin, is advocating.  This name might actually tickle the brains of some of you – Josh Waitzkin was the subject of the 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer, about a chess prodigy.  Josh believes in diving deep into whatever it is you are learning, to focus on it such that you attain significant depth in your learning.  Here’s a quote from Josh:

Let’s say we have three skills to learn. The typical approach is to take them all on at once. It is much more effective to plunge deeply into one, touch Quality, and then transfer that feeling of Quality over to the others. A martial artist, for example, should internalize one technique very deeply instead of trying to learn 10 or 15 superficially. This approach engages the unconscious, creative aspects of our minds, and we start making thematic connections which greatly accelerate growth. It is also important to point out that deep presence is required for a state of neural plasticity to be triggered—our brain does not re-map effectively when we are skipping along the surface

So my goal is to target my efforts into learning one thing well before moving on to the next, rather than trying and struggling to learn 3, or 4, or 12 things at once.  I am sorely tempted to order Josh’s book on learning from Amazon, but I already am reading about 6 different nonfiction books at once.  I’ll try to finish just one first, I think he would approve.

This year, I’m not working for a company that grants me vacation time.  I’m working on Aaron-time.  Sometimes I think Aaron lets me have too much time off from work.  So the question then is: how much holiday vacation do I allow myself to take?  Should I set some days aside that I use to completely divorce myself from any thoughts of work?

I guess I will probably end up working the whole time through the holidays, just not as much as I would normally, and not on any kind of real schedule.  I keep thinking that I’ll feel guilty about that though.  When I had vacation from work I didn’t feel guilty in the slightest about not working.  Now I will, because I still haven’t gotten anything concrete up and running and I desperately need to.  Either that or get a part-time job… *ugh*.

If you, like me, are prone to lose perspective on this then I have a piece of wisdom for you. And this comes from a source much, much wiser than myself: Aesop (he of the many fables.)

Here’s one of my favorites:

The Miller, His Son, And Their Donkey

A MILLER and his son were driving their Donkey to a neighboring fair to sell him. They had not gone far when they met with a troop of women collected round a well, talking and laughing. “Look there,” cried one of them, “did you ever see such fellows, to be trudging along the road on foot when they might ride?’ The old man hearing this, quickly made his son mount The Donkey, and continued to walk along merrily by his side. Presently they came up to a group of old men in earnest debate. “There,” said one of them, “it proves what I was a-saying. What respect is shown to old age in these days? Do you see that idle lad riding while his old father has to walk? Get down, you young scapegrace, and let the old man rest his weary limbs.” Upon this the old man made his son dismount, and got up himself. In this manner they had not proceeded far when they met a company of women and children: “Why, you lazy old fellow,” cried several tongues at once, “how can you ride upon the beast, while that poor little lad there can hardly keep pace by the side of you?’ The good-natured Miller immediately took up his son behind him. They had now almost reached the town. “Pray, honest friend,” said a citizen, “is that Donkey your own?’ “Yes,” replied the old man. “O, one would not have thought so,” said the other, “by the way you load him. Why, you two fellows are better able to carry the poor beast than he you.” “Anything to please you,” said the old man; “we can but try.” So, alighting with his son, they tied the legs of The Donkey together and with the help of a pole endeavored to carry him on their shoulders over a bridge near the entrance to the town. This entertaining sight brought the people in crowds to laugh at it, till The Donkey, not liking the noise nor the strange handling that he was subject to, broke the cords that bound him and, tumbling off the pole, fell into the river. Upon this, the old man, vexed and ashamed, made the best of his way home again, convinced that by endeavoring to please everybody he had pleased nobody, and lost his Donkey in the bargain.

Who among us hasn’t found him or herself in a situation where juggling responsibilities and priorities seems like a daily struggle?  How do you step back from those things you have offered to do so that you can focus only on what is most important?

After I left (escaped!) my job, the thing I wanted most immediately was a bit of time to relax and be completely irresponsible.  I didn’t want to worry about doing anything at all.  I suppose that’s what most of us want when we get away from work or go on vacation – a chance to leave the cares and worries that are swirling around constantly in the background of our minds, and to just focus on relaxation and being in the moment.  So, with my new freedom, I thought about all the things that I could do without the tether of a job tying me to one location.  And for a while, I relaxed a bit a went on some short trips.  I rode on Space Mountain for the first time in 15 years, and hiked in the mountains around Lake Tahoe.

All too soon, however, I found myself volunteering and agreeing to take responsibility for things which really should have been secondary to my main goal – starting a business and focusing on myself.  And with a creeping certainty, those commitments began to take up more and more of my time; they began to eat away more and more of my mental energy.

So it goes with me it seems.  I often find myself oscillating between doing too little and taking on too much, always struggling to find the right balance that will let me be calm yet productive, to take care of myself and also give back to others.

Today my renewed focus is on figuring out what combination of things works best for me and will make me most happy.  I hope you find this balance in your own life.

All ramblings aside, about a year ago I read a book by David Allen called Getting Things Done.  It’s (surprise!) a book on productivity.  And it’s much more than concept.  It is chock-full of ways to be more organized and productive, and contains detailed instructions to implement David’s very well thought out system, known as GTD (getting things done.)  

What makes the system in the book so appealing is that it present a way to organize all of one’s projects and “to do’s” into a comprehensive system that allows you to free your mind from the mental burden of worrying about projects all the time.  The idea is this: write every single thing you need to do down in one place, think about the desired outcome, plan the next actionable step, and then figure out what is most important to do next.  Once everything is down in a list you can refer back to on a regular basis and update, the “open loops” of worrying about things in your mind can be removed, and a person can get into a zen-like state of working on only what is most important right then, without having to be concerned about what isn’t getting done.

At least that’s the idea.  I never did any of the things in the book the first time I read it.  But I’m changing all that with my second read-through, and I have to say that after just a short session of listing a few things that have been on my mind, thinking about what the best possible outcome is and then writing the very next step I can take to get to that outcome, my spirits were lifted and I felt better about things.

So, for anyone who ever has forgotten a bill, who has ever stayed awake at night worrying over something, I recommend this book to you.

Sometimes I get confused about what to do next too, Mr. President.

Just don’t follow my lead by reading and forgetting.  Read and do.

Maybe he’ll let me work for him…