Ok, so I’m making a choice this week to get off the social media circus that has been South Africa, Trump and the news cycle.
I did a training session last week on The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and AI last week. The Seven Habits have been my chosen personal effectiveness construct since I discovered them on a rock in the Cederberg some 25 years ago… and one of the reasons I frequently come back to them is the “teach to learn” concept.
You see, as the sage Yoda once said so poignantly to Luke Skywalker back when the Star Wars movies were epic storytelling and innovatively groundbreaking: “You must unlearn what you have learned”. And we all do that, don’t we? Habit creep means that we relearn bad habits, mindsets and constructs quite easily. But it’s like the boiling frog – it doesn’t happen in one fell swoop.
Almost a decade ago, I decided to get off social media, by and large. Unplug notifications on my phone, limit my time on Facebook, stop doom-scrolling YouTube, and cancel my subscription to Business Live. I decided that the news cycle is not really news, just repetitive bad news entertainment designed to grab my attention and keep me engaged.
I supplanted these inputs with podcasts and audiobooks. Tim Ferris was my gateway drug, my first foray into long-form podcasts. On his 90-minute stints, he interviews world-class performers, and I found the content inspiring, motivational and consistently high quality.
About a year ago, I expanded my long-form podcast listening (partially because Tim Ferris stopped producing frequent content) to some other chaps in the genre. Particularly Lex Fridman, whose thoughtful interviews are more focused on world events, politics and ideology. He stays carefully neutral, but bit by bit I was sucked into the news cycle in a different way altogether.
Before I knew it, my scope had expanded to American politics, South African politics (and boy oh boy have they been intertwined these last weeks), and the entertainingly destructive social outputs from the Trump camp, the BizNews crowd and the media at large.
It dropped for me on an intellectual level a few weeks ago. Trump, hate him or love him, masterfully read the trends and hit the Joe Roganish long-form podcast circuit for maximum audience reach. And this week I realized it emotionally… I’m back in the news loop, even though I thought I had escaped it. And there is really zero I can do about all this bad news on a practical level, which is also fundamental to the Stoic underpinnings of Habit 1. So why give it so much oxygen?
Here’s the thing about living the 7 Habits: Never forget that you have freedom of your mind. You choose what you want to be in there, you write the programme. You are the programmer… yet the world really really makes it difficult for you, our general construct is deliciously deceptively engineered to suck us into an unhealthy narrative.
Much like it’s difficult to be of sound mind and body in a world where sugar, fatty snacks and beer-and-wings combos conspire to put us on a loop of binging, race training and sober January, keeping your mind clear and your focus in the right places is tricky business.
Habit 1: Be Proactive. I am the Programmer. Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind. Write the program. Habit 3: Put First Things First. Execute the Program.
Easier said than done. But first things first. Going to go on a bit of a podcast and YouTube fast for a bit…
Upcoming Workshop: AI Meets Business Frameworks
March 25: Jim Collins’s Good to Great
Scale your business with AI execution techniques. Master Level 5 Leadership, the Hedgehog Concept, and the Flywheel to gain momentum and attract the right people.
📍 Location: Workshop17, Kloof Street
🎟️ Spots Available: Only 3l eft!
💡 Pricing: R1 000 per person
📅 Secure Your Spot → 🔗 Register Now
PG’s PRO TIP:
If you don’t have a plan, someone else’s plan wins. Even if you don’t know you’re on their plan.
Comments