How to Avoid the Land of Forgotten Ideas
Applying life advice is hard.
Well, I guess for me it’s harder to actually remember to apply life advice. I hear something that I really like, copy/paste it into my note-taking system and then kiss it goodbye as it fly’s off to the Land Forgotten Ideas.
And that chance gets even lower that I will find it when I need it.
Julian Shapiro’s latest blog on how to apply life advice really struck a chord with me and is something that I have been implementing with success for the past few weeks.
Here is the TLDR of the article:
We ignore life advice: This reminds me of a great tweet from @anthilemoon . If you don’t have a proper system for documenting and revisiting your ideas they will just fall through your mental bucket.
We don’t act on advice: We treat life advice as a single fact. That is not what it is. It is a framework of instructions on how to behave. Shaan Puri has an awesome PDF of his top frameworks below for free: https://shaanpuri.com/posts/week-7
Solution on How to Treat Life Advice: Whenever he encounters valuable wisdom, he transforms it into a decision-making principle and asks: “Is this more useful than one of my existing memorized principles?” Do this until you have an ultimate list of decision-making principles
Miller’s Law: “The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.” Commit to six Starting Principles and review them every day. If you come across a better one, please one of your six with it.
What makes advice a “Starting Principle?”: “A Starting Principle should be high-level enough to make other decisions with it. For example, the Starting Principle behind “Don’t take it personally when someone cuts you off in traffic” could be “Start by assuming good intent.”
What makes a principle good?: Bottom line — when it meaningfully changes your behavior. How does it make you feel or behave for the better? If it doesn’t do this, don’t let it take one of your six spots.
In the article, Julian gives examples for you to get started.
Here are my starting six:
- In conversation, lead with curiosity instead of critique
- Luck is a function of surface area. More experiences generate more serendipity
- You can be twice as rich by deciding you need half as much.
- In a year from now, you will regret not having started today
- Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
- Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99 percent of success is just showing up
After reading this, I am interested in your six Starting Principles. Reply and let me know!
For more tips on marketing strategy and design follow me on Twitter @MentalWeapons
