Second Most Important Thing?

Recently I posted in this blog about the “most important thing” being these blog posts, where I have some reflection and determine all of the things I need to improve. It’s still quite possibly the most important thing I do every day.

But in the past, I had always considered the “most important thing” to be self-improvement through education and learning. Mostly it has taken the form of reading books on a variety of topics.

Is that, then, the second most important thing? For now, I’m going to say yes! Things like, focusing on improving the business are important too, but none of them are as far-reaching and critical to my long-term success as improving myself through learning.

Reading has given me a huge list of improvements, both short-term and long-term. In the short-term, I feel empowered and capable. Learning something new makes me excited to try new things and general sense that I’m improving and my situation is going to constantly improve.

And long-term, it’s basically everything. I makes me more effective. It improves my decision making. It helps me focus on what’s important and ignore the rest. It literally makes me better at everything. Knowledge is power, as they say.

These are all things that will serve me well for my entire lifetime. The more knowledge I can acquire while I’m still young, the more valuable it will be over the course of my life. Just like making an investment early. Exactly like that, actually.

I need to redouble my efforts to constantly improve myself. Whether that means reading books, taking courses (online and off), trying and improving in new things, learning a language, or even just meeting new people and hearing their thoughts. It’s absolutely critical.

Without that learning, it’s easy for things to feel stagnant. Like nothing is going to improve, and that I’m not getting better at anything. I think one of the most important things in life, in terms of feeling fulfilled, is to always be improving. And I need to do that.

Lately I’ve maybe not been as focused on it as I should have been. I’ve gotten carried off in different directions with work, and I’ve been spending more time on other, unrelated activities in my spare time. I’ve even got a handful of books I’ve only partially finished! I need to finish those up.

I Need a Formalized Review System – OR – How Non-Existent Long-Term Attention Span Is

I’ve realized recently that even if I have grandiose ideas that could change everything, within a week or two I’ve almost completely forgotten about them.

At the time I came up with them, of course, I thought that I would never need any kind of reminder. Self-assured of my own profundity, I assume that they are so important that they will be top-of-mind forevermore.

But, that’s not how things play out.

In this blog, specifically, I’ve had ideas and written already about things that I think have the potential to seriously impact my success. And yet, most of them lie dormant; not only not acted-upon, but not even remembered.

Fortunately, I think it’s just a major human weaknesses that we get all excited about things (perhaps rightfully so) and then naturally get distracted by other things or bogged down by the trivial. Unfortunately, it is a serious weakness, and without some kind of mechanism to counteract it, has the potential to completely derail ideas that would otherwise prove extremely valuable.

Now, for the most part, I don’t think I need to go to lengths such as adding calendar reminders about every post and idea that I have. I tend to ignore those anyway.

I’m thinking that I need to regularly read my old posts. And if they hold up to the test of time and hindsight, perhaps create something more permanent. Implement them into my processes.

For now, I think what I’ll do is institute a rule where I either read one of my articles per day, or two every time I actually write one. Over time I can determine whether this is adequate.

Hopefully it will be enough to stay on top of everything and nurture the good ideas and implement them in my life. If there are ones that turn out not to be very relevant or useful, maybe I’ll create a new category to exclude them.

Either way, I think it’s critical to use this kind of self-reflection as more than just an outlet to dump ideas where they will fade away, just so I can clear my head. It needs to actually be useful!