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German-engineered for all. This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 1317, Solving Non-Existant Problems by Tynan of Tynan.com and I'm Justin Mollick. Welcome back to Optimal Living Daily or OLD, where I narrate blogs and books for you, the best ones I can find. Today's author is Tynan, named by Tynan magazine as having one of the best blogs.
Sounds great to the post, as we optimize your life. Solving Non-Existant Problems by Tynan of Tynan.com A few minutes ago, I had a great idea. I'll set up a super backup system. I'll put a 16GB SD card into my laptop, and then have it automatically back up my projects and photos in the background.
Then I'll also set it to backup certain things to the internet, and even more to my external hard drive. A week ago, I had another good idea. Apparently the bugs have been ironed out, and Mac OS can now be installed on my laptop. Perfect.
I love Mac OS and don't have any particular affinity for Windows. A couple months ago, I was in my RV and had a big thought. The square footage is so small in here that I can install marble floors for next to nothing. How fun would that be to have a tiny RV with marble floors?
And while I'm at it, I should put some LED lighting in. It's way more efficient than incandescent lighting. In the end, I never did any of these things, and I chose not to for the same reason. Each of these is a solution to a problem I don't have.
I back up my data. Everything important is on a backup hard drive, and even if I lost it all, it wouldn't really matter. The most important stuff is online. Maybe Windows isn't the best thing ever, but my computer does 100% of what I want it to.
I have it configured exactly how I like it, and I'm settled in. Everything I need to do is effortless. And what do I need marble floors for? How is that going to make my life better?
Maybe LED lighting is better, but I generate more than enough power each day to meet my needs. But aren't these types of solutions so seductive? I'd love to spend three days wrestling with my computer, finding the best software, and maybe even setting up an elaborate backup scheme on my Frankenstein's laptop. The problem is that if I'm busy putting out 100 fires that don't exist, I'm ignoring fires that are here and are burning.
That's not to say that everything I do has to be solving important problems in my life. That would be a boring, robotic life. But solving problems that don't exist feel that addictive need we have for accomplishment. Solve one if you like the day has been well spent, even if none of your real goals have been met.
So here's what I do when I get into a situation that I think might be like I'm describing. I ask myself how doing this project is going to make my life better. Backing up in three places? Not at all.
Mac OS? Not at all. Marble floors? Not at all.
This habit, which I've also noticed in tons of other people, by the way, has a close cousin. Getting info you don't need. I'm addicted to the computer. No doubt about it and no excuses.
I'll throw the thing in the lake if I could, but that would cut out most of my productivity and some of my communication, especially with people in other countries. Gaking the computer habit is like trying to give up crack, but having it baked into every food available to you. It's hard to separate the bad from the good. Last week I realized that a large part of the bad is my obsession with checking things that don't matter.
Here's an example of what I might check. How many feed burner subscriptions this site has, how many visitors came to this, and my other sites. How much I've made on Amazon, stock prices for the three stocks I own, what my eBay auctions are at, Facebook, MySpace, how many new subscribers my mailing lists have, my bank account balance, the latest election polls, the news, comments on YouTube videos. I could go on and on.
If I got bored for a moment, I'd go check one of these things and usually then move on to the next one. Even when I was doing something productive like writing a post, I'd interrupt myself a couple times to check these things. This is a real problem that needed fixing. Whenever I have a real problem, I try to come up with a black and white rule for myself to follow to fix it.
If it's gray area, I'll abuse it. If it's black and white, I'll stick to it. So I decided to not check anything unless it was likely that I would take action based on the new information I found. Feed burner?
Nope, I could check this once a month and just make sure I'm on track. Traffic? Same. Amazon doesn't matter.
I make only $20 to $100 per month, and I'm not going to Amazon anymore if I make less. Stocks? I'm not going to sell any of my stocks anytime soon, so why does it even matter? eBay, the auction will end at whatever it will end at, me checking won't help.
I get notifications if anything happens, I'll wait for those before checking. My space, I can check once a day, I don't get notifications there anymore. And subscribers? Again, I'm not even working on anything that would affect my subscribers.
And so on. Now I don't check anything that doesn't require checking. I had to open up my brokerage account to do something, and I did glance once at the quotes, and I checked feed burner once, but other than that, I've been good. I've also got myself off from sites like Reddit and Dig.
That's a tough one because there's sometimes great info on those sites, but I figure my friends who read will let me know. Jonah showed me a picture of a sad wallaby, so I know I'm still getting the most important stuff. I'm going to keep doing this for the month and see how it goes. So far it's been great.
I find that I'm less compelled to be on my computer, and when I am on my computer, I'm left with nothing but productive things to do. Focus is an important thing. Limiting distractions is one way of becoming more focused, especially when you've allowed yourself to get as distracted as I have. You just listened to the post titled Solving Non-Existant Problems by Tynan of Tynan.com.
Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truths from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise.
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Plus it used to cost $499 right now, it's just $199, and head to superpower.com and use code old at checkout for an additional $20 off, your membership. It's funny, his post-reference is my space, so him must be old, and then check the date on it. But I did want to say one little trick you can try which relates to yesterday's episode actually. If you find yourself compulsively doing things like checking social or going into apps on your phone and time passes by when you don't really want it to or when you want to be productive instead, a trick is to simply pause before taking action.
Just a slight pause for him was asking himself that black and white question, but really could be anything. That pause can help set you back on track, so try that out. Have a great weekend if you're listening in real time, and I'll get you in the Sunday show tomorrow, where you're optimal life.