Find Your Ignition Point

Main themes from the Learning Strategies "Mastery Acceleration" seminar with Stewart Emery.

Simplify

"Less is more."

In order to focus on our passions, we can simplify our life to remove distractions.

Who's in your room?

Visualize your lifespan as a single room with only one door - a door that can only let people into your room, not out.  Would you be more careful who you allowed in? Now imagine you placed a doorman at the entrance, and his job is to critically analyze each person trying to enter. He keeps out the people who would bring chaos, hatred, or negativity in the room.  If he was there since your birth, would that change who is already in your room?  Could you benefit from stationing your doorman today?

Examples

1. My iPhone's home screen was packed with apps that added chaos to "my room".  Facebook or Angry Birds stole time when I could be responding to emails or reading articles.  I re-analyzed each app and thought "do I really need this?", "do I use this every day?", "does this distract me when I have work to do?".
cleaning... cleaning... done!---->

No longer miss tweets, emails, or reminders.  And Notes always stay organized!

2. Last week I thinned my wardrobe to 1/4 of what it was (20 t-shirts to 5 t-shirts, 4 pairs of jeans to 1 pair, etc).  Why does this help me focus?  Let's see:

• Picking an outfit (-20 sec/day)
• no more spacing out at all the choices
• Doing laundry, folding clothes (-15 min/week)
• easier to keep track of # times worn, less unnecessary washes
• Packing for trips (-15 min/trip)
• easier to see what I need, pack less
• Moving/organizing/shopping/finding items in closet (- lots of min/lifetime)

This saved up to 2 hours a month (24 hours in a year!).  An extra day of vacation, and we haven't even considered the fridge, pantry, desk, or hallway closet!

3. At the "Mastery Acceleration" seminar, I put my doorman in place as soon as we learned the concept.  Although I mingled with everyone throughout the 3 day event, I focused on getting to know the 4 individuals in the room with whom I shared the most values.  By politely preventing entry to those less like myself, I made connections to those whom I want to stay in touch with: 

   Gloria shares my passion for life.

   Peter for learning and self-improvement.

   Zuzka for tech, critical thinking, and honesty.

   Duane for humor, networking, and determination.

4. This post originally had twice as much content.  Four rounds of editing while thinking "what could others most benefit from here?"  And this is our result - hope you enjoyed!  

Have examples of how you or someone you know simplifies?  Please share! :)