Our lives are filled with so much input, it can all feel like noise — emails, messages, work, meetings, news, social media, and more. We get overwhelmed, and often shut down or avoid.
Too many priorities, too much information, too many inputs, too much noise.
Finding the signal in all this noise is the secret.
D the noise Everything that seems urgent, or all incoming stuff. It can make us reactive when we act on noise.
D signal Objects that actually matter. It’s the stuff that will move the needle, create the impact you want, move important things forward in meaningful ways.
If we want to deal with overwhelm and become less reactive, we need to separate it.
So how can we separate the signal from the noise?
Let’s take a look.
Criteria for finding signals
There are no right answers, but here are some ways I look for signals in all the noise…
- What is my most important thing going forward?
- What will I regret ignoring?
- What happens when I’m silent?
And it’s this last one that I highly recommend – practicing a little steadiness every day. It can be daily meditation, but it can also be pausing for a minute or two, closing your eyes, breathing slowly and relaxing. listening
In such silence and stillness, the signal becomes clearer.
How to practice
Question 1 above (prioritizing your most important things) requires you to know what is most important. So I recommend Every few months, a little quiet for an hour or two to clear your priorities. They can migrate within a year, so check back every 3 months or so.
then do A weekly “signal check”: 10 minutes at the beginning of the week to ask what is really important for this week. Write them down, schedule them if you can.
I highly recommend doing one Practice daily steadinessEither at the beginning or end of the day (or both!) to keep the signal visible. In all the noise, what is important for today?
And during the day, if you feel overwhelmed or reactive … just take a moment to calm yourself, re-center and clear your signal with just a moment of stillness.
Clarity isn’t found in more information – it’s in letting ourselves relax into stillness and finding clues to what really matters.
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This post was Previously published in Zen Habits. Oncopyright Courtesy Leo Babauta.
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