WHAT IS YOUR (LIFE) JOB?
AND WHAT IS NOT
James Altucher claims (rough paraphrase) that diversion of thoughts and efforts away from intelligent thought "lower his intelligence", often by 20 - 60%. Most items seem to be more in the range of 10-30%, but many people seem to have more than one intelligence reducer going at one time.
Of course, intelligence in this case might be described as the ability to figure out what to do.
But, then, there is also "effectiveness", which is the ability to provide a force that will produce the best total effects in terms of benefits.
FOR WHOSE BENEFIT?
If I do something "right" for another, it is likely to have little or no effect. So it would be considered to ne "not effective".
So, I would purport that your "job" is to benefit #1 in your world - you - most important by far!!!!!!!! (You Are Not That Important...)
Well, you might say, so what!?
Well, the importance of this is two fold:
1. So, you'll see that your job is to benefit you the most, and
2. So you'll see what is not your job at all (and is of little benefit to you).
Your job is to learn "effective control" around those things that will benefit you - so that you end up with the greatest total satisfaction/happiness/appreciation in life.
THE REST IS NOT REALLY YOUR JOB
Effective control around things that will benefit others is 'nice', but not really your job. And most of what we do for others has little effect and/or we are simply ineffective at it and/or people aren't really that influenced by us (and they'll just continue doing the bad stuff they are doing). Note that some people are so influenced by our culture that they keep doing "good things" but gain little for themselves.
"But I was taught that it is good to help your fellowman."
Yes, it is nice and certainly an activity you might choose, but there are many things that would take priority over that to produce much more benefit for you.
And if you're still stuck in the ineffective quest to get other peope's approval, you're likely not helping people in order to help them so much but more to prove how good you are or how worthy or to get their approval. One of the ironies here is that if you invest in yourself and become much more powerful, the amount you will help others, in terms of benefits, will geometrically increase - and each of your efforts will be more respected and more eventful.
Recall that the formula for highest success is to do that which has the greatest positive net impact (or payoff). And that means that if you want to do what is most impactful you'll have to clear out all the time that you otherwise might spend doing what is less impactful, zero impactful, and, especially, that which is negatively impactful (such as un-smart things you continue to do to get undesired results).
The rule is spend 0% of your time in lesser beneficial activities. I mean 0%, as long as there is a choice of where to spend my time, I will choose something that has higher impact than 0% - after all, I'm not willing to be a fool (mostly).
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Oh, incidentally, the activity that has the highest marginal effect of all is learning how to best produce the highest effectiveness of all, so that you'll have the ability to produce the greatest total benefit for yourself!!!!! Learning how to be effective is the most effective base-creator of being effective in life and getting the greatest total benefits for oneself.
THREE TYPES OF IGNORANCE - WHICH FIT YOU?
FarnamStreetBlog:
The first category is when we do not know we are ignorant. This is primary ignorance. The second category is when we recognize our ignorance. This is recognized ignorance."
Of course, we are less ignorant if we know that we are ignorant.
But I would propose that there is a third category: ignorance by choice. This is when we know that we "should" (might best do) follow the key principles and laws and learnings that we are aware of, but we chose to not do so.
Sad.
