RUN YOUR LIFE ON "HIGH RELEVANCY"
NOT JUST OF "SOME VALUE" OR "SOME RELEVANCY"
In my life, looking back, I saw that I had't been using a high enough standard for the value of my time and life- and it hads cost me - lots!
So, I more carefully defined and created a true standard for the value of what is to be let into my life - and cut off that which was not meeting that standard, for I no longer wanted to let my life dwindle away into something of far less meaning and far less "life value"
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Often we misuse and misconstrue the idea of what is important. Sometimes we give importance to something because others tell us it should be important to our lives.
Sometimes we give importance to something because we wrongly tell ourselves that something should be important in our lives.
But there is a subtle distinction here which needs to be clarified. What is important to us is determined by the value it can bring to us. The value it brings to us is what we also call the "impact" on us or interchangeably its "importance". (After all, the root of important is "of import", meaning it has impact - and the measure of impact lies only in the most important end measure in life: "life value units".) Our life is all about bringing the most value to our lives, as is discussed in Life Value Productivity - Producing The Maximum Life In Your Life.
We must ferret out what is something we allow to creep in as if it were relevant, when it is not even close to being "highly relevant" (which is all we have time for anyway!).
Below is a version of what I did for myself, to tighten up my ship so it runs much better in life, easier and more productively at the same time.
Where have I been NOT been properly limiting myself?
Email
Screening what I read on internet
Books (piled high, but not often needed right now)
So many ideas, so many notes unused, into oblivion
Deciding what is relevant for me right now...list and not relevant
The quickest path to high productivity that I am not taking
Use of experts in
Site writing
Site management
Book writing
What I will change
Since initially writing about the "Law Of Relevance", I have noticed ways that I am not applying it at all in some cases and misapplying it in some others.
For instance, I think every person who wants to be "value productive" in life (hopefully that is everybody) should spend no more than 5 minutes on their email and be ruthless about what is read, in the emails and in everything. (Social email is excluded from this. However, the social emails should only be done during "time off" after the primary
high-value-productive time is finished.) There are so many interesting things (which I also call the equivalent of "shiny objects") in email and on the internet that we could spend 25 hours a day just surfing and learning and whatever.
So, what I've decided is to not only cut out as many of the email lists that I am on, but to also spend only 2 minutes maximum to scan through to identify key emails to look at. And, after my productive day is finished, then I only spend 5 minutes sorting through to see which ones to read and which to follow up on. I sort the survivors into an email folder for ""To Do" and "To Read" and then set a time in my schedule for each of the to do's that I decide are of worth (or put them on a tickle list if they are to be assigned to a later time at least more than a week from now). I find that the "to read" file ends up with me automatically screening out some of those, as I look again at the relevancy issue.
I used to save (at least now I am cutting this down considerably) information that I think will be of use in the future on topics I am interested in - which in number are quite a few. But this information seems to often fall into the pit, never to be accessed. The key is only to put in that information the will be used in, say, the next month and then believe that you can access the other needed information when it is actually needed. (I find that I sometimes forget about all I've put aside into a place to review in the future - and I end up using the search and research processes anew.
WHAT WE ALLOW INTO OUR LIVES THAT IF OF LOW RELEVANCE
Besides the items mentioned above, we often find other low relevance activities we engage in because of false beliefs and/or the failure to really look to see what is of value and then stand only for that and nothing else.
Daniel provides an example for us. He is rife with anxieties, especially about what others think of him. He accepts calls and talks with people that he doesn't even want to talk with, fearing that they might think ill of him (or that he might "hurt" them if he rejects them by cutting the call short). He is giving up his valuable time for an ethereal passing motive - and it is an indication of what he is doing in his overall life.
Of highest relevance for him is revising his misbeliefs in life, as that would have the most impact of anything he could do in life. But it is not chosen, for a number of "reasons" probably, in favor of spending his valuable time on some quasi-relationships with people who just love to call and bend his ear, to express their opinions - but all of very little relevance to his life. He is passing his time trying to "maintain relationships with friends he doesn't want to lose, while he is giving away his life.
(I will add more to this over time, but I think you get the idea. Let me know via email if you want me to add to this and what you would be interested in. Contact.)
