Your mind always points to something, what’s important.
For example, if you spend most of your time focusing on the idea of failing relationships in the past, it’s different from the day when you’re focusing on solving computer programming problems. Your mood, behavior, and the tone and feeling of life depend heavily on your thoughts.
As you know, if you read this blog, able Focus on things other than your thoughts; you can participate in the current attitude phenomenon. Even if it only takes a few seconds at a time, it will break the momentum of thinking.
But, in most cases, if you are someone living in the modern world, your attention bandwidth will likely dominate by thinking. In the environment, we incorporate us into the abstract world of thought. Every glance of entertainment, advertising, news, gossip or content is a seed that launches open, self-sustaining weather systems of thought and feeling.
Through the gas station, you see prices rising, and within a second you are thinking about your own family budget, other costs rising, then inflation and politicians, and people you know vote for bad politicians, not good people, and so on. Depending on how sticky the subject is to you, and the issues are often trickier than anything else – this one glance can create a mood and theme that will make you colorful throughout the day.
We often inadvertently provide more energy to these mental weather systems. When a topic dominates your mind, you can strengthen it by talking about it and consuming content about it, creating more feed for more introspection, triggering more content consumption, and more.
This model is not strictly maladaptive – if this topic does serve you. If you no longer focus on the key points of political conversations and focus on career-changing changes, this focus may lead your life in a good direction.
If you are fully focused on banjo music rather than “world event,” it may lead you to pull the banjo out of the closet, learn some new licks, download some banjo podcasts, and join a banjo-centric community. Banjo music may not solve the hunger of the world, but it may still be a better timeline for you.
At every moment of your sixteen awakening times, your mind points to something. If you have data, you can make a pie chart that pays attention to the topic, just like a description of the application usage on your phone. You’re spending some Actual In the workplace drama or “state of the world” or your health troubles for hours and hours. This hypothetical pie chart composition has a direct impact not only on the feeling of life, but also on your feelings Doso where your life is going.
Your thoughts drive the content of your life
This is a personal example.
I have a series of obsessed history. My thoughts will focus on an interesting topic, and I will dig into books, movies, and podcasts in weeks or months. I’m engaged in the fruitful obsession of blues guitar, wine, cold war history, vegetarian, bodybuilding, chessTh– Century seamen, coffee brewing methods, Lovecraft horror, Buddhism, Scotch, Stephen King’s bibliography, rock climbing and countless smaller interests that lasted only a week or two.
How long does a human mind give a topic? The important bandwidth depends on how magnetic it is to a person’s sensitivity and how you develop this interest through consuming relevant content and bringing its tools, thinking patterns and community into your life. Past fantasies of vintage clothing may change your outfit forever. Long-term viewing of documentaries about vegetarianism may change your diet and health.
On a slow workday in 2008, I read a blog post and started years of blogging and online entrepreneurship, which led to the establishment of the site and completely changed my career and life path. At the time, I was reading these topics, getting involved in the community, building things and planning future projects. My mind made a strong adjustment to the subject, which drove my habits. I’m coming home from get off work and looking forward to taking the time to do something.
It’s great because it drives my life in the direction I want to go: building independence, creativity, prosperity and connections to similar ideas.
That was a long time ago. For over a decade, my interest in building a business and online community is far from my heart. I think it’s already filled with other things.
so what have Always dominate my bandwidth by starting a business?
Many topics, I listed some of them above. But at least in the past few years, I have not noticed completely, and I have become very focused Political Philosophy All things.
In hindsight, this interest is driven by our wild online cultural wars – the dichotomy, the odd dichotomy division, the allegations of verbal rights, racism and weapons, and the use of state power. The ways people seem to disagree seem very unhealthy over the past decade. It became so strongly ideology and partisan. To understand where this comes from, I jumped into Lasch, Hayek, Marx, Marcuse, Sowell and many contemporary experts.
So far, I’ve consumed a lot of content on this topic. Between my home, the gym and my vehicle, I absorb only about three hours of audiobooks a day, about 80% of which are about political ideology. I’ve been bashing them this way for the past three to four years.
This stage is very useful and it helps me understand the massive human madness that seems to be characteristic of the 2020s. But this is not good for me. Instead of driving my creativity, career and connection with others, this interest brought me to my phone and into the bottomless sea of short political hotspots. Even if I don’t absorb the content, my head is swimming with political arguments, mottos and conversation points and generating new arguments.
I don’t need it. Unfortunately, I find political ideology fascinating topics. Thoughts on how to run society. Of course there is a place.
But now I want to invest in bandwidth elsewhere. I’m working on building what I think the world really needs – a method, a method and procrastinator to overcome the biggest problems in their lives – rather than filling my bandwidth with the ideas and skills needed, but filling it with research on economic policy and advocacy methods. I have the opportunity to improve my life for thousands or millions of people, but if that’s my goal, I’ll miss my bandwidth.
Make intentional bandwidth changes
The brain won’t get your permission before participating in something – it will only grasp what looks significant. However, you can change what it tends to master by curating the input.
On February 1st, I started an experiment. During the months of February and March, I will pour politics out of my attention bandwidth as much as possible. I’m cutting off all inputs that attract thinking in this direction. This means there is no news or political editorial*, nor books on the subject, and I will avoid discussions about political or world events.
Of course, this means no social media browsing. Scroll X or Bluesky or threads are essentially a Rolodex that browse endless emotionally driven political stances.
Like I did in the early 2010s, I was mostly consuming content related to small business marketing and community building, rather than drawing political ideas into my mind every day. If my mind is to consider some questions, I would rather be how to make me the best exercise to a million people than how to express the arrogance of the socialist planned economy.
Objection to “Citizen Responsibilities”
I need to address the inevitable “citizen duty” objection, which comes up every time someone advocates ignoring politics for a moment. Responsible adults need to know what’s going on! You can’t just put your head on the beach!
I share this moral concept that by adjusting the news, I will give up the important role of watchdogs and public opinion, but I think the moral importance of the role is mainly a fantasy. It’s a hobby or addiction, dressed up as a duty. While people familiar with the matter have the potential to influence political outcomes technically, this is not something we do by consuming a lot of content. For those who have a greater influence on litigation, it’s easy to be sure that the focus we invest in what they do is to measure our engagement. We are the audience, fascinated by wonder.
Also – Any spiritual bandwidth occupied by politics is unavailable to anything else. When you are doomed to the news app, do you really put everything possible into human connections, creative work, material prosperity, spiritual realization or something else that is “important” to you?
Anyway, it’s a rest, not a lifelong renunciation. Trust me, I still have my opinion.
Follow the experiment (or join me!)
I will keep a public experiment log to detail my experience with my bandwidth S-Swap campaign.
If you choose to do something similar – whether it’s political or any other bandwidth eavesdropper – you can share your insights in the comments section of it.
What occupies your psychological bandwidth? Can you use something better?
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*Apart from being strict and actually necessary for my family decision. My country is currently dealing with new U.S. tariffs and I want to understand these implications, so I only read about tariffs. This is not fun.
