eliminate dead weight from your life

“If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.” 

— Dr. Marshall Goldsmith

“You are responsible for shaping and choosing the environments that will ultimately shape the person you become and the destiny you have. Environmental design is your greatest responsibility. Choosing and shaping your environment is at the center of what ‘free will’ really means, because your choice of environment and external influences will directly reflect in the person you become.”

― Benjamin Hardy, Willpower Doesn’t Work

An effective strategy that we can employ is to eliminate dead weight from our lives. One way a majority of us fall short of our long-term goals is by wasting our precious time and attention on the Internet. As soon as the going gets tough while working on a project, we grab our phones to get some dopamine hits. We check our email inbox and social media repeatedly to get past boredom and monotony. And so, rather than getting some real work done, we fall prey to the superficial pleasures of the Internet. 

To combat these temptations, we need to be firm and decisive. We need to create a work environment that protects our focus and attention. You must gather some courage and delete all the apps that pull you away from reaching your big goals. Throw away your excuses and empty concerns, and just go cold turkey and distance yourself from them. In this way, when you remove enticing distractions from your surroundings, you ensure that willpower doesn’t even enter into the picture. When the attraction is just not there, you can’t succumb to it. Right?

Once you remove distractions of the Internet, take the same approach and apply it to other areas of your life. Go one step further than Ulysses; tie yourself to the mast of the ship and even put beeswax in your ears, so that no matter how enticing the songs of the Sirens are, you’re single-mindedly focused on the task at hand. Whenever you identify the dead weight that’s stopping you from achieving your goals, let go of it immediately. Eliminate anything superfluous that steals your focus and attention from the equation.

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