There’s danger in consuming too much information. I’m sure you know what happens when you eat too much food. Like food, information needs digestion. It’s only useful to the degree you can distill it into actions, habits, and wisdom.

Dallin H. Oaks gave a good talk on focus and priorities:

We have thousands of times more available information than Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. Yet which of us would think ourselves a thousand times more educated or more serviceable to our fellowmen than they? The sublime quality of what these two men gave to us—including the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address—was not attributable to their great resources of information, for their libraries were comparatively small by our standards. Theirs was the wise and inspired use of a limited amount of information.

I know where to get my information binge if I want it. (Thank you, RSS.) I’m sure you do too. The challenge is to consume less of it and use it more wisely.

I wonder what Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln would do in our shoes.

I received a phone call that impressed me. It was like this:

“Richard, I’m afraid I can’t help with the project like we had planned. Some things have come up, and I no longer have the time. I just wanted to let you know. If I can help in the future, I’ll call you again.”

Flakiness is so common, but here is a guy who didn’t flake out. He communicated “no” just as clearly as he had communicated “yes”. I no longer had to wonder.

“No” isn’t mean or rude. If you can’t realistically commit, “no” is courteous.

“No” is a way of prioritizing. If you say “yes” to everything, you haven’t prioritized.

As someone who tends to say yes and overcommit, I’m impressed by this example of saying no.

Distance
From Jerry Seinfeld:

You can measure distance by time. “How far away is it?” “Oh about 20 minutes.” But it doesn’t work the other way. “When do you get off work?” “Around 3 miles.”

Serving size
Get out your stopwatch. Each serving of PAM No-Stick Cooking Spray is “about 1/3 second.”

Priorities
Where we spend our time indicates what is important to us. Do you spend enough time with your family and close friends? Do you spend more time reading books or blogs? TV or exercise? Do important projects get enough attention or is your time eaten up by unimportant tasks?

From Henry David Thoreau (via Quoty):

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?