I was inspired by reading one of the diaries of General Napoleon Bonaparte, the great French military leader and Emperor who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century. The diary talks about the emperor’s ability to stay focused. One of the tactics Napoleon followed strictly, was to instruct his spies and generals to wait 2 to 3 weeks before bringing him the most urgent letters and intelligence. He did this because by the end of the 2nd or 3rd week most of these urgent issues would have been resolved. A lot of these letters were rumors, or generals asking for an increase of salary, or someone complaining about something, etc. In other words, by ignoring information deemed important by the top leadership, Napoleon was able to selfishly focus on what he considered a priority and what allowed him to pursue his success.
It is mostly noise
Success and happiness are choices, but to get there you need to remove noise and distractions from your life. Start by eliminating the distracting shiny trends, and those artificial deadlines that are created by people and events around us. In doing so, you free-up so much time to focus on the decision that will move the needle of your success. One of the keyways to win at the game of life and reach happiness is about making the right moves, making the right choices, day in and day out. That’s all there is to it, it is that simple. In order to do that however, you have to reach a high level of focus eliminating the irrelevant events and information that are so common in our digital lives.
Talk less and produce more
When you constantly produce, you build mental fitness and resilience. You create space to act and to take risks safely. You create incremental positive momentum which is indispensable for winning. The more you produce the more self-confident you become and the better you become at shutting all the noise out. Let others do the talk and instead stay focused on delivering solutions, services and impact every day. This is what winning is!