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Create Your Own by Filtering Out Everything Else

The only thing common in the routines of every supposedly successful person is that they’re all different. You have to figure out what works for you. The worst outcome is trying to duplicate the schedule and habits of somebody famous — and then when it doesn’t work out — blame yourself and get demotivated. Results vary wildly. The specifics of success are not universal, and neither is anybody’s abilities or strengths.

It can be difficult to realize this when you read multiple articles claiming that there’s one thing that all successful people do — blog posts that say that everybody would benefit from a new, sensationalized pattern or practice.

What is universal are the abstract, conceptual foundations behind success. For example, figure out what you think is:

1. Important to do.
2. Enjoyable to do.

Then, it’s a matter of figuring out how to carve out the needed time. This is wildly different for everyone. A lot of people looking for something more in life don’t have the luxury of extra time or income, and it’s foolish for so many writers to neglect this obvious fact.

Noise vs. Quality

In order to figure out what works for you, you need to spend time on you, and less on other things. Read less material that makes you doubt yourself.

In only a short amount of a time, society as a whole has gone from a sparse amount of information available to far too much instead. It’s far too easy to get consumed with consuming as much media as possible — but the amount of usefulness quickly plateaus.

Watch less television, read less articles (like this one), play less video games. Allow yourself to be extremely selective of what you expose yourself to on a daily basis —with the sheer multitude of media, there’s no need to subject yourself to anything low-quality or biased.

Ask yourself if what you’re consuming is doing one of the following:

1. Inspiring you — giving you motivation to do something good.
2. Educating you — giving you knowledge to do something good.
3. Entertaining you — giving you time to relax and synthesize.

If the answer is no to all of the above, then don’t be afraid to disregard it. You’re not going to be missing out on much. Use the time you’d regularly spend reading/watching/playing non-useful things to create instead. Or at least find something that does one of the above three things.

About B. Kenneth Brown