Opinions Dilute Focus
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Most people believe that having a well-informed opinion on everything, politics, the latest tech drama, or global events, is a sign of intelligence or engagement. In reality, it is a massive tax on your most valuable resource: your focus. Every time you form an opinion, you are making a mental investment. You are choosing to care, and caring is expensive. Opinions dilute your focus. It’s impossible to care about a thousand different things and still have the energy and efficiency to pursue the three or four things that actually matter to your life.
Biologically speaking, we aren’t designed for the modern information environment. We weren’t built to consume a never-ending stream of media informing us of every good and bad event occurring across the globe. This constant influx forces us into a state of perpetual “opinion-forming,” which fragments our attention and leaves us emotionally exhausted. We are essentially over-clocking our cognitive processors on background tasks that have zero impact on our own trajectory. The more things you allow yourself to care about, the fewer things you can actually meaningfully focus on.
I am convinced that most people can achieve almost anything they want in life. You can’t achieve everything, but you can achieve a thing. But this is only possible if you’re able to consistently focus and chip away at that goal for an extended period of time. This level of consistency requires an incredible amount of mental “blank space.” If your mind is cluttered with opinions on things that don’t affect your goals, you’re leaking the very fuel you need to succeed.
The most effective people I know are intentionally indifferent to 95% of things. They aren’t uninformed because they’re lazy; they’re uninformed because they’re protective. They realize that caring is expensive and should be reserved for things they care about and can affect.
Think deeply about the most important objectives in your life. Once you identify them, start ruthlessly shedding opinions on everything else. By having no opinion, you reclaim your attention and direct it toward the only place where it actually yields a return: your own work. Getting what you want out of life is hard enough as it is and collecting other opinions on a myriad of other topics and areas makes it that much more difficult for you to arrive at your desired finish line. Perhaps it’s incredibly selfish, but once I’m exactly where I want to be in life, I’ll be open to having more opinions on more things.
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