Latest Blog Post

Lines of communication

So, on holiday last week I am thinking about how the information is hardwired into my brain.

I have a mobile phone which accepts calls.

My mobile phone accepts texts.

My mobile phone has two email accounts on it, one pretty much specifically for work and the other pretty much specifically for personal.

My mobile phone has WhatsApp, at the moment there might be 15 channels on that.

My mobile phone has Strava (full blown social media for people who exercise in various different ways).

My mobile phone has the BBC Sport app and the BBC News app.

On my laptop, I have various pieces of software and apps, one is my training peaks platform which analyses my training (or not at the moment as the case might be) another is Asana which is a massive project management tool that we use throughout the practice and business and for some personal projects, obviously my emails are there too and any number of communication channels that I would choose to access if I wanted.

In the 4 years or so since I bailed out of the social media madness, cut away from Facebook and stopped posting on my brand-new Instagram account which only had about 50 posts the input hasn’t decreased.

It has increased.

I wonder how the hell I would possibly cope if I had Instagram coming in and Facebook coming in and Snapchat coming in.

I really do wonder how I would cope if I had notifications on my phone that just keep pinging every time an email or a text or a WhatsApp or any other information that pops into my supercomputer in my pocket.

The funny thing about all of this is that we choose what our inputs are and choose what they are not.

There is no question that the constant stream of incoming information distracts me from doing the good stuff and the stuff that matters and ridiculously the stuff that pays too.

One of the most important things in my life is the ability to ration the amount of incoming information that I have coming in and only to take the bits that are most important.

This is a really, really difficult skill to master, but something that must be worth time for all of us I guess.

By Colin Campbell on 01/11/19 18:00