“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.”

Robert J. Sawyer

As business leaders, we strive for inner peace.  But we also strive to move our companies forward.  To do this we need to learn what to ignore.  By learning what to ignore we do not spend time, attention, and mental energy on unimportant or trivial matters or issues.  We thus save our time, attention, and mental energy to focus on what truly matters.  With the constant onslaught of information in our modern lives, learning what to ignore is more important than ever.

In ancient times having power meant having access to data.  Today having power means knowing what to ignore.” 

Yuval Noah Harari

A Word of Caution

Learning to ignore is a double-edged sword.  While much of what screams for our attention and much of what comes across our desks can be safely ignored, problems or festering situations cannot be ignored and must be dealt with. As the author, Aldous Huxley writes:

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

What Can We Ignore

Most News, Gossip, and Expert Opinions

Author Tim Ferriss says it well:

Increased output necessitates decreased input. Most information is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence.  I challenge you to look at whatever you read or watched today and tell me that it wasn’t at least two of the four.

Most news, gossip, current events, memes, viral trends fall into all four of the categories that Ferriss lists.  If we ignore these, we save our time and attention span to focus on something more productive and positive.  Most expert opinions, especially from talking heads in the media, can also be safely ignored.  These so-called experts are:

Never in doubt.  Usually wrong.

Slights, Pettiness, and Critics

As leaders we are out there with our teams, other leaders, and often the public.  Backlash or resentment for who we are and what we represent (our business, our industry, capitalism in general) are inevitable.  We need to ignore all such negative and at times demeaning comments and move forward with our objectives.  At the same time, we should listen to measured critics and determine if they change our thinking or help us improve.

Irrelevant Aspects of Problems

This is likely the most challenging as it requires us to be experts.  As we have developed in our careers, we need to have learned to avoid extraneous red herrings and focus on the aspects of a problem we are trying to solve that really matter.  This speeds and improves our decision making and all that we do.

The main difference between individuals with and without expertise is that the former can quickly ignore the irrelevant aspects of a problem.

Martin Heidegger

Conclusion

It takes discipline to avoid the news, gossip and current events.  It takes fortitude to ignore the slights, pettiness, and critics.  It takes insight to avoid the irrelevancies and focus on the most important aspects of problems and situations. 

Discipline, fortitude and insight combine to give us the wisdom to know what to ignore and what to pay attention to in order to move ourselves and our companies forward.  And maybe, just maybe, to give us some inner peace.