5 Things You Need to Know Today:
1. Re-think your need for news : Watching (or reading) the news all day is a non-essential time trap. It maybe informative in moderation but is rarely transformative for the communities you have influence over. Life seems to be about progress, so why do we obsess with more news rather than more living? Sure, news can be a learning mechanism (i.e. learning about culture, current events and policy so that you can be an informed member of society) but unless you have plans break down the countless complex issues in the news and act on those complexities systematically, you’re left with nothing more than a loosely defined and often biased opinion of each issue. Very valuable (not)!
2. Re-assign your time: If the average American spent as much time reading books as they scroll the socials, they would read approximately 200 books a year. The average American spends 608 hours on social media and about 1642 hours on TV. (Total = 2250 hours) That’s a lot of mindless time! (Source QZ.com)
3. Be Vigilant: To re-assign your time you must be vigilant of your time for 30–60 days. Take inventory, find out where your time is going. I’m using a 28-day free trial of Hours (click for app). Being vigilant of your time will make it meaningful instead of mindless.
4. Take Action: Find a good book or make a list of good books. Ask a few people that you look up to and ask them what they’re reading. Using social media for good, create a new post asking your friends to comment with the best book(s) they’ve read in the last 12 months.
5. Ignite Change: Start a conversation with a small group of people who want to learn or who want to be the change that stirs deep inside. You probably already know who they are. Using social media for good, create a new post that says something like this, “Hey friends, I’m organizing a meet-up to discuss how we can ignite change for ________ in our community. Message me privately if you’re interested.” If your post creates a thread of arguments, you can kindly private message the person(s) who initiated the argument and explain what you’re doing and that you’d like to avoid conflict on your Facebook post. In my experience, this interaction has almost always prompted the person to delete their comment. Doesn’t hurt to be kind and to privately message the crazy ones :)
