In the course of an average day, your brain processes 11 million bits per second.
That’s 14 billion bits of information over your life.
Your brain is always active. Always processing.
Whether you are solving problems in your business, brushing your teeth, watching TV, having sex or spending time with children.
Your brain is always processing information.
Right up until the moment it’s not and then everything stops for you.
Every time you take any action, you’re spending your bits of information.
The quality of your life is determined by the information your process over the duration of your life.
Learning to walk takes 5 years.
But then you spend the rest of your life doing it with almost zero effort.
We call this “muscle memory” but the label is false.
Rather, we reinforce pathways in our brain to make it more efficient to process information.
We carve grooves in our mind that allow information to flow like water in a channel.
This makes it easy to perform complex tasks on autopilot conserving our energy for other more important tasks
( Link to power of routines and habits article)
Stack your information into skills that help you flow or grow.
The unintended side effect is that we also reinforce biases that we hold.
This is the origin of the phrase
“you can’t reach an old dog new tricks”
We become more fixed into our habits and behaviours
Forging new habits, experiencing new things, keeping an open minds, learning new skills…
This is how you stay young forever.
I think of these X2 reinforcements every time I spend my attention watching a subpar Netflix show that doesn’t relax me,
Or waste my energy worrying about problems I can’t solve.
Or allow information that doesn’t help me and I can’t control into my life.
Or worry about things that have yet to pass.
Only spend energy doing things in front of you, or on planning so the right things come to be in front of you.
