Glance all around you online, everyone’s onto something flashy, showing their perfect lives, perfect jobs, perfect outings, and vacations etc. Everything is good, however perhaps it’s just 1% of their life in form of highly filtered posts, shown to you to make themselves appear better and hide the 1000 different (good and bad) things going behind the scenes to make that 1 good post happen.
To understand difference between noise and signal, we have to first accept on a mutual understanding of what noise and signal means in the first place. Most of trends, cheap dopamine farming videos, brainrot, labubus, comparison of humans, derogatory influence, low quality human behavior, acting selfish, etc. is noise. Signal is peace, reading books, spending quality quiet time in private with loved ones, helping people without expecting in return for whom you care about, having integrity for the people who trust you, being honest, being low ego, etc.
Anything that increases your life’s value, relationship, status or career = Not noise.
Trends, brainrot, doom-scroll, trash-talking, gossips etc. (sure you can do if you want. I classify that as = Noise.)
I’ve heard this couple of times, but I keep on reiterating this in my mind, no matter how big, vast or widened my network of influence or power becomes. I always say this, “the more simple needs I have the faster I can move.”
I learnt this lesson early in life, seeing people in my relatives, people outside, my friends, their families used to waste hours watching television, same movies 10 times, going out not just for an hour or two, instead for multiple hours without plans, sometimes on random workdays (It’s not wrong, but I judged everything as value of time invested). The things they used to watch or read added different value to their lives.
For me I want the best value for my time invested into anything. I want growth, learnings, insights and have a hunger for knowing more about the world scientifically and logically. While they watched tv for entertainment, passing their time. I watched documentaries for gaining knowledge that I can apply later. Goals were different, so was the method of using tv.
Similarly two different people might do the same thing, but the perspective, target and outcome might be different. I discussed this in: Priority dilemma: How people can have vastly different perception of the same situation.
I saw my friends wasting their time in irrelevant relationships early on which was understandably based on no foundation, not that I never needed one myself. I had some opportunities, (more than one would expect from a nerd) but I refrained from being in any relationship till my 20s, because I knew it would take a toll on my speed for growth.
The reason the constant thought of how people move, behave, do what they do, was in my mind, because I want to learn more from others. Every human has 1 life, only 24 hours each day, the way they use it makes all the difference.
So I kept building a mind map of people, where they go, what they do, movies, drinking, smoking, hanging out that are making them comfortable. Some people also never try to inspire others to achieve something, and they don’t do something themselves as well. This makes them comfortable in mediocrity and are not doing anything, inspiring others to do nothing as well. People who who waste their money or parent’s money to maintain life status or to be in a comparable range with friends, without building wealth or planning about future independently, might be running in a race for a negative sum return in life. Basically speed run towards debt.
Since I was in primary school, I stopped watching movies, going out with friends just for hanging out everyday, I went but only for exercise, play or projects, diverted all my saved time into building science projects in my home and courtyard. I spent a lot of time, no regrets, on machines, toys, internet, coding, applications, whatever new tech I could get my hands on.
These habits continued and I’m the only few in my entire circle of thousands of contacts globally, that doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t go for random night out without reason, stays disciplined and keeps on showing up, focused on the long term life goals. Sure I might appear boring to some of my friends, and some people in my extended family, but at least i’m satisfied with my life and I did what i wanted to always and achieved what i wanted to or at least worked for it.
Well I’m not saying you have to stop everything, but if you struggle with taking out time for your personal goals or life goals. You should considered re-prioritizing where you give time and to what kind of activities and how much value does that bring in your life, Long term vs Short term.
In no way I’m saying people who drink or smoke are bad, instead many of my acquantances do it, and they are really good people by nature and positivity. But the habit of smoking and drinking itself, is bad, as it’s not good for health. So why waste time on it in the first place? (My rant forever).
I separate human lives in sphere layers. Like atmosphere has layers, so does human tendencies in my honest opinion:
- Base layer: human itself, existence basically
- Simplicity layer: A human’s need for simple life and simple movement towards goals (I live here with very few other people I ever met on the same level).
- The Noise layer: A human need to validate himself between people who don’t even care about him, wander life without aim, do things to match others, do activities that harm health and relations in the name of “Oh, i’m exploring more. It’s fun” (all these things are part of noise layer). Very few are able to accept, “I’m doing it because everyone in my friend circle does it.” And even fewer are able to say “I am a separate person with a separate identity independent of the people who surround me sometimes. And I move on my own opinions and integrity.”
Most people exist in the noise layer including influencers and many other professions as well perhaps. In constant need to validation, proving themselves to others etc. some habits of mine also falls into the noise layer, like posting my life achievements online to showcase my journey. Which in short is marketing and growing a following. Yes, I like to make money too like everyone else, but with ethical guardrails, that I would like to write an article about in future.
Very few people translate their lives into the simple layer. But in this world I don’t think so it’s 100% possible for individuals in simple layer to even cut off completely from noise layer. There are always some parts of simple and noise mixed up creating an individual trying to live in the simple sphere. But still better than people whose most personality is comprised of noisy habits.
Anyhow, the secret to saving time and seeing beneath or beyond the noise layer comes down to metapsychology, metacognition and deep self reflection.
In simple level it starts with the first step, realizing that you can stand independently and disagree with other’s opinions or ways of life without being disrespectful or nuisance. Let’s go in the steps deeper.
Step 1: Disconnecting from herd
I have always had controversial opinions of disconnecting from the herd in my friends groups. But here’s the thing most people never understanding, you don’t have to go cold, you don’t have to become nonchalant, you just have to be respectfully a separate person and have a real personality, likes, dislikes outside of the group you’re a part of. For example, one activity can be something you like, your friends might not and vice versa. Then you all should respectfully realize it and move towards the activities that suit both the sides.
There’s never going to be a group in which you’re going to match 100% with even 1 other person. Embrace differences and learn to work together, don’t be sheep and worse don’t be sheep led by a trendsetter of the group. That also doesn’t mean fighting for control on every group decision, it just means, being honest to your standards and to people around you, while being humble and flexible to adapt to new environments on demand.
Every person has some things they are flexible on, and some things that are non-negotiable, learn about yourself faster to be better at communication with others as well. For me the flexible are, timing things are done on, non-negotiable terms are integrity, caring nature, no smoking, no drinking, no bad people in close connection, good relationship with parents etc.
Step 2: Seeing long term
In the second which is think is the most simplest step is to know, realize, learn and practice on who you want yourself to be in next 5-10 years? How do you want people to view you? What kind of person do you want to become? And if your next 10 year version was here right now, what would he do to reach there? That’s how you get clear answers to the most confusing situations and opinions in the short run.
They say in business, something like, employee sees till next week, manager sees next month, vp sees next year, CEO sees next 10 years. By this you can judge what I’m saying. Be the CEO of your own life, don’t be an employee to the version you made of yourself to fit within others mold of you. Be bold, be humble, be respectful, learn from the ones better than you rn, build your opinions based on knowledge.
Remove the activities from your life that drain your peace, health, time, relationships, community or respect. It can be anything, but it’s your responsibility to sit down everyday and figure out what’s not good for your life, accepting it without ego and then working on a plan to remove it gradually from your life. Removal happens with replacement of a better habit then the last one to take it’s place in your life.
Step 3: Maintaining peace
When you go out, when you talk to people, when you process things, when you remember things. See what you’re thinking about and why? What are your triggers, what are your pain points, what are your reasons to do the things that are not good for your life? Remove the reasons and triggers from your brain and life first of all. And if you can’t remove, stop acting on them, ignore the triggers. find out better habits, and better hobbies, better people, better places.
It all starts with a conscious choice and a non-egoistical realization and acceptance of where I stand today and where I want to reach, how much distance is there in between and how can I fill that distance faster with my choices and better habits?
Hacks that I perform to be SANE:
- I unlearn bad conversations, bad people, bad habits and bad moments as soon as possible. Remove that from the brain.
- I distance myself from people who bring noise to my life, chaos, unhealthy relationships, choices, bad surroundings and bad influence.
- I see everything from long term and see if my time invested in this person or this thing is going to pay me off or both of us in form of happiness, money or not?
- I stay clear in communication to keep noise away in the first place before chaos begins to form.
- Keep my circle small. Tiny.
- Do what I like and what’s healthy for me. These are the things i like: read books or articles, sit near the beach, listen to music on repeat, walk on grass, see the daylight, talk to family, learn about machines and tech.
- Keeping the people I love happy and instead of thinking “What can I get?”, I think “What can I give?”. That little attitude change makes a lot of positive difference in life.
- Believing in positivity, believing in positive intent in everything, believing in god and long term vision of life. For me, it’s to make other’s lives better. Either directly or indirectly.
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“Article originally published by Aditya Gaurav at https://adityagaurav.com, licensed under CC BY 4.0.“
