Erik Unger's Blog

I’ve found this checklist in the book The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz and thought it’s a gem I should share:

The “How am I thinking?” Checklist:

1. When I worry:
   • Would an important person worry about this? Would the most successful person I know be disturbed about this?
2. An idea:
   • What would an important person do if he had this idea?
3. My appearance:
   • Do I look like someone who has maximum self-respect?
4. My language:
   • Am I using the language of successful people?
5. What I read:
   • Would an important person read this?
6. Conversation:
   • Is this something successful people would discuss?
7. When I lose my temper:
   • Would an important person get mad at what I’m mad at?
8. My jokes:
   • Is this the kind of joke an important person would tell?
9. My job:
   • How does an important person describe his job to others?

Cement in your mind the question “Is this the way an important person does it?”

1. Look important.
2. Think your work is important.
3. Give yourself a pep talk several times daily. Build a “sell-yourself-to-yourself” commercial.
4. In all of life’s situations, ask yourself, “Is this the way an important person thinks?”

If we take the things we want or have to do and apply the dimension urgency and importance, we’ll end up with the following combinations:

1. Not Urgent & Not Important
2. Urgent & Not Important
3. Urgent & Important
4. Not Urgent & Important

Let’s use these combinations as categories for what we want or have to do. What is the impact of every category on our productivity and quality of life?

Things that are not urgent and not important clearly won’t benefit our life. They are nothing more than distractions. Still large parts of the population spend a lot of time with activities of this category.
Examples are watching television, playing video games, checking Facebook every 15 minutes. Basically everything we do to kill time and escape boredom.

Things that are urgent but not important won’t serve us either. They are delusional. Because of their urgency they seem to be important at the moment. But they are not if measured on the impact on our life.
An example is answering phone calls. What seems to be important and/or urgent for the caller becomes automatically urgent for you because you think you have to answer the call – even if the thing that’s important to the other person is not important to you. There is this tendency that those people who are the least organized, who often have problems with the least important things, will call the more organized people to help them see through their mess.

Now to the two important categories. It seems that you can’t top the urgent & important category, can’t you? That’s where the demand is. But let’s think about those things that have the highest positive impact in your life. Are they urgent?

What about eating healthy food and doing some exercise; Is it urgent? Usually not. You always can start your healthy diet and the gym training next week. But is it important?

Is spending time with your family and friends urgent? Usually not. But is it important?

Is having time for yourself, pursuing a hobby or passion urgent? No. Is it important?

Is personal and professional development urgent? Usually not. Is it important?

Is planning and settings goals urgent? No. Is it important?

Is reading, thinking and writing down your thoughts urgent? No. Is it important?

I think you’ve got the pattern. All the things that are really important, the ones that have the highest positive impact on our life, are not urgent. That are the things that lead to fulfillment. The problem is, that we ignore or postpone them all to often, because there is always something that is important and urgent. We recognize the importance when it gets urgent, but then it’s often too late.

The conclusion is that we have to do the non urgent but important things regardless of how many other important things are currently urgent. Also by doing the important things while they are not urgent, we can prevent that they’ll become urgent at some point in the future, which reducing our stress level and increases our quality of life.

The following gave me to think:

• Dimitar Sasselov: How we found hundreds of Earth-like planets | Video
  on TED.com
• First Direct Photo of Alien Planet Finally Confirmed

• Latest estimation: 100 million earth like planets in the visible universe
• Age of the life on earth: 4 billion years out of 14 billion, the age of the universe
• Lately we find water everywhere in our own solar system when we look closer (frozen and even melting water on Mars, hidden oceans and ice caps on Jupiter/Saturn moons)

Conclusion: Life should be quiet common in the universe and significant on the time scale. But if we look at the intelligent life of humankind, it’s absolutely insignificant on the time scale. After all, the human race is only 1 million years old with no big changes since 100,000 years. This means if we could resurrect a 100,000 year old frozen human, he or she could live in our time without any limitations. He or she could learn everything we know, work in science, become an artist, a teacher or be an entrepreneur who changes the world. No limitations. So what have we been doing over the last 100,000 years? Why haven’t we developed science, industrialization, space flight and computers thousands of years ago? It took only 500 years from Copernicus to landing on the Moon. Those 500 years could have happened at any time in any ancient civilization.

The only thing that did hold those civilizations back was their attitude, their mindset. The attitude of believing in what they thought were facts instead of questioning everything. This questioning of everything is the core of science. Something is only considered a fact for so long as it can’t be proven otherwise and everyone is free to do so without getting burned on a stake.

So what stronger indication is there, that attitude is everything?
It made the difference between stone age and such achievements as space flight, the internet, quantum physics and decrypting the secrets of our own DNA.

One of the most profound statements I have ever heard is:
“Attitude is more important than facts, because facts are usually just opinions!”

Every time someone changed the world, he or she had the attitude to question or ignore what seemed to be facts at the time. Thus there should be no limitation for the development of humankind if we keep questioning the old facts and generating new ones all the time.