Filters

[The Way of Distraction - III]

My favorite email feature is the one I don’t use enough. But when I do, it’s so satisfying.

Filters.

In Gmail, go to “Settings” —> “Filters and blocked emails” —> “Create a new filter”. Fill in the fields with information contained in the emails you no longer want to see in your inbox, and voila. No more emails from Macy’s or The Boys and Girls Club or the Endangered Frog Fund.

The act of creating an email filter is satisfying because I know I’m doing my inbox a service.

What about the inbox of our brain? How do we set up filters for our mental health? Specifically, what’s the equivalent to email filters for the work we are supposed to be doing, the call we have discerned, the revolutionary idea we have sketched out.

There are unlimited channels to receive information. People like us don’t first ask, What is entertaining? Instead, we ask, What will affirm the greater purpose of me being here? That’s the ultimate “filter question”.

Too much information is undermining your call, your idea, your solution. If we’re not careful, the tsunami of information becomes what feels like an orchestrated resistance to the specific work we are sent here to do.

Filter out the distractions!

I encourage you, dear friends, create filters for the naysayers, the doubters, the voices that are bent on distracting you and me from what we know we ought to be doing.