Protect your ignorance
You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you. Isaiah 26:3
Ignorance is bliss.
I have come to appreciate the truth behind that statement.
We live in a world where information comes at us even when we are not seeking it out. Did you know that during our leisure time, not counting work, each of us processes 34 gigabytes, or 100,000 words, every day?!
We spend hours mindlessly scrolling through social media and checking our notifications, not realizing that we are passively consuming information that affects our mood and occupy our thoughts.
It’s not hard to see why there is a correlation between time spent on social media and worsening mental health.
What I’ve come to recently appreciate is the value of protecting my ignorance.
What I mean by that is to be deliberately unaware of things that are unimportant to me and instead, reserve my mental and emotional energy on things that are.
Why does this matter?
I’ve learned that the information that I consume affects my mood and occupies my thought.
What it means then is that, if I am not selective of the information that I consume, then I am not in control of my emotions and my thoughts.
In a lot of ways, I am the product of the information that I consume.
I have recently shifted from passively consuming information to being deliberate about the information that I consume.
This new discipline made me mentally healthier and emotionally happier.
I found that I can focus better on people and thoughts that matter to me.
Be deliberate about the information that you consume and protect your ignorance.
Just like our physical diet, our informational diet determines the quality of our mental and emotional health.
Be deliberate about the information that you consume and protect your ignorance.
To begin to protect your ignorance, you have to understand what is important and urgent for you
Start by understanding where your information priorities fall in the Important vs. Urgent quadrant.
The main idea here is that you would want to pay attention to items that fall in the “Important - Urgent” category and ignore the ones that are in the “Not Important - Not Urgent” category.
As a Christian, it is important and urgent for me to be able to meditate on God’s word before I start my day.
That way I can give my early attention to God and it gives me the strength to tackle the day.
I have to admit that it is a discipline that I am trying to be consistent with, but God, along with encouragement from my wife have helped me develop this life-changing habit. 🙏
Here are 3 ways to protect your ignorance
1) Take control of your notifications
Our phones are designed to be addictive, but we can protect our ignorance by turning off unimportant notifications so that we control when we check our phones.
You can go to your settings section on your phone and turn off your notifications
If you are a mac user, you can hit the Do Not Disturb toggle first thing in the morning. That way, you are in control of your notifications.
2) Control what you consume
Be deliberate about when you check social media and who you choose to follow. I highly recommend auditing the accounts that you follow every year.
That way, you deliberately make sure that the people that you have in your social media circle are people that will build you up and not bring negative energy.
3) Add friction or make it harder for yourself to consume unimportant information
Hide your social media icons in a folder that is harder to access or for the braver ones, uninstall social media apps from your phone so that the only time that you check social media is when you are at your laptop.
These are just some ways that I’ve implemented to help me protect my ignorance.
There’s no right or wrong way, the point is that we should be deliberate in what we consume and make sure to protect our ignorance.
Take control of your emotional and mental energy by protecting your ignorance 🙉
And maybe one day, we will all be like Shaq 😅 flipping away every negative emotion and thought.
Let me know in the comments if this resonates and other ways that you’ve found helpful in protecting your ignorance!
Talk soon! 👋