This one's about the relentless onslaught of information washing over us every day, influencing and shaping our thinking, and questions whether the strategies we have in place to manage it are good enough.
When I started this blog, my plan was to post something every week. 52 blogs a year of stuff that you would hopefully find interesting, funny, insightful and that would maybe act as a trigger that inspires and encourages you into moving a bit further towards being that best, true version of yourself every day.
The first few months went well and I had published something most weeks. But, after a while going through the backlog of thoughts and ideas I had, I realised that I needed to be a bit more discerning. If I didn't have anything that I thought was good enough for you to take the time to read, I wouldn't post. So I missed a few weeks. And then came July 2026.
After writing Faff Around & Find Out, I thought that I'd have a break for the rest of the school holidays. The plan was to do some reading and some faffing around and finding out. So I did. And I loved it. And every week the reminder popped up to write the blog and I thought about some ideas and....... Sunday came and went. As did September and October. So here I am, in November, with a blog and an apology to you for being a little bit sh1t about getting back to blogging.
I can't say I made the best use of the time, because there was a fair bit of faffing around done. But I can report a very positive outcome on the finding out front. My main non-fiction read was the latest book from the Art of Brilliance team (link at the bottom):
The Art of Focus
There's a blog on the way about it in more detail, but the highlights are:
It got me to look inwards and reassess a lot of stuff. As usual, none of the things I found were a surprise. Everything I noticed, I had noticed before, worked on and sorted. But I'd underestimated the relentless power of 21st Century living to slowly and surreptitiously wear you down.
So I suppose the most important realisation, which seems bleeding obvious now but wasn't until I realised it, is:
Just because you have worked on something and sorted it, doesn't mean it stays sorted.
If I was writing this 5 years ago I would be talking about building habits that maintain your optimism, happiness and positivity, just like you would build habits to maintain your health and fitness or your expertise in a skill. But when it comes to mindset and thinking, though great habits are essential, they're not enough.
21st Century living is about being bombarded with information from a myriad of sources: news outlets; TV; radio; the internet; social media etc. Let's group them together and give them a label:
thought influencers.
I think there are 4 things to be aware of when it comes to thought influencers.
Plus, it's almost impossible to disconnect from them. However great you are at controlling your consumption from the thought influencers, unless everyone you spend time with is as well, they'll still get to you through the people around you. We are all thought influencers, going about our day influencing everyone we meet. We can't not do it. We can only do our best to make that influence kind, positive, and caring.
Plus, as we have seen from the recent court cases against companies like Meta, the tech giants have designed their platforms to be ninja level sneaky at getting into our heads. How many times have you been sent a funny reel by a friend and ended up doom scrolling afterwards ? How often does a 30 second funny cat video turn into 10 minutes of doom scrolling, maybe more ? The thought influencers have made it super easy for you to go down the rabbit holes that generate them revenue. They have the data that tells them what you like AND what you are likely to like. They have the mechanisms to keep throwing the right stuff at you so that you don't want it to stop. And they don't care about how that will impact on you. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point.
So my main learning of the last few months is that whatever was good enough to keep me safe from the onslaught of thought influencers in 2025, needs updating for 2026 and whatever is good enough this year will need tweaking next year, etc.. I don't think any of us, unless we are deeply embedded in big tech, can understand the levels of information the platforms hold on us and how they are able to use that to influence us. I would even say that they probably have a better idea of what motivates and stimulates us than we consciously do. Wouldn't it be great if that data and insight could be used to improve our mental health and happiness, rather than create value for shareholders and make billionaires even richer 🤔
Maybe one day, hopefully soon. In the meantime, we need to be on our guard and a lot more proactive about where we focus our attention. The Irish have the ideal term for it:
Catching yourself on
I see it as a very kind way of giving yourself a wake up call and checking in with yourself to see if your behaviours are still supporting the 'version of you' you aspire to be. The question in my mind is how can we reduce the time between the thought influencers poisoning our thinking and behaviours and us realising it and taking action ?
I think I'm coming to the conclusion that trusting myself to notice that the thought influencers have got their claws into my mind is no longer a sensible strategy. A better strategy would be to assume that they have and to move to a regular maintenance routine to sort things out. I suppose it's a bit like using dandruff shampoo and moisturiser to proactively avoid dandruff and dry skin, rather than waiting until you're very flaky.... 🤔
Looking at my devices (I'm Apple all the way down), when I have everything upgraded to iOS/MacOS 27 I can get daily and weekly reports of usage across all devices. So my plan is to have a weekly maintenance slot. Not sure what it will entail but I'm thinking:
I already do a weekly review of things, so this is just an addition to that. Will it work ? I don't know, but it's worth giving it a go and it's better than slowly letting the thought influencers take more control than they already have.
To finish I'd like to thank Dr. Andy Cope, Ollie Cope and Hannah Knowles for writing what I believe is one of the most relevant, timely and useful self help books that will help you survive and thrive in the 21st Century. Link to the little shop of happiness below.
Get it bought.
Get it read.
Start making changes 👍
Mike xx
