Yesterday I wrote about stocks. And stocks are easy for humans to think about. What about flows? Flows are the movements of a thing in and out. Births and Deaths, water entering and draining, calories consumed and burned.
While a stock of a thing may be easier for humans to understand, flows are also deceptively easy…
Adding a thing is easy. Eating more, complicating more, demanding more, adding more, playing more — it’s easy to understand “more.” More is an inflow. Example: If I earn more money my stock of money will rise. However, what baffles me is how hard it is to understand that more can be gotten from less.
If I don’t increase the amount of calories I consume but do not exercise, I will gain weight. In that example, I am limiting an outflow. If I earn the same amount of money but spend less money then my stock of money will increase. In these examples, my stocks of things increase because my outflow is restricted.
Yesterday I wrote about focus I said that a stock of focus may be a function of the inflow and outflow of energy. I can increase my stock of patience by increasing the amount of energy I stockpile for focus. However, I can also increase it by focusing on less things — saying “no” to more.
I continued questions I asked myself yesterday and this time asked myself: what might I limit in my life? I came up with obvious answers like calories or expenditures. But as I persisted through the thinking I came up with other ideas that if applied, I might see an increase in stock of energy.
So for you, some questions:
What is one thing I do in a day that require me to maintain focus?
What allows me to have that energy?
What allows me to maintain the focus?
What might I limit?