Today we had a great call in the Stephen Lock Academy community. This is something we do every Friday, but this week's had an extra positive energy about it. Because we're all embarking on a challenge.

Let's rewind a little.

A few weeks ago I was talking to my client C. He's brilliant, charming and highly skilled. He was also a bit overwhelmed and failing to make progress on his goals. I am delighted to have received a lovely voice note from him today, so I know that's no longer the case.

Something I suggested to C was that he stop learning more things. Stop taking more advice. Stop listening to more podcasts. Stop ordering more books. And, crucially, STOP LISTENING TO ME 😆

I am delighted to say that he did all of those things and trusted himself to take his own steps forward.

At the same time, I have been getting increasingly frustrated with my own lack of productivity. Or, more accurately, I've been achieving more and more stuff without feeling satisfaction.

And so, I investigated myself, what might be causing this and what might be done about it.

To cut a very long investigation short, I think many of us are suffering with an overwhelm of information. The average person now consumes roughly 74 gigabytes of information daily across all digital and physical channels, which is more than double the daily intake from a few decades ago. All those Instagram reels and YouTube shorts have a cost.

For comparison, this is roughly 16 movies, 200,000 words, or the amount of information an educated person might have processed in an entire lifetime 500 years ago.

Which means, if we are failing to produce how we want to, the issue isn't a lack of information. It is that we've forgotten how to use the information we already have.

Which is where the challenge was born. Me and the members of my community are going to start this on Monday. Here's what you need to do:

1. Think of a piece of work you want to focus on.
2. Complete 80% of your task without a single Google search, ChatGPT prompt, or new book from Amazon.
3. Only use notes, books and other materials that you already have.
4. Decide if you want to allow yourself to ask advice from others.
5. Set a deadline for completing the task.
6. When it is over, review how productive, engaged and successful you were.

I've already been trying this over the last couple of weeks and my creativity and enjoyment has skyrocketed.

I hope that yours will too. So, you in? Reply YES for a little extra commitment.

Stephen

PS On Monday we're going to have a one hour accountability session where we all work together (online) on our projects. If that might help you, reply and I'll tell you how you can join.