Well, as we get busy in our lives, it becomes important to choose whom we follow and whom we spend time with. Everyone chooses their life’s path and moves ahead. But whatever path we choose, it’s important to decide how we spend time and with whom.
For every one time is limited, and it never stops. We many times note that when we are doing things without any purpose or defined goals, we end up spending more amount of time than necessary because we don’t have a goal.
In life, we meet different people with different personalities and perspectives. Many times, we feel motivated, inspired or happy to be with certain people for a short while. But when we look back after few days, months or a year, those people don’t bring that same energy, because our interests and purpose in life don’t align with their interests and life’s purpose.
Great artists love being with other great artists, and great musicians love being with other great musicians. It is because they share common thoughts, interests and beliefs. Sharing common thoughts and beliefs helps us to become happier when we are with that person. Common thoughts and beliefs bring strong signals of connection rather than noise. Noise in life distracts us from doing what we want to do. It makes us do things that we might not want or believe in but forced to do. At times, noise might make us lose our creativity. For instance, many times people don’t take steps in life to make it better, because of the societal pressure. They keep doing the same thing that they don’t love for their whole life. Even though they are creative, imaginative and full of ideas, they accept noise over signals because of social pressure. This way, their creativity, imagination and ideas remains buried deep inside them.
As an entrepreneur, my learning and execution depend on how I spend time and with whom. When you are an entrepreneur, one of the most integral jobs is to make a team of creative, imaginative, out of the box thinkers, artists, musicians, techies, and passionate people. And when such a team comes together, its sole focus is to build high-quality and valuable products, while creating enriching experiences for customers through powerful collaboration. One of the main reasons these passionate people come together to work as a team in a company if they think the company shares the same goals and principles in which they believe. A company should exist for a purpose. Serving society and helping humanity reach its true potential should be important purposes of a company. A company can do this in different ways from helping individuals to learn better and faster to help them live healthily and much more.
So, while deciding whom I should follow or spend time with, I came up with four criteria. I would carefully spend time with someone who:
- can teach me or make me learn new things
- can send out a high signal vs. noise ratio
- is polite and agreeable
- thinks original thoughts rather than influenced by other people
In the end, let me summarise my learnings with the help of a quote by a famous writer, Wilfred Peterson.
“Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground.”
