Input Output

You become what you think about all day long.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

What I read (attentively) tends to affect my thinking during the rest of the day.

I’ve been reading stoic philosophy in the mornings. I use the principles I read to examine my previous day and to prepare for the one that’s about to start. It’s a habit I am working on building. It makes me spend the day relating what I hear, see, and read to the stoic lesson I read that morning. This is good training.

The problem I’m having with it, is when I’m working on a different topic throughout the day and I want my mental output to be on that topic, not necessarily influenced by stoic philosophy. Right now, for me that is nonprofit management.

If I spend the day reading and writing about nonprofit management, I think about it when I’m going to bed, and when I wake up.

My brain is like a long-distance runner, not a sprinter. My output is better when I think about the same topic over several days.

As good as it is to read stoic principles every morning, it interrupts my long-distance thinking on nonprofit management.