Capturing What’s Most Important | Josiah Igono, Erik Averill | Athlete CEO #52
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Episode Summary
It’s been estimated that the human mind is capturing anywhere between 10,000-60,000 thoughts per day, and that we scroll somewhere in the range of the Statue of Liberty’s to the Eiffel Tower’s height per day.
We are inundated with information every day – how do you capture what’s most important to unlock your full human capital?
By utilizing one of the most pivotal tools of performance: journaling.
Through the frontal lobe, the brain has a built-in functionality to sift through the proverbial firehose of information we’re consuming throughout our days and makes executive decisions on what to store and what to sift out, so a constant barrage of information can actually tax the performance of that function.
So as Josiah puts it, “you cannot use what you can’t access.”
With the habit of journaling, we unlock the ability to note the most important points from that recent book we’ve read, performance notes from our last training session, map out our big goals, and it even helps us address stress and anxiety.
Our resident performance coach and founder of All Things Performance, Josiah Igono, joins Erik once again to discuss this topic and how to implement it in our lives to improve our performance in all areas of life.
Episode Highlights:
(1:34) Stats of the daily firehose of information
(4:07) How journaling helps us use the information we gather daily to actually become actionable
(5:47) “You cannot use what you cannot access” – Josiah Igono
(8:27) How journaling helps us set goals and find clarity
(11:47) How journaling can help with stress and anxiety
(12:12) “A listening ear has a healing quality” – Josiah Igono
(13:02) What is stream-of-consciousness journaling?
Stay Connected
All Things Performance: Podcast | Courses
Josiah Igono: LinkedIn | Twitter
AWM Capital: IG | LinkedIn | Facebook | AWMCap.com
+ Read the Transcript
Erik Averill (00:00):
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Athlete CEO Podcast. I'm your host, Erik Averill. I'm the co-founder of AWM where we partner with our clients to unlock the full potential of their wealth for maximum impact. One of the things that we believe to the core of AWM is the greatest driver of your net worth is your human capital, and so this podcast, The Athlete CEO Podcast, is all about how do we bring you the tools, the tactics, and access to the best experts to unlock your full human capital. Today, we're joined by our resident peak performance coach, master, and expert, Josiah Igono. Joe, welcome back to the podcast.
Josiah Igono (00:57):
Hey. How you doing, man?
Erik Averill (00:59):
I'm doing well, doing well. I'm excited for this conversation today because journaling is something that I have done for an extremely long time in my life, and unfortunately, it's also something that I've neglected in the last couple of years, as I've had kids. Why I'm so excited to have this conversation is this isn't just a nice-to-have, it's actually a tool of performance. I would love to just start there and talk a little bit about why are we talking about something that seems so basic like journaling?
Josiah Igono (01:34):
Yeah. First of all, I mean, thanks again for having me. When you talk about journaling, I think we need to start with the fact that the human mind is capturing anywhere between 10 to 60 or plus or minus thousand thoughts every single day, right? We are inundated with information. I think I saw a stat the other day that was saying that we scroll, right, the length of the Eiffel Tower, right?
Erik Averill (02:03):
Stop it.
Josiah Igono (02:03):
Do you know what I'm saying? We're looking at our cell phones between 80 to 150 times a day. The average cell phone is within 10 feet of us at any given time and the average text message is responded to within minutes. You take that and you couple that with the, "Hey, we're having 60,000-plus thoughts a day," we're drinking out of a proverbial fire hose, right? Journaling is a way to help organize our ideas. It's also a way to help mitigate stress, anxiety, rumination, right, just these thoughts that we keep having. We don't have anybody to talk to, or we don't have anybody to talk to at the moment. Journaling's a way to help us capture vital information, right, and so it's one of those things where it does become, to use your words, it becomes a tool of performance, right? It's a capturing tool.
Erik Averill (03:01):
Yeah. A few things that I'm thinking about right there is one of the things that I feel I break down, as you say, this information overload, whether it's the messaging that's coming in, or now education as entertainment that we see with masterclass or the latest and greatest book, right, is I can get caught in this thing of thinking that the way I'm going to get better is just by consuming more and more and more and it's the next podcast and this next podcast. What I realized is a lot of times I'm like, "Man, I think I'm just fat on information and I don't know that I'm actually learning or implementing something," and journaling becomes a way to start to reflect which we've done a previous podcast on. Can you just maybe talk a little bit more about that, of why the journaling and the space is so important for ultimately what we're trying to do, is not get more information, we want that information to do something for us?
Josiah Igono (04:07):
Yeah. I know, absolutely. I think as you were asking that question, my mind goes back to famed Ph.D., Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman. I got a chance to meet her several years ago out of Dallas there. She does tremendous work, Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman. A lot of her work is based on the brain and the frontal lobe, right, is where we have our executive functioning, we're making decisions, we're doing a lot of critical thinking, is a gatekeeper, so to speak, to all things thought. When we're constantly overloading, it's actually taxing our brains. It's toxic. Your brain has built-in functions to sift and weed things out because could you imagine what we would do if we would try to consume, capture, use, watch all the videos, podcasts, commercials? That's why people hate commercials. Why do you think people hate commercials so much?
Erik Averill (05:18):
I mean, they're pointless.
Josiah Igono (05:20):
Period. Full stop. I am sorry for all the advertisers out there spending billions of dollars, you know what I'm saying? But yeah, it's unnecessary information, right?
Erik Averill (05:31):
Yeah.
Josiah Igono (05:32):
It's one of those things whereby that's why we hate buying books that suck, right?
Erik Averill (05:38):
Yeah.
Josiah Igono (05:38):
Right, because it's meaningless: "This is meaningless. Let me get to the good stuff." You know what I'm saying?
Erik Averill (05:44):
Yes.
Josiah Igono (05:44):
That's why when we were in college, we wanted CliffsNotes.
Erik Averill (05:47):
Totally.
Josiah Igono (05:47):
Because we didn't want the fluff, we just wanted the nuts and bolts. The brain has built-in functionality to help sift out and weed things out, right? This is a function of brain health, you know what I mean? We can talk about this here in a little bit, but whatever you cannot access, you cannot use. If you can't access information, you can't use it.
Erik Averill (06:14):
Wow.
Josiah Igono (06:17):
I'm not going to use that example. I was going to use an example that's probably controversial, so I'll save that for another one.
Erik Averill (06:23):
All right.
Josiah Igono (06:25):
You cannot use, man, what you can't access.
Erik Averill (06:29):
Wow. Yeah, number one. I always loved these sessions. I feel like I'm selfishly just getting a ton of performance coaching for myself, that's why I do this. But you're so right, is I can get in the habit of having this FOMO of everybody else is reading the latest and greatest book or listening to the latest, greatest podcast. But I would've never thought that too much information was toxic, right?
Josiah Igono (07:01):
Yeah.
Erik Averill (07:01):
That was a very strong word to say, "No, you're, you're hurting yourself. The thing that you think you're doing to help yourself is causing a lack of performance," so being able to master content, it's one of the things I was doing with one of our athlete clients the other day that I love. He's been a client for 10 years, just an exceptional human being, but what he wanted to know is he really wanted to learn about investing, making good decisions. What I did with him, and here's what's crazy, I've had these conversations with him for 10 years and he's like, "Man, I feel like I should have known this stuff." I said, "Well, we've never prioritized it for you to be able to recall," and so I had him teach me and he got up on the whiteboard. Now, I know with full conviction that this player could walk into a locker room and anybody else and teach them the framework of investing because now he can recall it.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Erik Averill (08:01):
But I think of how many things I've listened to, watched, read that, I mean, I've got no idea. Maybe talk a little bit, and this might be getting outside of journaling, but I feel like journaling a lot of times comes in tandem with setting goals, of road-mapping in the beginning of the year, a vision, mission, values. Can you talk about why pen to paper matters so much?
Josiah Igono (08:27):
Yes. Journaling is, I call it the "kinesthetic version of reflection." It is, it's head to pen to paper. There's so much to be said. It's funny. I had a post a little while ago and when I journal or when I write in books, it's funny because you can actually remember where exactly in that journal it is. There's something about having that signature, that neuro signature on a piece of paper that connects you to that piece of paper, or to that journal, to that notebook, to that notepad. It heightens, it just proves to be just better when it comes to remembering. Typically, there's some controversial research out there, but goal-setting is huge, right? It's like, "Oh, let's set goals. Let's know where we want to be." What do people typically do? They get on a big whiteboard, like you said, or they get a journal out and a paper and they start writing it down, right? These serve as the tangible framework of, "This is what I intend to do."
Josiah Igono (09:38):
As soon as you take those thoughts that are in my mind, or that are in the atmosphere, and you can put it on paper, that's a powerful move because you're having 60,000 of them. If I can grab that and put it on paper, that's a powerful move because many people don't even do that, right? "Oh, I want to be a millionaire," or, "I want to go to the league," or, "I want to be an all-star," "I want to win the Super Bowl," "I want to be a Cy Young." Okay, what's the first step in that? Well, you have to do A, B, and C before you even get to that starting line, right, and so journaling helps with that. Again, it's a capturing tool and there are many different versions and ways to journal and none is better than the other, just depends on what you're trying to go after.
Erik Averill (10:23):
Yeah. What comes to mind is you talk about being able to decipher out of all that information to capture it onto that piece of paper is, for whatever reason, my mind went to Michelangelo, right, with the sculpture of... Sometimes it's removing, right?
Josiah Igono (10:40):
Oh, yeah.
Erik Averill (10:41):
Starting with this block and the artist is able to remove, and I reflect on so many conversations I've had with our founders or with our athletes is a lot of times, we just don't have clarity. We're foggy and we have a general idea, so from a performance standpoint, we've had so many of these conversations with our baseball players recently because we're in the middle of the spring training of asking them of, "What is success? What does it actually take to become the starting shortstop of XYZ team? Why do you get paid?"
Erik Averill (11:15):
What I understand, a lot of us have a fuzzy general concept, but we don't have specificity. We don't have clarity. I think it's why it's actually so hard to answer these questions. When I have to take my pen to paper and write something out, what I realize, there's a gap between what I think I understand and the intentionality with which I'm living my life, and so I think that that's where journaling can be helpful.
Erik Averill (11:47):
Shifting a little bit on the use of journaling, one thing that you said is it can help with stress and anxiety. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because in case we haven't noticed, it's been a pretty stressful last few months and years, so I'd love to just hear of that as people here really deal with loneliness, tension, depression, anxiety. Can you talk about how journaling enters in there?
Josiah Igono (12:12):
Absolutely. A listening ear has a healing quality. One of my mentors told me that a while back. He said, "A listening ear has a healing quality." Just being available to listen to somebody does wonders for that individual. But you know what? Sometimes as a professional athlete, there's not a lot of people around you that you can trust to listen, right? Especially if you're on the road, a long road trip, or whatever the case may be, in a slump, right? You don't want to be around. Sometimes you just don't even want to be around people, right? Journaling helps you to get those thoughts out onto the paper without any reservation. It is almost like a cleanse. It's like a mental cleanse, a mental reset.
Josiah Igono (13:02):
One of the ways in which you can journal is what we call "stream-of-consciousness journaling," and in stream-of-consciousness journaling, you just basically set a time, 15, 10, 15 minutes, a lot of writers do this, actually, 20 minutes or whatever the case may be, an hour, and you just write whatever comes to your mind. Don't hold back. Just write. Just whatever it is, just write it. Don't hold back. What happens is it acts as a means to transfer ideas. It's almost like talking to someone, right? I mentioned rumination earlier, just continually to think about dwelling upon things that might not even be true. Get that stuff out on paper.
Josiah Igono (13:43):
Sometimes if I have problems sleeping, I sleep like a rock, I sleep well, I can fall out anywhere. I'm not narcoleptic, but I can fall out anywhere, you know what I'm saying? But sometimes if I have had a very busy week or a very, very busy day, rather, and it's hard to sleep, you know what I'll do? I'll pull out a pen and paper, dude, and I'll just start writing and you will be amazed at what that does to help hit the reset button, help to clear your mind, and just to relieve stress. It works.
Erik Averill (14:16):
Yeah. I believe it. I think for myself, a few of the things I've implemented is instead of just being so tied to my technology, is just making sure that I have a pen and paper with me wherever I can go in and stealing those moments of that brain dump has been one of the most, yeah, therapeutic exercises I have. I just never thought about it as a tool performance.
Erik Averill (14:41):
I've loved this conversation and for our audience, highly encourage you: Go analog, go old school, go find a pen that you love and a notebook that gives you that emotion where you have that own listening year at your disposable anytime that you want. Love this conversation. Of course, we'd love to hear from you guys. Head over to athleteceo.com. You can access the show notes, all the resources that we've mentioned in this conversation. Until next time, stay humble, stay hungry, and always be a pro.