Your Genius Adores Solitude

The greatest gift you can give your child, or your spouse, or your client, or your co-worker is the gift of the fullness of your attention. When you focus your presence and your energy and your attention on another human being, you make that person bigger.
You validate that person. One of the greatest gifts you can give another human being is the gift of pristine listening. If you're checking your phone, well, then again, you're taking your attention and you're leaving attention residue on your phone, which
means you have less attention for the conversation. And if you have less attention for the conversation, then you're not really listening to that person. And if you're not really
listening to that person, the deep place within them knows it and they're going to trust you less. And you're going to miss data that would allow you to serve your client or build the teammate or dominate your domain.

So, no phone conversations professionally and personally. Just turn off your phone, turn off your device before the meeting, and go all old school and have a real conversation. The best leaders are curious. You don't get that if you're worried about your incoming digital messages. 

The second excellent habit that will allow you to beat digital distraction, construct your own Menlo Park. I'm a big fan of Thomas Edison. He's one of the greatest, if not, arguably, the greatest inventor in the history of humanity. I mean, over a thousand patents to his name, came up with amazing, amazing things. How did he do it? Isolation.
You can be out in the world, you can be a history-maker and a productive legend. You don't get to do both. One thing all great geniuses do is, they spend a lot of time in solitude. Solitude has a bad reputation in our society right now. We think if we're
not with the cool crowd, if we're not checking our devices, if we're not posting selfies or other images, we are losing out. We have all these fears. And here's what really happens.

As you start to play with your phone, as you start to get hooked on likes, as you start to spend most of your best hours of your greatest days, posting, checking, playing with apps, getting hooked, you actually become addicted. We all know about technological addiction. And it's literally a dopamine. Dopamine is the inspirational neurotransmitter. And every single time you check for a like, there's a shot of dopamine. And it becomes this addiction. Every single time you check for a like, the hook grows stronger. Every single time you pick up your phone, you build the neural pathway to check it even more often. Every single time you see that if someone's liking you, and is your following growing, you tap into that reward system that every human brain has. Because when we were tribal, thousands of years ago on the savanna, we wanted to be liked by the
people in our tribe. We wanted to follow the herd. And if we weren't being followed by the herd, we would stray from the herd and get eaten by saber-toothed tigers. We would starve or we would be captured by warring tribes. And now here it is in modern society, but we still have that neurobiological instinct, it's a part of who we are, to check for likes, so we fit into the crowd. Well, the true nature of a leader is you're not a follower, and so you absolutely have to do the inner work required to break that hook of being liked. I mean, that's what leadership is all about. That's what being a great artist is all about. That's what dominating your domain is all about. That's what changing
the world is all about. It's about saying, here's who I am. I have my own mission, my own vision, and I'm going to break free from the crowd. So, an addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production. Your phone is costing you your fortune. If you look at the great geniuses of the world, the Shakespeares and the Basquiats and the Beethovens, and the great chefs and the great titans of industry, and the great humanitarians, all great thinkers have one thing in common: They spent long periods of time away from diversions, distractions, trivial interruptions.