Signal Vs Noise

On Monday I built an app. 

In the space in my life that was a public holiday, combined with weather forcing me inside, I had the space and time to have a bit of a mess around with AI and start building an app that will be really useful for me on Lovable. 

This is not about the app, this is about the space. 

One of my perpetual battles and challenges is giving myself the time and space to do really useful, needle-moving stuff. I think that a lot of us are challenged by this. 

But the fact is, unless we make time for the most important things they simply will not happen. 

Those people that achieve the most, focus on the tasks that are really going to move things forward. 

Steven Bartlett talks about ‘Signal Vs Noise’ in his conversation with entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary. 

This is using a television station analogy. In reality, ‘Signal’ is when you have the telly tuned in, and ‘Noise’ is background static. 

The recommendation is to find the signal – that is the 3-5 things that you can do daily for you to make progress in whatever it is you want to do.

Noise is all that gets in your way – the constant minor irritations like emails, doom scrolling, and unproductive phone calls. 

Ideally you spent 80% of your time in ‘Signal’ and 20% in ‘Noise’

I know that for most of us this is the other way around. 

I built out the bones of a product in a few hours that I have thought about for years and if I can get it right it will help me out in a big way. I will refine this over the weeks ahead. 

Of course, this is provided that I can find enough time in the Signal…