Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining us all the way from across the end of the world, are you in Sydney, Australia?

Ross Dawson
I am.

Greg Voisen
In Sydney, Australia, is Ross Dawson. Ross came to us, by the way of Le Gould. Le is a fellow Australian, who literally wrote a book called Feeling Forward. And she said, “I think Ross would be a good guest. And I always take recommendations from prior guests. For guests that could be good on the show. Good day to you, Ross. How's going in Australia this morning?

Ross Dawson
It's wonderful. It's fun to hear, but it's where I live, which is by the beach. It's still not too cold for me to go swimming every day.

Greg Voisen
Well, you have reverse season. So right now you guys are going into Are you still in fall right now? Would you consider it?

Ross Dawson
Well, it's just a day away from the shortest day of the year. That's right, the longest day for you.

Greg Voisen
Exactly. So maybe you're actually entering winter so but it is a beautiful spot. Let me let my listeners know a tad bit about you. Ross is a globally recognized leader and futurist keynote speaker, strategy advisor, bestselling author, and the book we're going to be talking about is called thriving on overload. Ross is in strong demand globally, having delivered keynote speeches, speeches, strategy workshops to 30 countries six continents, for companies such as American Express, Boston Consulting Group, Citibank, Coca Cola, Google, Interpublic Group, Microsoft, and the list goes on. He's also the founding chairman of advanced human technologies of companies. And you can get to that website at a h t group.com. Ah, t group.com. Also, you can get to his personal website, just Ross Dawson d-a-w-s-o-n.com. There you can learn more about his futurists resources. You can learn more about him the strategic advisor, his keynote speaking and about Ross himself. He's been named one of the most influential people in the world, the future of work, FinTech, crowdfunding enterprise to digital media magazine, as well as the 40s Biggers plays in stress Australia's digital age. He previously worked in senior positions in London, Tokyo, and Sydney and most recently, Thomson financial is Global Director of capital markets, as well as Merrill Lynch and NCR. And he's worked at senior levels in many countries and cultures. And he speaks five languages. Well, I have a hard time with just the one that I do, Ross. But I want to start this off, because in the introduction to your book, you kind of identify yourself as a futurist you state that it is someone that helps people think about the future to make better decisions today. What are some of the things that listeners, whether they're CEOs or midline managers, or executives or not, that are listening to this show, could be prepared to thrive in the next 10 to 20 years? And what are some of the trends that we you may want to tell them to look out for?

Ross Dawson
So when we look at the future, there are two fundamental things which we can understand. There are trends, the things which we have seen, and this is things which we see in the past. So we can see, for example, technology trends, we can see demographic trends, we can see social trends and in shifts, we can see that there are shifts in the structure of business, but there are also some uncertainties. And in a way, the my primary advice and what a lot of what I work with boards and executive teams is around how we dig into the uncertainties. So there's a lot of you can see any number of trend reports and these provide some insights around what has happened in the past and up to today. In order to think effectively about the future, we kind of need to be digging into the uncertainties. And I think, you know, in a way the primary question for any leader is what is most uncertain and most important to my business. And

Greg Voisen
I remember having Miss McGrath on here and her book is seeing around corners professor at a university. I'm sure you know her. What would you tell people about seeing around the corners and being able to put the dots together because, you know, if you're a CEO, you're trying to look for what might be hitting you right in the face, what might be coming at you as quickly as you can Han, what are some of the things you might tell them, they may want to do to adopt to those things that could be hitting them in that face.

Ross Dawson
So part of the context for this was I was originally had a proposal for a book, which was about how to be your own futurist. And so I believe that the role of futures is valuable, but you can't outsource thinking about the future. Everybody needs to be their own future. So originally, I had a proposal, which essentially booked about to be how to be your own futures. And a number of agents told me that they couldn't sell that book. But yeah, it was just hard to sell futures books. But there was one chapter title in my proposal, which is called thriving on overload. And that's what they said, well, what am I even said, if you write a book, which is called Thrive overload, I can sell that. So that

Greg Voisen
is the crux, that is, pardon me for interrupting you. But at the crux of many people's stress factors today, whether it's seeing around the corner or not, it is overload. And you state in the introduction of book that the information overload occurs when the amount of input to a system exceeds, exceeds its processing capacity. That's the adoption of the human species, which is evolved now, in your estimation, to handle a lot of information. How can we be more able to cope with this information? I remember having a behavioral scientists on here, her book was the watchman's rattle she's been on a couple of times. And you know, it's almost like we wait until the last minute to do something about global warming, it has to hit us right smack dab in the head. And you see the things that are going on in our part of the country. We see the fires in Australia and the challenges we're having with global warming. The thing is, the information overload is really in your estimation, on what how your perspective is and how you deal with in other words, how you use it for your advantage. Can you speak with us how we would use this information for our advantage?

Ross Dawson
So that's what we're saying is that essentially thriving on overload and strategic inside of the same thing, where our brains are finite, we have an unlimited amount of information. And so in order to see around the corners, to be able to see sometimes what is right in front of us, we need a whole set of information practices, which is the five powers that I lay out in thriving on overload. So this is around acknowledging that our brains wonderful things, but also limited, and we have an extraordinary abundance of information. So it's around shift going beyond the overwhelm to say, what is the information that serves me? What is it that enables me to be a better leader, what enabled me to make more effective decisions? So this is a whole set of processes, of habits of ways of working or ways of thinking of how it is we deal with information, how we think, and there's no one point to it, there are the five powers that are interlaced, and these are of purpose, framing, filtering, attention and synthesis. And together, these are the five powers, which are the practices, which means that whether we are simply a students, for example, overwhelmed by all of our coursework, or starting in a job, where suddenly you get thrown new things about things, or we are a leader, looking to make a big impact, and to shape our future in a very fast moving world. These are the same practice principles that we need to implement.

Greg Voisen
Well, I love your diagram in the book and your chart with the center is purpose. And I remember having Steven Kotler on here many, many times, talking about flow Genome Project, but in Stephens work, he said, Look, focus is for free. Curiosity is something that all CEOs have. They're highly curious, most of them. They're trying to find different solutions. But the purpose then was the next thing on the list. purpose was, you know, beyond focus, being for free and being, you know, having curiosity, you have to find a purpose for the why you're doing something, right. What is this? Why, and then you can set goals, right? And then you can set proximal goals, and then you can get something accomplished. What would you say about executives who might be listening today, that are having a hard time finding the purpose to be able to deal with overload in every area of their life?

Ross Dawson
So the this is the first point is that booth finding a purpose is a journey. It's not a destination because once you find a purpose, the world changes you changes. And so this is a process of discovery. In fact, one of the first lessons in our relationship with information is that this is part of being able to find and refine, refine our purpose. So, we might have an idea, this is a holding, just a straw man, or this is an idea of what my purpose or direction or the reasons for my work and the organization, the organization that I lead to, to be, and then that starts to sensitize you to looking for the information that can help you to refine that to say, these are the things that inspire me, these are things that I think I need to be making a difference in. And so one of the first ways in which we are purpose feeds on itself and finding information is we have an idea, that helps us to then look for the information that helps us to refine our purpose. So and as we refine our purpose that is then the filter to determine whether information is useful to us, or not useful to us. And that's the critical thing, we have any, you know, unlimited infinite information. And most of that information is for anybody with a particular purpose, not just have zero value, but negative value, because it takes your time it takes your attention without giving you sufficient value. So as you begin to refine your purpose, it enables you more and more accurately, easier and easier to say, yes, that information is useful and valuable to me, because it serves me in helping my purpose or refining it. And that information, I will not take in into my limited attention because it doesn't serve me.

Greg Voisen
Well, what you're saying is it gives me clarity and focus. And I think one of the biggest things that happens Ross, just in my humble opinion, is when you find a purpose. It's not that you get singularly focused, you do say that these are inseparable these five powers, and you're in your framework at the center of the framework is purpose. But I believe that the listeners would want to know about filtering, attention, synthesis and framing. So how do those powers help us change our relationship with information for the better, because at the essence, at the core of your book, is literally purpose with these others surrounding purpose. And they all play a role in conjunction with the purpose. So if you would briefly explain filtering, and attention and synthesis and framing,

Ross Dawson
all start with framing as that is, in a way, the starting point for the others. And the key point is that what we are looking for is not information, it is knowledge and insight and understanding. And that comes from piecing together, the information that we see the same make the connections to build a literal framework. So we need to be building frameworks in which can help us to understand where new information fits, where it's, it helps us to build a richer, more refined, more useful understanding of the world. So we need to build some valuable, some frameworks, visual frameworks or other ways where we piece together help us to build deeper knowledge, which flows into then the filtering, because we now have our purpose and using our frameworks we can then discern, not only is this information served me or not, we're getting more discerning around that information, where it fits, but also where it might fit in our frameworks. And you know, not just accumulating bits of information, but actually building that into the framework of our knowledge and understanding. Attention is absolutely critical, because that is that's what we the resource which we have in the world, and it's limited, it is finite. And we need to build attention practices and understand that we can just schedule our attention. There are some things which we can spend time on, there are different attention modes, different ways of paying attention, and building that into a structure and our lives can build us met far more effective and how it is we take in information. But the final one,

Greg Voisen
so they ask you a question about it may ask you a question about a 10 cheese. You're doing really well going through them. But I think a listener out there today. And I'm not saying all executives but many executives are AD D and ADHD. And part of that challenge is the ability to get that focus and attention to get the attention. What would you tell somebody who might be struggling with that attention? To be able to come back in and focus and get that clarity? What advice might you give them?

Ross Dawson
Well, I think the first point is that everybody struggles. And some people might struggle more than others. Some people may be diagnosed with attention deficit. But it's everyone struggle. That's just the nature of what we are. Our brains are distractible. Oh, that's, that's well, our brains are trained to, you know, designed to be able to sort of just keep on getting distracted. So everyone gets distracted. And this is, so yeah, we're recognized, we're always going to struggle with it. So I think that's one of the first things to acknowledge and accept, and then say, okay, what is it that I can do to incrementally just get that little bit better?

Greg Voisen
Over here? Why are we distracted? Because they often say, hey, we're going to check, we're going to chase the next shiny object, right? So you think about it, it's like, oh, I'm gonna go chase this object, because it's better. In your research, what did you find about us being distracted? And did you find out anything as a result of how we get distracted, and how we can get back to being more focused, and paying attention to what we need to do?

Ross Dawson
Well, part of it comes back to the history of our brains, and we used to forage for food. And essentially what we did is we looked for food in a particular place. And when it ran out, we would start to look for food in new places. And these are dopamine driven pathways in our brain that keeps us making us look for new things in places. And in fact, it's been demonstrated that information foraging, to say that which is just looking for information, it uses exactly the same dopamine driven pathways, the thing is that we never run out of information but are still our brains is still trained to keep on looking for new information on all fronts. So this is just essentially the way our brains work. So this does require essentially training ourselves. And we could let our brains be distracted by the TIC TOCs, and the neon banners around us all the way, that's just the nature of what we do. So we do need to understand that we need to train and develop our capacity for attention. And one of the most powerful practices is simply to say, I will spend 510 minutes, 50 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever, on one task. And with no distractions during that period, and those tasks could be, for example, just saying, I found this really interesting article or this book, and I'm going to do that one thing. And we keep on wanting distractions of our I want to check my messages. And it's simply been able to practice, you know, and it's only for a little bit longer at a time to say I will do one thing for a period of time. And that is the most powerful single thing we can do is to do one thing for a period of time.

Greg Voisen
And I want my listeners to hear that because, you know, Ross, that is tremendous wisdom and advice. And I hope everybody is listening to Ross right now, because that is something that anybody can do, you just have to put your mind to it. And you frequently you have to have a lot of discipline, and a lot of commitment to do that. A commitment that the result of doing that is going to be greater than the distraction that you might be doing something else. And that's where the reward comes in. The reward is getting something finished getting something completed and feeling good about that. Because you usually do feel good. When you complete that. What about synthesis and framing? Those are the two other factors out of the five, can you speak with the listeners about synthesis and framing

Ross Dawson
synthesis is the master power of humans is what is we do better than anyone there's more this will keep us ahead of machines. And that is simply for everything that we have ever seen or touched, to pull that together into that big picture of understanding. And this is the critical power for leaders. And that in a way this is the seeing around the corners as you see around the corners because you see the whole how all of the pieces fit together. So if you are building a strategy for an organization in a fast moving world, you do need to be able to see the pieces of your own organizations, competitors of the new technologies that are emerging the social shifts that are changing. So this is where we need to not only build this picture of the whole but be very open to changing our views because the our ability to be open to new ideas, it becomes more and more valuable, the faster the world changes. is. So synthesis is something about being able to pull together all the pieces to literally connect the dots into an understanding and helping to fall back to frame out things. But also at the same time being able to adjust that and be open to doing that. And this is supported by this power of framing, just building the frameworks literally been able to see the bits of information, literally connect them to visualize that, to make documents to be able to build that understanding. And that's the foundational practices, which then enable you to synthesize, see the big picture to be ahead and keep ahead in a world of extraordinarily fast change

Greg Voisen
was you're speaking about synthesis and attention and framing and filtering, that reminds me of something that almost like an architect would do, you know, you've got all these ideas, I want to rebuild or build something, right. And in the process, you're literally synthesizing all the things you'd like to put into it, then you're framing it all together, putting it out on paper, whether it's a mind map, or it's an architectural drawing. And that came to me is a really powerful symbol, which would be something that we're designing and putting together. And you know, you speak about six fears of defining our relationship with information, can you discuss these six fears. And Alba help us into and enact a positive relationship with information because I found that part of your book to be, I want to say, not just interesting, I think very, very important element of this is really these fears, these spears.

Ross Dawson
So the first point is that we do have a relationship with information, yes, we have a relationship with food, or we have a relationship with money. And that relationship can be an A empowering and enabling or it can be destructive. And so we need to build this positive relationship with information so that it serves us and makes us better and able to achieve more. So the first of those spheres is identity, where we can use the information we seek to help us understand who we are and who we are becoming. Expertise is a critical way of understanding who we are in a more and more complex world with more and more advances, we do need to be specialists, we do need to have deep knowledge. And choosing where we are an expert is a fundamental choice in what we have ventures and those, those ventures could be a company, it could be a community garden, it could be a project to be fit, and we can look at those ventures and how it is information serves us, we need to look at our well-being the well-being of ourselves or others. And that that's something where we need to seek information. And it's harder and harder, because they always have different opinions around how it is that we can be healthy. And so that's something which we need to look to. And we also need to be looking to our passions. And that reality is you know, we're not on automators we are passionate about could be sports, or arts or culture or history or whatever it may be. And these are part of who we are. And that's part of our information, relationship with information is across these different domains to help us maybe a hole and make sure that the information we take in helps us be who we can be.

Greg Voisen
Well, those six fears, and I'm going to direct my listeners when you get the book, even though you get a Kindle version, or you get a real copy of the book from Amazon, definitely look at the models that Ross has put into the book. Because just looking at the models alone, if that's all you bought the book for would be extremely valuable but changing your relationship with information. And let's talk about inflammation on the flip side of the coin. And that's the information we receive from the news. We call it news. Most of the time, it's negative news. And as you said it can be seriously harmful to our mental health. I don't think people see it that way all the time. But the reality is, I think if you listen to enough negative news, it is going to have some serious effects on how you perceive the world. What you see, because you're not you're seeing the negative you're not seeing the positive. What's your recommendation on how we should engage with news because we still need to be up to date on current events about what's going on about what could affect us. And if that means having to listen to the news or read the newspaper or read it on your iPad or get it off of your cell phone. We're being bought bombarded by it every day. And the other thing we're being bombarded with is It's instantaneous. I mean, an event can occur in Australia in 20 minutes from now. And it's literally going to hit the news waves, and it's going to be on my cell phone in 21 minutes. Right? So how do we, how do we deal with this news?

Ross Dawson
Well, the first thing is to understand what it is we want from the news. And, yes, we do want to be informed participants in our society. But we just knew we do I need to sit back and reflect what do I want from the news. And in a way, the news is always demanding our attention. And you should know this, you should know this. And sometimes the number of commentators have pointed to the practice of just simply having a, you know, taking note getting no news at all for let's say, a week, and then say, well, how much different was my life? Is it? Was it better? Or was it worse? Is there anything I need to know? Or, you know, letting friends tell you if something important happened, rather than having to keep it across? So because of accent well, maybe I do want to know about, for example, things which will help me know who to vote for, or that there are helped me to understand the shape of the world. But I think most of us consume more news than we need to. And I think that again, there needs to be purpose, why? Why do I want to have this news? And to actually just think that through, say, all right, well, because I do, we know it's happening. But the other key point is around this negativity, where the reality news is news because it is bad. Good things happen slowly, bad things happen fast. And so the reality is, we always get this barrage of negative things. So one thing we can do is actually balanced that out. There are in fact, there's not, it's hard to find them. But there are some positive news sites, I've created a Twitter list of positive use, which is a better way to start the day than the usual news. And this can be just part of this bouncing, yes, there are good things happening out there. And I can have some broader perspectives. So I think we need to have a diet of news saying that there are things which I might want to use, but that I will contain that. And to also make sure that you are looking for some of the good things which are happening as well as the reality of all of the news, which is negative, because it's it can be damaging. And one of the things we need to avoid at all costs, the Doom scrolling is just that sharp cut, okay, I've seen what's happening, will cut us off, I don't need an update in 10 minutes, or an hour or six hours, I can check in tomorrow. And I will not be any worse off. In fact, I'll be better off for not being continually scared, you know, trying to keep abreast of things which don't serve me.

Greg Voisen
Well. And I think also it's around your notifications on your cell phone, you know, the reality is, you can set those up to notify you like you said, you made a list of the good news channels, I'm definitely gonna go look for that. Because I think that I need to be fed with more of that myself. And I do thrive on it. When I knew it. It also tells me trends that I need to look at. Right? It's that's the good news can be good news about trends about what's happening in the world. What is somebody inventing? I remember hearing a story about lithium, and right in my own backdoor door, a place called the Salton Sea, where I'm trying to think of the huge billionaire who starts investing in it. And the reality is, is you know, you look at this, and those news stories which are good, which are informative. They do give you insights on trends that are occurring, where it's occurring, what you might be able to capitalize on, because frequently, people are looking to invest in things that they can make a return on and capitalize on, let's face it. You tell a great story and your book about Chris Dancy. And he was addicted to food and Diet Cokes in particular. And this guy ballooned over 300 pounds, you said, I'd love you to tell his story and how Chris used information. Now here's the most important part of this question to change his life for the better.

Ross Dawson
So Chris is focused on information about his body. And so one of the big trends, as you just discussed is about fitness trackers where you know, because we have our smartwatches and so on. Now we're able to count our steps and find out more about our pulse rate and so on. So this is more data about we have about our body and this is something which Chris used well, so he started to track data from his body in terms of how he felt Around is physiology, and correlated it to the activities, which he did. So he started to track. And he noticed that amongst other things that the more water you drank, the less he smoked. And, you know, he improved his habit. So he started to drink more water. And he started to see all of these patterns around with one thing that actually made a difference to his life and building on these by getting information about his body. But using that to learn around what made a difference, enable them to just gradually change his habits, to lose an enormous amount of weight to stop smoking to completely change his diet, and become a different person. And this was focused on the information but not just looking at the information, using that as a resource, to begin to see what makes a difference, making those small changes, which added up to make the big change of a transformation of his life.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, the Stanford professor that wrote the book, Tiny Habits was on the show, not that long ago. And I mean, there's many of these books on habits and changing little tiny habits at to actually make a big change in your life. And, you know, if you were to provide our listeners with three bits of advice or takeaways to help them in dealing with the amount of information in the world and to thrive on it, what advice would you provide them? And what simple things could they start to do now to change their relationship with information, Ross?

Ross Dawson
So the first one is one you already mentioned, which is to minimize notifications. So this is a is it essential? Because I get this notification coming up on my phone or my computer? Or is it something which is okay, if I just find it when I look for it? So just gradually pull back and say, how can you? No, no, no, there should be no sound notifications unless it's something which is going to be critical to you. And there should be no lottery notifications, and to make sure that your phone or devices are away. And that's one of the first very simple things to do. Second thing is to start to timebox. So you create periods of time where you will just do one thing, and one thing I think everybody should do is at least once a week, for at least 90 minutes at a time when you're doing just one thing. And that could be studying, it could be thinking about, you know, building a strategy of your business, it could be building, you know, writing a book or an essay, whatever it might be. And during that time, they will, you will not look at anything else. So you can use various apps to make sure everything else is shut off, you will only do that. And you won't check your phones that if you have to, if you just needed a break, you just get up and walk around or look at something, but no other digital devices. And this is a practice of achieving an immense amount and beginning to get your attention into to be more effective. And the thing, the third thing I would point to is, is simply being simply pulling back to looking at some information source that you normally wouldn't look to and going out and being as diverse as possible in your information source. And so simply just taking that step back, say, what information do I look at now? And do we all have habits, we all have consistency and how the information source we look at and just simply just think about that and say, Do I want more or less of any of these information sources? This one I really should be looking at today? And what is something new? And what is something different which can add to make create a more diverse portfolio of information sources that will serve me well.

Greg Voisen
Very well put. Now my question is, you ask. And I've heard this from Kotler. He says to go read something that you wouldn't normally read. Another words like if you've never read Architectural Digest, go pick up an Architectural Digest and read it because just the fact that you took in different information and get this, right, it triggers your ability to be much more creative in your thinking as a result of having a diversity of design because it's not information you would normally pick up, pick up a book, if I don't know just a book on volleyball, right? It's like, hey, that's not something I would normally pick up and read and why would I read it? What's the point? But he's saying just having the ability to do that. Do you believe the same thing do you believe that that helps people this diversity have information and new different kinds of information.

Ross Dawson
It's absolutely critical, because we live in an extraordinarily complex world is moving faster and faster. And that synthesis depends on us being able to see the whole, if we're only looking at a part of it, then we'll never see the hole, we'll always be equally blindsided we'll never see around the corner, they'll always be somebody coming up with something new, which we never dreamed of before. So it is absolutely essential first to be very broad, have the breadth of view. And you know, there are times when we need blinkers on to be very focused and working on particular projects. But we absolutely need to take the blinkers off and to look around and to see things that we hadn't seen. And we cannot be effective leaders, unless we are seeing all of the pieces that help us to see the whole. And that requires us to say, all right, well, I'm going to look at that which I would never normally look at. And this you start to sometimes immediately say, well, actually, this is relevant to me or I've learned something new or I can start to see all of the richness of the world, which enables me to have this synthesis, pull this together. And coming back to where we began to see the future better see the nature of change, and make better decisions today.

Greg Voisen
Very well put Ross, I want to thank you for being on inside personal growth. And for my listeners, this is books have been getting rave reviews, it's called thriving on overload the five powers for success in a world of exponential information, we'll put a link to Amazon to that look, we'll put a link to Ross's website as well, which is just Ross dawson.com. We'll put a link to his company's website as well in there. And we'll put a link to some of the YouTube videos that you can see about Ross speaking about this. Ross again, thanks for being on inside personal growth, sharing some of your wisdom and insight about how people can thrive with overloaded information and not look at it as a negative but reverse it and look at it as a positive and have a different relationship with that information. It's been it's been a pleasure having you on.

Ross Dawson
It's been a real delight. Thank you Greg.