How much control do you have over your life?

One easy measure is the Verified Information / Hearsay Information ratio.

Verified information refers to information that you can actually verify for yourself, and that you therefore personally can trust. This is the kind of information that you can use to make important life decisions.

Hearsay information refers to information that you heard or read from another source, such as newspaper or TV, and whose veracity, validity, accuracy or authenticity you can simply NOT verify either because you do not have access to the information source, or do not have the intellectual skills to verify whether the information is true or not.

The tragedy in life is that most people make important life decisions based on Hearsay Information. We somehow believe what other people say, without realizing that every person who talks to us has a specific agenda for saying what it is that they are saying.

Even members of your own family, or your friends, or your affable coworkers will have their own agenda to promote and advance every time they talk to you. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, because you probably have your own agenda when you say something to them.

The important thing is to be able to VERIFY everything that other people say.

Over time, I've had to learn a skill that I think has helped me to distinguish between good advice and bad advice. I first think about the other person's agenda before I listen to his/her advice.

I always ask myself: "Is it in his/her interest to tell me what he/she is telling me?"

If so, then I don't really pay attention to the piece of advice. I am now especially suspicious about people who seem to go around offering advice when their advice is not solicited at all.

How do you verify the information you are getting from other people?

You create what I call verification filters, which are simply heuristics that help you to screen OUT the information that cannot possibly be useful to you.

As a matter of information management policy, I automatically screen out from my mind:

• news from TV
• advice from baby boomers who hang on to the old economy
• advice or information from people who have something to gain from their advice or information being more widely circulated (e.g. more prestige for them)
• advice or information from people whom I do not consider "winners"
• etc.

People often complain about information overload, yet that is not the real problem. The real challenge is to have clear goals, so that you can easily and quickly determine WHICH information or piece of advice is relevant and can actually help you to reach your goals faster or more reliably.

If we say that the problem is "information overload," then we are blaming other people. But if we accept that the problem might actually be "lack of clear goals," then we can begin to take responsibility for our own lives.

In the end, the easiest and fastest way to gain total control over our lives is to simply press the red button on the remote control (it's the button call "Power Off"). Then, all we have to do is write on a piece of paper a clear goal, and begin to gather information and resources, and do things that will help us accomplish that goal.

A lot of people compliment me on the achievements in my life, but I maintain that I don't have more talents than anybody else. I just developed early in life a sort of ruthless mindset about protecting my time, and an absolute commitment to verify all the information that I come across.

My head is so small that I cannot afford to let in any information that will not be useful to me in getting what I want from life, which is -- EVERYTHING.