How to Create an Intellectual Foundation of Self-Support

The knowledge base you create as a cross reference framework for dealing with your reality, does not solely determine your sight, but vision. For whatever you see, you will see it in contrast to your knowledge base, and if your knowledge base is not wide and deep enough, you will obviously miss a lot of points, and in so doing – loss a lot of time you could’ve saved. This is why a constantly expanding knowledge base is a strategic imperative no matter who you are or what you do, as it saves you a lot of time and grief by cutting the learning curve and quantifies your process towards any kind of goal or attainment. But to really quantify your process of accumulating knowledge and understanding in an optimal way, it is necessary to develop a strategy or method by which you constantly expand your perspectives, by simply deciding and planning what to focus on. Your time, attention and efforts are your primary assets, and how you deploy these in a strategic long term manner is of outmost importance when it comes to really creating a desirable future. 

All of this seems fairly obvious, but in terms of really having a more in-depth look at the implications of directing any kind of content through your mind, I believe we tend to overlook some of the more major implications. Because when directing something through your mind, it is not merely a matter of the conscious-mind. The data goes through the subconscious and unconscious-mind as well, and in that process provokes all kinds of reactions, pre-programmed responses and so on. So, knowing this to be the case, and that everything you put in is highly suggestive to the subconscious and unconscious-mind, it makes it easier to see the need for prevention as the best cure. Meaning: to not put anything in that is not useful, supportive and/or integrity wise, in a long term strategic way, as a way of applying the principle of prevention as the best cure to ensure long term success and effectiveness. Because what you put in will determine what you put out. 

What I am basically talking about is a strategically long term information diet that is meant to support you in dealing with various areas of life that is determining. There are certain areas of life that we may consider foundational. This would include areas that largely determine what becomes of a human-being. Such as relationships, social-environment, self-awareness, understanding, health and well-being. All of these areas cover a lot of the ground work in learning how to adjust and adapt to really optimize your life. And what is more, all of these areas are changing with the disposition of times, and thus it is necessary to consistently expand your awareness and competence in these areas in order to remain flexible and effective, no matter where and with whom you must deal. 

So to contextualize all this in a practically self-empowering way, I will share a bit about an obsession of mine that started when I was about 15 years old, nearly 12 years ago; as I started studying how leaders read. But my interest was more specifically about how leaders decide what to focus on and invest in – a question that has been very difficult for me, as there are so many things of interest to me. So it all started as a way to help myself deal with everything, as I always felt a bit overwhelmed by all the possibilities, opportunities and potential I could see through all kinds of knowledge and information that I just couldn’t decide what to really work on. But in this I started seeing a need for planning what to focus on and invest my time in. I started making investment plans in knowledge and information, by building a library, both physical and digital, and eventually, I started working with this concept of long term strategic information diets, that could be constructed and engineered after individual needs. 

In this I began creating booklists/data-diets to tackle various problems. I created data diets for people considering suicide, people experiencing anxiety, fear, anger etc. Any kind of problem I could identify, I tried to find a knowledge and information diet that could remedy the problem. And so in this I began a process of living a consistent kind of mind-programming. Eventually I began to experience the effects of my data-diets in terms of improved pattern-recognition, empathy, strategic thinking, deduction abilities and an overall ability to see, realize and understand more complex systems, relationships and problems. I began to experience a kind of mental acuity that I realized anyone could develop. So I started getting in deep, by studying the reading habits of all kinds of leaders. I studied emperors, business leaders, innovators, experts, politicians, athletes and so forth. Now, in this process I found some interesting correlations between many world leaders, and particularly the highest achieving ones. There was always a behavioral pattern of constant learning and reading, and it was always very deep and wide. So what I saw was that what all leaders did was to constantly expand their current perspectives, and neglecting all conclusions to remain flexible and expansive in reasoning, or teachable more directly put.  So what can simply be concluded by these studies of the reading habits of leaders, is that you need a plan for your own personal intellectual leadership, in terms of how to invest in knowledge and information. To help people become knowledge and information investors in long term strategic ways. What really is required is a more long term sustainable and strategic approach towards one’s own education, as it is a never ending pursuit, that extends far beyond the education that is formal, and a strategy regarding your education can save you decades of hard work. In this age of knowledge it is clear how complexity is the enemy of execution, and so I think reading disciplines can simplify the complexity and put things into a perspective that makes one more able to execute. 

And maybe it is true what the wealthy say, that the only thing you can buy that will make your rich, is books. And additionally, another point to consider about making investment plans for the accumulation of knowledge and understanding, is the compound interest of it. There is for instance no way to predict the compound interest of buying a book such as Benjamin Grahams book The Intelligent Investor. How could that book change your life? 

By consistently accumulating valuable knowledge and information, it will throughout time create compound interest, get more organized and you may easier find ways to convert the knowledge into value. It’s about a way of life I suppose; to constantly expand your view, develop leadership vision and find ways to lead your mind and become an effective processor of the 21 century, which is this age of knowledge. It is time to take the habit of reading seriously, and consider how when you create habits, they will eventually create you. Reading is the one constant of the mind. It is always reading, whether it be reactions, emotions, feelings, content, people etc. You are reading both internally and externally, and so reading is a skill, not just an ability, I would argue it is The Skill, and my primary interest is dedicated to help develop people develop this skill, in the fashion many billionaires, investors and world-leaders have done it. It’s truly time to sharpen our reading skills, to make sense out of this overflowing world of information and knowledge. 

So with this I hope I have aroused your interest regarding my company and that you would like to learn more about how data diets can be utilized to support yourself in the long term and increase your chances for success in whatever you pursue.

Markus Modin

Founder at Directive Dynamics