How to Change Your Life? Brian Tracy Answers

Last week, I wrote about 3 simple ways to write better blog posts. For those who didn’t catch that post, you can read it here.

In the time since writing that post, I have listened to an interview with Brian Tracy conducted by Success Magazine’s founder Darren Hardy. One of the many gems Mr. Tracy shares in this interview is how to change your life in today’s noisy world.

“You want to change your life?” Brian Tracy said. “Change your ratio.”

The ratio he is referring to here is what he calls the “e vs. e” ratio, which stands for “entertainment vs. education.”

This ratio intrigued me because like the “3 e” formula for writing better blog posts I shared, so too does Brian Tracy use e’s. They even stand for the same words.

He explains that people in today’s culture, which is filled with entertainment everywhere you turn, are experiencing a ratio of 50:1 using his formula.

“For every fifty minutes of entertainment people absorb, they are getting one minute of education.”

Ouch.

And here I was promoting entertainment as one of the three ways to write better blog posts! Turns out, that advice is contributing to the problem. (I’m still going to do it, though, because I believe you can educate through certain kinds of entertainment. But that’s for another blog post.) 🙂

I don’t know about you, but that statistic caught my attention. I started thinking about how I spend my time each day, and how close to that ratio my own behaviors come.

Turns out I am definitely part of the statistic.

Definitely not 50:1, but definitely not in the range Mr. Tracy believes is best for success. Now to be fair, he is not saying that entertainment is BAD; what he is suggesting is that the trend toward massive entertainment consumption is one of the reasons many people’s lives are not going anywhere.

“Think about it,” he says. “You wake up in the morning to songs on the radio. Entertainment. You check your phone for messages and texts. Entertainment. You socialize around the water cooler, shoot the breeze with colleagues all day, go to ball games on the weekends, play Farmville and Farkle on Facebook, retweet funny YouTube videos, watch TV at night…entertainment, entertainment, entertainment.

“I have met thousands of people in their 20’s and 30’s who tell me they haven’t read a book in 10 or 15 years because they know it all. Yet these same people are not living the life they say they want to live. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

Take a few minutes and think about your own “e vs. e” ratio. How much time are you truly devoting to educational activities that are moving your life forward and getting results — real, measurable results? Frankly, I was pretty shocked when I did this because I am a huge advocate of education and love to read and develop my skills. But if I am being totally transparent, my “e vs. e” is too high on the entertainment side for achieving  the kind of goals I have set for myself.

Do you think we need to be less entertained and more educated as a society? Are we, in fact, entertaining ourselves out of prosperity? Is Brian Tracy on to something? Please share your thoughts!