I’ve long been a virulent opponent of the  ’dumbing down’ phenomenon. Internet For Dummies,  Accounting for Dummies, that slew of books. I’m decidedly not arguing for complexity for its own sake, but arguing against the idea that clarity requires diminishing the intelligence contained in a concept.

Imagine, then, the joy of coming upon this quote:

“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”

Who said it… not an author of yellow dummy books, but Albert Einstein. The same fairly bright fellow who gave this definition of relativity, from his famous theory:

“Sitting on a hot stove for seconds can seem like hours, and sitting next to a beautiful woman of  for hours can seem like seconds. That’s relativity.”

Notice that even Einstein’s sentence structure in that first quote has not been dumbed down. It’s by definition, a complex sentence. There is a fundamental value in being clear and direct without diminishing the meaning and message. That’s not dumbing down, it’s communicating on a higher level.

Some recent research presents a compelling case that one of the strongest predictors of success in life and work is… self control. So now there is some science to accompany what we might intuitively believe… that the most successful people possess or have cultivated a core capability of self control.

Even more interesting to me, however, is the definition of self control that accompanies this research. They stipulate that they understand self control as… the strategic allocation of attention.

That definition so resonates with me… the strategic allocation of attention. Self control is indeed about the intelligence and wisdom we each bring to where we put our attention, where we place focus, and how much attention we direct to specific pursuits and pleasures.

All this challenges me to examine how smart I am, on a daily basis, about allocating my attention, how purposeful, how mindful.

Keep an eye out for self control… around you and within you. Test how much of it evidences the strategic allocation of attention.