#65: Kill The Noise

I’m an avid learner, and I love a podcast. I often find interesting little nuggets that give me ideas or make me think. But every now and then, something hits differently.

That's what happened when I was listening to Kevin O'Leary (Shark Tank) on Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO. He mentioned something that made me pause the episode and replay it three times. Since then, I've been thinking a lot about it, doing extra reading, and being more conscious of it in my day-to-day life.

It's a principle that I think explains the difference between executives who build empires and those who just stay busy. Between companies that dominate markets and those that never gain momentum.

The concept? Signal vs. Noise.

What Jobs Actually Did

Here's what O'Leary witnessed firsthand when he partnered with Jobs in the 1990s. Jobs operated on what he called an "80/20 signal-to-noise ratio." He'd dedicate 80% of his time to just 3-5 critical tasks that needed to get done in the next 18 hours. Everything else? Noise.

This wasn't some productivity hack. This was performance discipline.

O'Leary tells the story of getting emails from Jobs at 2:30 AM, expecting immediate responses. Jobs was ruthlessly focused on immediate, tangible goals. While other executives were in endless strategy meetings, Jobs was laser-focused on execution.

When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was haemorrhaging $1.04 billion annually across dozens of confusing products. Macintosh models, printers, digital cameras, peripherals – "tons of products, most of them crap," as Jobs put it.

His response was surgical. He created a simple four-square grid: Consumer/Professional × Desktop/Portable. Everything outside this grid got eliminated. Over 70% of Apple's products disappeared.

But here's the part that gives me chills. Jobs had this annual retreat ritual. He'd gather his executives and ask them to list everything they thought the company should focus on. After heated debate, they'd narrow it down to the ten most important initiatives. Then Jobs would cross out seven of them.

"We can only do three," he'd say.

The result? Apple moved from $1.04 billion losses in 1997 to $309 million profit in 1998. Eventually becoming the world's most valuable company.

As Jobs said, "I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do."

Why Everyone Gets This Wrong

Many people confuse motion with progress.

Being busy feels productive. Saying yes feels collaborative. Attending every meeting feels important. But it's all an illusion. You're not building a business; you're building a very sophisticated form of procrastination.

The comfort of busyness is seductive because it removes the responsibility of choice. When everything is urgent, nothing requires real thinking. When every opportunity looks good, you don't have to make hard decisions about what's actually great.

Look around, and you’ll see this everywhere. Companies expanding into twelve markets simultaneously instead of dominating three. Marketing teams focusing on lots of channels before mastering one. Teams spread across ten projects instead of delivering a few exceptional outcomes.

The information abundance paradox is real: more access doesn't equal better decisions. It equals decision paralysis wrapped in the illusion of thoroughness.

And our always-on culture makes it worse. That notification ping might be the next big opportunity, right? Wrong. It's probably just more noise masquerading as signal.

The Signal Detection Framework

So how do you actually cut through the chaos?

The Daily Practice

Every morning, before you touch email, Slack, or any input, identify your 3-5 critical tasks for the next 18 hours. Everything outside this list is noise until these are complete.

The Strategic Filter

Companies with clear strategic logic produce less noise and learn more from each iteration. Strategy becomes your most powerful signal amplifier. If an opportunity doesn't directly advance your core strategy, it's noise.

The Elimination Audit

Weekly question: "If we could only keep three metrics, which ones?" Then ask it about meetings. Then initiatives.

The Weak Signal Detector

The best insights often hide in seemingly minor information. That random forum complaint about your payment flow. The competitor hiring pattern that signals a strategic shift. The competitive intelligence hiding in a LinkedIn post.

But here's the key: deploy systematic detection, not reactive consumption.

The Decision Template

Before starting anything new, define what success signals look like. Identify the noise sources that might distract your evaluation. Set kill criteria upfront.

The magic happens when you realise that competitive advantage in the information age comes from superior filtering, not superior access.

In a world where everyone has access to everything, those who focus on the essential few will demolish those distracted by the trivial many.

So here's my challenge: What will you eliminate this week?