#27 | Global chaos? Sort. Focus. Act.

Tariffs. Oh dear!

April 2025 didn’t whisper. It crashed through the front door.

A sweeping 10% U.S. tariff on all imports. Then the fine print: 145% on China, 24% on Japan, 20% on the EU. Then, all paused again. (What the heck!)

Markets tanked. S&P500 down almost 20%. Nasdaq, Dow, Dax, FTSE didn’t do any better. Trillions (who even seems to care these days) erased.

So, maybe your operating costs jumped. Maybe a client already hit pause. Maybe your portfolio flinched, and your longer-term plans suddenly felt shorter.

Or maybe none of that touched you—because you were already hedged, prepared, or even welcoming the shake-up.

Fair. But the daily headlines still leave a trace.

And they raise real questions:

What do you do with all that noise? How to act and respond smartly when everything feels like it affects you—but most of it’s out of your hands?

Spoiler alert: The Sphere of Influence Reset (When Global Chaos Hits)

Well, information isn’t always strategy.

It smells of a trap these days.

One live event—tariffs, layoffs, rate hikes, protests—unleashes a flood: Feeds, opinions, analysis, reaction threads, AI news digests.

It turns into 50 headlines. Then 500. We could easily think that more information would bring clarity. You read more, know more, worry more… and somehow understand less.

But instead of decisions, you get drift. Instead of action, more tabs.

Let’s press pause. Just a quick one. Not to ask, “What should I think?” But instead: “Where should I focus?”

Because if the problem isn’t ignorance or lack of interest—it’s attention—then we need a better way to sort.

The Sphere of Influence Reset …

… which is a mental model for sorting chaos into strategy—or when it feels like everything matters, but nothing moves (or everything crashes down like a falling knife).

It is a simple idea, borrowed from Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (​view on Amazon​*) (and, before that, from Stoic thinkers like Epictetus).

Maybe you’ve heard of it. Or perhaps it’s completely new.

Either way, it works like this:

• Control → What you can act on directly today Your budget. Your habits. Your pricing. Your outreach. Your systems. Your learning decisions.
  
• Influence → What you can shape but not fully control Your team. Clients. Conversations. Community. Collaborative planning. Thought leadership. Policy feedback loops.
  
• Concern → What affects you but lies outside your control Tariff laws. Central bank rates. Geopolitics. Public sentiment. Market volatility.

Sure, you can care about the Concern zone. You can study it. Factor it in.

But building your day around it? That’s how you lose three hours, open countless browser tabs (about tariffs), and the thread of what matters.

But easy! This model doesn’t ask you to disengage.

It encourages you to reorder your attention.

The reset isn’t abstract. It’s directional. It’s a way to decide where your focus goes when the noise shows up.

Try it in real-time

This model holds—especially when things get messy.

Here’s how to apply it right now—mid-tariff shock, mid-chaos, mid-mental fatigue:

Step 1: List what’s pulling at you
Everything from “Why did the market drop 10-15%?” to “Should I raise prices?”

Business stuff, life stuff, all of it.

Don’t filter. Just unload the mental tabs.

Step 2: Sort them fast into the three zones

• Control → You can take action
• Influence → You can guide
• Concern → You can’t do a thing (yet they dominate your tabs)

Step 3: Redirect your energy

• Spend 80% of your time and strategic brainpower in Control
• Use Influence (15%) for planning and communication
• Acknowledge Concern (5%) but let it sit on the sidelines

This isn’t a productivity hack. It’s a shift in how you use your strategic energy.

And once you’ve done it a few times, it changes how you spend your time.

It becomes a reflex. A strategy filter. A sanity lever.

Example roles (this week, not hypotheticals)

Let’s make this real—starting with the tariff shock.

If you’re trying to figure out where to focus, here’s how it might play out in different contexts:

• Freelancer: You don’t control supply chains, but you can redesign your offers for clients feeling the pressure. Smaller retainers. Flexible scope. ROI-first messaging.
• Digital nomad/Remote worker: You don’t influence energy prices, but you can map out alternative cities with stable rent and a liveable climate.
• Business owner: You don’t set economic policy, but you can renegotiate vendor terms, revisit your margin structure, or localize some sourcing.
• Learner: You don’t predict hiring trends, but you can double down on cash-flow adjacent skills: pricing, automation, negotiation, research design.
• Private investor: You don’t move markets, but you can rebalance, exit fragile positions, or explore sectors that stand up better to trade tension.

So, overall, we want to move away from reacting to big headlines.

And instead build a routine that holds when the next one drops.

AI? Yes. But only if it’s helping

That same idea—Control / Influence / Concern—applies to how you use AI.

Many people probably fall into the trap of using AI to dig deeper into the Concern zone—and then wonder why they’re still spinning.

“What are the long-term consequences of U.S.–China trade tensions on the global GDP?”

Not useless. But also,… not useful right now. → Lots of information. No direction.

Compare that to:

“What’s a resilient service offer I can create if my product costs go up 30%?”

That’s a Control question. It points you toward motion, not mental churn. → That’s Control. That’s where momentum starts.

Let AI help you think. Not spiral. Connect questions and research to your use case and/or life situation.

What this strategy isn’t, imo

This framework doesn’t simplify complexity. ​Here is a better approach.​

Of course, it also doesn’t fix the macro picture.

And it won’t make you immune to volatility. Or, have you ever gone on a halfway decent rollercoaster without feeling the Gs?

But, what it gives you is traction. Not in theory—in your calendar, prompt history, and next move.

It shrinks the map. Without shrinking you.

Try this today

• List the top 10 things on your mind.
• Drop each one into Control / Influence / Concern.
• Choose a Control item and write a better AI prompt around it.
• Use the result to take one decision or one action.
• Bookmark that list. Come back to i.t

The noise will keep coming. The difference is where you let your attention land.

And if you want—reply. Tell me what shook loose. Or where you’re still stuck.

We’ll sort it out from there.

Stay sharp,

Mark
The AI Learning Guy
👋⚡😎

Quick reads and books

1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. View on Amazon*​.
2. Understanding Tariffs in simple terms and language. ​View on Perplexity​.
3. Understanding the Sphere of Influence. ​View on Perplexity​.
4. Books about AI and AI trends. ​View on Amazon*​.

Note: No single website has all the answers. This list offers a starting point for those who want to roll up their sleeves or simply satisfy some AI curiosity. Links: Links with * are affiliate links. See disclosure below.

​Affiliate disclosure: To cover the cost of my email software and the time I spend writing these emails, I sometimes link to products. Please assume these links are affiliate links. If you choose to buy through my links, a big THANK YOU – it will make it possible for me to keep doing this.