Practical writing on personal growth and productivity — tactical enough for today, strategic enough to matter tomorrow.
For years, I never wrote anything on the first line of my daily planner. Not once.And for years, I never asked why. (After all, it’s hard to introspect a habit you’re not aware of.) I’d flip to a new page each morning, jot down my tasks for the day, and skip right over that first […]
When you catch yourself keeping a second, mental list of what you “really” need to do, that’s a sign you don’t trust your plan for the day. Red alert!
Are you stuck putting off an important project because a horde of urgent tasks keep jumping the queue? You really want to work on that project—it would make such a difference—but when you sit down to work on it, there’s other stuff you need to do first. Other stuff that has deadlines. So you put […]
Jerry Seinfeld once shared a simple piece of advice for building momentum: mark an X on your calendar every day you write. The idea is to “not break the chain.” But what happens when the chain does break? Not if. When. It happens. We miss days. We get sick. We lose motivation. Life doesn’t ask […]
Our brains excel at coming up with shortcuts. They have to. We’re exposed to too much information and too many choices to process everything. Habits are one shortcut we take. We train—intentionally or not—our basal ganglia that when a certain condition is met, we take a specific action. Our phone dings, we check our phone […]
Our behavior is shaped by our beliefs about how the world works. The Reality Model helps us see the connection.
The bottle on the left is mouthwash. So is the bottle on the right. The difference is that the bottle on the left tastes like it’s trying to kill me. I’m trying to use mouthwash more consistently. Whenever it’s time to rinse, all I can think of is the impending flavor of doom and sadness. […]
Are you stuck putting off an important project because a horde of urgent tasks keep jumping the queue? You really want to work on that project—it would make such a difference—but when you sit down to work on it, there’s other stuff you need to do first. Other stuff that has deadlines. So you put […]
Think of yourself as three people in one. Your Past Self is who you used to be. Every action you have taken is in the past. Your Future Self is who you want to become. You have hopes, dreams, and ambitions for the life your Future Self is going to live. Your Present Self is […]
Jerry Seinfeld once shared a simple piece of advice for building momentum: mark an X on your calendar every day you write. The idea is to “not break the chain.” But what happens when the chain does break? Not if. When. It happens. We miss days. We get sick. We lose motivation. Life doesn’t ask […]
For years, I never wrote anything on the first line of my daily planner. Not once.And for years, I never asked why. (After all, it’s hard to introspect a habit you’re not aware of.) I’d flip to a new page each morning, jot down my tasks for the day, and skip right over that first […]
Our brains excel at coming up with shortcuts. They have to. We’re exposed to too much information and too many choices to process everything. Habits are one shortcut we take. We train—intentionally or not—our basal ganglia that when a certain condition is met, we take a specific action. Our phone dings, we check our phone […]
You’ve probably heard this stat: it takes 25 minutes to recover from a single interruption at work. That’s what a 2008 study by Gloria Mark and her team at UC Irvine found. It’s a stat you’ve probably heard before—often quoted as a rallying cry to defend your focus and minimize distractions. But what happens during […]
No matter how bad the past was, there’s nothing you can do to change it. What you can do is change how you perceive your past, which changes everything.
Some of the most successful people don’t use a task list. Instead, they schedule everything on the calendar.
