A friend once shared with me how her 17-year-old daughter adapted some advice for her own purposes. It's an inspiring story with several lessons. The young woman was training to become an opera singer — an ambitious, long-term goal. It was particularly challenging for...
A member of the Thinking Lab asked me to clarify how I reduce the size of my lists: "I was struck by your lists never having more than 7 things on them. This seems self-evident and also incomprehensible to me. What about stuff that you're not sure about that you don't...
As most of you know, I'm a thinker. I like to understand issues thoroughly before I act. I am happy to consider possibilities, work out consequences, and introspect my emotional reactions before jumping into action. However, I have learned the hard way that if I want...
When you make a marketing plan, or a 5-year strategic plan, or even just a plan to complete a complex project, you sometimes don't know much. You know what you wish would happen. You know some things you need to do so you can make that happen. Everything else is...
A friend of mine once told me that she hated doing housecleaning. Rather than make herself clean on a schedule, she would clean only when she felt disgusted by something dirty. That would give her the motivation to clean up that area. This method worked for her for...
It's easier to think at your desk than on your feet. Knowing this, you can make it easier to follow through on your own good intentions. Good intentions often fail when "something" comes up. For example, you intend to exercise at lunch, but then at 11:45 you see you...
Don't be embarrassed if you occasionally feel scattered. It's a normal transition state. For example, after you've finished a major project, you may feel somewhat scattered until you've figured out the next big thing to focus on. But don't let yourself remain feeling...
Willpower is crucial to achieving your goals. From putting forth an extra effort to meet a deadline, to curbing your spending to save for the future, willpower is the force that turns your good intentions into reality, I think willpower draws on a kind of reservoir of...
Your top priority is not necessarily the most important task on your list, nor is it necessarily the most urgent one. It is the one you decide you should do first--prior to the others. Often, as soon as you identify your top priority by naming the reason it's #1, you...
Burnout is a common problem. When you "burn out," you lose the motivation to do productive work that you have done in the past — and used to enjoy doing. There are three common sources of motivation: a personally meaningful (selfish) purpose, an inspiring person, or...
You have probably heard the saying, "no plan survives contact with reality." There's a lot of truth in this — so what's the value of planning? Planning pays off before you take action, while you are taking action, and after you have taken action. The most obvious...
It's a truism that you should break a complex or difficult project into small steps. The difficulty in applying that truism is in figuring out which of many possible steps to take next. You need to choose a good next step, quickly and effectively, without falling into...
In another article, I mentioned that whenever you give a reason for your conclusion, you should pause to make sure it passes the Laugh Test. Yes, the "Laugh Test." Sometimes your reason will turn out to be a patent rationalization, and you won't be able to repeat it...
Much of the advice for curing yourself of procrastination comes down to "just get started" or "just take a little step." Once you start on a task that you've been avoiding, you often find that the work develops its own momentum. If you can just get started, you can...
Last week I gave a terrific class on how to troubleshoot "Rationally Connected Conversations." I mentioned three mistakes to watch out for. Then yesterday in a conversation I made all three mistakes. Actually, I did catch mistake #1 at a certain point and remedy it....
At the start of a break during the workday, I have the idiosyncratic practice of reading one paragraph of Ayn Rand’s non-fiction. This is an example of a highly tailored tactic to help with a problem that many people have: breaks take over the work day. Let me explain...
In the last blog post, I pointed out that when you struggle there is a fact that needs to be accepted. In a post a month ago I explained that the way you accept facts is that you factor that fact into your thinking, your expectations, and your planning. This leaves...
Perhaps the most important lesson I've learned in life is to treat struggle as an alarm that warrants your immediate, full attention. By "struggle," I mean "to proceed with great difficulty and effort." [Merriam-Webster] You struggle because the task is difficult...
I had a long talk with a Thinking Lab member the other day. He was concerned about his power of concentration, which wasn't all he wanted. He often got distracted and tired when he worked for a couple of hours. So I gave him my spiel on concentration, and thought I...
It is not enough to know that washing dishes is a good thing, that it helps you keep a clean kitchen. The dishes won't wash themselves. The same is true of every mental tool. No matter how long you have used a tool and no matter how convinced you are that it works,...
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