thinking
Taking Words Seriously Can Help You Get Things Done

Taking Words Seriously Can Help You Get Things Done

"I need more time." That is what a client told me was the solution to his grueling work schedule. We say such things without thinking about it, but it's worth pausing for a moment to focus on the thought. How could the solution possibly be more time? There is no such...

The Work of Worry

The Work of Worry

If worries never break your concentration, congratulations. Most of us get stuck occasionally in a worry loop. For example, you might be trying to work out some budget numbers, when you start worrying about whether they will be acceptable to your boss. Each number...

Find Yourself Digressing? Take a Quick Timeout

Find Yourself Digressing? Take a Quick Timeout

It happens to the best of us. You sit down to work on your top project, but soon you find yourself thinking about how to respond to a contentious email. Or after a solid hour's work, you step out for a quick break and get waylaid by a co-worker who "just needs five...

Coping with Interruptions

Coping with Interruptions

By some estimates, people lose 2 hours of work a day due to interruptions. The time is wasted in two ways: First, when you are interrupted, you often lose your place. You have to go back and redo some of the work to restore your working context. Second, the topic of...

How a Decision Log Can Help You Move from Scattered to Focused

How a Decision Log Can Help You Move from Scattered to Focused

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...

How Triage Can Help You Prioritize Under Pressure

How Triage Can Help You Prioritize Under Pressure

In the chaos of battle, military doctors use a system of triage to determine whom to treat. They divide the wounded into three categories: those who will survive without treatment, those who will likely die despite treatment, and those for whom treatment will make the...

Distinguishing Feeling Overloaded from Feeling Overwhelmed

Distinguishing Feeling Overloaded from Feeling Overwhelmed

When your thinking process feels stopped by too much on your mind, take a moment to distinguish whether your are overloaded or overwhelmed (or both at once). "Overloaded" is a cognitive state. It occurs when you are juggling too many ideas in your mind, perhaps...

Jump-Start Your Thinking

Jump-Start Your Thinking

Questions are the motor of thinking. A question puts your subconscious databanks into motion—it's a request to the subconscious to provide information. Although I teach techniques to generate questions to move thinking along, sometimes it's helpful to use pre-packaged...

How Identifying Three Good Things Each Day Makes Your Life Better

How Identifying Three Good Things Each Day Makes Your Life Better

Here's a daily practice I learned from Martin Seligman, author of Learned Optimism and Authentic Happiness. Once each day, write down three good things that happened in the last 24 hours. You can write them before going to bed or first thing in the morning. You can...

Aiding Willpower

Aiding Willpower

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...

Don’t Let Pressure Sabotage Your Thinking

Don’t Let Pressure Sabotage Your Thinking

Pressure can sabotage your thinking. By pressure, I mean an issue weighing on your mind as you try to concentrate on something else. Perhaps it's an imminent deadline or a desperate desire to do a fantastic job. Maybe it's a highly-charged emotional situation you...

Case Study: New Year’s Resolutions

Case Study: New Year’s Resolutions

New Year's Resolutions. How often do they turn out to be empty rhetoric? A resolution is a special kind of goal. It is not just a one-time target, like doubling sales for the year. When you make a resolution to lose weight or stop smoking, your goal is to change your...

Three Signs You Need to Check Your Premises

Three Signs You Need to Check Your Premises

Ayn Rand coined the catch phrase: "Check your premises." A premise is a past conclusion that supports your present thinking. Her point was that if you arrive at a contradiction in the present, there is an error somewhere in your past conclusions. You need to find that...

Don’t Motivate Yourself, Lead Yourself

Don’t Motivate Yourself, Lead Yourself

There was a theme in the questions that members of the Thinking Lab asked me this week. They all involved some form of, "how do I motivate myself?" I've had an epiphany. This is a mistaken way to conceptualize the problem. Motivation is an effect, not a cause. When...

How Latent Knowledge Can Help You Sift Out What Matters

How Latent Knowledge Can Help You Sift Out What Matters

For those of us who juggle several projects at work, a frequent question is, "which should I work on right now, in this chunk of time?" Sometimes the answer is obvious. Sometimes there's a crisis, and the best you can do is triage the work.1 And occasionally there's a...

Getting Started Using a Bit of Pretend

A bit of imagination can be surprisingly helpful with difficult thinking. I learned this by applying advice from Alan Lakein on how to get started on a difficult task: "Imagine this: You've been relieved of all responsibility for getting a difficult A-1 [important...

Unclear on Your Priorities? Do a Thought Experiment

Unclear on Your Priorities? Do a Thought Experiment

But they're all important! When everything seems like it's off-the-charts important to do today, a thought experiment can help you figure out your actual top priority. Here's how to do it:  Look at your short list of tasks to do, and pick one. Now imagine this was the...

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