Do you have trouble saying "no" to requests from others? Do you add new projects faster than you can complete them? Do you love to go above and beyond on your assignments? If so, you're like me. You tend to overcommit. The standard advice we are given is, “Just say...
What Does Your New Commitment Compete With?
Time management books talk a lot about keeping track of your commitments. Commitments are those tasks you have decided you are going to do, no matter what. They range from the trivial (mailing a letter today) to the profound (write a book). They can be personal (lose...
How to Remember Your Commitment
Forgetting is real. It takes special work to remember an idea or an intention, particularly to remember it at the time you need it. The default is that you don't. This issue is much wider and more important than remembering names of people you meet or items on a...
How to Find and Commit to a Central Purpose
Working out your central purpose is one of the most selfish things you can do. It has the biggest effect on your future and your happiness. It’s not a quick process. If you already have a general direction but need to clarify the personal significance for yourself,...
Avoiding Setbacks When You Add a Weekly Commitment
When you are on a program of continuous improvement, you are often adding some new activity to your weekly schedule, or improving the existing one. But by continually raising the bar you create a hazard: the increased potential for failure! Here are a few things that...
How to Be Effective When You’re a Bit Overcommitted: The 80:20 Rule
A Launcher recently told me that her initiative was going well and she'd added another project. Then she asked, "What's your short advice for how to be more productive, because I don't have time for the long version." In other words, she was now at least marginally...
Use a Tickler File to Reduce the Size of Your Lists
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...
FAQ: What if I don’t have any goals?
In the Thinking Lab, I have a lot of material teaching goal-setting. But generally, the exercises start with writing down a pre-existing list of goals or a vague goal or a list of possible goals. Usually the problem is that people have goals that do not effectively...
The Weekly Review
The very first article I wrote for my newsletter was a book recommendation for David Allen's book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. That was 2004. Recently I realized that I had misunderstood the utility of a key tool from his system — the...
An Effective Way to Make Big Decisions
Big decisions can be made quickly and easily if you simply compare the best-case scenarios — and commit to doing the work to achieve the best outcome. This is a brilliant idea of Brooke Castillo's that cuts through fear, doubt, and uncertainty and propels you into...