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...
Introspect Deeply When You Catch Tinges of Hostility
Introspection is your tool for understanding and shaping your own psychology. Often, your first identification of a feeling is the tip of an iceberg. There is much more work to do before you know what caused the feeling, and can disintegrate any self-defeating beliefs...
How Much Time Is a Problem Worth? 3 Minutes, 15 Minutes, More?
The #1 general-purpose problem-solving tactic I teach is "Thinking on Paper." If you are not familiar with it, get my freebie, "Thinking Directions Starter Kit." If you are confused, overloaded, uncertain, blank, conflicted, or stuck in any way, I recommend you turn...
My Vision for Personal Communication
An important way you grow in the middle of challenges is to choose the person you want to be. This is not as easy as it might seem. I find it’s always helpful to put the vision into writing, spelling out what I want, in entirely positive terms. I recently did this for...
Expect Internal Conflict During a Transition
As I write this, we are shifting to a new phase in coping with the coronavirus pandemic. We are not in total shutdown. Businesses are opening up cautiously. People are interacting more, albeit six feet apart. Just as shutting down posed internal challenges, so will...
Keep Your Purpose in Mind to Keep Your Break on Track
If you want to stay on a schedule, you need to be able to take breaks that last a certain amount of time, and no longer. But that can be difficult. By definition, you are taking a mental rest from concentrated effort. How do you take that rest, without slipping into...
Check to See You’re Being Logical
I often recommend that when you are confused in your thinking on some issue, you need to take multiple passes, first to gather information, then to test your thinking. The simplest test is to ask about each sentence, "is that literally true?" By asking this question,...
How to “Forgive” Yourself
The common wisdom is that you need to forgive an injustice from another. If that means “to grant a free pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.)”1 then I am not in favor of it. I’m in favor of a just response. Admittedly, that is more challenging. Often...
Systematically Make Your Days Better by Creating a “Quality of Life” Benchmark
We're moving into the next phase of the coronavirus crisis. We're getting a glimmer of the long haul. To help you flourish through tough times, I recommend you take proactive action to ensure that you have sufficient pleasure in your life. You need positive...
Distinguish “Buffering” from Procrastination and Self-Care
Have you ever found yourself teleported to the refrigerator at the time you were supposed to be doing work? Or taken a “short” break to watch one video, then had that turn into watching an entire series? Or started to tidy your desk to settle down to work, and wound...