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,...
Concentrating at Home
Thanks to Covid-19, many people are being asked to work at home. I thought I'd share a few thoughts on how to concentrate at home in the present circumstances. Some of the concentration challenges at home are obvious. There are clear distractions: Your family and your...
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...
Welcome to the Thinking Lab – Getting Started
How to Get Started If you are new to the Thinking Lab, go ahead and sign up for the private podcast listening option. You should have gotten an email from mail@transistor.fm with instructions. If you have trouble or you didn't get the email, write to...
Book Recommendation: Mind Over Mood
by Dennis Greenberger & Christine Padesky
Emotions are our automatic life-reporting systems. We experience joy in our successes, eagerness to achieve the next goal, fear of a deadline we need to pay more attention to. Emotions are crucial to enjoying life and keeping it on track. Unfortunately, emotions can...
How to Distract Yourself from Distractions
The other day I got a call at 9:00 a.m. about an event I'm planning for my Toastmasters club. I felt I needed to take it. Soon afterwards I noticed an email from a fellow volunteer in another organization. It concerned a problematic situation, and I was lured into a...
How to Say “Yes” to One Project When That Means “No” to Another
Many people get stuck prioritizing, because to say "yes" to one thing is to say "no" to another. That "no" feels like giving up something that's important. Faced with the need to prioritize, your subconscious exclaims: "But I want them all." Of course you do. Let's...
Your Reasons Matter
When you are committed to living by reason, contrary emotions can create all sorts of conundrums. For example, a Thinking Lab member recently reported some doubts about a decision he made to take a break and go for a walk. Based on our discussion, I would say that all...
FAQ: What Is a Value Hierarchy?
If you want to manage your motivation, you need to understand your own value hierarchy. A value hierarchy is not a list of your top ten values or a bucket list. It is a psychological structure consisting of all of the values you have formed in relation to one another....
Developing a Daily Planning Sheet
In the Thinking Lab, I offer a self-study course called, "Evolving a Scheduling Infrastructure."1 The goal of the course is to help you get a basic system in place to keep you productive. The basic system consists of only three things: 1. A daily planning session (15...