A nice little article on the top 5 time management mistakes from Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/3048828/hit-the-ground-running/the-top-5-time-management-mistakes-youre-making
Exercise: Generating Your Own Warmup Questions
Exercise: Generating Your Own Warmup Questions Background In the previous exercise, I recommended using prepared questions to get an overview. That works very well when you find a set that is suitable for your situation. But sometimes you need to warm up and get an...
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...
Tactic: Empathy Bath
Tactic: Empathy Bath When you are chilled, a hot bath brings your temperature to normal. When you have a fever, a cold bath can bring it down. When you are tense, self-doubtful, jittery, or otherwise triggered, an "Empathy Bath" can bring your emotional state back to...
What You Need to Know about Suffering to Be Happy
In the first article in this series, I explained the fundamental nature of happiness, which I learned from Ayn Rand. Elaborating on this concept, she wrote: In psychological terms, the issue of man's survival does not confront his consciousness as an issue of...
Exercise: Motivating Unpleasant and Boring Tasks
Exercise: Motivating Unpleasant and Boring Tasks Background It's a dirty job, and you're the someone who has to do it. Maybe you have a boring administrative task on your plate. Or maybe you have a difficult conversation scheduled with your co-worker. Long-term, you...
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...
Setting Standing Orders
I'm a believer in using checklists and notes as memory aids. But sometimes you need to be able to rely on your own memory. This is particularly true for things you want to remember every time, like: Remember the car keys. Pronounce that word PREF-ur-u-buul, not...
The Value of Revisiting “Settled” Issues
Whether you grow or stagnate as you get older depends on how and when you rethink settled issues. An issue is settled when you evaluate it in the full context of your knowledge and conclude it is true or false. Some conclusions get settled for life. Philosophical...
Don’t Make Concentration Harder Than It Is
When Thinking Lab members tell me their task is hard, I hear alarm bells in my mind. Invariably, I find they are making a difficult task harder than it has to be. A difficult task is one that requires a special mental effort to complete. It may require all your...