In the previous article, I opined that only a productive purpose can serve as a a central purpose. Before going deeper into the positive point, I'd like to address some common questions. People ask, why not make recreation or relationships or emotional well-being your...
Confidence, Certainty, and Understanding Your Own Motivation
In the previous article in this series, I said that confidence is the emotion that proceeds from the conclusion that you have sufficient skill that your current or proposed effort will result in success. But if the task is at all difficult, how can you reach such a...
Take the Laugh Test
In another article, I mentioned that whenever you give a reason for your conclusion, you should pause to make sure it passes the Laugh Test. Yes, the "Laugh Test." Sometimes your reason will turn out to be a patent rationalization, and you won't be able to repeat it...
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...
Eyes-Wide-Open Decision Making: An Overview
I’ve been asked to explain the difference between my Eyes-Wide-Open Decision Making Process1 and a typical decision process. The short answer is — my method offers a way to validate difficult decisions, when you can’t reach certainty. Many decision methods can speed...
Motivating Three Kinds of Major Goals
Your greatest success comes from setting and achieving major goals. The biggest mistake that people make in pursuing such goals is that they don't build motivation into every step. The effort you put in needs to pay off in some way to ensure you persevere to the end....
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...
Tactic: Planned Evolution
Tactic: Planned Evolution "Planned Evolution" Tactic Overview What: "Planned Evolution" is an organic planning process. The essence is that you aim at a scaled-down first-generation outcome, which can then be added to and/or improved to create the desired outcome. The...
The Key to Brainstorming
Brainstorming means: generating a long list of creative ideas to solve some problem or answer some question. Any time you are feeling a little blank, you need some form of brainstorming to start ideas flowing again. Often we think of brainstorming as a group activity,...
Engineer Your Life
Engineering your life is very much like engineering a suspension bridge. You start with a goal. To achieve the goal, you need to understand the fundamental forces you will work with, how to balance them to achieve your goal, and the nature of the materials used to...