Habits have to serve a purpose 

If you want to eat healthy but you don’t, it’s because you aren’t really that concerned about your health, body, etc. And, that’s ok! If you want to meditate but you don’t, it’s because you don’t really believe that it’s necessary. If you want to get up early but instead you snooze the alarm, it’s not because you like sleep…

Error on the side of overconfident. 

Confidence, roughly speaking is a reflection of what you think of your own ability. Often times it is out of touch with reality. Hence over-confident and under-confident.  Many people recommend humility which would suggest leaning toward under confident. Which means erroring on the side of believing you’re not as good as you actually are.  But that’s no way to grow.…

Positive emotions can be just as pernicious as negative 

You might think that negative emotions, like anger, are the ones that when left unchecked get you into trouble. Like slugging someone when you’re angry. Positive can be just as bad, if not worse because they’re unsuspecting. Excessive positive feelings lead you to promise to do things you can’t or won’t do.  They lead you to jump on spur of…

Habits are feelings

The hardest part of building a new habit is forcing yourself to do it (whatever habit you’re forming – say going to the gym) long enough that you feel bad when you don’t do it.  Everything else is down hill once you feel compelled to do it. 

Writing is doing not planning 

Too many people spend too much time getting organized and thus never get to writing. Plan just enough to get you headed in the right direction and then let whatever happens happen. Big up front design usually means you never get to whatever it is you want to do because the plans never feel quite right.  They never will, so…

Prioritization matters more than organization

If you’re always doing high value things, the order doesn’t matter. Nor does getting everything done matter.  If you really think you can get all of the high value things done in your life, well then if that’s really the case you can move on to trivial things. But chances are you just don’t know what matters if you find…

Do things the way you want to 

If you’re stuck on something, it’s using up much of your time… Sometimes you’re just not allowing yourself to do it another way because you feel like you’re not permitted. If that’s the case, why not try breaking the rules?  For example, I can take the subway to get to the airport, or an Uber. I might not let myself…

Right and wrong detract from productivity 

The only thing that’s absolute is that discussions of right and wrong often lead people to act counterproductivly.  Anyone can safely drop the words from their vernacular and still be as productive if not more so. Take for example, you should stop and look both ways before crossing any road. What if it’s 2 AM in rural America and a…