You have to create boundaries of space and you have to create boundaries of time. Then, and only then can you play.
– John Cleese
Archive for August, 2010
John Cleese on Creativity
Sunday, August 29th, 2010Ritualize Practice
Saturday, August 28th, 2010Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you’ll take on difficult tasks is to ritualize them — build specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.
– Tony Schwartz in Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything
We Are What We Repeatedly Do
Friday, August 27th, 2010We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
– Aristotle
Most people look at life like this
Friday, August 27th, 2010have -> do -> be
When I have or get this in my life, then I will be able to do that, and then I’ll be this (secure, happy, peaceful, powerful).
Enlightened people look at it exactly the opposite.
be -> do -> have
I become the person that I need to be to be able to do whatever it takes to have whatever I want.
– T Harv Eker
A monkey economy as irrational as ours
Sunday, August 1st, 2010Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in “monkeynomics” shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.
The 7 most important lessons after 5 years of GTD
Sunday, August 1st, 2010Rolf F. Katzenberger over at Evomend has compiled a list of GTD lessons that he learned during the years:
- Setting up filter rules to sort unread email into folders is cool, but stupid.
- I hardly ever need anything from the archive (reference material).
- GTD is my friend and autopilot.
- Top tasks take care of themselves.
- Real standards defy all competition.
- I will never again waste time on time management.
- I can see – always – what I need to do, wait for or monitor.
Everything he listed makes perfect sense in the realm of GTD. Agreeing with the entire article.
How do you know when somebody gets GTD?
Sunday, August 1st, 2010It’s very simple. If they at all feel out of control or if they feel they have not the right focus, they know exactly how to get back to it, by themselves. That’s how I got a black belt in karate (“if you can train yourself”). Doesn’t have to mean you’re always in shape but if you know how to get yourself back in shape because you know the game and you know how to put yourself into the game when required, that’s it.
So, if you’re feeling out of control in any situation and you know how to get that control, or you’re feeling like I don’t have the right focus right now and I need to get the right focus. If you know how to do both of those, you’re on.
– David Allen @ 27:14