Not long ago, I was taking a trip with my wife and kids, when I saw an interesting sticker on the outside of the hotel where we were staying.

It was the logo of an organization called Optimist International, but nothing else.

I was intrigued.

When I looked up the organization, I found the following list of principles, which they call The Optimist Creed, which you can view in full below:

Promise Yourself:

1. To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
2. To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.
3. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.
4. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
5. To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best.
6. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
7. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
8. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
9. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
10. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

The creed originated with the writing of Christian D. Larson — one of a group of early 20th century American personal growth/spirituality writers. It sets forth a way of looking at the world and tackling each day that pushes one toward positive things, rather than negative ones.

It’s not a doctrine of escapism from or ignorance to the bad things in life. Rather, it’s a reminder that after you feel the pain, sorrow, exhaustion, fear — or whatever the negative emotions of the day are — you choose to think and act in a constructive and positive way.

Feelings, Thoughts, and Behavior

One of the key things I’ve learned over the past year is that emotions are involuntary and always valid. I feel how I feel, and I’m allowed to feel that way — no justification necessary.

There’s nothing I can do to change the fact that I felt a certain feeling — as uncomfortable as it may be for me. But my thoughts and actions coming out of that unpleasant feeling are voluntary. I can choose how I think, what I think about, and how I behave. And I need to choose carefully — because my thoughts influence my behavior, and my behavior impacts other people.

In other words: my emotions don’t have to dictate my thoughts and behaviors. I can separate those 2 things from my emotional state.

That’s where the Optimist Creed comes in. If you can manage to internalize the principles, it can become habitual — like a new operating system for your mind. It’s your starting point; your baseline.

I may wake up this morning and feel terrible, overwhelmed, saddened, afraid, or any combination of those. But it’s possible for me to think and act in a positive way — rather than ways that feed into the negative emotions I’m feeling. The creed provides a nice, simple list to help you do just that.

But…Does This Really Work?

If you do follow the creed, and you focus on positive things, and act in positive ways, your life gets better.

Clarification: when I say “your life gets better”, I don’t mean you suddenly receive and achieve all the things you’ve longed for. That’s ridiculous. No mindset or practice can make things happen in the external world without you taking sustained action over time. Anyone that says otherwise is likely trying to sell you magical thinking.

So, no, this kind of mental operating system won’t bring you the things you desire immediately. It may not bring you the things you desire at all. A tool like the Optimist Creed isn’t about changing your circumstances, resources, skills, and relationships. It’s about changing how you view those things. It’s about getting you to bring something more positive and hopeful to the various circumstances of your life — so you can get something better out of those circumstances.

Whatever change you’re hoping for, it has to start from within. You can’t wait for the furniture of your life to be arranged in some certain way in order to make you adopt a positive mindset. That’s actually backwards. You need to have the positive mindset first, and then it becomes easier for the furniture of your life to be arranged more to your liking.

But there’s no magic here. It’s not like adopting a certain mindset will magically rearrange the furniture of your life to your liking. But what it can do is make it easier for you to redefine what it means for things to be “to your liking”.

Your old mindset may have been so rife with unrealistic, unwholesome, and unexamined desires about how things should be. And those may have been making your miserable — all those desires being consistently unmet. Changing that mindset can very quickly allow you to accept all sorts of things you used ruminate about, which frees you up to spend mental energy on taking some small actions to change what you can — and do so more effectively.

Not a New Idea

The funny thing is, there’s nothing new about this idea. You can find it in a Buddhist text called The Dhammapada — which originated over 2,000 years ago:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
It is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.
If a person speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows them, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

– The Dhammapada Ch.1 V.1

Don’t underestimate the power of your mind — in 2 key ways:

1. Don’t underestimate your ability to change the key drivers of your negative feelings: desires and expectations about how things should be.
2. Don’t underestimate how much damage your current mindset has done — acting as the root of most of your current emotions — and thus thoughts and behaviors.

Voluntary and Involuntary Things

The funny things about beliefs and emotions is that neither start off as voluntary, but they both can become voluntarily adopted and supported — depending on our mindset. But beliefs have a powerful influence over your future emotions, as well as what your focus on each day, and how you act in general.

But many of these powerful beliefs are ones we may not even be aware of. But if we really laid them out and asked whether we have good reason to believe them — the answer would probably be no.

We each hold so many beliefs that influence our further thoughts and behavior. And many of those beliefs have never truly been examined, so we continue to hold them. Furthermore, if we’ve built our current mindset on the foundation of those core beliefs, it’s very difficult to question them.

That’s why self-help, religious, and spiritual messages — along with mediation and other things that disrupt your normal thought patterns can be extremely helpful. Messages like that often come in a form unfamiliar to your limited mindset, As a result, they can can push into your mindset by poking at a certain emotional nerve deep within you — and disrupting your normal mental flow.

Homework

So, lest this piece of writing serve just as a bunch of words you just read and forget within a week — here’s some homework to do over the next week or so — to make it stick:

1. Write out or print out the Optimist Creed on a small piece of paper or card that you can carry with you throughout the day.
2. At the Beginning of Each Day:
   Look at the creed, and commit to following it to the best of your ability.
3. At the End of Each Day:
   Give some attention to a few things that are going well. Reflect on how they make you feel good — and let that feeling sink in.

The book 1984 is famous (infamous?) for many things, but chief among them is reinforcing a particular vision of freedom. You could call it optimistic, but it is rooted in an almost pessimistic way of viewing people in societies.

That vision of freedom? It’s the vision that—no matter how many restrictions are placed on a person from the outside, we are always free to think and feel anything. If you manage to give that up, you’re no longer free.

And it is, indeed, possible to give up that freedom. In fact, we do it partially all the time.

We used to define freedom in physical terms, because life was largely physical for most people. These days, life is largely mental (cognitive and emotional) for most people. For most of us, basic physical needs are no longer the focal point of each day. By and large, we have food, water, and shelter.

So the mental time and space that used to be taken up by pursuing basic sustenance and security is now free to be occupied by other needs—or at least things we think are needs.

And this is where the idea of modern freedom gets sketchy. It’s where the ways we think we’re more free than any of our modern ancestors might actually be ways that we’re less free. It might turn out that we’re just in more luxurious chains.

“Happiness is a Choice?!”

Just over 12 years ago, my wife and I went to Jamaica for our Honeymoon. While at the fancy resort hotel, we met a man in the lobby who was drawing portraits for money. We happily paid him for the chance to get a hand-crafted memento. We still have that picture; it’s pretty good.

The artist was young, but somewhat world-weary. He had a calm presence about him—as many folks we met did. This was despite the fact that he’d run into some pretty tough times over the past several years. I’m talking about genuine misfortunes—which at that time, he was still working through.

I asked how he managed to stay upbeat through it all. He said that when he was a kid, his grandfather told him something that’s helped him through any number of tough times “happiness is a choice.” He explained that you can’t change what’s already happened. Things are the way they are.

Given that, you’re left with a choice of what your focus will be. You can focus on the things that have already happened – which you can’t change. Or you can focus on the future — which you can. And the only sure way to change things for the better is to be positive about what’s possible in the future.

So why focus on the stuff you can’t change? Why bring bad feelings into the future?

Why indeed.

And yet, we make it all the time, don’t we?

Of course, it’s not as simple as that 4 word sentence above. You can’t really choose to either be happy or unhappy. That’s an oversimplification.

But you do make choices every day that set up how many barriers there are to being happy. You choose to either create dependencies for your happiness, or make your happiness more or less independent.

You either make your happiness dependent on how certain things outside of your control turn out, or you choose to let most of that go. You commit to focus on skillfully controlling what you’re able to, and letting the rest go.

The Switcheroo

We end up making the choice to be unhappy as a series of smaller mistakes we make—due to an almost unconscious switcheroo. It’s more of a conflation, really.

When we conflate a desire with a need, we give up a part of our freedom. You see, a need has more emotional weight than a mere want. A need has more power behind it—more urgency—and thus, it pushes and pulls quite strongly.

In the back of our minds, we know this. We know that if we believe we need something, we’re pushed much more strongly to pursue it. The feeling is stronger. It’s more exhilarating. It gives us purpose—even if it’s the short term purpose of fulfilling that desire—and even if it’s only temporarily.

But this merry-go-round of adopting desires and transforming them into what we think are needs—it’s not an entirely conscious process. It happens over time when we let that hunter/gatherer part of ourselves run wild. When we really were chasing life-or-death needs every day, the successes were extremely fulfilling, and the failures were extremely catastrophic. Those highs and lows drove us as humans for tens of thousands of years.

But things have changed in our environment. For 95% of us, there isn’t constant uncertainty about our food and water for the day—or about how we’ll avoid getting eaten by a predator.

With no more worry over the next meal or some hungry predator chasing us—the energy of this inner hunter/gatherer can now go toward other pursuits. And rather than become okay with not having that life-or-death pursuit, we allow that hunter/gatherer to latch onto to something not life-or-death. And we put all that energy and anxiety into the cascade of new “needs” available to pursue and stress about.

The Solution?

The more we repeat the word “need” to describe something we could live fairly well without—the more we unnecessarily shackle ourselves to any number of forces outside of our control. We make ourselves less free.

That’s our modern condition. We’ve ditched the many freedoms our progress has afforded us. We’ve traded them for a series of more luxurious chains. We have come to convince ourselves—and each other—that many mere wants are actually needs. As a result, we unnecessarily place ourselves at the mercy of the weight and force of needs.

So what is the solution? Do we just reject all these wants, sell our belongings, and live in a tent on public land? Of course not.

The solution has to happen much like the problem happened: internally. A change in mindset allowed us to fool ourselves into believing that so many desires were needs. So a change in mindset is the most effective way to correct that .

Gratitude (as cliché as it sounds) is a large part of this. Understanding that the things we think are needs are not actually necessary. Then we come to really appreciate what it’s like to have the things we do. That’s the mindset. As you view more things in this way, your inner hunter/gatherer will stop pursuing these things in the same way.

And as that happens, you’ll stop feeling that really low low when you don’t get that desire met. Without all those ups and downs pulling at your mood, your energy will become different—more consistent. And without all that noise from the past in your mindset, you might be surprised at how much you can end up influencing your future.

You’ve probably heard that old saying:

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Whether it’s attributed to Maya Angelou or a leader in the Mormon church isn’t all that important. What is important is that any time spent working with others—whether in a personal or business setting—will quickly validate it.

(Ir)rationality and Relationships

Feelings are important. Furthermore, feelings are efficacious—meaning they make things happen. We may think we act based on logic—reasons, evidence, and all that. But it’s been well documented in the psychological research that we tend to make a lot of decisions based on how we feel—only to rationalize them after the fact. And many times we do so quickly and unconsciously.

Relationships are at the core of life. How your relationships go dictates how well things go for you, period. And the single most important factor in the health of your relationships is how the other party in each relationship feels about you.

And for those who insist that they don’t have relationships with others, and (for some reason) don’t need them—you’re still not exempt. We each have a relationship with ourselves. It sounds weird, but it’s absolutely real.

We all engage in self-talk to some degree. We all have (or lack) a level of trust in ourselves. We all feel certain ways about ourselves. So ensuring that those feelings are both positive and strong will go a long way toward improving your life—even if it’s just you by your lonesome.

The Method In a Nutshell

The great thing about working with feelings is that you don’t have to go through any kind of process to get started. Feelings are everywhere. Every interaction you have with someone—or even just sitting by yourself—feelings are there. Sometimes they are front and center; other times they are lurking in the background—though they’re still very much pulling the strings.

Effectively working with feelings is as simple as a 5-step process. It’s one you can repeat over and over again.

1. Validate
2. Investigate
3. Extrapolate
4. Integrate
5. Create

Do these 5 things, and watch the depth and quality of your relationships improve. The result is a much better return on your investment of time and effort. You’ll always be able to leverage those strong and deep relationships to help you achieve your goals.

Validate

All feelings are valid. You can’t get anywhere in any relationship until you acknowledge this principle and act accordingly. You need to make sure that you validate whatever the other party is feeling, and that they see that.

This is where we so often get tripped up. We may think that there’s no reason for the person to feel the way they do. And that may be true. But that doesn’t mean that the feeling isn’t there.

Acknowledge the feeling. Make sure the other party feels acknowledged. And use the validity of that feeling as the starting point of what comes next.

Investigate

Once you’ve validated the feeling, it’s time to find out what’s driving it.

Keep in mind that what someone says is driving their feeling may not actually be what’s behind it. We’re often mistaken about why we feel the way we feel. Sometimes the thing we think incited our rage would normally not even get any kind of rise out of us. But some other background tension already had us ready to boil over.

The best way to get to the bottom of why someone feels a certain way is to ask questions. But the seemingly obvious questions (like why do you feel this way?) rarely work. You have to come at things from the side door—so to speak. Here are some things to poke around at:

• what’s been happening in the past few days?
• how have you been sleeping lately?
• are you looking forward to anything?

In general, you want to understand the emotional landscape at work. If nothing else, that will help to foster a much more informative conversation in general. But gather as much indirect information as you can.

Extrapolate

Perhaps you do understand why someone is feeling a certain strong way. You have a picture of the past—which has gotten you to the present. And that’s great.

If that feeling is a barrier to getting somewhere valuable, then you need to unpack the present and future. Namely, there’s a strong feeling at work. What is it doing? Where is it going—or threatening to take people?

The thing about feelings is that they’re often symbiotic with desires. We have desires, and when those desires get thwarted (or we sense they will), we develop negative emotions. The stronger the desire, the stronger the negative emotion. The same holds true for desires that get fulfilled. A desire fulfilled is the foundation of positive feelings. And the stronger the desire, the strong the feelings.

Perhaps the most important work we can do is to get clear on what desire is linked up with the feeling in question. There may actually be a few interconnected desires at work. And some may even be competing with each other. All this needs to be unpacked.

Furthermore, desires are supported by two other things: beliefs and values. What we believe and what we value can help create desires, but they can also threaten our desires. And what others believe and what they value can threaten our own desires—and vice versa. When we sense that, emotions can flare up.

Integrate

Knowing feelings is half the battle. The other half of the battle is being able to work with them. And I use the word with here because you can’t work against feelings.

People like to think that somehow facts trump feelings, but I think experience shows us otherwise. People’s feelings are powerful enough to force them into wild goose chases for data to support the conclusions they’ve become emotionally invested in. The human mind is resourceful that way.

Again, don’t work against feelings. Work with them. Harness them. Integrate them into the action. Integrate the feelings with facts and other feelings.

If people are angry, and you’ve found out what’s at the root of it, the next task is to find out if that anger can be productive. It might be. But it also might just need to dissipate. And at that point, you need to integrate that anger— and the desires, values, and beliefs at the root of it with other values, desires, and beliefs that will help the anger dissipate.

This isn’t actually a new suggestion. People do it all the time. They appeal to shared desires and values to get people in a fight to stand down. People use terms like “we” and “our” to appeal to the inherent desire to belong that each human has deep within. And that’s just one example.

Create

After validating, investigating, extrapolating, and integrating, it’s time to create. It’s time to take those newly integrated feelings and get them creating.

From an acknowledged and well understood feeling, we can form a belief and plan for action. And with the power of that refined old feeling, or the newly-formed one, we can move forward.

And the great thing about feelings is that they’re the most efficient fuel for consistent and persistent action. Feelings motivate more effectively than any fact or enticement. When we feel strongly enough, we act. And as long as we keep feeling, we keep acting.

Iterate

Whatever you do, just remember that however much we want to be “facts-first” people, it’s a fantasy. We are and always have been “feelings-first” people. If I were to make an evolutionary argument, I’d say that we have feelings because natural selection proved them to be advantageous. Feelings—when appropriately harnessed—got us as far as we’ve gotten as a species.

And yes, facts and reasoning have their place, but that place is not the forefront. They may be at the conscious forefront, but they are not the stars of the show—merely great supporting actors.

We feel first, and reason second—though a close second. Understand this, see it in others, and learn how to work with that fact—not against it. Boy will things be a lot easier for you when you do.

Feel better now?

Especially when we’re wrapped up in the pursuit of a goal, we tend to see anything that’s not clearly forward progress as a setback. In other words: We think If we’re not gaining ground, we’re losing it.

As a result, we can end up making risky moves in an attempt to try to move things forward. But we may end up only wasting our energy, and not even gaining ground—or even worse—losing it.

That’s where a shift in mindset can help. If we scale back our obsession with constant forward movement, we can do much better over the long run. We just have to realize that sometimes the best available moves are not forward—but sideways—or maybe even backwards. Yes, sometimes we may even have to move slightly backward now in order to be able to move a longer distance forward later.

Pass It To the Side

It can help to take a cue from American football, and consider the merits of what they call lateral moves.

The rules of football dictate that the ball cannot be thrown forward from one player to another beyond the line of scrimmage—which is the line from which the play began. So once a player begins running the ball past that line, it may seem like their only option is to keep running. And when they encounter opponents, they may try to simply plow through them.

But the rules of football allow for the ball to be thrown sideways or backwards. And while that in and of itself doesn’t provide forward progress, it does open up opportunities that weren’t available before. It just takes some patience and vision to see how it can work.

Don’t Trap Yourself in the Short Game

When we encounter opposition on our march of forward progress, we should be willing to consider lateral moves. They’re the moves that don’t immediately look like progress. In fact, sometimes, they can seem like concessions or giving in to setbacks. But these moves can help put us in a better position to move forward later.

And that’s the real kicker—the thing that keeps many of us from considering lateral moves. We lack the patience to wait for “later”. We don’t value the future like we do the present. And even when we do value the future, we tend to value the immediate future much more than the long-term.

So we end up playing the short game. We lack the vision to see how lateral moves now can actually make way for significant forward progress down the road.

In Praise of Patience and Zooming Out

This is why patience is a truly unsung hero of the virtues. The world continues to move more quickly than it did in previous years and decades. And it seems to demand that we do so as well.

The sheer amount of new information to sift through continues to increase. And the pressure that comes with our awareness of that increases as well. We have to move faster and more elegantly in order to keep up.

But in the face of such acceleration, it might pay to question the prevailing momentum. What do we gain by “keeping up”—if we’re even successful at doing it? The others who seem to be charging relentlessly forward—going further down field—are they able to keep up that pace and progress for long?

I think you’ll find that the answer is no. The zoomed-out, long-run picture of progress may look like a straight line upward. But zooming in, in almost every case, you’ll see peaks and valleys. You’ll see losses that nearly erase the gains. You’ll see pauses and perceived plateaus or stagnation—but then a march back upward again.

The picture we see of ourselves is almost always zoomed in. We see yesterday’s setbacks, and today’s challenges. We see how we fell short of our goal this past year. But we don’t usually zoom out and see that all of that was part of a consistent path forward.

So this setback today—this lateral move when you really wanted to push forward—it’s not a loss. Every loss is a potential lateral or backward pass that can allow you to make an even better push forward further down the line. But you’ll never be able to do that if you don’t see it as a possibility.

Keep your eyes peeled and your mind open.

There’s this monologue I love from the show Breaking Bad. It’s about half-measures. You can read the whole thing here (warning: it’s a bit profane and grizzly).

The gist of the speech is that the speaker, Mike, used to a cop. He and his partner would regularly be called to the same couple’s house for domestic disturbances. The really large, abusive husband would regularly knock around the thin, fragile, scared wife. But each time Mike and his partner arrived, she would refuse to press charges against her husband.

One day, Mike got the call without his partner. He showed up alone. He’d had enough. He threw the husband in the back of a squad car, drove off to some isolated place, and threatened him. If he ever laid a hand on his wife again, Mike would kill him.

Two weeks later, Mike and his partner were called to the same house. But this time, it was for a homicide. The husband killed his wife. Mike laments as he delivers the story’s lesson:

“The moral of the story is: I chose a half measure, when I should have gone all the way. I’ll never make that mistake again.”

Boy is that ever true when it comes to personal development. No half measures.

Of course, it’s not a life and death matter, like Mike’s story.
Or is it?

When we take on new systems or tools to help us make positive changes in our lives, we’re looking for help — but we know we have to put in effort. The problem is that we usually end up taking half-measures. There are two halves of the equation to making systematic changes in your life. Without both of them, you end up with abandoned aspirations.

Let’s look at how we often only take half-measures, and what we need to do in order to make personal growth stick.

The Two Halves

It’s easy to get swept up in excitement about the newest self-improvement craze, newest fitness regime, or personal productivity trick. We read the books, print out the worksheets, buy an app, and attempt to implement the plan — step by step.

And then, inevitably, somewhere, it goes off the rails. We don’t stick to the plan. We break the habits. We get discouraged. Our progress grinds to a halt.

So…

We don’t see the results. We lose hope. We sink into the couch, defeated. We end up right back where we started, hungry for the next system or method that can save us.

And while it’s easy to blame the system for not being affective, “just not being your thing”, or being too difficult to follow— the truth is something a little more difficult to swallow.

The truth is we fail when we try to implement new systems because we are taking half measures. There are 2 distinct pieces of work that need to be done to make adopting a new system successful. And we usually end up only doing the first one.

But that second half of the work is vital. It not only ensures a better short-term use of the new system (whatever it is). It also ensures sustained and consistent usage of the system — which means sustained results.

One Size Fits None

The problem with taking someone else’s step-by-step advice is that our feet are all different sizes. We each have a different appetite for complexity, different energy levels, and different ways of learning. So even if an overall system is sound, the discrete steps that make it up may not work for everyone as they’re written.

And while I’m using that foot analogy I’ll offer another one: Not only are our feet different sizes, but the staircases we’re climbing (our self-improvement journeys) are also markedly different. Some are steep. Some aren’t. Some have twists and turns that make them tricky to navigate.

And beyond our staircases, the houses they’re a part of (our life circumstances and hurdles) all have different floorplans. I may need only one staircase to get to where I want to go. Others may need several. Each life is different.

You get the idea.

Make It Your Own

Things brings us back to that second half of the work I mentioned earlier. You may need to learn a system step by step to get started on it. But to really make it stick, you need to make it your own.

We have to remember that any system someone else created was created in a context. That context is their own life, their own work, their own ways of thinking, neurology, and habits. And as much as a system’s creator may try to escape those, and universalize their steps — there’s just no getting away from it.

My system, while it fits me perfectly, is only a model for you. It’s a reference, a template. It alone will not work for you. You can’t do only the half measure of copying my system, and assuming that you can “just add water”. Rather, you need to do the hard work of making the system your own. There’s a few key elements to doing this:

Don’t change your bad habits…yet

Don’t change your bad habits to adopt a new system. The right system for you should work around your current bad habits — at least at the beginning. If you’re starting a new fitness regime, don’t go from struggling to get up in the morning to a 5am 5k run.

If the system you’re adopting suggests a morning workout, but the goal is just to begin working out, tweak that aspect for a bit. Do your run in the afternoon or evening.

Tool Time

If you have to log your progress, or use some kind of app, tool, or worksheet as part of your system — make sure you enjoy using it. If your first experiences with it are difficult and you dread every update — guess how long you’ll continue to use it.

That’s right, you won’t — not for long.

So whatever your system, make sure the tools behind it are fun to use. There are plenty or apps, notebooks, trackers, etc. Find one that’s attractive to you. Consider it like a little cookie — a tasty treat that lures you into following your new system.

Don’t be afraid to tinker

Just over a year ago, I built my own personal productivity system, and unleashed it to the world. There’s now a community of people using it and sharing their experiences, tips, and tricks online.

The people are also tweaking the system based on their own habits and preferences. Some tweaks are pretty radical.

I could be an overly proud creator and jump in with a dissertation on how these tweaks “go against the spirit of the system” or some nonsense. But I don’t, because I understand the value of tweaking a system.

Tweaking a system makes it your own, and gives you skin in the game. Even if the tweaks don’t last, and you need to re-tweak or un-tweak the tweaks — it’s still your system now. You’ve got sweat equity. You’re much more likely to keep it.

The truth is, my system won’t work for you. Yours won’t work for me. But it doesn’t have to. The system you cross the finish line with shouldn’t look too much like the one you started with. Things change; so should your systems.

So whatever method or systems you adopt on your personal growth journey, don’t fall for the trap of having to do everything by the book. A system has a much better shot of working for you if you make it your own. Fit it to your life, your mindset, your tendencies — and tinker with things over time. If you don’t, you run the risk of only doing a half-measure. And as Mike’s story illustrates, that can end pretty badly.

How we simultaneously underestimate and overestimate ourselves, and how to avoid both

Is there any more overused cliché than “less is more”?

I guess that’s kind of ironic, given the spirit of the saying. But I digress.

There’s an application for the aphorism that I don’t think gets enough attention. It has to do with achieving goals and managing tasks. When it comes to estimating the goals you can achieve in a given time, we tend to underestimate ourselves. But we shouldn’t.

However, when it comes to filling up our to-do lists for the day, we tend to overestimate what we can get done. But once again, we shouldn’t.

Both of these errors in estimation yield the same result: we get frustrated. Our motivation dwindles. We fall short of what we know is our potential.

And as I pointed out at the outset, the fix is simple: remember that less is more.

Goals: More is More

If you are serious about your goals, you need to dedicate a separate block of time for thinking about them. And during that time, resist the urge to think small. That is, think only about the what, and not about the how.

Rather than thinking about how you will achieve the goal, and letting that dictate what the goal is, think about what you really want. Then, put it into words that reflect your honest desire for what you want things to be like. Don’t be afraid to go big.

That’s the what. That’s the more portion.

Tasks: More is Less

Once goals are set, carve out a different block of time to think about the how. This is where you plan out the steps.

This is where you think about how long it might take. It’s when you get realistic, and descend from the heights of your ambitious future down to what you can actually do in the present. This is the less part.

Resist the temptation to think that tomorrow’s to-do list has to be as grandiose as your goals. Remember that goals aren’t achieved in a day. Achieving them is a marathon, not a sprint. So pace yourself. Failing to do so will just end up burning you out quickly. The result will be fewer goals achieved, or much less satisfying versions of goals achieved.

More ends up being less.

The Balance

The truth is, we don’t usually get as many things done in a day as we think we could (or should). And when we write down a bunch of items on today’s list, we unconsciously create an expectation of ourselves that those things will get done. And when they don’t, we feel let down.

That feeling saps our motivation for tomorrow. And as long as that process repeats each day, it acts like a hole in our fuel line. The vital fuel that we need to reach our goals leaks out and we run out of gas long before we accomplish what we set out to.

The way to avoid this is to think small when planning the tasks for each day. Build a smaller to do list. Put fewer,—but more important—things on the list. Allow for buffer time to handle the inevitable “other stuff” that comes up each day.

Repeat this each day. Over time, less becomes more. Put less on your plate each day, achieve more over time.

I don’t tend to get excited about Hollywood folklore. But there’s one particular story I really love because it contains an unexpected pearl of wisdom, wrapped in a paradoxical sentence. It sounds contradictory, and like it can’t possibly be true. And yet it reveals something about human nature that’s worth thinking about.

An LSD Trip into Wisdom

The story in question comes by way of the 1960s/70s countercultural madman Paul Krassner, part of which appeared in an article he wrote for High Times magazine called “My Acid Trip With Groucho”. The tale he tells (which you can read in full here) is every bit as crazy as the title sounds.

It was 1967, and Krassner is friends with a producer making a comedy movie called “Skidoo”. It features an aging Groucho Marx as a crime boss named God. The movie (which is very 1960s) does a lot to basically…advocate LSD use. Groucho was concerned about being part of the film having never done the drug. So he asks Krassner to be his sitter on his inaugural LSD trip.

Krassner documents a great collection of pull quotes from Groucho during his trip. At one point he’s talking about how he’s going to approach playing a character named God who’s also a criminal overlord. This prompts him to think out loud:

“Do you realize that irreverence and reverence are the same thing?”

Krassner asks him, “Always?”

To which Groucho replies: “If they’re not, then it’s a misuse of your power to make people laugh.”

I first read this passage about 10 years ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since. In part, it’s because I totally get it. But also, I totally don’t get it.

Reverence and Irreverence

Until I read this Groucho story, I hadn’t really thought about irreverence as a form of reverence. But it makes perfect sense when you think about it.

When you revere someone or something, you treat them with deep respect. You consider them sacred, and worthy of special consideration. You take pains to make gestures that show that you have the utmost respect for someone or something, and deeply appreciate them.

Reverence requires placing oneself below whatever they’re revering. I revere such and such spiritual leader. I place myself on a level below her–because of her wisdom, generosity, or whatever the reason. I bow, kneel, provide offerings. I show my reverence.

We use the word ‘irreverent’ to describe someone who doesn’t take pains to make grand gestures of respect to people and things where others do. They see others bowing and heaping praise upon a person or a thing–and they refuse. They then go a step further and make jokes that imply the revered person or thing isn’t worthy of such gestures. The take aim at the exact things that people revere about them, and shoot to kill.

Not Opposites

We tend to think these things are opposites. We tend to think that one can’t be both reverent and irreverent. But I think that’s misguided. I think that in order to be irreverent, you actually have to be extremely reverent. You just don’t revere what others do.

Groucho was a perfect example of this. So was Mark Twain. They both made jokes at the expense of people who others revered. Groucho made fun of the aristocrats–the ones that others were bowing to. Mark Twain mercilessly lampooned politicians, tycoons, and other cultural leaders. Both comedians did so while also making fun of their own inadequacies and undesirable traits.

In effect, the irreverent jabs of Twain and Marx were a way of revering the camaraderie of the human race as a group of equals. They were saying: look, we’re all trying to make sense of things and find happiness, but some people are consistently messing up–and begin to think they’re better than everyone else. It’s our job to remind everyone that no one person rises above the rest of the unwashed masses–especially not those who claim to have done just that.

Irreverence is about revering not individual people as somehow above the rest of us, but revering humanity above all else–and reminding those who think they’ve transcended that they’re still one of us. It’s also about reminding the worshippers who place themselves below others of just what they’re doing. We’re all human, we’re all constantly messing up in different ways. Don’t debase yourself by elevating others above the human mess. We’re all in this together–for better or for worse.

Humor Has Power, Wield it Responsibly

That’s the power Groucho was talking about. Humor has power. It makes you think without being overtly intellectual. It uses the emotional power of laughter to change thought patters, and thus behavior. Groucho’s point about irreverence is that irreverence will always bring us all back down to size. It will always remind us that nobody’s too good for the rest of us.

But any humor that claims to be irreverent while lifting some of us above others (especially the person telling the joke), you’re misusing that power of humor. You’re dividing where you should be maintaining unity. You’re debasing when you should be ennobling.

We can all make jokes, and we frequently do. Many of those jokes seem irreverent. They “take the piss out” of someone. But are we really being irreverent, or are we attempting to divide and debase? It can’t hurt to ask that question now and then. Because the power to evoke laughter is one each of us has. So we need to make sure we’re wielding that power responsibly.

Building a habit of structured reflection and planning to maximize your effectiveness

“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.”

– Andrew Jackson

There is an important line that separates when to think and when to act. But it’s not easy to see-especially in the practice of daily life. On one hand, you don’t want to spring too quickly into action. Acting too quickly, without thinking things through, can end up causing all kinds of issues. You can end up doing the wrong thing, or doing way more than you actually need to.

On the other hand, we don’t want to suffer from paralysis by analysis. Spending too much time thinking about possibilities and mulling over minutiae can keep you from doing anything at all. I ‘ve been known to get way too into the weeds, and become so ensnared that I never end up starting a course of action.

Developing the Skill

With those two undesirable possibilities, it should be clear how important it is to know when to think and when to act. It’s a skill that deserves attention and development. But how exactly can you develop it?

In my experience, there’s one habit above all else that develops this skill: regular and extensive reflection and preparation. It’s why a weekly reflection process is so important, and remains at the top of my task list in the closing day of each week.

When I reflect, deliberate, and plan-it sets me up to act much more decisively and effectively in the coming week. It makes filling out each day’s list easier, because I’ve already reflected and decided on what deserves my time and attention.

A Regular Reflection Session

In order for a regular reflection session to be effective, there’s a minimum amount of ground you need to cover. I’ve found the best success with doing the components in this order because it takes me from past, to present, to future. Though perhaps others are wired differently. As always, use what works for you.

Reflect on the period since your last session.

• How did things go?
• What did you do well, that you can keep doing?
• What went wrong, that you need to focus on improving?

Review your stuff to focus your mind

• If you have a list of your major goals and projects, review it. Make sure your projects align with those goals.
• Eliminate as many projects as you can that don’t align with your goals.
• Eliminate any projects that aren’t relevant anymore, or put them on a separate list for ‘later’ (i.e., the period after your next session).
• Set up a list of tasks that will serve the projects on your list for the next week or two.

Plan for the Near Future

With your head clear and calm from reflecting and reviewing, it’s time to plan. This can be more free-form, based on how you plan best. But a few key components usually help.

• Look at your calendar for blocks of time that are already spoken for. Fill in other blocks that need to be blocked off.
• Add an action to your task list for any things on your calendar you should prepare for.
• Separate your task list from the Review step into what you’d tentatively like to tackle during each part of the coming week, and what might need to wait until next week.

How Often Should You Reflect?

A weekly session of reflection and preparation is best, but everyone has their own rhythm. Some may need more frequent reflection and preparation. Some may need less. But the great thing is, you tend to be able to sense when you need it.

When you feel like things are coming at you faster than you can make decisions. You need it.

When you’re trying to decide what’s important to do today, but your mind is all over the place, unsure of what matters most right now. You need it.

Of course, you want to do your session before you experience those feelings

Make the time in your week to do this deliberation. Look at all the stuff that’s nagging you to act. Decide which things deserve your time and attention. Commit to stop letting the rest pull at you. Keep doing that as often as you need to in order to feel good about what you’re not doing each day.

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Originally published at https://thetodaysystem.com.

When it feels like all you have time for is putting out fires, that’s when it’s most important to step back and reflect

image c/o Pixabay

There’s an old Zen parable that highlights the importance of spending your time wisely.

A man goes to a Zen master and says “I need help. I’m stressed, I’m overwhelmed, my mind races all the time, and it all feels like it’s all too much. What can I do?”

The Zen master tells the man “you should meditate for 20 minutes.”

The man, frustrated answers “but I can’t meditate for 20 minutes. There’s too much to do. I just don’t have the time.”

The Zen master nods his head, closes his eyes, and thinks for a few seconds. He opens his eyes and answers “I see. Then you had better meditate for an hour.”

I love this story both because it’s both funny, and it highlights a hard truth that I regularly forget again and again. The more that you think you don’t have enough time to step back, plan, and reflect-the more important it is that you make time to do exactly that.

The act of filling out a card each day is a great reminder that you should take this time. I have found that the less time I take to think about and fill out my items on the card, the worse my score ends up being. Spending time figuring out what should go on my card today and why is always time well spent. And up to a point, the more time you spend on that, the better your day will go.

Because of how valuable time is, you should always look for wise ways of investing it. The reason I continue to fill out a card every day, and keep score, is that I have realized that the time I spend filling out a card is always a wise investment.

All of the things that you have on your plate may make it seem like you should just jump right in and start doing things. But when you do that, you run the risk of focusing only on what David Allen calls the “latest and loudest” things. And those latest and loudest things are rarely the most important things to do; they’re just what jumps out at us upon superficial reflection.

But constantly doing those latest and loudest things first-rather than stepping back to reflect and build a list of important stuff to work on-will just keep you going through the motions, with little to show for it. You may get a lot done, but you’ll make very little progress on the important stuff in your life. Your bigger goals will suffer because you neglect them for smaller, easier, more nagging little tasks.

Whenever you think to yourself I’m too busy to reflect on my goals, plan, and prioritize today’s stuff -remember the lesson of the Zen master. Spend more time planning and prioritizing. By the time today’s craziness gets under way, you’ll be glad you did.

There is more than one way to eat a frog.

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

We’ve all dealt with procrastination. It’s that thief of time and energy that saps our productivity and can leave us feeling utterly powerless and pessimistic.

And it’s likely that we’ve all gotten a piece of advice about how to deal with procrastination. Friends, family, partners, and colleagues have probably offered you any number of suggestions. Perhaps you should read this interesting article in the Harvard Business Review. Perhaps you need more sleep. Perhaps you need to count down from 5, then just do it!

All of these pieces of advice can usually be lumped into one of two basic categories. While each of them can be helpful at times, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for beating procrastination. However, if you can identify some of your own traits and tendencies, you can choose which of the two approaches can work best for you, and more importantly, when.

The Two Basic Approaches to Dealing With Procrastination

I’ve found that the advice I’ve seen on how to deal with procrastination falls into one of two approaches. At various times in my life, I’ve found them both appealing, and it seems to depend on my state of mind as to which one works for me.

The Frog-First Approach

The first approach comes from the well-known Brian Tracy book Eat That Frog!— which takes its name from a quote that people mistakenly attribute to Mark Twain: “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

The idea is simple: do the big, hard, scary thing first — no matter what. That thing you tend to procrastinate about, or just have a hard time starting. After that, you’ll feel so good and productive that things will come easy for the balance of the day.

Whereas if you don’t eat the frog first, all the less unpleasant and less scary things you do throughout the day will be tainted by the knowledge that the frog is waiting for you. Those well-versed in procrastination likely know the feeling.

The Frog-Later Approach

The opposite approach to eating the live frog first is what I call the “frog-later” approach. Rather than doing the hard, scary thing first, you wait until later — often after doing a few somewhat pleasant things. I heard this suggested in the context of the ADHD brain and productivity. Having ADHD myself, I find this to be an appealing approach.

You simply do a series of tasks that need to get done, but that you’re more attracted to than your “live frog” task. That builds momentum and confidence. For those with ADHD, it kick-starts our dopamine circuits and makes us less likely to ditch the hard task for something more stimulating.

With that momentum, you can roll into starting the hard task that you usually avoid, and probably make faster progress on it. Pick out some easy wins, and do them in quick succession. Then roll that into starting the big, hairy task you tend to avoid.

Which Approach is Right for You?

For most people, the right approach won’t be just one of these. I hate to say it, but we’re not the same on Monday at 8am as we are on Friday at 4pm. We’re not the same after a great week of eating right, working out, and killing our task list as we are after a week of eating pizza and binge-watching TV shows.

We contain multitudes! Our energy and mindset change depending on various factors, and we need to adjust how we handle procrastination accordingly.

I think the frog-first approach can work for days where you feel more in control. It works when you have enough good sleep under your belt and are in a decent or neutral state of mind. It can work when you may feel busy and rushed, but optimistic that you may be able to get back control.

I think it can also work when you’ve just talked to a coach or mentor of yours. When your priorities are clear, and you’ve got a freshly identified plan of action under your belt.

The Frog-later approach is more for days where you’re not feeling so confident, and you can feel yourself avoiding starting on stuff. It’s probably best for days when you’re not able to get helpful input on your workload and the relative importance of its tasks.

If you’re an introvert, the Frog-later approach may be great for recovering from a day (or days) of having to interact with people. If you’re an extrovert (like me) it will be better for days when your head has been buried in solitary work, and you’re having trouble staying in your lane.

But in order to pick which approach to take, you’re going to need to really know yourself. Know your moods, know your limits. Know how your energy levels fluctuate, what kind of work drains you vs. energizes you, and when that work will happen.

Peter Drucker is famous for naming what most of us do these days “knowledge work” — because so much of it depends on the process of coming to know what our work actually is so we can do it.

But there’s another aspect that makes Drucker’s chosen name oh-so accurate. Getting really good at knowledge work also involves a really good knowledge of yourself. Without that, any procrastination strategy you try will have little chance of succeeding over the long term.

On the concept of the emotional bank account and the importance and the tactics of keeping your word

Photo by Visual Stories || Micheile on Unsplash

The single most important thing each of us has in our lives is our relationships. This is true at home, in our communities, and in our work — whatever that work may be.

And though you may not think of it often, your relationship with yourself is just as important as your relationships with others — if not more so. And the very foundation of any of those relationships is trust.

Without trust, there is no strength in the relationship, and you can’t build anything upon it. You need to trust the people you live and work with; and they need to trust you. You also need to trust in yourself.

Keep Track of Your Commitments

Trust is built by honoring commitments. It’s eroded by breaking them. So the most important kind of work each of us does is to keep track of, communicate about, and work on meeting our commitments.

All of the talk about project management, task lists, and managing your email inbox — it’s not just nerdy productivity stuff. It’s the way you manage your commitments — the currency of your life’s important relationships.

Keeping track of your projects and tasks, and setting aside time to strategize about which ones to meet and which not to — it’s not the work of a select few. It’s literally the work of living life. The less thoughtful you are about what you commit to, the less likely your commitments carry weight with others. And if your commitments are basically meaningless, chances are, your relationships are suffering because of it.

The Emotional Bank Account

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks about trust in terms of deposits and withdrawals in a bank account.

If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust toward me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to. I can even make mistakes and that trust level, that emotional reserve, will compensate for it. My communication may not be clear, but you’ll get my meaning anyway. You won’t make me “an offender for a word.” When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.

Notice how Covey describes trust. It’s not merely a good feeling to have; it’s essential. It’s the fuel for achieving goals, for pushing through obstacles, and for growth.

When you live and work with people you trust, things are easier. You don’t have to worry, follow-up constantly, or do a bunch of damage control when things are done late or poorly. The same is true for others. When others can trust you to meet your commitments, it takes the burden off of them. It helps them trust and respect you more. It secures solid relationships.

That frees up everyone to focus on bringing value in their own unique ways — which is where we find the magic of life and work. When enough of that exists in our relationships, there’s no limit to what it can achieve.

The Most Important Relationship in Your Life

I would be remiss if I didn’t re-emphasize a point I made earlier: the most valuable and long-standing relationship you have is the one you have with yourself. It may sound weird, but it’s absolutely real.

People who have healthy self-confidence and manage stress well often have those abilities because they trust themselves. They realize that the commitments they make to themselves should be honored in the same way as those they make to others. They don’t consistently tell themselves they’re going to do something unless they truly intend to make it happen. As a result, they become confident, and bring that confidence to the commitments they make to others.

All this is to say, be mindful of the commitments you make to others. Do your best to keep them, or to proactively renegotiate them with the people you made them with. But don’t forget to also do this with yourself.

Make it a habit to write down your commitments to yourself, and treat them the same way you would treat your commitments to others. Whether it’s to work out 3 times a week, reduce your sugar intake, or spend X hours of quality time per week with family — make the commitment and hold yourself to it. And let everything else go for now. Don’t beat yourself up for not committing to a million things; pick a few commitments, and go all-in on them.

I tried all the popular productivity systems. This is what finally stuck.

Photo: Netalieh/Getty Images

For the better part of a decade, I’d get frustrated at myself for not
being able to make popular productivity systems to work for me.
GTD, the Bullet Journal Method, Day Designer, The Franklin Covey
planner, the Ivy Lee Method, time-blocking — I tried them all. Even
if I kept up with a system for a couple months or so, I would
inevitably lose motivation.

Then one day in November 2020, neck-deep in pandemic-induced
frustration, I took out a 3×5 card and wrote down the most important
things I needed to get done that day. Next to each task, I put a point value. At the end of the day, I tallied my score. I vowed to get the same score or
better the next day.

Nearly a year later, I still fill out an index card every day—and I’ve become more productive, focused, and motivated because of it. I call the simple practice The Today System.

How it works

• Grab a 3x 5 lined index card and something to write with.
• Flip the card to the unlined back, and position it vertically. Set a timer for three minutes, and write down every task you think you should try to get done today.
• Flip the card over to the lined side. Put today’s day and date at the top, and make it look like the picture below.

• Using your task list from the back, begin listing the most important tasks you have time to do today¹, in order of importance.² Pick no more than 9 tasks (one for each line). The first item is #1, the second is #2, and so on. Your card should look like this:

• In the “P” column, place the point value for each item using the following scheme:
  – Item #1 gets a point value equal to the total number of tasks.
  – Item #2 gets a point value equal to 1 less than the item above it.
  – Repeat until you get to the final item on your list, which is worth 1 point.
  Your card should look something like the picture below:

• Add up all the possible points in the “P” column. That’s your possible points value for the day.³
• As you complete items, cross them off the list, and award yourself the point value for each in the “A” column.⁴
• At the end of the day, add up the total points you’ve earned, and place that at the bottom of the “A” column. Take that amount, divided by your total points possible, and put that in the box at the bottom of your card. 
  Below is an example of a card with a full score at the day’s end.

Aim for a score of .750 or greater. If you achieve that, keep it up! If you score lower, think about fewer items per free hour tomorrow. Repeat each day.

Why it works

This is the one system that I haven’t become overwhelmed or repulsed by. I’m sure the fact that I came up with it for myself is a part of that. But I’ve built systems for myself before, none of which stuck.

I think there are three key features of the system that have allowed it to work so well for me. And they’re features that others who’ve given me feedback have also identified.

Visual separation

I’ve used countless apps, notebooks, and planners over the years in an effort to make my days more productive. In the best of times, they’d help for a few days here and there. But more often than not, they’d be another source of distraction. Any time I looked at one of them to see what I needed to focus on for the day, there was always the risk of getting lost in the noise of everything else I kept there.

The great thing about deciding on tasks and putting them on a separate card is that there’s no inherent noise. There is only one place I have to look to remind myself what’s important today. And it’s very easy to see which things are more important than others.

Gamification

This system continues to work for me because it harnesses the power of making productivity each day into a game. It makes prioritization into a game. I can see how well I’m doing with a simple number. And when the day is coming to a close, and my score is not what it should be, I get motivated to get those things done I told myself I would.

Metrics and feedback

When it comes to productivity, it should be clear that the quantity of tasks you get done matters little compared to the importance of the tasks you get done. But a traditional to-do list uses only the quantity of tasks as a numerical metric, and so provides little in the way of useful feedback.

The scoring system on the card helps to show you not how many things you got done, but how important the things you got done were. And you’re the one who assigns a point value to each score, so you’re getting direct and quick feedback on how well you’re doing being intentional and following your own sense of importance.

Taking the system further

Filling out the card each day and using the scoring system is just the first of four levels I’ve built into the system. The next three levels are optional, but strongly encouraged. They’ve helped me continue to be not only productive each day, but also to reflect, plan ahead, and use my scoring system to continuously improve.

Level 2 is the inclusion of a simplified scheduling system to better prepare for listing tasks on the card every day. It’s basically a running task list, separated into suggested timeframes: today/tomorrow, the next few days, this week, and next week & after.

Level 3 is the use of a spreadsheet I created in order to track your score each day, and enter notes to reflect on how the day went, and how I can improve tomorrow. There’s also space to conduct a three-part weekly reflection — using my compiled score for the week, and using that to see what I can do to improve in the coming week.

Level 4 involves building and streamlining a list of bigger projects above the running task list — and then ensuring that they fit into a higher-level short list of goals. Those goals then become the barometer for which tasks should be the highest point-value ones the cards each day.

If you’re interested in learning more, head over to the website. You can read the in-depth guide on all 4 levels, as well as sign up for a one-week crash-course that consists of an e-mail a day.

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Footnotes

1. Don’t overload yourself with tasks to do, especially if you already have things you’re committed to doing/attending today. A good rule of thumb is this: count only the amount of hours you have free to do tasks today (i.e., not time in meetings, running errands, cooking dinner, self-care, or other pre-existing commitments). Take that quantity of hours and multiply it by 1.25. That’s roughly the amount of tasks that should go on the front of your card.
2. I take the word “important” to mean a task that contributes to meaningful life goals of yours — things that you consider worth doing in order to make your life better. While others’ goals for you may seem pressing (like getting your boss some document she requested), don’t assume that automatically makes them important.
3. A quick way to add up your possible points is to use a fun mathematical concept called the termial. Simply take the count of the items on your list (in our example, it’s 7). Multiply that by the count of items plus 1 (in our example, that would be 8). Then divide that by 2, and that is the total possible points.
4. Half points are possible for items that you put forth a respectable amount of effort toward, but didn’t complete. For example, if you had 9 items on your card, and you made progress on item 1, but didn’t finish it, award yourself 4.5 points.

The often-overlooked cognitive bias that hurts both personal and professional relationships creeps in everywhere, and learning how to avoid it is crucial to your development

Photo by Sammy Williams on Unsplash

Cognitive biases are all the rage these days. Writers all over the internet are abuzz with explanations of these flawed ways of reasoning that trip up our ability to be smart about various things. And for good reason — overcoming cognitive biases is key to getting smarter, making better decisions, and advancing in your chosen field.

But there’s one cognitive bias in particular that’s not only intellectually problematic, it’s also morally problematic — as well as completely harmful to our own self-interest. It’s a veritable triple-threat in the world of cognitive biases.

I’m talking about the fundamental attribution error. Here I’ll discuss what it is, the 3 different ways that it’s problematic, and a way to prevent yourself from making the error. At the very least, you’ll find yourself committing the error a lot less, which is still progress worth pursuing.

What It Is

The fundamental attribution error is the tendency for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for peoples’ behavior, while under-emphasizing situational explanations. It also includes the tendency to draw conclusions about peoples’ character based on limited examples of their behavior.

In order to understand the error, let’s look at an example.

Suppose you just started a new job. You’re really excited about, and want to make a good impression on your boss and your team. However, on your first day at the job, your car — which has been extremely reliable for years — failed to start. As a result, you were late for a team meeting at the beginning of the workday. Your team was disappointed and your boss advised you that you can’t be late, period.

While your car is in the shop, you decide to take the bus. It takes about 10 minutes longer, but seems the most reliable option. Your first day taking the bus, a fight breaks out between a few people. The bus driver stops the bus, and it takes a while to get the brawling riders off the bus. As a result, you’re late — for the second day in a row.

Your team and your boss attribute this to you being careless and disorganized. You begin your tenure at the company not getting important work, and thus having to disprove everyone’s perception of you just to get back to square one.

Everyone has assumed that it’s something about you that made you late, rather than the situations you fell into. What’s more, if they were in the same situation, it’s highly likely that they would feel the same way as you — that it’s not your character to be late — the situations were mostly to blame.

Why It’s a Problem

The fundamental attribution error is problematic for three kinds of reasons. First, the reasoning behind the judgments aren’t logically sound. Second, engaging in fundamental attribution reasoning isn’t fair to others. Lastly, it’s highly impractical to attribute actions to people’s character. It can result in disastrous consequences, even from a purely self-interested point of view.

Logical reasons

From a purely logical point of view, the fundamental attribution error is problematic. Depending on the thought process involved, it can either be logically unsound (which is bad) or logically invalid (which is worse). In either case, it’s not the kind of reasoning that anyone would recommend.

Consider what we’re doing when we’re attributing a person’s behavior to their character — as opposed to the circumstances they’re in. One way of constructing the reasoning is this way:

1. Wayne lied to his wife about why he was late coming home.
2. The only reason a person would lie to their wife is because they are just a liar at their core.
3. Therefore, Wayne is a liar at his core.

This is a valid argument — meaning that if the two premises are true, the conclusion (#3) must be true. But this argument isn’t sound — meaning that one of the premises (#1 & #2) isn’t true. There are many reasons people might lie in certain situations — even if their character is not that of a liar. So to use this kind of reasoning to judge people’s behavior is unsound.

There’s also a way to look at the reasoning behind the fundamental attribution error in which it’s logically invalid. Consider this example:

1. Character is something that person displays through consistent behavior over time.
2. I observed a few instances of Guarav’s behavior recently.
3. Therefore, I can make an accurate judgment of Guarav’s character.

This argument is more than unsound; it’s invalid — meaning even if both the premises are true, they don’t guarantee that the conclusion is true. We’re reasoning from a few particular instances to a general and absolute judgment — which is a logical fallacy.

Reasons of fairness

Engaging in fundamental attribution thinking is also unfair. On a very simple definition of that term, it’s unfair to apply reasoning to judge others that you wouldn’t agree to for people to judge you. And yet, that’s exactly what we find in most cases of this cognitive bias.

Most of us who don’t suffer from personality disorders will admit that we make mistakes. We’ll admit that one of our actions was wrong — that we should have done otherwise.

But most of us wouldn’t agree that one of those mistakes is reflective of something deeply wrong with us as a person. So when we judge others by criteria we wouldn’t see a fair for us — it’s a clear-cut example of being fundamentally unfair.

Another issue around fairness centers around the concept of character itself. The concept of character is usually seen as deterministic — meaning we tend to think that it’s not subject to change. So the fundamental attribution way of judging people basically says that not only does a particular behavior reflect how the person is at a deeper level, but it’s also how they’ll be forever. That’s a deeply unfair way to judge people.

Practical reasons

Aside from the logical and moral issues around fundamental attribution, it’s also a highly impractical way to operate. Resorting to the concept of character for judging others will tend to impair your own future judgments — which can be detrimental to you.

For one thing, there are two human tendencies at work here worth thinking about. First, people don’t tend to appreciate character indictments — regardless of how accurate they might be. Secondly, humans tend to reciprocate to others what they get from them — especially in the cases of poor treatment. So when your M.O. is to judge others’ characters, rather than merely assess their actions, you’ll get the same kind of judgments leveled back at you. And since we all make mistakes, this will only come back to haunt you.

Another impractical aspect of the fundamental attribution error is that it can set you up for highly ineffective reasoning in the future. Attributing actions to someone’s character (especially a foolish error or misstep) can lead to underestimating people — including those who it’s not strategic for you to underestimate.

It’s often said that there’s no greater danger than underestimating your opponent. So judging someone you’re competing against to be incompetent or weak, based on one experience with them could give you a false sense of security and superiority — which could come back to bite you. As for peers and allies, judging them to be undesirable because of a single action or situation could make you exclude people from your life who could have been of great benefit to you.

How to Avoid the Error

Avoiding the fundamental attribution error is as simple as changing your mindset. Shift your judgment process away from the person, and toward the action and the situation. You can do this in two simple steps:

1. Make statements about the behavior itself, and take the person out of the equation.
2. Avoid trying to make a judgment based on the action, but if you feel compelled to do so, ask a question instead. Ask what situation could have pushed you into engaging in a similar behavior, if you found yourself in it. Then ask if it’s likely that such a situation is the cause of this person’s behavior.

So rather than saying Keisha’s error in that presentation proves she’s careless and incompetent, you can simply say that particular error seems easily avoidable to me. You don’t need to go any further than that. But if you feel compelled to take an extra step, rather than trying to judge the person’s character as the cause for the action — look at the situation.

Instead of a judgment, ask a question. Specifically, ask yourself what’s the most likely situation (not something about them in particular) that could have pushed the person to make that error. Then ask yourself if in that same situation, it’s possible that you’d behave in a similar way. This should help you get outside of your very restricted way of assessing both the situation and the person. It’s a much more logically, morally, and practically sound way to judge behavior in general.

BuJo? GTD? Ivy Lee? No single system is right for everyone, so make sure you’re asking the right questions to find which one is right for you.

Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

If you’re reading this, it’s highly likely that you want to be more productive. And that’s a good thing. No matter what it is you’re trying to accomplish in this life, being more effective at it is worth working on. In many cases, the way to do that is by adopting a personal productivity system. But let’s look at why a personal productivity system is helpful in the first place. And while we’re at it, how should you go about choosing one from among those that are out there?

I believe there is one over-arching rule when looking at productivity systems: There’s no reason to adopt a personal productivity system unless you understand and agree with its foundational ideas.

By ‘foundational ideas’ I mean two things:

• the system’s output
• the primary forces it leverages to achieve that output

A personal productivity system is simply a tool that helps you take the stuff of your life from chaos to completion. That’s the what, and it’s dead simple.

The complication comes in with the how of these systems. Each system answers the question of how you go from chaos to completion differently. That’s where it becomes more important to choose the right system for you-given all of your ways of doing work.

They’re Just Tools!

Productivity systems are essentially just tools. And you only need to use a tool if you desire the output of whatever function the tool performs. In other words: If you don’t have anything to tighten or loosen, there’s no reason to grab a wrench.

Most of us do need a productivity system of some kind. But not all productivity systems are designed with the same output in mind. Again, the wrench tightens or loosens. The broom sweeps. Depending on the output you’re looking for, choose the right tool.

When it comes to choosing the right productivity system, the ‘output’ is a little trickier to define. On a naïve understanding of productivity systems, they all produce the same output of ‘completed tasks’. But it’s more complicated than that.

After all, no productivity system will get things done for you. That sentence is worth reading again, because for longer than I care to admit, I believed that the right system could get things done for me. But rest assured: No matter what system you choose, you’re responsible for taking its output and turning it into completed work.

With that in mind, the way to choose the right productivity system is to ask yourself this question:

What do I need more of in the space between the undefined stuff of my life and completed work?

Everyone will have a slightly different answer to that question, because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has different likes and dislikes. Everyone moves at a different pace, has different attention spans, energy levels, and lifestyles. Every one of those factors matters when it comes to which productivity system you’ll choose and ultimately stick with.

A Little of This, A Little of That

You can pretty much carve up the different kinds of productivity systems (and apps) by how they answer the above question. Here are a few examples.

GTD is for people who need more organization in between the undefined stuff and completed work. The whole system is built on a process that helps you divide things into reference material, projects, tasks, and things to review later. It further categorizes tasks based on contexts-which are based on the people, places, and tools of your particular lifestyle.

The Bullet Journal Method is for people who need more information and a space for reflection. BuJo provides a way to log what goes on each day, what’s on the schedule for the month, and what’s further in the future. It also provides space for you to think through projects, brainstorm, and link different sessions and projects together via pages and the index. Again, it provides information and a way to reflect on it, so you can integrate it into action.

Things like time-blocking and the Day Designer products center around scheduling. Some people need to leverage the rigidity of a schedule and the constraint of time to get more things done. So these systems leverage time constraints and cues as a way to ensure things successfully go from undefined stuff to completed work.

What Worked for Me

I created my own system because none of the above systems initially worked for me, but after a while, they stopped working. At first, I thought it was because of something wrong with me. And I beat myself up quite a bit about it.

But what I came to realize is that GTD and BuJo were just not a good fit for me.

Going back to the question above, what I needed more of in the space between the undefined stuff of my life and completed work was not what those systems provided. After getting organized and learning how to log and reflect, I still didn’t have 4 important things: focus, prioritization, motivation, and feedback.

The silly index card with its quirky scoring system gave me those things-all in one 3 x 5 inch space. And as I began getting more done, and feeling more confident and competent, I built a little more complexity into the system. It still works for me. It’s a fit. It provides what had been lacking.

Ask the Right Questions

When looking at which productivity system is the best one for you, remember to ask two questions.

1. What do I need more of in the space between the undefined stuff of my life and completed work?
2. What does this productivity system I’m looking at center around? What are the primary gears of its machine? (i.e., collecting information, organization, scheduling, etc.)

If the answers to the first question seem to fit with those of the second, that system might be the right one for you.

But remember, your needs can — and will — change. What you need more of now may not be what you need a couple years from now. So if a system stops working for you after a while, ask these questions again. You may have grown out of your system. And that’s okay. As luck would have it, there are plenty of personal productivity systems out there to try.

You may even want to give The Today System a shot! But no pressure…

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A version of this post was originally published at https://thetodaysystem.com.

How NOT to be naïve about your passion and find something you love doing.

Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash

My father worked for almost 40 years — for 12–16 hours per day, at a job that he hated. He worked all sorts of crazy hours, was shuffled from location to location, and by his account — hated every minute of it.

Also by his account, he was in this situation for 2 reasons:

• He didn’t go to college, but rather chased after an immediate paycheck
• He didn’t pursue his passion, and so ended up working only for money

As a result, my primary directives in live came to center around not repeating those two mistakes. My journey into work thus began not through money, but through trying to find my passion, my “life’s work”.

Unfortunately, my naïve understanding of that concept did me more harm than good. And it took me a lot of mistakes and pain to learn a better way to look at the idea of passion, loving what you do, and the concept of “life’s work”.

The First Mistakes

From the time I was about 5, art seemed to be the candidate for my passion. I had been drawing since I could remember doing anything. I loved reading comic books, and created my own characters and stories.

This continued throughout school, but during that time I began to really embrace more scholastic and intellectual subject matter. I began really enjoying the critiquing of art — the examination of themes, concepts, and ideas. I began procrastinating on my own work, turning in technically shoddy pieces, and explaining away the shoddiness with flowering, interpretive prose.

This was the first of many missed signals that I was on the wrong path.

My senior honors art portfolio was sparse and filled with sub-par work. I just couldn’t get motivated to put in the time — and it showed. The only area in which I shined, according to the feedback from the board, was the essay explaining my portfolio.

It was clear to my teacher that I didn’t have the time or energy to waste on my supposed passion, but I could devote plenty of time and energy to putting words together to explain it. I should’ve learned something from that, but I was 17, so I just applied to art school instead.

Once at art school, I began to feel completely outclassed by the people in the illustration program. From the introductory drawing classes onward, I was out-shined every time we put work up to critique. The only time that I didn’t feel out-shined was when I was talking or writing about the ideas and concepts surrounding works of art. I received numerous compliments on my critiques and insights, but because I still was so sure I was an artist, I ignored what was right in front of me.

Spectacular Failure…and Something New

After 2 years of art school, I finally received a message I couldn’t ignore or explain away: I failed my art classes. I couldn’t move on in the program. I was done.

But then something weird happened.

I had been taking Philosophy 101, and liked it a lot. I loved the stuff we were reading, I loved writing the papers, I loved the discussions in class.

On the day of the final written exam, after I had handed in mine, the professor made it a point to follow me out of the room and chase me down to talk with me. He said he saw a lot potential in me, and suggested that I pursue philosophy as a major. Had I not just failed my art classes, the message might have fallen upon deaf ears. But alas, the timing was right.

Days later, I decided to change course, and formally declared philosophy as my new major.

I proceeded to fall in love with philosophy, and because I really wanted to continue doing it, I looked for the narrow and well-worn path to make it my job. That path is to get a master’s degree, a PhD, and become an academic.

So in starting to take that path, I narrowed my vision, and made my success contingent upon following an unnecessarily narrow path. I began work toward my master’s degree, and dreaming of PhD programs. My mindset was that my life’s work was to be a philosophy professor. Nothing else would suffice. By thinking in this narrow way, all I did was give myself a shortcut to severe disappointment.

I essentially crafted an ultimatum for myself: either do exactly this one thing or be miserable at any other job. So when — for financial reasons — I made the decision not to pursue a PhD, I found myself hurtling into doom and gloom as I drove to my regular salaried job, which I had convinced myself that I hated.

The Problem of Narrow Passions

Having a passion is great. But that passion cannot be too narrow.

Where I thought I had been setting myself up for success, I was really increasing the probability that I would fail. After all, good jobs in academia are becoming fewer by the day. Good academic jobs in philosophy even more so. So when my financial situation demanded that I turn down 3 funded offers to do doctoral work in philosophy, I initially felt a wave of regret and sadness at having lost my shot at doing what I love. Was I doing exactly what my dad had told me not to do? Was I leaving behind my passion for money?

Again, I was thinking too narrowly. At the behest of my wife(always the voice of reason), I began to re-frame the whole thing.

She asked what it was that I loved about the idea being a philosophy professor.

I replied: “I love thinking about interesting problems, teaching others how to try to solve hard problems, and writing about hard problems.”

She said “Okay, but do you have to be a professor to do those things?”

I didn’t have a ready answer, but it quickly became clear to me that the only correct one was an emphatic “absolutely not!”

In hindsight, I should have let myself benefit more from hindsight. After all, I had been down this road before. I used to be so sure that being an artist was my passion — my “life’s work”. But the whole time when I felt so sure, there was a better fit for me lurking just around the bend.

As it turns out, I didn’t need to be a professor. That wasn’t my life’s work. Nor was it my passion. What I really wanted was what Merlin Mann has called “sharp tools and interesting problems”. I just wanted to think, talk, and teach others. Fortunately for me, opportunities to do that are everywhere, and perhaps in even greater supply outside of academia.

I don’t need a fancy postgraduate degree or permission from academic journal editors to explore these problems. I could begin writing about the persistent interesting problems in any arena I choose, today, right now. All I had to do was give myself permission to think more openly about what work is out there for me.

The overarching lesson I learned is this: Yes, to lead a fulfilling life, you should do what you love to do. However, you must be as inclusive as possible in defining what that is.

Open Wide and Dive In

To assume that there’s only one job to match your passion is foolish. Think about it: jobs appeared long after people started pursuing their passions, not the other way around. So don’t attach your notion of what your life’s work is to an existing job. It’s unnecessarily limiting, and often disappointing.

Instead, take your interests. obsessions, enthusiasms, and curiosities, and shop them around. Do so with an open mind — at whatever job you can shoehorn your way into.

Embrace the hustle, look for interesting things to work on, even things you know nothing about (yet). Get yourself in a bit over your head, so you have to learn, and learn quickly. Then take a step back, and look at what you’re doing now that really moves you. If you do this right, you can begin to realize your broader passion — the more eternal, overarching thing that drives you. And I can guarantee you it isn’t limited to one specific job.

You could also fall flat on your face. In fact, you probably will. And when you do, good on you. I pity the person who has not been fed the wholesome and rejuvenating fruit of failure. Feast on those failures. Lick your plate clean, and rise from the table — armed with the knowledge you’ve gained. The younger you are, and the more narrowly you think about your passion, the more this advice applies.

In the end, the only real mistake you can make is to act in fear of making mistakes. Mistakes aren’t to be feared. In fact, quite the opposite. Mistakes are always accompanied by lessons — lessons as shallow as tweaks to your workflow or as deep as rethinking your life’s meaning. Look for all of them, and then really look at them. It could mean the difference between merely working all your life and doing your life’s work.

Use it in your work life, personal life, and everywhere in between

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Early on in my sales training, I had to sit down with engineers and learn about the technical side of what the company sells. The company I work for places a lot of emphasis on its technical aptitude and sells based on industry-leading technical services. So when I began talking with the senior engineers, I expected some definitive and informative answers to most of my questions.

Instead, I kept getting the same answer to quite a bit of them. In fact, I got the answer so often that it became a kind of inside joke among those of us training with the engineers. The answer I kept getting was: “it depends.”

‘It Depends.’

I would ask the senior engineer what he would recommend in this case or that. He would say “it depends.” Inevitably, I would ask “on what?” To which he’d often reply, “what are the customer’s goals? What are their constraints? How strict are they about making changes?” And so on.

When I first heard it, I thought is was a cop-out — a way of avoiding blame if a recommendation was wrong. But as I continued to receive that answer, I realized that it wasn’t a cop-out. In fact, it was a sneaky way of encouraging me to stop looking for quick answers from supposed experts and start asking for more information from the people who would feel the most impact from whatever answer I gave.

Prescription Without Diagnosis is Malpractice

The engineer and salesman who would serve as my mentor had an explanation for using the “it depends” approach. It came in the form of his favorite quote:

Prescription Without Diagnosis is Malpractice

He would tell me that to answer a question to quickly is like prescribing a treatment without being sure what the ailment is. It can only serve to increase the risk that you waste your time, make things worse by trying to solve the wrong problem, or both.

It helps to put yourself in the head of the person who asked the question. Something motivated them to ask it. Whatever that was is worth digging into. If you don’t dig into it, you’re leaving an opportunity — or many opportunities — on the table. In many cases, people don’t ask the question they’re really hoping to ask. Or they don’t even know what answer they’re looking for, so they ask an easy question without thinking much about it. Be on the lookout for this. Again: lost opportunities.

It doesn’t matter what your job is, or even outside of the context of work — questioning questions is a powerful practice. And “it depends” is a great gateway to establishing that practice. Don’t be afraid to question the questions. You’ll be glad you did.

I was a GTD fanatic for over 10 years, but when I realized it wasn’t giving me what I needed, I had to build my own system

Photo by Kate Trysh on Unsplash

For the first 10 years or so of my working life, I was a huge GTD adherent. At times, I was more than an adherent, I was a fanatic. It seemed like the perfect system to me. I loved ubiquitous capture (and still do, as a matter of fact). Understanding the world in terms of projects and next actions seemed intuitively right to me. And to an extent, it still does. The concept of the weekly review appealed (and still appeals) to that part of me that knows how good it feels to really think deeply about the stuff of your life and plan to take care of it.

But for all that love I felt (and still feel) for GTD, I’ve had to come to grips over the past few years or with something that I just wasn’t able to get from it. There was a piece missing — 4 missing pieces, actually — that in my years of using the system and systems like it, I just couldn’t find in it.

Prioritization

GTD was great about telling me what I needed to do and in what settings I could do it. But it wasn’t great about helping me decide when to do things. I had all these projects with associated actions, and contexts, but no idea when I should do them — or even if I should do them at all.

This problem of if and when is a problem of prioritization. Understanding which items are priorities for you helps you understand when they should get done.

Focus

I’ve struggled all my life with staying focused. There are various factors that affect my focus, but one that’s been fairly constant is being overwhelmed by how many tasks I have to do. And because I’m very visual, a long list of tasks and projects makes my inability to focus that much worse.

Motivation

Systems like GTD are great at getting me organized and prepared. By getting my projects and tasks straight, I was able to see what needed to be done. But what these systems didn’t provide was a way to motivate me to push through and get those things done. It’s not that these systems fell short. They weren’t built with that in mind, or they were built under the assumption that being effectively organized and prepared was motivation enough to get things done.

Measurement

What gets measured gets managed. Feedback is necessary for consistent improvement. While systems like GTD were always great at setting me up to get to work, they didn’t provide me with much in the way of measuring how I was doing. The more I can see — in something close to objective terms — how well I’m doing at getting important things done, the more I can keep improving.

Disclaimers

Here’s a disclaimer: I’m not saying that you can’t get these 4 things out of GTD or other systems. I’m just saying I wasn’t able to. And because it’s highly unlikely that I’m the only one, I feel it will probably be useful to share how I built my own system to get those 4 things I wasn’t getting from GTD and other systems.

What has ended up working for me is a deceptively simple system. It’s built on a set of tweaks to the principles of systems like GTD. But it also adds important elements to it. It starts off with a very simple daily ritual that provides focus, prioritization, motivation, and measurement to the day. It can build out from there into a more all-encompassing system, which integrates those elements into your life. It’s done exactly that in my life.

Here’s another disclaimer: personal productivity is just that, it’s personal. So it’s never wise for someone to say that a given system will make you more productive. In line with that principle, I will not say such a thing here. All I will say is that this system has helped me be productive in ways no other system could. And it was simple to set up and is simple to keep running. I hope that perhaps, if you’re looking for a simpler system that supplies these 4 missing elements I mentioned, you’ll give this a shot.

The Today System

To review: I needed a system that could deliver the 4 missing components that my years using GTD and other systems didn’t provide.

• A way to systematically prioritize my tasks each day and represent those priorities in a tangible way
• A mechanism to help me focus on what I need to do today — beyond just what’s on my calendar.
• A source of motivation throughout the day
• A measurement system to tell me how good I am at doing what I’ve prioritized, as opposed to just crossing tasks off of a list. Also, that measurement system should serve as the basis for a feedback loop that helps me evaluate and improve my performance over time.

So I built the system. It’s called The Today System. It’s built around a simple 3 x 5″ index card that you fill out every day.

It’s easy to start using right now — whether you’re a productivity newbie, or a seasoned veteran. It’s easy to integrate into existing productivity systems. It’s also easy to scale up into a more complete system by adding other components as you get more comfortable with using the card each day. It’s not an all-or-nothing system; you start with a card each day, and build your system as you go.

So here is the high-level overview of the elements system:

• The Today Card – A card each day with my most important items, and a score for them that reflects their relative importance. It’s a physical card — separate from all of my lists, calendars, and apps — to help me focus. The scoring system helps motivate me to complete the items on the card — so I can get a good score.
• The Simplified Scheduling System (S3) — A list of my tasks — arranged by relative timeframes in which I’m aiming to get them done: today/tomorrow, next few days, this week, and next week and after.
• The Scorekeeping Sheet — Which records my daily score from the card, as well as notes about the day. It also calculates my score for each week and compares it to last week’s score. It provides me with space to reflect on my performance and plan for how to do better in the future.
• The Projects List — A list of things bigger, more complicated, and happening on a longer timeframe than the actions on the S3. Most of the items on the S3 will fall under projects.
• The Goals List – A list of my overarching goals — the big dreams or aims I have over the next 2 – 20 years. Each goal has a #G and a number next to it. I then mark each of my projects with the #G number to note which of my goals that project is serving. It lets me see which projects are not serving my goals — which helps me more effectively prioritize.

So let’s dig into it.

How to Set Up the System

As I say above, the system is not all-or-nothing. I began the system with what I call Level 1, just an index card with my most important items, and the possible points listed. That alone was enough to help me prioritize what I intended to do each day, keep me focused on it throughout the day, and motivate me to achieve just a bit more than I would have otherwise.

But once I had been filling out a card every day for a while, I built out a more integrated system. It has 4 levels — each of which builds upon the previous one.

• Level 1: The Today Card
• Level 2: The Today Card + The Simplified Scheduling System (S3)
• Level 3: The Card + The S3 + The Scorekeeping Sheet
• Level 4: The Card + The S3 + The Scorekeeping Sheet + Sorted Goals & Projects List

Below, I’ll run through each of the levels, and what they look like. Feel free to stay at one level for as long as you like — until you feel like you’re ready for

Level 1: The Today Card

Grab a 3″ x 5″ lined index card and something to write with.

• Flip the card to the unlined back, and position it vertically. Set a timer for 3 minutes, and write down every task you think you might need to do today.
• Flip the card over to the lined side. Put today’s day and date at the top, and make it look like the picture below.

• Using your task list from the back, begin writing your most important tasks you have time to do today¹, in order of importance.² Pick no more than 9 tasks (one for each line). The first item is #1, and so on. Your card should look like this:

• In the “P” column, place the point value for each item using the following scheme:
  – Item #1 gets a point value equal to the total number of tasks on the card.
  – Item #2 gets a point value equal to 1 less than the item above it.
  – Repeat until you get to the final item on your list, which is worth 1 point.

Your card should look something like this:

• Add up all the possible points in the “P” column. That’s your possible points value for the day.³
• As you complete items, cross them off the list, and award yourself the point value for each in the “A” column.⁴
• At the end of the day, add up the total points you’ve earned, and place that at the bottom of the “A” column. Take that amount, divided by your total points possible, and put that in the box at the bottom of your card. Below is an example of a fully scored card.

Aim for a score of .750 or greater. If you achieve that, keep it up! If you score lower, think about fewer items per free hour tomorrow. Repeat each day.

Level 2: The Card + The S3

Just filling out a card with the most important items to take care of, and aiming for a high score each day, was a huge help for me. But it was even more helpful to have a list of tasks lined up that I could put on my cards each day.

You could use a standard GTD-style “next actions” list — unordered and perhaps with contexts (like “@office” or “@phone”). But for me, that proved to be too overwhelming. I needed a way to queue up the things I should be working on first, things to work on after that, and further down the line. So I built what I call a Simplified Scheduling System, or “S3”.

A Simplified Scheduling System (S3) is a list of all the things you want to get done, separated into 4 temporal categories:

• Today +
  (this list feed the card each day)
  The items you deem most important to try to get done today, or tomorrow, if you don’t think you’ll be able to get them all done today.
• Next Few Days
  The items that should get attention during the next few days. They should move up as items get on to the Today Card and get completed.
• This Week
  Items that should get taken care of in the next 7 days or the current week — however you define that.
• Next Week and After
  This category is more of a parking lot for things that need to be on your radar, but not quite yet — at least until other items this week are taken care of.

If you don’t have a list of projects already, the S3 is simply your place to dump all the things you need to do as you become aware of them. As you complete items, or as they become more important, move them up the schedule. As things become less important, move them down.

It helps to review the S3 regularly. How you gage where items need to be in the list is up to you. But don’t let that list go stale. It should reflect — at any given time — the relative order of importance of tasks in the queue.

Level 3: The Card + The S3 + The Scorekeeping Sheet

Below, I reference a Google Sheets spreadsheet. You can find a copy of the template to use here.

Filling out a card each day, and keeping an updated list of roughly scheduled items is already super helpful. The gamification of each day was a huge boon to my productivity. I found myself pushing to get the best score I could each day — based on the items and possible points on my card.

But after a while, I became more interested in tracking my longer-term scoring trends. For instance:

• how am I doing over the course of a given week?
• how does my score for this week compare to my score from last week?
• what’s my career score?
• what can I learn from all these trends that I can put into action going forward?

For the purposes of answering these questions, I created a Google Sheets spreadsheet with 2 tabs. (You can download a template here.)

The first tab is a Daily Scores tab. It simply populates the week number (1–52), the day and date, and the provides a space to input the possible points for each day, and the actual points earned each day. It then calculates the score for the day. The last column allows for notes about the day — which I use to record my thoughts about how it went. I usually explain why I got the score I did, and what that might be telling me.

A screenshot of the Daily Scores tab from my own personal scorekeeping sheet

In an orange cell up top, it has a formula that calculates my “running average.” It’s the sum of all the points earned divided by the sum of all the possible points. I personally place a lot of importance on this number. If I can get that lifetime score to at least .750, and keep it there, I consider that doing quite well.

The Weekly Notes tab is for reflecting on your week-over-week performance. It automatically calculates your score for each week (using the week number column in the Daily Scores tab). It calculates how your score this week compares to last week. It also has columns for 3 key pieces of reflection to make sure the score serves as something actionable.

• Week notes
• Why the change from last week to this week?
• What should I focus on in the coming week to sustain or improve my score?

A screenshot from the Weekly Notes tab in my own personal scorekeeping sheet

Much like GTD, the tab should be part of a weekly reflection process. It’s much simpler than a weekly review in GTD, and it’s more like a combination of a journal and a quantitative self-analysis, combined with a forward-looking plan of attack for the coming week.

Level 4: The Card + The S3 + The Scorekeeping Sheet + The Goals/Projects List

Even at Level 1 — just filling out the daily card — the concept of importance is central. That is, the most important tasks you’re aware of should be on your card today. And the most important of those tasks should be at the top of your card. The more important the item, the more points it’s worth.

But how do you figure out what’s important? You can rely on your gut — which at times can be a pretty good guide. Or you can systematize things a bit more. That’s where Level 4 comes in.

Level 4 is about doing more than just tracking the tasks in your life. It’s about tracking your projects (which involve multiple tasks), and sorting them into those that directly serve your goals and those that don’t.

Just like getting any old tasks done isn’t a great measure of productivity, neither is simply getting any old projects done. But getting the right projects done — and getting the wrong ones off your plate — is what productivity is all about.

I have 4 major, long-term goals at the very top of my list of projects. As I review my projects each week, I ask myself which projects serve those goals, and which don’t. By each project that directly serves one of my goals, I put a #G next to it. By those that don’t, I put an #NG. I try to minimize the amount of #NG projects that stay on my list.

My S3 list contains primarily items that fall under #G projects. And when I fill my card out each day, the top 2 items on the card (those worth the most points) are actions that serve #G projects. My goals dictate what’s important, which dictate how much things on my card are worth. So my score each day, each week, and beyond reflect how much I’m serving my goals each day. That is the very definition of productivity — spending each day working on your goals.

In Conclusion, and One Final Pleasant Side Effect

I’ve been using this system since November 30, 2020. I fill out a card each morning. I grade myself based on the points I get each day. I record the daily and weekly progress and reflection in my scorekeeping sheet. I share my card each day on our little Today System community — and others do the same.

In that time, what I’ve found is that not only do I have the ability to focus, prioritize, and stay motivated that I never did before. But I also gained a helpful side-effect. It’s one that became apparent early on, and it’s become the main reason why I fill out a little index card every morning.

I now have a feeling of self-confidence — and it’s backed by a number. And the number doesn’t lie. You may have caught that lifetime score in my screenshot above — the number in the orange cell of the “Daily Score” tab of my scorekeeping sheet. It’s at .7355.

That means that about 74% of the most important things I say I’m going to do each day — I get them done. Come hell or high water (which — as most of you know — do come), I follow through on what I say is important. Say what you will about measuring yourself, but I think that’s a pretty damn good way to do it.

If this sounded at all appealing to you, come check out The Today System on the web. Join our community on Discord. Sign up to learn how to use the system, and to get regular emails from me with tips, tricks, and helpful insights.

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Notes

1. Don’t overload yourself with tasks to do, especially if you already have things you’re committed to doing/attending today. A good rule of thumb is this: count only the amount of hours you have free to do tasks today (i.e., not time in meetings, running errands, cooking dinner, self-care, or other pre-existing commitments). Take that quantity of hours and multiply it by 1.25. That’s roughly the number of tasks that should go on the front of your card.
2. I take the word ‘important’ to mean a task that contributes to meaningful life goals of yours — things that you consider worth doing in order to make your life better. While others’ goals for you may seem pressing (like getting your boss some document she requested), don’t assume that automatically makes them important.
3. A quick way to add up your possible points is to use a fun mathematical concept called the termial. Simply take the count of the items on your list (in our example, it’s 7). Multiply that by the count of items plus 1 (in our example, that would be 8). Then divide that by 2, and that is the total possible points.
4. Half points are possible for items that you put forth a respectable amount of effort toward, but didn’t complete. For example, if you had 9 items on your card, and you made progress on item 1, but didn’t finish it, award yourself 4.5 points.

A reminder that it’s not about you, and thinking otherwise is the primary reason why things go off the rails

Photo by Grégoire Hervé-Bazin on Unsplash

Goals are interesting. A goal is basically just a strong desire that things be different than they are now. That’s not too interesting. What is interesting is the reason why a particular goal is adopted by someone. That is, you want certain things to be different than they are now — but why?

In my own professional journey, I failed to ask that question on many occasions when it would have saved me some grief. Had I actually bothered to ask myself why I adopted certain goals, the answer I would have had concerning many of them would have been the same disappointing one: my ego. I wanted to achieve these goals to feel better about myself.

The tragedy is that it’s unlikely that achieving those goals would have actually made me feel better about myself for more than a short period of time. The ego has a way of desiring ever more of whatever superficial things we feed it.

The Ego’s Disguises

There are all sorts of disguises the ego can use to smuggle itself into our motivations. Some of those disguises appear noble and thoughtful at first. For instance: I want to be a good husband, be a good father, or I want to be the best salesperson I can be. Those seem like selfless, even admirable goals. But without a further explanation of why I have those goals, they leave the door open for the ego to sneak in.

Let’s take the first example: be a good husband. Stated in only that way, and with no why behind it, it can allow for me to stop well short of the goal. So rather than actually be a good father, I’ll stop short once my wife doesn’t give me negative feedback anymore.

But that’s just ego. I’m not doing what I do to actually be a good husband. I’m just doing what I do in order for my ego to be satisfied. If I were really interested in being a good husband, I would continue to ensure that I’m providing what my wife needs from a partner. I would continue to solicit feedback, and continue to find ways to grow the connection we have.

If you’re not a romantic person, the same thing is true for whatever your endeavor is. Let’s say you’ve just started to market a new book you’ve written about fitness. You build a website, open a Twitter account, get on Facebook and LinkedIn, and start pumping out the content. You build an email list, get subscribers, and try to grow your audience. You go crazy buying ads on social media, networking, and getting your name out there.

But why? It’s great to have name recognition, and have your work out there — but what about the reason you started in the first place? Did you do all of that because you believe wholeheartedly in fitness and helping people achieve it? Are you obsessed with your follower count, monthly sales numbers, and stats because that shows how well you’re serving the purpose? Or is it ego?

In short: when you’re doing something for your ego, you’ll stop when you feel either validated or frustrated. When you do it for a higher purpose, you won’t stop. You can’t stop; your passion won’t let you. You’ll continue to serve that purpose, and look for new ways to do it better.

Stay In Service

We all get wrapped up in various projects throughout our lives. Many fizzle out, and for various reasons. But every once in a while, we stumble onto that thing that we care so much about, we can’t be stopped. We want to keep learning more about, sharing what we learn with others, and building something — just to be in that space — to offer it up as our contribution to that field we love so much.

When you get something like that, hold on to it. Don’t let it become adulterated with concerns that leak in through the ego. Don’t be swayed by the vanity metrics. Don’t focus on the numbers.

Yes, the numbers are nice. If you really believe in what you’ve built, and you believe it can really help people, it’s great to see it reaching more people. But don’t make that the focus. If you have an audience of just 2 people that are into what you’re doing, serve them first. Don’t take them for granted while you keep trying to keep pumping up your numbers. In fact they’re not your numbers. And the more you think they are, the more you know that’s your ego creeping in.

In other words, stay in humble service. Focus on the bigger why of the thing you’re doing. And if you’re not sure of the bigger why, then just ask yourself: why am I doing this? And keep asking until you get one of two answers:

1. Because I want to be validated/liked/famous.
2. Because I believe what I do provides value, and I can’t not do it.

As soon as your trail of whys ends in answer #1, fall back. Pick something new, or just regroup and adjust your mindset. Hopefully, your answer is #2 — in which case, you’ll get back to doing what you do. And hopefully, you’ll also have pushed your ego away, in order to fully focus on being of service.

A Higher Power

At the end of the day, goals are the most powerful piece of mental machinery we as humans can adopt. Goals can take us to places and lift us to heights we would never have imagined. But the wrong goals can drag us down to the depths of despair and leave us feeling empty and ever-envious of what others have that we think we should. That’s what happens when goals are tainted by ego.

It’s not about you — even when you so badly want it to be. And even if there are a million fans screaming your name — especially when that happens — it should still be clear that it’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s about what you’re doing for them, and about what you’re doing for the sake of that thing that you and them have in common — that thing you both love so much that brought you together in the first place.

For musicians, it’s the music. For writers, it’s the words and the message. You get the picture. It’s a higher power. It’s transcendent. It has to be — in order to move you and the people who come to you.

Stay in service. Serve the people who find you and stick around. Serve the craft you’re engaged in.

On Feelings, Facts, and the Minefield of Human Motivation

Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

A few months ago, I was on the phone with the sourcing manager of a prospective customer. I had submitted a quote to her a week ago, and I was following up to see what the next steps were. As I suspected, the next step was: lower your prices.

I asked the sourcing manager that I was working with: what number do you need us to get to and why? Her answer was that she needed to see a 7% reduction in our pricing. She needed that because she and her leadership are facts-based people. Her (paraphrased) explanation was: “Just show me the facts. Show me the numbers. Facts tell the stories. It doesn’t matter how people feel about things. The facts speak for themselves.”

I lowered our pricing as she asked. Taking her at her word that “the facts would speak for themselves.

We didn’t hear back.

I Guess We Don’t Need Marketers…

So I scheduled a follow-up call with to find out what happened. The sourcing manager began to tell a story about how the people at the site had feelings of loyalty to their current supplier. There was concern about bringing us in — despite our lower pricing.

I’m not sure there’s much she could have done to overturn the decision. I don’t fault her for that. But what I do fault her for is what I fault many people in both business and politics for: believing in this ludicrous proposition that the facts speak for themselves, and that feelings don’t matter. I’ve never heard anything so silly in my life.

If the facts spoke for themselves, we wouldn’t have the need for marketing, and we’d need far fewer sales people. We wouldn’t need nearly as many lawyers, judges, or detectives. And nonfiction writers? Forget it! We’d have only a handful. But none of this is true. All these vocations continue to grow. The need for them is real and increasing. Why? Because the facts don’t speak for themselves. They never have, and they never will.

Feelings Matter

In addition — and this speaks to the other thing for which I fault this sourcing manager — feelings DO matter. Feelings have always mattered. Feelings are the primary reason things get done. Facts are great to have, but they will never wield the same power as feelings.

In fact, the only way that facts can actually get someone to act on something, is if hearing the facts evokes a feeling of urgency and importance in someone. That’s the entire reason why we have marketing, sales, and trial lawyers with well-prepared opening and closing remarks.

Think about coaches. If the facts really spoke for themselves, all a good coach would need to do is point at the scoreboard and show her team that their score is lower than their opponents’ score. But that’s not how good coaches work. Good coaches — whether in sports or business — rely on getting their people to feel enough to take effective action. The appeal to emotion, folding in facts as tentpoles on which to prop up an appeal to that eternal driver of human endeavors: feelings.

Think of the millions of people out there who have been told by their doctors to exercise. They’ve read about the benefits. They’ve watched the transformation videos online. Their friends have told them how much better it feels to be active. They know they’re in poor health. But yet they don’t work out. This is but one example of many similar behaviors.

We’re All Irrational

The point is, facts don’t speak for themselves. And by an overwhelming margin, feelings do matter — so much so that they tend to inform which facts people will accept, reject, or seek out (see inoculation theory).

Facts mingle with feelings, and feelings mingle with facts. But both of them drive our behavior. To pretend otherwise is to oversimplify. As much as we don’t want to admit it, human behavior is not as rational as we like to think it is.

And for those of us trying to persuade people to do something, it’s in our best interest to realize this as quickly as possible. If we don’t, we’ll continue to be confused and frustrated (feelings!) by how a rational presentation of the facts can still fail to win the day.

Finding both the work I love and the person I love took me on a journey that taught me to rethink everything I thought I knew about how love works

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

From the time I was an adolescent, and I first became aware that I was responsible for making a life for myself, I knew that a good life involved love. I had to find work I love, a person I love, a place to live that I love — and so on. A good life meant finding love — in its various incarnations. And so when it came time for me to leave home and build a life of my own, I went looking for love.

Unfortunately, I ended up finding out that I — like so many of us — had gotten love all wrong. I misunderstood the mission — as it were — when it comes to love. I thought that what I was supposed to do was find love, in the way that you find a good deal at an antique shop.

But that’s not how it works. That’s not the mission. A good life isn’t about finding love. It’s about building it.

First Loves

When I left home for college, I did so believing that I loved art. I declared it my major, and told anyone who would listen that I was going to be an artist.

That same year, I told my first serious girlfriend that I loved her. I told my friends I loved her. I told my parents I loved her.

Within one year, my girlfriend and I parted ways — the year having created both physical and emotional distance between us. What I thought was love was simply infatuation with someone new, and with a deeper kind of relationship than I had experienced before.

Within two years, I became frustrated with art. The program I was in was competitive. I fell behind. I became unmotivated and disillusioned. The love I thought I had for art faded.

By the end of my sophomore year of college, I had discovered two new loves: a new girl, and a new major. Unfortunately, as time went on, neither would turn out to be what I had thought.

Making Love, Faking Love

As I entered my twenties, I had changed romantic partners and changed majors. I began dating a girl I would date for more than 5 years. And I found a subject of study that fell deeply in love with: philosophy. Not only did I love it, I did very well at it. I very quickly declared that because I loved it, I would do whatever it took to do it for a living — that is, be a philosophy professor. It became my mission.

As the years pressed on, my romantic relationship became toxic. We were both young. She had years of trauma from various sources she hadn’t worked through, and instead let it all out on me. I was emotionally stunted and terribly inattentive. The love we thought we found was a festering codependence. Whatever relationship we thought we made was detrimental.

That relationship had a detrimental effect on my pursuit of the other love I’d found. When I began graduate school, the relationship was so bad, I began skipping classes regularly. I fell into substances of various types to avoid the emotions I was going through — but didn’t dare actually address. My research and writing suffered. I ended up getting kicked out of the graduate program.

I ended up being very fortunate, and when I had to relocate, that toxic relationship ended. After some time, I tried to forge another relationship — which didn’t work out. I had no program to return to, and thus, no clear career path.

Mistaking Love

After being out of the love game for a while, I found someone, or rather she found me. We had both gone to the same college, and passed each other many times without formal introductions. I didn’t know it, but she had had her eye on me for a while.

She reached out when I became active on social media after my break-up and relocation. We emailed. We talked on the phone. Then we began to meet in person. I fell in love. She fell in love. We moved in together. I proposed. We bought a house. We got married. We made 2 wonderful children.

During all of that, I fought a battle with myself about the profession I loved — but hadn’t yet secured. I began my 30th year on earth with no Ph.D and no professorship on the horizon. I had accepted a job at a small company in the area where we lived — but I always had my eye on that horizon of academia — my true love. Or so I thought.

When I applied to Ph.D programs — 17 of them, to be exact — the response wasn’t great. My academic record was too spotty. My pedigree wasn’t impressive. I could no longer simply uproot and move to chase whatever low-paying academic position opened up. It was becoming clear that this love may end up eluding me.

And while I fought that internal battle to find my way to the profession I loved, I let my other love whither. That battle I was fighting made me distant from my wife — just as she was starting her journey as a mother and a burgeoning entrepreneur. I didn’t heed her requests that I rejoin her. I simply fell deeper into my inner life.

After a time, I ended up realizing that academia wasn’t in the cards for me. I wouldn’t end up as a philosophy professor. I couldn’t in good conscience put my wife and kids through the uncertainty and upheaval to tilt at windmills in a dying, yet cutthroat job market. I closed that chapter, and bid adieu to that particular love story. And all the while, I had all but shut out the other love story of my life.

A Discovery

There I was, with two real loves of my life that seemed out of reach. One had slipped away years ago. The other, I pushed away, while I pined for the one I should have known I couldn’t reach.

But then the woman I had all but pushed away from my heart helped me realize something. I was devastated by the fact that I would never be able to do my dream job — the job I loved. But she asked me an important question: what is it about that job that made me love it? And when I answered that researching, thinking, writing, and teaching others was what made me love that job — she again asked me an important question: could I find a way to do those things I love without having that exact job? The answer — surprisingly — was a resounding yes.

Thanks to my long-suffering wife, I came to realize that I didn’t need that job — that “love” that got away to do what I love. All I had to do was forge a path — my own path — where I could do the things that made me love that job, but within my current situation. Would it be easy? No. Would it be the same as if I had gone into academia under ideal circumstances? Of course not. But whatever it ended up being, I would have to make it happen. I would need to build it.

The Real Mission

It’s taken 20 years and several wrong turns, but I’ve finally realized that when it came to love, my main problem was that I had gotten my verbs all wrong. Life is not about finding love out in the world. It’s not about finding things that you already love and riding them into utopia. That way of living can only result in disappointment.

Love is not found, it is built. You don’t simply stumble across the things and people you love, and it’s happily ever after. You find people and things that pull at you for some reason. Then you get yourself near them. You give to them — give of yourself. You open yourself up — your heart and your mind. You cultivate love for them. You nurture a connection, a relationship, an appreciation.

Most importantly, and this cannot be overemphasized: When you find that thing you love, or that person you love — do not box them in. You do not make demands upon your connection with them. You do not smuggle in your preconceived notions, desires, expectations, and biases. You allow that love to grow by keeping all of those mental and emotional weeds out of your garden.

Whatever you love, whoever you love, nurture that connection, and let it grow. And remember that growing means changing. It means that what you love, and how you love will be different than when you first fell in love. But that’s okay. Love allows growth and change. Love enables growth and change. Love that doesn’t is, well, not love.

It’s Ongoing

I’ve made my peace with my “dream job”. I write and think about whatever tickles my fancy. I do it online, and I love it. I also work a regular job that I’ve managed to make much more interesting by finding ways to research, write, and teach as a part of it. I have cultivated a vocation that I love.

And now, after putting it off for so long, I have also begun to cultivate the love I neglected for so long. I have begun to open up, and let in the woman who offered herself and her love to me long ago. I let that garden run wild with weeds of inattention. And had I continued to let it grow, I’m sure things would be much the worse now.

What’s interesting is that I’m finding that love can be regrown. It can be revived. It can’t be made into exactly what it was before. But it can still be wonderful. But again, it takes attention, and cultivation. A love — be it for someone or something — cannot be leaned on. It must be supported and cared for.

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I have gotten love wrong for most of my life. But I think I’ve finally gotten it right — mostly. I’m sure I’ll never get it completely right, but I don’t think that’s possible. If you believe in God, I think that’s the only place there’s perfect love. And what a can of worms that is.

The only way I could get love mostly right is by getting it completely wrong — for a long, long time. I don’t think my journey is unique in that way. Surely the details of how I misunderstood love, and what it cost me — those are unique. But the phenomenon of getting it wrong — tripping and falling, then getting back up with a lesson learned. That’s how we learn to love. That’s how we get love right — even if it takes us our whole lives.