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Review whatever lists, overviews, and orientation maps you need to, as often as you need to, to get their contents off your mind.
The Weekly Review is the time to: Gather and process all your stuff. Review your system. Update your lists. Get clean, clear, current, and complete. You have to use your mind to get things off your mind.
context, time available, energy available, and priority.
There is always more to do than you can do, and you can do only one thing at a time. The key is to feel as good about what you’re not doing as about what you are doing at that moment.
three different kinds of activities you can be engaged in: Doing predefined work Doing work as it shows up Defining your work
Looking out from a building, you will notice different things from different floors. Horizon 5: Purpose and principles Horizon 4: Vision Horizon 3: Goals Horizon 2: Areas of focus and accountabilities Horizon 1: Current projects Ground: Current actions
Minute-to-minute and day-to-day you don’t have time to think. You need to have already thought.
The Value of Thinking About Why
It defines success. It creates decision-making criteria. It aligns resources. It motivates. It clarifies focus. It expands options.
People love to win. If you’re not totally clear about the purpose of what you’re doing, you have no game to win.
Purpose defines success.
It Motivates
if there’s no good reason to be doing something, it’s not worth doing.
It Clarifies Focus When you land on the real purpose for anything you’re doing, it makes things clearer.
It Expands Options
When you really know the underlying why—for
merger—it expands your thinking about how to make the desired result happen.
A great way to think about what your principles are is to complete this sentence: “I would give others totally free rein to do this as long as they . . .”
Whereas purpose provides the juice and the direction, principles define the parameters of action and the criteria for excellence of conduct.
Vision/Outcome
This is the what instead of the why. What will this project or situation really be like when it successfully appears in the world?
The Power of Focus
When you focus on something—the
launch—that focus instantly creates ideas and thought patterns you wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Clarifying Outcomes
you won’t see how to do it until you see yourself doing it.
You often need to make it up in your mind before you can make it happen in your life.
Brainstorming The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas. —Linus Pauling
Your mind wants to figure out how to get from here to there, but initially in somewhat random order.
Capturing Your Ideas
give yourself permission to capture and express any idea, and then later on figure out how it fits in and what to do with it.
Distributed Cognition
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have. —Emile Chartier
Write all your notes and quotes on separate three-by-five-inch cards. Then, when you get ready to organize your thinking, just spread them all out on the floor, see the natural structure that emerges, and figure out what’s missing.
Don’t judge, challenge, evaluate, or criticize. Go for quantity, not quality. Put analysis and organization in the background.
Determining what might go most wrong in a situation is at times the best way to generate the best ideas about how to make it successful.
Go for Quantity, Not Quality
The greater the volume of thoughts you have to work with, the better the context you can create for developing options and trusting your choices.
Put Analysis and Organization in the Background
The big secret to efficient creative and productive thinking and action is to put the right things in your focus at the right time.
Success Factors for Filing
Keep Your General-Reference Files Immediately at Hand
One Alpha System
Make It Easy to Create a New Folder
Make Sure You Have Plenty of Space for Easy Storage
Label Your File Folders with an Auto Labeler
In the fire zone of real work, if it takes longer than sixty seconds to file something where it belongs, you won’t file, you’ll “stack.”
Purge Your Files at Least Once a Year
Filing as a Success Factor Itself
Wherever items of different character or meaning are piled into the same location, it’s too much work to continually think about the nature of the contents, so your brain will go numb to the pile.
