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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
S.J. Scott
Read between
January 28 - February 8, 2018
(my philosophy is it’s easy to not procrastinate if you never agree to do a task in the first place);
maybe you put off starting a new hobby because you’re afraid of making a bunch of mistakes. Or you might procrastinate on a major project because you’re secretly worried that it’ll be a complete failure. Simply put, beating procrastination is tough because we all have personal, but different, reasons for why we struggle with it.
The growth mindset creates a desire to learn and an ability to overcome problems in order to be successful.
The study notes that misinformation remains in an individual’s memory and continues to influence their thinking, even if the person is aware that they are mistaken. The person is also likely to make use of the misinformation, especially if it fits with their existing beliefs and makes a logical story. This then leads to spreading the inaccurate information to other people.
The big lesson here: knowledge is power. Even if you receive bad news, the earlier you hear it, the more opportunities you will have to overcome a potentially worse situation.
What am I afraid of? What is the worst possible consequence that could happen? What could happen if I ignore the situation? Why am I putting this off? Is there any benefit to putting this off? How often do people die from avoiding a situation like this? Am I trying to convince myself of something that’s not true? Am I scared of the process or the result? Can I handle the outcome? Am I trying to protect myself from a certain outcome? Am I actually scared or was I just told this was scary?
In your imagined future, you will have boundless energy, eat a healthy diet, exercise on a regular basis, and work well into the evenings in order to get everything finished.
Each “self” represents the decision-maker at a certain point in time and the inconsistency happens when their preferences are not aligned.
People make different decisions for what will affect them in the immediate future rather than what will affect them down the road. One interesting aspect of time inconsistency is the challenge of aligning the needs of Present You versus Future You.
“Future You knows you should do things that lead to the highest benefit in the long term, but Present You tends to overvalue things that lead to immediate benefit right now.”
the only thing that Present You wants is to watch Netflix and eat a bag of potato chips.
Future You has all sorts of dreams and plans, but Present You often succumbs to the instant gratification of an immediate reward.
The more time and effort it takes to do a task, the harder it is to get started.
The researchers found that your emotional brain has a difficult time imagining the future, regardless of the fact that our logical brain can see the future consequences of current actions.
The lesson here is if you can connect a task to your interests, goals, and values, then you increase your motivation for working on it.
The idea here is to break down any multi-step project into a series of smaller tasks that can completed in a single block of effort.
Write down the specific tasks that have your attention. Decide which actions can be taken care of right away and do them. Organize the rest of the task. Constantly review your breakdown of tasks. Do each task, one by one, until they are all finished.
Finally, it’s easy to “tinker” on projects that sound fun, but aren’t part of your five core projects. This is a dangerous practice, because whenever you say yes to something new, you’re basically saying no to the projects that you’ve already identified as being important.
It’s okay to eliminate existing goals and projects—just make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.
The key to the effectiveness of this step is to not complain about being overworked but to provide solutions on how to fix this issue.
we’ve discussed, ignoring potential emergencies can lead to death, divorce, suicide, financial ruin, and other horrible situations. No matter how busy you might be, it’s always important to immediately address any situation that could be an emergency.
the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.
tasks, because while they seem urgent, they can often be automated or passed off to someone who is better qualified to handle them.
