… and I’m not taking about the latest personality quiz. A while back I found a little gmail add on that’s just fantastic. It’s called boomerang, and it does just that. You can say “send this back to me” and fill in the blank for when. I put all my reminders into it too so I have one system for alerting…
Expectations have to change too
When making changes to how we do things, sometimes the net effect feels wrong and so we implicitly assume it’s wrong, and won’t work, and we abandon change that could’ve been for the better. For example, maybe you’re used to revising emails four or five times to make them “perfect.” Nevermind it takes you twenty minutes–no joke–to compose a simple…
Pick up pal
Bad things happen, for example dropping a birthday cake that you just spent 2 hours crafting. If you’re another person in the room, step up and offer to bake the next cake, or offer to go out and buy a cake, or just clean up the mess while they get started on the next cake. It’s amazing how nice it…
Beating yourself up is a step in the right direction
Knowing that there are things that you want to change about your own behavior is the first step toward affecting change. Beating yourself up about undesirable things is a good first step. So contrary to the cliche, you should beat yourself up. Long enough to do something about it. And eventually long enough to learn to identify undesirable behavior without…
Importance is attention
We all place a great deal of importance upon that which captivates. Is what captivates you what you want to be important?
Don’t organize, search
Organization is often a waste of time, especially if you don’t know how–let alone if–you’ll ever come back to something. For example emails, don’t put them in carefully crafted folders, just hit archive and then search when you need to find something. How much time do you waste organizing things unnecessarily?
What do you want to see
Jonathan downloaded an app that tells us when there’s a crime happening nearby. At first it was interesting to hear about the crazy things that happen, like a report of someone being hit with a clock. How that works, I’m not sure. Yesterday we were at the park walking Pax, she was looking for squirrels but sadly found none. Nonetheless…
Competition is a good thing
A specious inclination is to assume that competition is a bad thing. To assume that you shouldn’t bother with your idea because someone else has already tried it or is doing it. The reality is, competition means there is a market. So, competition can be a good thing. Without out it you might be heading into unchartered territory which often leads…
Tell yourself no
One common hindrance to working out is when your mind says no even though your body is perfectly capable. And I’m not even talking about taking risks. Often the mind says no to attempting one more rep or five more degrees in a squat. And it’s not just the gym, the mind unnecessarily says no all the time. For example,…
Don’t make it easier to do things you shouldn’t be doing
Sometimes we want to do things that will make it easy to do one thing and will enable us to also do things that we shouldn’t. For example, I have a recording tool that I’ve found is amazing for editing. It makes it incredibly easy to make changes to videos after the fact. And it’s great when I do editing…