Chris Bailey

Negative self-talk is absolutely, completely normal. One psychologist, Shad Helmstetter, has found that “seventy-seven percent of everything we think is negative, counterproductive, and works against us.

Working ninety hours a week for any longer than one week is a recipe for burnout.

Productivity isn’t about how busy or efficient you are — it’s about how much you accomplish

Productivity isn’t about doing more, faster — it’s about doing the right things, deliberately and with intention.

According to Duhigg, cues that trigger habits fall into one of five categories: a specific time of day, a place, a feeling, the presence of certain people, or a preceding behavior that you have ritualized.

Boring Frustrating Difficult Unstructured or ambiguous Lacking in personal meaning Lacking in intrinsic rewards (i.e., it’s not fun or engaging) The more of these attributes a task has, and the more intense these attributes are, the less attractive a task will be to you, and the more likely you’ll procrastinate on it.

Focus: This involves narrowing your attentional spotlight to focus on the task at hand, which helps you work more efficiently.

the more aversive (unattractive) a task or project is to you, the more likely you are to put it off.

WHAT I DO ON MAINTENANCE DAY If you’re curious, here’s a complete list of everything I wait to tackle until Sunday morning — all of which takes me, at a leisurely pace, four to six hours: • Grocery shopping • Clean house and office • Create a meal and workout plan • Trim beard and shave • Do laundry • Prepare lunches in Tupperware containers for the week • Water plants • Read articles I’ve saved up throughout the week • Review my projects, and define next steps (this page) • Review my “Waiting For” list • Define three outcomes for the week ahead (this page) • Clear out all my inboxes (this page) • Review my hot spots (this page) • Review my Accomplishments List Naturally, your own Maintenance Day ritual will vary.

Awareness: This means becoming aware of what’s going on in your internal and external environments, which helps you work more mindfully and deliberately.

We have to work with intention as much as possible — this is especially true when we have more to do than time within which to do it.

People who have a growth mindset believe that through hard work and persistence, they can accomplish more. They embrace obstacles as challenges to be overcome, instead of seeing them as roadblocks, and they see working hard as the only way of mastering a skill.

the most productive people are the ones who strike a balance between the two extremes, who understand the power of capturing and organizing what they have to get done, but who also don’t sacrifice real work in favor of being productive about productivity.

can be. As David Allen told me, “Your head is not for holding ideas — it’s for having ideas.

common sense isn’t always common action.