Chris Bailey Quotes

As I began to deliberately and intentionally invest more time, attention, and energy into my highest-return tasks, my productivity shot through the roof. Working smarter instead of just harder is impossible without first stepping back from your work, and that’s what this first section of the book — Laying the Groundwork — is all about.

What separates the most productive people from everyone else is that they make course corrections every week to gradually get better at everything they do.

You don’t have to look far to see evidence that we like to think in threes. According to J.D., “the simplest reason [three accomplishments work so well] is because our brains are trained from early on to think in threes: the beginning, the middle, the end.” For example, “the military uses threes to help people remember survival information: You can go three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food.” When you look around, there are also countless examples of sets of threes embedded everywhere: the three bears, three blind mice, three little pigs, and three musketeers; phrases like “blood, sweat, and tears” and “the good, the bad, and the ugly”; and ideas like gold, silver, and bronze medals, and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Our mind is wired to think in groups of three.

your brain is simply not built to focus on more than one thing at once. In fact, your brain can’t focus on two things simultaneously — instead it rapidly switches between them, which creates the illusion that you’re doing more than one thing at a time.

One study found that when we continually switch between tasks, our work takes 50 percent longer, compared with doing one task from start to completion.

just because we’re busier doesn’t mean we’re getting more accomplished.

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

Attention is the backdrop against which we live our lives wherever we go and whatever we do, even if we’re just noticing the thoughts in our head.

When someone says they “don’t have time” for something, what they’re really saying is that a task isn’t as important or attractive as whatever else they have on their plate.

Notepads Everywhere: I love capturing ideas as they come to me, but because I shut my phone off between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., it’s not always possible to capture them on my phone. For that reason I keep physical notepads everywhere.

The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy than doing the task itself.

Productivity is about how much you accomplish.

We are what we pay attention to.

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.

Constantly trying to do more things — instead of the right things — leads to more stress, poorer quality of work, and lower productivity.