Chris Bailey Quotes

By controlling how much time you spend on a task, you control how much energy and attention you spend on it.

Your Central Executive: This is your thinking and planning brain that lives in your prefrontal cortex.

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. Intention enables us to prioritize so we don’t overload our attentional space.

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

We are what we pay attention to.

Ask yourself: After consuming one of those products, will you be happy with how you invested your time and attention?

happiness is nothing more than coming to terms with how things change.

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

Determine the foremost meaningful tasks in your work and life. Use the Rule of 3 on a daily and weekly basis.

1. How much of your time you spend intentionally 2. How long you can hold your focus in one sitting 3. How long your mind wanders before you catch it

deeply care about your productivity goals, about why you want to become more productive.

When it comes to productivity and creativity, scatterfocus enables you to do three powerful things at once. First, as I’ll discuss in this chapter, it allows you to set intentions and plan for the future. It’s impossible to set future intentions when you’re immersed in the present. By stepping back and directing your attention inward, you’re able to switch off autopilot and consider what to do next. Your brain automatically plans for the future when you rest — you just need to give it the space and time to do so.

I see drinking alcohol as a way of borrowing energy from tomorrow;

the more you see yourself like a stranger, the more likely you are to give your future self the same workload that you would give a stranger, and the more likely you are to put things off to tomorrow — for your future self to do.

Time pressure narrows our focus on the task, restricting us from considering a number of more creative ways to complete it. We don’t question our approach as much, because we haven’t stepped back to consider the alternatives. This makes it easier to switch.