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

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.

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.

when we schedule time for something, what we’re actually doing is simply deciding when we will invest our attention and energy into the task.