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MECE is a famous consulting principle which means mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. Its a tool to sharpen your thinking

We’ve been thinking about motivation all wrong. Once I figured out how motivation works, I was able to overcome procrastination and get to work.

From Om Malik : “I have often lamented that the ‘why’ of blogging got overtaken by the ‘what’ and the ‘how,’ with the tools and format becoming the primary focus. Ironically I made the same mistake with my newsletter. I don’t work for a publication, so I don’t have a deadline. I no longer have a

I recently returned to Haruki Murakami’s 2007 pseudo-memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I first encountered this book back in 2009. It inspired me at the time to write an essay titled “On the Value of Hard Focus,” which laid the foundation on which I went on to build my theory of […]

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here . Reading time: 5 mins One Sentence Summary : I want to be the best at getting better, specifically the best at getting from Level 0 => Level 10.  “Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally.” Sam Altm

3074 quotes from John Steinbeck: 'I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.', 'Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.', and 'All great and precious things are lonely.'

Tips for small business to win more business and get more done.

Behavioral designer, Nir Eyal, reveals the hidden dangers of to-do lists and the value in taking a more scientific approach using a schedule builder.

First off, allow me to tell/remind you that new book Four Thousand Weeks, about making the most of our absurdly brief time on the planet, is now available for pre-order in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand! (The subtitle is either Time Management for Mortals or Time and How to Use It, depending on where you live.) Pre-orders are hugely important for authors these days: they count towards the first week's sales, giving a crucial signal to publishers and booksellers that a title has momentum. So if you value the writing I do here or elsewhere, by far the most effective way to support my work is to pre-order the book, from any retailer. If you decide to do so: thank you! And hold on to your receipt, pending details of a forthcoming giveaway I'll be announcing exclusively for pre-orderers. For more about the book, and to pre-order, click here. • The therapist and writer Sheryl Paul defines anxiety as "a feeling of dread, agitation, or foreboding associated with a danger that does not exist in the present moment." I'm guessing you can relate; I certainly can. (Holding this sort of feeling at bay is, I think, the secret motive behind many people's interest in productivity techniques, personal development and so on.) Both parts of Paul's definition are crucial: anxiety is the feeling that something very bad might be going to happen – combined with the absence or near-absence of any real evidence to believe it actually will. Which is extremely bizarre, when you think about it, and worth a closer look, if only because – and I speak from experience – going around all day with a pit in your stomach is no way to live. In my last book, The Antidote, I explored a Stoic technique for coping with this sort of worry called "the premeditation of evils" – the practice of soberly envisaging what the real worst-case scenario in any given situation could truly be. Suppose you're anxious about giving a speech. It helps to imagine, in detail, the experience of embarrassing yourself before an audience of hundreds, then shuffling off stage and hiding under the bedcovers – because while that's certainly unpleasant, it's also pretty clearly copeable with. And since anxiety is the fear of a danger with which you couldn't cope, the exercise has the effect of cutting your worries down to size. I still recommend (and use) that practice today. But I've come to see it has a limitation. It risks implying that nothing catastrophically bad could ever really happen. Whereas the anxious person knows, if only subconsciously, that it could. Public humiliation won't kill you, but in fact it's always the case that the next hour or week or month could contain a bereavement, a terrible accident, or a shattering medical diagnosis. So the attempt to reassure yourself that nothing too appalling is coming down the pike will always run up against the gnawing realisation that actually you can't be sure. I think that's part of what Paul means in calling her (excellent) book The Wisdom of Anxiety, echoing the title of Alan Watts's great book The Wisdom of Insecurity. Anxiety isn't a silly mistake about how bad things could get. It's a logical response to what's entailed by the human situation – thrown into the river of time, unable to know what's coming let alone to control it, condemned to the condition the author Robert Saltzman calls "total vulnerability to events", yet obliged to try to build a meaningful and enjoyable life anyway. My partner vividly describes the teenage epiphany when she realised, after a childhood steeped in moviegoing, that if something devastating were to happen to her, it wouldn't be foreshadowed by sinister music so that at least she could mentally prepare. Nope: it would just happen. Anything always could. In this predicament, you won't find the deepest solace in compulsive planning, or from visualising worst-case scenarios. You find it from seeing a) that there's nothing you could ever do to change this state of affairs, so you might as well relax into it if you can; and b) that literally everyone's in the same boat, so at least you needn't worry that, existentially speaking, anyone else is more in command of their lives than you are. And you find it above all, in my experience, not with any kind of mental insight or cognitive exercise, but in action: inching forward into the future, doing tiny bits of the things that are causing the anxiety, committing a little more to the relationships you're feeling tentative about – and discovering, in each moment, further concrete evidence than in fact you can cope with what reality tosses your way. ("It's easier to act yourself into new ways of thinking than to think yourself into new ways of acting.") My life so far provides zero reason to believe I'll ever attain the degree of control over the future I always thought I needed. But then again, my track record of not yet having been entirely overwhelmed by existence suggests that maybe I never needed it to begin with. • I'd love to hear from you – just hit reply. (I read all messages, and try to respond, but not always in a timely fashion: sorry!) If you enjoyed this email, you'd be doing me a big favour by forwarding it to someone else who might like it, or mentioning it wherever you emit opinions online; the "View in a browser" tab will take you to a web version. And if you got this from a friend and would like to subscribe yourself, please do so here. 540 President St, Brooklyn, New York 11215

There’s no doubt that the internet has revolutionized how we access data. Access to the web has brought the global community together in…

So, the big question is: what's the strategy to success, and how can you replicate it?

Build your own Todoist workflow with different ideas for how to use favorites, filters, labels, board view, and more.

AN INTERNET CREATOR’S MANIFESTO I have a duty to be useful and to be myself. I don’t know what’s useful or obvious to others, so I share things useful or obvious to me. I never know what will resonate. I show up daily and give myself permission to create. “The warrior and the artist...

The Internet King on why the Internet is a force for good, on media conformity, the inevitable triumph of the WEIRD, Crypto, Retards, etc.

Announcing Passport, the new infrastructure supporting Stratechery.

Using inversion to solve problem from different perspective.

Saying no to tasks and interruptions isn’t always possible, whether they come from your spouse or manager. Here’s a better way to stay productive.

Content is the commodification of creativity. To make something you're proud of, make a classic instead.

Tips to keep you from banging your head on your desk.

If you’re looking to build online, you must be compelling. And if you dive deep into the most compelling creators online today, they operate differently than the average creator.

The author Joan Didion By Joan Didion This piece, about the author's college rejection from her first-choice college, appeared in The Saturday Evening Post April 16, 1968. “Dear Joan,” the letter begins, although the writer did not know me at all. The letter is dated April 25, 1952, and for ...

"Practice any art... not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming , to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow."

Distractions have become so pervasive in the digital age that we've come to accept them as normal. Here's how we can escape their grip and free our minds a little.

When I was a kid, there were serious discussions in churches, schools, and in front of Congress about whether the music my friends and I listened to might be satanic. I remember my friend’s mother making him throw away all of his Metallica tapes. I remember hiding the parental warning labels when asking my mom to buy the new Pantera album. I can still see my father breaking my Bone Thugs-N-Harmony CD in half when he realized they dropped more F-Bombs than Nixon in Cambodia. In case anyone asks, this is the album that caused the downfall of human civilization. By the time I reached adolescence, the grown-ups had moved on from offensive music and commenced their hysterics over the corruptive forces of violent video games. The Columbine Massacre in 1999 was peak hand-wringing about violent entertainment. Back then, school shootings were still a rare occurrence. And it was only fitting that such an incomprehensible act be explained by such a new and incomprehensible form of entertainment. Sorry. Correction. This video game is what caused the downfall of human civilization. Today, we chuckle at the hair metal bands of …

Creator of the infamous Hero's Journey, and the man who coined the term 'follow your bliss', these Joseph Campbell quotes will help you slay your dragons.

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was one of the bestselling authors of all time. In Confessions of a Young Novelist, he shares some unique advice for writing fiction.

In 1991, Sebastian Junger suddenly found himself with time to think. He had wounded himself with a chainsaw at his day job as a climber for a tree pruning company in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and was laid up recovering. Morbidly inspired by the experience, Junger became interested in the idea of writing a book about dangerous […]