Going in Circles

When people get lost, they really do tend to walk in circles. German researchers discovered that volunteers who could not see the sun or moon often walked for hours in circles, sometimes in circles as small as 20 yards across. Some participants didn’t believe the researchers until they were shown proof.

What makes the difference are external signposts. Landmarks like the sun or moon completely changed the result.

One of the researchers offers this advice: “Don’t trust your senses. You might think you are walking in a straight line when you’re not.”

Isn’t that how life is? We know people who trust their senses and have no external guideposts to keep their lives on track. They believe they are marching forward, but all the while, they are going nowhere. They repeat the same mistakes. The people who get somewhere in life carefully choose their landmarks and trust these life-anchors.

Stephen Goforth

The Benefits of letting your mind wander

Allowing our minds to wander can also give us opportunities to process emotions, Elisabeth Netherton, a psychiatrist and regional medical director with Houston-based Mindpath Health, said. Some of her patients keep their brains busy to avoid certain feelings, which then come flooding out when their minds slow down. Providing some time for introspection during the day can help manage those emotions and reduce anxiety. Although mind-wandering has been linked to increased anxiety and depression, the results of a 2019 study suggest that intentional mind-wandering can mitigate anxiety, depression and stress.

Counterintuitively, mind-wandering may also help us get more done. Although we’d never expect our bodies to run all day long, Olga Mecking, author of “Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing,” said, “we somehow expect our brains to be on 24/7.”  The high value society places on productivity means we often keep working, even when we notice ourselves slowing down or making mistakes. But by preventing such issues, taking breaks might make us more productive. Meanwhile, Dane points out that, if our minds never strayed from the current task, we wouldn’t remember the other tasks we need to complete. Research shows a link between mind-wandering and the fulfillment of goals.

Pam Moore writing in the Washington Post

It’s not time management, it’s attention management

In his book “When,” Dan Pink writes about evidence that your circadian rhythm can help you figure out the right time to do your productive and creative work. If you’re a morning person, you should do your analytical work early when you’re at peak alertness; your routine tasks around lunchtime in your trough; and your creative work in the late afternoon or evening when you’re more likely to do nonlinear thinking. If you’re more of a night owl, you might be better off flipping creative projects to your fuzzy mornings and analytical tasks to your clearest-eyed late afternoon and evening moments. It’s not time management, because you might spend the same amount of time on the tasks even after you rearrange your schedule. It’s attention management: You’re noticing the order of tasks that works for you and adjusting accordingly.

Adam Grant, writing in the New York Times

The Main Thing

Every morning just look at your calendar and ask yourself one question: “What’s the main event today?” I’m going to see six people. I’m going to do seven things. But of the six people I see and the seven things I do, what’s the main event?

In other words, what’s the most important thing I’m going to do today. Don’t make everything the main event because I’m not going to be good all day. I’m not going to be able to hit a home run every time I swing the bat. I’m going to have some fouls and I’m going to have some strike outs.

When you decide your main event, spend most of your time, most of your energy, most of your focus on it. You know what I know about life? You don’t have to be good at everything, you just have to be good at the main thing. If you’re good at the main thing, people will pay for you to do it again.

John Maxwell

Wrong Turns

With each step along the wrong road it becomes increasingly difficult for (travelers) to admit that they are on the wrong road, often only because they have to admit that they must go back to the first wrong turn, and must accept this fact that they have wasted energy and time.

Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man

Licking the Earth

When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises, being known and praised, ostensible pleasures like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down in it like Satan, explaining and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has to offer. In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, ‘licking the earth’.

Malcolm Muggeridge

Death Ground

You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Since nothing seems urgent to you, you are only half involved in what you do. The only way to change is through action and outside pressures. Put yourself in situations where you have too much at stake to waste time or resources – if you cannot afford to lose, you won’t. Cut your ties to the past; enter unknown territory where you must depend on your wits and energy to see you through. Place yourself on “death ground,” where you back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive. 

Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

If-Then Planning

It's called if-then planning, and it is a really powerful way to help you achieve any goal. Well over a hundred studies, on everything from diet and exercise to negotiation and time management, have shown that deciding in advance when and where you will take specific actions to reach your goal (e.g., "If it is 4 p.m., then I will return any phone calls I should return today") can double or triple your chances for success.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

Why is it so impossible to get everything done?

Several research studies have shown that people never get more done by blindly working more hours on everything that comes up. Instead, they get more done when they follow careful plans that measure and track key priorities and milestones. So if you want to be more successful and less stressed, don’t ask how to make something more efficient until you’ve first asked, “Do I need to do this at all?”

Simply being able to do something well does not make it the right thing to do. I think this is one of the most common problems with a lot of time-management advice; too often productivity gurus focus on how to do things quickly, but the vast majority of things people do quickly should not be done at all.

If you think about it, it’s actually kind of ironic that we complain we have so little time, and then we prioritize like time is infinite. So do your best to focus on what’s truly important, and not much else.

Angel Chernoff