To be average in today's world

As reaction to panic or stress the body pumps adrenaline, making you breath faster and certain parts of the body feel tight, that makes us prone to often incorrect snap judgments. When having that kind of response, close your eyes, take a few breaths, and take some time to consider your next action.

That buys you time to physically calm down enough to make a more considered choice. 

1. Be skeptic, meditate, learn from previous mistakes, know what the data and it’s context means, and trust your informed judgment.
2. Focus on the quality of information you’re getting, not the quantity.
3. Set a time limit for yourself, and ensure you’re not using your decision-making angst as a procrastination device.
4. If you see that you prefer familiar and easier choices, ensure they aren’t being reframed to support something you wish was true.
5. Crisp, clear decisions may seem like the best kind of decisions, but they may cost you time and extra effort when often the details may not even matter.
6. Forcing yourself to choose may lead to you making high-risk decisions and ignoring alternatives.
7. Imagine the effort you’re considering was a fantastic success, and then that it was an unequivocal disaster. Then, analyze the reasons for both to find blind spots, dampen excessive optimism, and bridge the gap between short-term and long-term thinking.

Start the day with your #1 priority.

Getting up early isn’t enough. You need to put first things first. When you put your top priorities first, then you ensure they make it into the bucket of your day. After your main priorities have been completed, the rest will fill the gaps.

Chances are you won't just wake up one day and suddenly change your life. To go where you want to go, you have to chart out a plan.

For example: If you feel the cue of smoking, replace the smoking with some other activity like having a cup of coffee.

Commitment to performing a specific task is often the only difference between our results and our desires.

When you commit to a task, then the next step is obvious.

Do you want to take a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunrise? Next step: find a good spot. You've found a good spot? Next step: wake up early and drive there.

Most of our email is replied on the spot and has incomplete information, which leads to a lot of back and forth dialogue.

To minimize this, reply at a suitable time when you can provide sufficient details, clear action items, due date or deadline if any, and maybe an alternative.

We keep checking email, instant messages in our smartphones or office PC, and even social media, whenever we get the urge or any new notification.

Allotting specific times to check your phone's messages and email, like in a two to three-hour intervals, can boost your productivity by 40%.

Banks don’t like to give away their money. That mindset is reflected in the interest rates of checking and savings accounts of 0,5% and 0.9% avg. annual interest respectively.

When you deposit your money in the bank, the bank turns around and invests that money at 7% a year or more. After they collect their profit, they give a tiny shaving of it to you.

• Your portfolio reflects your long-term wealth building investment strategy – not the short term. It includes everything you own. Your retirement accounts, your investment accounts, even your home are types of investments.
• Diversification is a way to describe owning multiple types of investment assets. Diversification is smart because you both protect yourself from failure and position yourself to take advantage of multiple robust methods for building wealth.

Having clear values that you try to live by can make tough decisions easier.

For example, maybe you know there’s a certain amount of time you want to spend with your family, or a baseline level of debt you’re willing to carry.

You don’t need to speak with someone who’s knowledgeable on the topic. 

You just need a good listener who’ll give you time and space to hear out your monologue and occasionally reflect back to you what you’ve shared.

Instead of thinking an 8-, 6-, or 10-hour workday, split your day into four or five 90-minute windows. 

That way, you will have on average 4 tasks you will get done a lot more efficiently. Take breaks between tasks to recharge.

To know what's coming easily to you, what you’re performing well on, pay attention and measure the indicators of success in the chosen activity.

At some point, you won't need more information, you will need to make a choice between sticking with the activity or switching to a new one.

Once you have experimented enough and overcome the need for extra information and fear of committing, it's time to put in a consistent volume of work and persist through the grind.

Only through the grind you will be able to bridge the gap between competent and excellent. Then you can simplify because you know what is essential and what is unnecessary.

Distancing yourself from a problem can help you face it in a more objective way. 

Instead of remaining in your own frame of mind, consider yourself as an outside observer, such as a friend giving advice or a fly on the wall. Removing yourself in this way helps you filter out some of your cognitive biases and lean you toward a more rational decision.

Accuracy and reliability in decision making tends to increase if you first give yourself some time to decompress and collect yourself.

This may also help you remove yourself from the problem, knocking out two of these strategies at a time.