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How to Minimize Your Life: The Unimportance of Practically Everything
“Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant.”
Stephen Covey
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
Oliver Emberton
Important vs. urgent tasks
- Important tasks are things that contribute to your long-term mission, values, and goals.
- Urgent tasks are tasks that have to be dealt with immediately: phone calls, urgent deadlines, and situations where you have to respond quickly.
Sometimes important tasks stare you right in the face, but you neglect them and respond to urgent but unimportant things.
Don't be available all the time
Time, not money, is your most valuable asset. Invest your asset:
- Allocate time to each task you need to get done every day.
- Each task of the day should be attainable, realistic, and time-bound. And it should advance your goals for the day, week or month.
- Don't get distracted by everything others expect you to do.
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Key Ideas
The new law of productivity
High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)
Deep work vs. Shallow work
- Deep work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. Creates value.
- Shallow work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. Doesn't create value.
4 philosophies to integrate Deep Work into your life
- Monastic: maximize Deep Work by minimizing or removing shallow obligations. Isolate yourself for long periods of time without distractions; no shallow work allowed
- Bimodal: divide your time into some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leave the rest open to everything else. Reserve a few consecutive days when you will be working like a monastic. You need at least one day a week
- Rhythmic: involves creating a routine where you define a specific time period — ideally three to four hours every day — that you can devote to Deep Work
- Journalistic: alternate your day between deep and shallow work as it fits your blocks of time. Not recommended to try out first.
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Key Ideas
What's Most Important To You
"You have limited time and energy, so you need to determine what your top two priorities are at any giv...
Create An Action Plan
Take a few moments to create a plan of where you would like to see yourself in the next couple of months or years.
Align those dreams with your priorities to help you focus on making your wishes come true.
Designate Specific Time Slots For Tasks
It's important to remember to set time aside for things that truly matter to you.
Whatever it is, you won't feel fulfilled if you constantly put other things before your own happiness.