How to champion the Box of Daily Life.

Many of us start our mornings with dozens of things we need to get done, but later realize that we haven't crossed any of them off our lists. We did get stuff done, but none of the things we planned.

A balm against hectic days that pass without progress is to choose...

• Cheap satisfaction: we get immediate satisfaction from checking off the little things on our to-do lists.
• Survival instinct: going after the easy, low-hanging fruit in life probably made more sense in our history than putting things off in order to get a long-term payof...

Everything that might potentially require action must be reviewed on a frequent enough basis to keep your mind from taking back the job of remembering and reminding.

Elements of the weekly review:

• Gather and process all your stuff