“Don’t
 think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the 
national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, 
on this play, in this moment. That’s the process: Let’s think about what
 we can do today, the task at hand.”The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well.“Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, “Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?”We are A-to-Z thinkers, fretting about A, obsessing over Z, yet forgetting all about B through Y.

Step one: Deal with the problems right in front of you first.

When coach Shaka Smart was interviewed after his team beat North Carolina in a surprise upset last week, what did he say? He didn't focus on the buzzer beater. Or the strategy. He said his team won because " they followed the process.

productivity

Productivity

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

education

Learning & Education

problemsolving

Problem Solving

creativity

Creativity

How We Can Apply the Mindset of an Athlete to Our Own Lives

In other words, if you aren’t hungry, and if clothing, shelter, and your other basics are covered, you’re capable of being at least as happy as <a href="https://qz.com/1489332/the-brainy-obsessions-of-a-bookish-koch/">the world’s wealthiest people</a>.&nbsp;The fleeting feelings of happiness, though, don’t add up to life satisfaction. Looking back, a person who has had many happy moments may not feel pleased on the whole.The key here is memory. Satisfaction is retrospective. Happiness occurs in real time. In Kahneman’s work, he found that people tell themselves a story about their lives, which may or may not add up to a pleasing tale. Yet, our day-to-day experiences yield positive feelings that may not advance that longer story, necessarily. Memory is enduring. Feelings pass. Many of our happiest moments aren’t preserved—they’re not all caught on camera but just happen. And then they’re gone.Still, it’s worth asking if we want to be happy, to experience positive feelings, or simply wish to construct narratives that seems worth telling ourselves and others, but doesn’t necessarily yield pleasure. Meet a friend and talk it over with them—you might have a good time.&nbsp;

We think we want to be happy. Yet many of us are actually working toward some other end, according to cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics. Kahneman contends that happiness and satisfaction are distinct. Happiness is a momentary experience that arises spontaneously and is fleeting.

philosophy

Philosophy

religionandspirituality

Religion & Spirituality

travel

Travel

books

Books

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

A Nobel Prize-winning psychologist says most people don't really want to be happy

Solving problems almost always starts with ensuring you’re solving the actual problem. When the actions we should take are not obvious, or the problem is difficult, it’s easy to feel the need to do something … anything. We convince ourselves that motion is better than inaction.Movement offers shelter from failure. When you’re in motion, you feel like you’re doing something. We convince ourselves that as long as we’re in motion, we can’t fail.&nbsp;Movement feeds our ego. Motion is easy. Results are hard.Preparations are necessary but not sufficient for achieving results. The actions we take are often just preparations for what we really want to accomplish. We read a diet book instead of dieting.&nbsp;

Do Something Syndrome: Why Movement Trumps Results

Solving problems almost always starts with ensuring you're solving the actual problem. When the actions we should take are not obvious, or the problem is difficult, it's easy to feel the need to do something ... anything. We convince ourselves that motion is better than inaction. The choice, however, isn't between action and inaction.

habits

Habits

timemanagement

Time Management

business

Business

Akrasia is the state of acting against your better judgment. It is when you do one thing even though you know you should do something else. Loosely translated, you could say that akrasia is procrastination or a lack of self-control. Akrasia is what prevents you from following through on what you set out to do.

The Akrasia Effect

In the summer of 1830, Victor Hugo was facing an impossible deadline. Twelve months earlier, the French author had promised his publisher a new book. But instead of writing, he spent that year pursuing other projects, entertaining guests, and delaying his work. Frustrated, Hugo's publisher responded by setting a deadline less than six months away.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don't Follow Through on Things

When the anxiety is at its worst, I’m not present for anything. It’s as if I’m going through life with my hands in front of my face. It’s an overwhelming and devastating feeling that is very different from what I used to think anxiety was.Mental illness arises from a complex linking between one’s genes and environment, and the triggers underlying its onset are often hard, if not impossible, to pinpoint.&nbsp;When I injure my body, it’s easy to say “my calf is pulled” or “I have a stress fracture in my heel.” But if I don’t have control over my mind, I can’t help but wonder who am “I.”When this happens, I do everything I can to remind myself that mental illness is just that—an illness, affecting an organ (the brain) with extremely complex biochemical interactions. I tell myself that I would never feel guilty or blame myself for having a condition that affects my body, like the flu. I should be equally kind with my mind.

When a Stress Expert Battles Mental Illness

Last August, I was in New York City doing media spots for my book, Peak Performance . In between interviews, I went on a long run in Central Park and didn't eat or drink enough afterward. I went to meet a friend for dinner, but the place turned out to be a bar without a real kitchen.

mindfulness

Mindfulness

health

Health

mentalhealth

Mental Health

meditation

Meditation

When a Stress Expert Battles Mental Illness - Outside - Pocket

As you can see, modifying a game you’re already playing because you don’t like how it’s turning out isn’t nearly as useful as picking the right game in the first place.

Seth

Gmail is email that's intuitive, efficient, and useful. 15 GB of storage, less spam, and mobile access.

Gmail

Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose.My situation, however, is the same as that of many who are reduced to slender means through no fault of their own: every one forgives them, but no one comes to their rescue.

Seneca on The One Thing Nature Loans us That we Cannot Repay

The Roman philosopher Seneca weaved beautiful and timeless insights into his letters. Lucikly a lot of those letters survived. While old, there is a reason we still read them today. While the language and phrasing might be dated, the letters explore subjects that we still struggle with today.

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Seneca on Saving Time

Zuckerberg has repeatedly doubled down on the toxic idea that we should only have one self, one persona. That we should be the same person in all social circles, lest we be “frauds”.What allowed me to change and prosper was the freedom to grow apart and lose touch with people. It’s hard to change yourself if you’re stuck in the same social orbit. There’s a gravitational force that pulls you into repeating the same circular pattern over and over again. Breaking out of that takes tremendous force.Knowing that everything you share will be seen by all these people from your past quietly. moderates what you actually share. Becoming someone else entails experimenting and failing with new styles and ideas. Not a lot of people are so keen to premiere such vulnerable stages of their evolution in front of an audience that expects them to be that same person they always were forever. I know I wasn’t.

Growing apart and losing touch is human and healthy

I quit Facebook back in 2011 for a lot of reasons, but perhaps the most crucial was to rebel against its core mission: Connecting the world. I was over-connected with the world, acquaintances and friends from the past, and I wanted out.

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

communication

Communication

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

The unpleasant feelings outweigh the pleasant ones, and so we avoid the unpleasantness, even if we’re making our lives worse in the process.It becomes more painful not to do something than it does to do it, and that’s when the bastard finally gets done.The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid doing it.This is one (of many) ways that positive thinking can actually derail us. Most people’s approach to deep-seated procrastination is to give themselves a lot of positive self-talk:“Come on, you can do this. You’re so smart. You’re amazing. You can do anything you want to do.”But the more you talk yourself up like this, the more you attach your identity to superlatives like being the “smartest” and “most amazing,” the more any action has the ability to threaten that belief.And because it threatens your newfound belief of being this amazing, perfect little snowflake, you’re less likely to actually go do it than you were before.

Procrastination

But I don't feel like writing it down right now. So let's watch this video of a guy doing overhead barbell splits: Aaanndd, I'm suddenly motivated now. OK, let's do this! It's ironic, but for two days now, I've been procrastinating writing a post on procrastination. I've done it all.

Everything You Wanted To Know About Procrastination But Were Too Lazy to Figure Out

And yet the truth is that more often than not, techniques designed to enhance one’s personal productivity seem to exacerbate the very anxieties they were meant to allay. The better you get at managing time, the less of it you feel that you have. The allure of the doctrine of time management is that, one day, everything might finally be under control. Yet work in the modern economy is notable for its limitlessness. And if the stream of incoming emails is endless, Inbox Zero can never bring liberation: you’re still Sisyphus, rolling his boulder up that hill for all eternity – you’re just rolling it slightly faster.What is uniquely modern about our fate is that we feel obliged to respond to the pressure of time by making ourselves as efficient as possible – even when doing so fails to bring the promised relief from stress.Yet as the historian Ruth Cowan demonstrates in her 1983 book More Work for Mother, the result, for much of the 20th century, was not an increase in leisure time among those charged with doing the housework. Instead, as the efficiency of housework increased, so did the standards of cleanliness and domestic order that society came to expect ...&nbsp; So should that message you got at 5.30pm really wait till morning for a reply?

Why time management is ruining our lives

The Long Read: All of our efforts to be more productive backfire - and only make us feel even busier and more stressed

How We Can Apply the Mindset of an Athlete to Our Own Lives

A Nobel Prize-winning psychologist says most people don't really want to be happy

Do Something Syndrome: Why Movement Trumps Results

The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don't Follow Through on Things

When a Stress Expert Battles Mental Illness - Outside - Pocket

Adriana Anchidin