In daily life, we often wrestle with decisions, be it food choices or more complex matters. These choices, though equally appealing, come with trade-offs. To tackle routine decisions efficiently, establish habits like a regular lunch salad. This eliminates the need for daily choices, conserving your decision-making energy.

Mastering Everyday Choices

For unpredictable scenarios, employ the "if/then" strategy. Define rules like, "If someone interrupts me twice, I'll respond." This systematic approach streamlines responses to unforeseeable situations, ensuring swift decision-making.

If/Then Strategy for Unpredictable Choices

Complex decisions often paralyze organizations. When faced with equally attractive options and no clear answer, use a timer. Allocate a set time to deliberate. If clarity doesn't emerge, make a decision and move forward. Waiting for perfect clarity wastes time. Decisiveness fuels productivity.

The Timer Technique

Overwhelmed with choices?List them and allocate a set time for each. Make the best decision in the moment. Any decision, even imperfect, reduces anxiety and propels you forward. Overthinking stalls progress, while action brings momentum.

Minimising Decision Overwhelm

In conclusion, don't linger on indecision. Embrace imperfect choices to avoid wasting precious time seeking absolute clarity. Forward momentum is the antidote to feeling overwhelmed.Just like ordering the kale salad for lunch – maybe not the best, but it's progress, and that's what matters.

Embrace Imperfect Decisions 

Sometimes spending more time is not the answer.

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Economics

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Problem Solving

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Leadership & Management

3 Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions

I suck at math, but I don't want to be disadvantaged in real world challenges.Even in an age of smartphones, crunching numbers quickly — and getting good at it — can give you snappy, useful answers to pressing real-life math questions such as, Is this shirt a good deal? or How much should I tip my Uber driver? Here are some good mental math shortcuts to keep under your hat.

Never Bad At Math - Lie

To calculate the amount of a 20 percent tip, calculate 10 percent (or remove the last digit) and double it. Example : You have a $42.50 bill 10 percent is $4.25 and double it to get an $8.50 tip.

To sign your check in record time:

To find out how much you’ll pay for an item that’s a certain percentage off, first subtract the percent off from 100. So if it’s 30 percent off, use 70; 60 percent off, use 40, etc. Divide this number and the price by 10 and then multiply the resultant two numbers. For instance, if a $20 shirt is 60 percent off, multiply 2 by 4 for a total of $8. A $40 shirt at 30 percent off would be 4 multiplied by 7 for a total of $28 final price.If you just want to calculate the amount that’s coming off (not the final price), divide both numbers by 10 and then multiply the resulting numbers. So 60 percent <warningtag>off $120 would be 6 x 12, for a total of $72 off.</warningtag>

Use the rule of 72 to calculate how long it would take an investment to double. The rule of 72 is that an investment that earns 10 percent interest will double in 7.2 years. Use this as a starting point for calculating various interest rates and lengths of time, by dividing the number 72 by your interest rate. For instance, if you are investing at a more conservative rate of 5 percent, you’d divide 72 by 5 for a total of 15 years (rounded up) for your money to double.To figure out how long it would take your money to triple, use 115 instead of 72. So at an interest rate of 3 percent, it would <warningtag>take 38 years (115/3), for your initial amount to triple.</warningtag>

To calculate how much a month more you’ll pay in a mortgage payment for a certain increase in house price, figure roughly 6 dollars per month for every thousand dollars more in total price.Example : So for a house price that’s $30,000 more than another, you’ll pay $140 more dollars a month (for a 30-year mortgage at 5 percent interest).

To Do Fast House Math

For quick conversions between Fahrenheit and Celsius: Celcius x 2 + 30 = Fahrenheit and (Fahrenheit – 30) / 2 = Celsius.

Translate Temperatures When You Travel

Multiply any number by four quickly by doubling the number twice. Example : 106 times four is 212 plus 212, for a total of 424.To multiply by five, multiply by ten and then divide in half. Example : 250 multiplied by five could by calculated as 2,500 divided by 2 for a total of 1,250.

To Be The Fastest Calculator In Any Room

Convert an hourly wage to a salary by using the formula that $1 per hour is $2,000 per year. Example : If you make $10 per hour, that would translate to a $20,000 per year salary.Another way to compare hourly wages to a salary is to drop the three zeros of a salary and then divide by two. So a salary of $42,000 would be roughly equivalent to $21 an hour. Conversely, multiply an hourly rate by two and add three zeros to the total to figure out a salary from an hourly wage.

To Ease Your Wage Wonders

To estimate the annual cost of a daily habit, multiply to find the weekly total amount you spend (so, times 5 if it’s a weekday habit, or times 7 if it’s every day a week. Then add two zeros to that number, and divide by two. Example : A $12 a day lunch five days a week will roughly set you back a whopping $3,000. (Just don’t do it.)

Analyse The Impact Of Your Coffee Habit

To quickly and roughly figure out what number you need to make a certain average, add together how far off you were from your target in each instance. Then add that resulting number to your target average for your final chance. Example : If your scores are 90, 90, 85, and 95 and you're hoping for a total average of 89, you’d add 1+1-4+6 for a total of 4. So you’d need to make 89-4, or 85, on your final test.

Know How Hard You've To Stufy

How to calculate a tip, convert temperature quickly, and more.

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9 Shortcuts of People Who Are Good at Everyday Math

pro-cras-ti-na-tion |prəˌkrastəˈnāSHən|
The noun means the action of delaying or postponing something.
What most people don't get is that procrastination isn’t optional—it’s something they don’t know how to not do.
To understand why procrastinators procrastinate so much, the above image ⬆️ will show you a non-procrastinator’s brain.

Avoid procrastination

The Rational Decision-Maker in the procrastinator’s brain coexistz with a pet—the Instant Gratification Monkey ⬆.This would be fine—cute, even—if the Rational Decision-Maker knew the first thing about how to own a monkey. But unfortunately, it wasn’t a part of his training and he’s left completely helpless as the monkey makes it impossible for him to do his job.

Monkey Business

The Instant Gratification Monkey is the last creature who should be in charge of decisions—he thinks only about the present, ignoring lessons from the past and disregarding the future altogether, and he concerns himself entirely with maximizing the ease and pleasure of the current moment.

Steer The Ship

Instant Gratification Monkey doesn’t understand the Rational Decision-Maker any better than the Rational Decision-Maker understands him. He thinks why would we continue something when we could stop, which would feel better?Why would we practice that instrument when it’s not fun? Why would we ever use a computer for work when the internet is sitting right there waiting to be played with? He thinks humans are insane.

I'm The Captain

In the monkey world, he's got it all! He eats when he's hungry, sleeps when tired and doesn't try anything difficult, making him a successful Instant Gratification Monkey. The problem for the procrastinator is that he happens to live in the human world, making the Instant Gratification Monkey a highly unqualified navigator. The Rational Decision-Maker, who's trained to make rational decisions and not to deal with competition over the controls, doesn’t know how to put up an effective fight. He just feels worse about himself the more he fails.

Wait, Who's The Captain?

It’s a mess. And with the monkey in charge, the procrastinator finds himself spending a lot of time in a place called the Dark Playground.The Dark Playground : For us this could be defined as a place where leisure activities happen when they're not supposed to be happening, and we know it. It's a place to play!

You're The Captain?

It’s a mess! The Procrastinator plays but doesn't have fun because it’s completely unearned and the air is filled with guilt, anxiety, self-hatred, and dread.Sometimes the Rational Decision-Maker puts his foot down and refuses to let you waste time doing normal leisure things, and since the Instant Gratification Monkey sure as hell isn’t gonna let you work, you find yourself in a bizarre purgatory of weird activities where everyone loses.<a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html#"> </a>And the poor Rational Decision-Maker just mopes, trying to figure out how he let the human he’s supposed to be in charge of end up here again.

NO Work-Done Zone

As it turns out, there’s one thing that scares the shit out of the Instant Gratification Monkey.The red thing here is The Panic Monster, he's dormant most of the time, but he suddenly wakes up when a deadline gets too close or when there’s danger of public embarrassment, a career disaster, or some other scary consequence.

The Escape

The Instant Gratification Monkey is terrified of the Panic Monster. It explains why the procrastinator who can’t write a blog's first line over a 2-week span suddenly takes all-nighters, fights exhaustion, and writes this Deepstash article. Why else would an extraordinarily lazy person begin a rigorous workout routine other than a Panic Monster freakout about becoming less attractive?The UNlucky procrastinators don’t even respond to the Panic Monster in desperate moments and end up running up the tree with the monkey, entering a state of self-annihilating shutdown.

Panic Shook Monkey

Of course, this is no way to live, something has to change. Here are the main reasons why:1) It’s unpleasant. Panic isn’t fun for anyone. And the too much time in the Dark Playground could be spent with a well-earned leisure with a schedule instead.2) The procrastinator ultimately sells himself short. He ends up underachieving and fails to reach his potential, which eats away at him over time and fills him with regret and self-loathing.

What To Change

3) The Have-To-Dos may happen, but not the Want-To-Dos. Most Procrastinators, even with the Panic Monster, get work done, but goals like exercise, healthy slow meals, hobbies or even a career change, are the important ones for us, but usually ignored by the Panic Monster.

Work Your Dreams

The full story about why procrastinators routinely ruin their own lives.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Cartoon Guide of Why Procrastinators Procrastinate 

The road to happiness isn’t always easy, nor does it really have one final destination. Joy exists on a spectrum. A lack of contentment is one of the most common overarching themes people bring up in therapy.While it’s best to seek tailored advice from a therapist for yourself, it can be helpful to see just how therapy has helped people with this particular issue.

Am I Happy?

“The best advice I learned is that it is OK if you’re not OK,” This was so powerful because we spend so much time resisting negative emotions and feeling as though we need to be happy always. In actuality, sadness and anger are totally normal and appropriate in certain situations.

You Don't Always Have To Be Okay

Whatever decision you make, just line yourself up with it.This helps take the stress out of decision-making by learning that you could be satisfied with any other decision. As long as you are fully on board with your reasons — and could have your own back whatever the outcome.

Trust Yourself

Therapists look at you in your roles as employee or friend and also as humans. And we have to accept that sometimes we will do things wrong and those times we won’t feel our best.We're allowed to occasionally fail, but pick yourself up and adopt a growth mindset and find joy in the process of its learning. We need to know that we’re all just trying our best.

Accept That You'll Mess Up Sometimes 

Sometimes we spend a lot of time judging people over petty matters and casual opinions. But if you think about it, life is too short to hold grudges and hate people.You could bottle up bitterness about people until you realize negativity is not worth holding in.

Let Go Of Judgement Over Things That Don't Matter

Each of your mornings, pretend and seek being happy when you get to work or school. You would force the creation of vibrant energy that continues to fill positivity in your day and each person who interacts with you. This in turn will make you feel better.

Start Your Day With A Good Attitude Towards Others

It seems pretty obvious, but it is so easy to put your own happiness on the back burner due to external stressors like work, relationships or just life as a whole. Don't say "I'll worry about myself later", learn to consider it NOW. People think they can have full control over other peoples’ feelings, but note the importance of letting that go. You can only control your own feelings, which means you can control the actions that trigger those feelings. Don’t ignore what makes you happy, or else you’re holding yourself back.

Take Your Own Happiness Serio

If you need to take care of others, make sure you give time and energy to focus of yourself as well, and prioritize self-care routines. “The more you assure yourself of your happiness, existent or non, you eventually will experience the happiness you conjured up.”

Self-care Is Not Selfish

Therapist remind you to consider that you're in control of your happiness and your life, and always use your voice no matter what.Do not settle for less than what you deserve. If you want more out of life, you can and have to make it happen.

Speak Up For ourself 

And again, the more you assure yourself of your happiness, existent or non, you eventually will experience the happiness you conjured up. Practice gratitude and notice the small things that you can appreciate like your food tasting great, car looking squeaky clean or workday being good. Doing this on a daily basis has allows you to focus on the many reasons to be happy.

Fake It Till You Make It

I'm a therapist and these are some precious learnings for everyone

Keep this wisdom from therapists tucked away for when you need a boost.

11 Golden Pieces Of Happiness Advice People Learned In Therapy

“Money is not going to solve all of your problems, but it’s going to solve all of your money problems.”“Money is how we transfer wealth. Money is social credits. It is the ability to have credits and debits of other people’s time.”“Money buys you freedom in the material world. It’s not going to make you happy, it’s not going to solve your health problems, it’s not going to make your family great, it’s not going to make you fit, it’s not going to make you calm. But it will solve a lot of external problems.”“Making money is not a thing you do—it’s a skill you learn.”

Money vs Wealth

I’ve learned a few things, and some principles. I try to lay them out in a timeless manner, where you can figure it out for yourself. Because at the end of the day, I can’t quite teach anything. I can only inspire you and maybe give you a few hooks so you can remember.

“If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.”“Money is not the root of all evil; there’s nothing evil about it. But the lust for money is bad.”“Lusting for money is bad for us because it is a bottomless pit. It will always occupy your mind. If you love money, and you make it, there’s never enough. There is never enough because the desire is turned on and doesn’t turn off at some number.”“You make money to solve your money and material problems. I think the best way to stay away from this constant love of money is to not upgrade your lifestyle as you make money.”

Despising Wealth

“You don’t get rich by spending your time to save money. You get rich by saving your time to make money.““Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP.”“Usually, the real wealth is created by starting your own companies or even by investing.”“Without ownership, your inputs are very closely tied to your outputs.”“Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. It is much more about understanding than purely hard work. Yes, hard work matters, and you can’t skimp on it. But it has to be directed in the right way.”

Building Wealth

“I’m always ‘working.’ It looks like work to others, but it feels like play to me. And that’s how I know no one can compete with me on it.”“My motivation has shifted from being goal-oriented to being artistic.”“Creating businesses and making money are now more of an ‘art.’““Whether in commerce, science, or politics—history remembers the artists.”“I’m just playing, for sixteen hours a day. If others want to compete with me, they’re going to work, they’re going to lose because they’re not going to do it for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.”“I got to combine my vocation and my avocation.”

Work as Play

“All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.”“Value your time. It is all you have. It’s more important than your money. It’s more important than your friends. It is more important than anything.““When you find the right thing to do, when you find the right people to work with, invest deeply. Sticking with it for decades is really how you make the big returns in your relationships and in your money.”

Time & Compounding

“Any end goal will just lead to another goal, lead to another goal. We just play games in life.““When you grow up, you’re playing the school game, or you’re playing the social game. Then you’re playing the money game, and then you’re playing the status game. These games just have longer and longer and longer-lived horizons. At some point, at least I believe, these are all just games. These are games where the outcome really stops mattering once you see through the game.”

Beyond the Games

“Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.”“Once you can solve your money problems, either by lowering your lifestyle or by making enough money, you want to retire.”There are multiple ways to retire:<ul><li>“One way is to have so much money saved that your passive income (without you lifting a finger) covers your burn rate.”</li><li>“A second is you just drive your burn rate down to zero—you become a monk.”</li><li>“A third is you’re doing something you love. You enjoy it so much, it’s not about the money.”</li></ul>

Retirement

“Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence and you’re accountable on your output, as opposed to your input—that’s the dream.”“My old definition was ‘freedom to.’ Freedom to do anything I want. Freedom to do whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like. Now, the freedom I’m looking for is internal freedom. It’s ‘freedom from.’ Freedom from reaction. Freedom from feeling angry. Freedom from being sad. Freedom from being forced to do things. I’m looking for ‘freedom from,’ internally and externally, whereas before I was looking for ‘freedom to.’“

Freedom

“All the real scorecards are internal.”“The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone.”“Training yourself to be happy is completely internal. There is no external progress, no external validation. You’re competing against yourself—it is a single-player game.““We are such social creatures, we’re externally programmed and driven. We don’t know how to play and win these single-player games anymore. We compete purely in multiplayer games.”

Single-Player Game

“‘I don’t have time’ is just another way of saying ‘It’s not a priority.'”“If something is your number one priority, then you will do it. That’s just the way life works. If you’ve got a fuzzy basket of ten or fifteen different priorities, you’re going to end up getting none of them.”“The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse.”“Health, love, and your mission, in that order. Nothing else matters.”“There are three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do.”

Priorities & Big Decisions

“If you cannot decide, the answer is no. And the reason is, modern society is full of options.““One of the things I’m trying to get rid of is the word ‘should.’ Whenever the word ‘should’ creeps up in your mind, it’s guilt or social programming. Doing something because you ‘should’ basically means you don’t actually want to do it. It’s just making you miserable, so I’m trying to eliminate as many ‘shoulds’ from my life as possible.”“Intentions don’t matter. Actions do. That’s why being ethical is hard.”“Impatience with actions, patience with results.”

Choices & Actions

“Everyone makes it up as they go along. You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, and discarding as you see fit. Figure it out yourself, and do it.““There is no endpoint to self-awareness and self-discovery. It’s a lifelong process you hopefully keep getting better and better at. There is no one meaningful answer, and no one is going to fully solve it unless you’re one of these enlightened characters.”“The hardest thing is not doing what you want—it’s knowing what you want.”

Know Yourself

“You can only achieve mastery in one or two things. It’s usually things you’re obsessed about.”“All you should do is what you want to do. If you stop trying to figure out how to do things the way other people want you to do them, you get to listen to the little voice inside your head that wants to do things a certain way. Then, you get to be you.”“To make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something.”“Figure out what you’re good at, and start helping other people with it. Give it away. Pay it forward."

Find Your Passion & Be The Best

“I think every human should aspire to being knowledgeable about certain things and being paid for our unique knowledge.”“Specific knowledge is sort of this weird combination of unique traits from your DNA, your unique upbringing, and your response to it. It’s almost baked into your personality and your identity. Then you can hone it.”Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion.”

Specific Knowledge

“‘Productize’ and ‘yourself.’ ‘Yourself’ has uniqueness. ‘Productize’ has leverage. ‘Yourself ‘ has accountability. ‘Productize’ has specific knowledge. ‘Yourself ‘ also has specific knowledge in there. So all of these pieces, you can combine them into these two words.“Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.”

Productize Yourself

“The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very, very fundamental level.”“The best mental models I have found came through evolution, game theory, and Charlie Munger.”“Mental models are really just compact ways for you to recall your own knowledge.”“Evolution, thermodynamics, information theory, and complexity have explanatory and predictive power in many aspects of life.”

Mental Models

“The means of learning are abundant—it’s the desire to learn that is scarce.”“Real knowledge is intrinsic, and it’s built from the ground up.”“If you’re a perpetual learning machine, you will never be out of options for how to make money. You can always see what’s coming up in society, what the value is, where the demand is, and you can learn to come up to speed.”“If you want to make the maximum amount of money possible, if you want to get rich over your life in a predictable way, stay on the bleeding edge of trends and study technology, design, and art—become really good at something.”

Learning

“Reading (learning) is the ultimate meta-skill and can be traded for anything else.”“Read originals and read classics.”“Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.”“Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contemporaries and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval.”“Read what you love until you love to read.”“Read enough, and you become a connoisseur. Then you naturally gravitate more toward theory, concepts, nonfiction.”

Reading

A list of powerful statements that give you a perspective if you haven't read Naval's tweets yet. If you have, read it once again for newer ideas :)

Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait we are born with. These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn. So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like? Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval's wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn't a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval's own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.

books

Books

Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait we are born with. These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn. So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like? Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval's wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn't a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval's own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.

Eric Jorgenson is an entrepreneur, writer, and investor. He is on the founding team of Zaarly, and has been publishing online since 2014. His blog has educated and entertained over a million readers.Eric is on a quest to create (and eat) the perfect sandwich. He tweets at @ericjorgenson and publishes new pieces and projects on ejorgenson.com/blog

Eric Jorgenson

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

In an economy, Pareto Optimal state when no further changes in the economy can make one person better off without at the same time making another worse off. Named after Italian economist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilfredo_Pareto">Vilfredo Pareto</a> , the idea simply refers to situations where you can (or can’t) improve something without trade-offs.Consider designing a car where you care about speed and safety.<ol><li>You have one design that’s fast but dangerous.</li><li>Another that is slow and safe.</li><li>A third that both moves like a tortoise and has the tendency to spontaneously catch fire.</li></ol>

Getting Better Without Getting Worse

How should you compare these three designs? The third option is obviously worse than the first two - it's slow and dangerous. But between the other two is a question of values. Maybe a race car driver would prefer faster at the cost of some safety. Maybe the soccer mom wants safety over speed.This is the idea of Pareto efficiency in a nutshell. A car design would be Pareto efficient if there’s no other design that allows you to get more speed or safety without getting less of the other.

Comparing Trades

What if there are more designs than the presented three? Such possibilities exist in some situations, surely with habits and situations. Here, putting them all on a graph, we can see that any of the ones on the inside of the frontier are bad choices. Why? Because there’s always a car that’s somewhat faster or safer without making sacrifices. There must always be something better, an ideal possibility, regardless of it's application in reality.

Efficiency Frontier

Efficient frontiers reveal a general pattern. When you’re below the frontier, you can always improve simply by optimizing your choice. You can make a better choice by just pick an option that has more of what you want.When you’re on the frontier, however, the only way to make the situation better is by deliberately making something else worse.

Patterns Of Trade

Let's say you plot all your schedules and leisures in a graph, it shows all your productive possibilities, time allotment, and situations of good work and sudden work.Now, is your situation is Pareto efficient? If we’re below the frontier, improvements is needed. We might choose to get more done without increasing our hours. The focus should be on trying to shift to a less wasteful situation.But if you're on the frontier, the way to improve is by accepting trade-offs. While pursuing an ambitious career move, accept that this has working nights and weekends.

Productivity Frontier

In engineering, new inventions promise faster and safer cars than what exist today. The frontier can shift.In your work, there’s always the possibility of radical changes that might break the current frontier. Maybe you find a technique that lets you get much more done in less time than usual.Innovating to push the frontier forward is good. But such radical improvements are much harder to come by than simply reorganizing among known alternatives.

Innovating Changes

If you're on the frontier, here are a few guidelines<ul><li>You’ve read and applied a lot of productivity advice, yoyre closer to the frontier and one who doesn’t even keep a to-do list is probably far from it.</li><li>When you look in your schedule, there aren’t a lot of things you could easily cut . If your day is full of activities you'd do more of, you’re on a frontier. If you find it with a lot of waste, there may be potential for easy wins.</li><li>Do efforts cause setbacks in other areas of life? When you pursued new ambitions and they came at a cost of important things, you’re closer to the frontier.</li></ul>

Are You On The Edge?

If you're far from edge, optimize. Treat each element in isolation and improve it.Want to improve your work? Just reorganize and get more done!If you're on the productive frontier, improvement comes from trade-offs. Would you rather have a clean house or more time to work on your project? Like whack-a-mole, investing more time in one thing, and losing time for another. You switch trying to get it all done.Be explicit about trade-offs. Stop and think about what you really care about and what you’re not willing to sacrifice. And it releases you from the guilt of trying to do everything.

Optimize Options

We all want to do everything, and feel guilty when we miss out on some. But.. 

Striving to eliminate waste is good. But eventually you'll reach a point where hard choices are needed to do better.

Can You Get More Done Without Making Sacrifices?

Content on max-ing motivation and productivity is everywhere. You probably have a mental list of all the platitudes or hacks. Motivational quotes trick us into feeling like we’ve accomplished something.Then why do we have days when we check off items from To-Do's and days when we just can’t get ourselves out of bed on time? And when we do get motivated, why is it so hard to keep it up?

Did you read platitudes today?

Author Robert McKain quoted “Action precedes motivation.”, but we always read that motivation is what makes us act. So what is it? So should I wait for that drive to get stuff done, or not?There exists an elaborate process of brain activity that pushes you to pursue goals YOU REALLY WANT TO ACHIEVE and the performance tasks that are demanded from you irrespective of interest.

Patience or Impulse?

Having resolutions and not following through is not because you didn't have the time. It's the Neurochemistry of your Motivation & Reward Systems.Motivation is <ul><li>A complex process in the brain</li><li>Involves multiple brain regions</li><li>Several Pathways</li><li>Release of Neural Messengers (Neurotransmitters like Dopamine)</li></ul>

80% of NY Resolutions Fail??

Dopamine (DA) is synonymously used with happiness and reward. It helps feel pleasure and relays 'motivational salience'. Motivational Salience means DA<ol><li>Indicates positive rewarding stimuli and </li><li>Responds to negative non-rewarding stimuli like stress</li></ol>This means, that both external environment and mood play a role in your drive to act.

Craving and Prediction of Rewards

DA is released when we work towards something we think is rewarding - a video game or desire for something tasty. DA is released while predicting and craving rewards, not so much while experiencing it. The process : <ol><li>Release in Planning Network in Pre-frontal Cortex (does most of the thinking)</li><li>Release in Motivation Generating Network in Striatum</li></ol>Parts of the striatum read motivational variables & push you to act on them. This can sometimes go awry - depending on the path and timing of this DA release, you may feel motivated to carry on a task like reading a book or you just don’t feel like it.

Quick - Think of cheesecake!

“I only write when inspiration strikes, Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning.”

Reward/Incentive - achievability of a task and the perceived pleasure/reward from it decides your motivation levels. But the aim is to conquer your goals without waiting for that drive. So what else?<ul><li>Indulge in Challenges/ Competition: Activity of Glutamine and Glutamate determines motivational stamina (our ability to continue a difficult task)</li><li>Unexpected Rewards: Finding money on your walking path one day, will raise your hopes of finding more.</li><li>Habit: Once you start acting on those goals/tasks, a routine will act as a cue for your motivation.</li></ul>

What will boost my motivation?

Ways you can consciously increase and sustain your motivation : <ul><li>Anticipation of Rewards: Visualize a completed task and act towards it, it activates the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC)</li><li>Record your Progress: Track your progress and accomplishments while taking small steps</li><li>Health & Intake: Regular exercise can remodel your entire reward system, allowing increased dopamine release and availability. </li></ul>

Purposeful Self-Motivation

Something we need to know the science of before we blame ourselves for unproductivity. 

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Science & Nature

Finding Motivation the Neuroscience Way

A new phone and repeated Operating System crashes is similar to a To-Do LIST (TDL) in your life.To-Do lists compel you to make promises of tasks that have to be done by dawn, making the undone tasks seem larger in size and longer in time. This repeats, often a cycle leaving the feeling on NOT GETTING ENOUGH DONE even though To-Do Lists are supposed to make you feel more productive.

Checkboxes need Promises

TDL in life is like running it on Windown 95. We need to shed the stress and toxic guilt of not checking off boxes.You'll find using schedule builders to make a weekly timeboxed calendar instead of relying on a to-do list is the right way to go. But why?<ol><li>To-Do Lists Perpetuate Harmful Self-Stereotypes</li><li>To-Do Lists Lead to Distraction</li><li>To-Do Lists Destroy the Fun in Life</li><li>The Best To-Do List is One you Make with a Schedule Builder</li></ol>

I love my TDL!

Time management practices, like any tool comes down to how it's used. A hammer can be used to build a house or bash someone’s head. With using to-do lists, getting tasks onto a piece of paper, or into an app, is a good thing. You start the workday with your to-do list, checking off boxes, maybe the wrong way to use this tool.It's a broken Operating System and you've got to update it. Here's why.

Broken OS? My Life?

Isn't it easier to add things to your TDL than to actually do them?Not finishing them, we'd blame ourselves and our inability. But this negative self-talk reinforced a kind of stereotype that makes it less likely to accomplish goals.Long-term adherence to a new set of actions necessitates seeing ourselves differently. Behavior change requires identity change. If you don't want to procrastinate, don't make promises to yourself you'll break, be indistractable.

To-Do Lists Perpetuate Harmful Self-Stereotypes

Having constant reminders of what you didn't do, cements a self-stereotype. You'll start to see yourself differently, for weeks or months.Don't stick to the cycle of "I'll finish it tomorrow, what's one more day?". The narrative will slowly change from , from"I'm not good with deadlines" (what we do) to "I must have a short attention span" (who we are).We begin to see ourselves as the problem and buy into a self-fulfilling prophecy, like from being 'easily distracted' to 'bad at managing time'.

I'll do it tomorrow, it's fine.

I swear by To-Do Lists on my Post-Its, only to realize I plan more than I can execute. Keep it time-bound and task-oriented, rather than a list of checkboxes. 

It’s time to shed the constant stress and toxic guilt of not checking off enough little boxes on your to-do list.

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