p 10: “Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.”
p 11: “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to anything” - Shunryu
Suzuki
p 11: Anything that causes you to overreact or underact can control you, and often does
p 15: “outcome thinking is one of the most effective means available for making wishes reality”
p 17: “stuff is anything you you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that
doesn’t belong where it is, but for which you haven’t yet determined the desired outcome and the
next action step
p 17: "Rule your mind or it will rule you” - Horace
p 18: “The key to manage all of your stuff is managing your actions”
p 19: “The beginning is half of every action” - Greek proverb
p 23: “The big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can’t do anything
about that”
p 24: Five stages of mastering workflow
(1) collect that command our attention
(2) process what they mean and what to do about them
(3) organise the results which we
(4) review as options for what we choose to
(5) do
p 41: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simple” - Albert Einstein
p 46: “The weekly review” is important to keep your mind clean :D
p 48: Three models for making action choices => I will explain the two of them because
the third has no benefits for me
The Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the moment
Context
Time available
Energy available
Priority
Threefold model for evaluating daily work
Doing predefined work
Doing work as it shows up
Defining your work
p 56: natural planning model
a) Defining principles (what are the standards and value, after which your handling) and
principles (get answers to the ‘why’ questions. Benefits: it motivates; it clarifies focus, it
expands options, it creates decision making criteria)
b) Outcome vision (clear picture of the success)
c) Brainstorming
d) Organizing (structuring the ideas of the brainstorming session)
e) Identifying next actions (allocating and reallocating physical resources)
p 61: “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” - Will Rogers
p 61: “Reactive planing model means to start planning in a different way than normal planning” =>
this ends mostly in a crisis
p 65: “If there’s no good reason to be doing something, it’s not worth doing it”
p 67: “Imagination is more important than knowledge” - Albert Einstein
p 67: “focus on something instantly creates ideas and though patterns you wouldn’t have had
otherwise”
p 68: “We notice only what matches our interests belief systems and identified contexts”
p 68: “You won’t see how to do it until you see yourself doing it”
p 70: “The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas” - Linus Pauling
p 72: “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have” - Emilie Chartier
p 72: “Only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of
his ideas is not enslaved by them” - Lin Yutang
p 105: practical reasons to gather everything before yo start processing it
helpful to have a sense of the volume of stuff you have to deal with
let you know where the ‘end of the tunnel’ is
when you have all the things gathered that need your attention, you will automatically be
operating from a state of enhanced focus and control
p 113: mind-sweep mechanism: write everything (ideas, professional stuff) on a sheet of paper
p 120: a very good diagram about processing - remember it carefully
p 122: processing guidelines
process the top item first
process one item at a time
never put anything back into ‘in’
p 122: “emergency scanning” is not processing => don’t process what you feel you should do what
you like most, because this behavior courages you to leave items unprocessed
p 142: action reminders => organizing pending items into lists of action reminders
p 149: “Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain its shortness” - Jean
de La Bruysre
p 169: “What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do” - Aristoteles
p 197: “It is often easier to get wrapped up in urgent demands of the moments than to deal with
your in-basket, E-mail, and the rest of your open loops”
p 200: “You must learn to dance among many tasks to keep a healthy balance of your workflow”
p 201: “Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it” -
Buddha
p 202: “The best place to succeed is where you are with what you have” - Charles Schwab
p 207: “When you are not sure where you’re going you’ll never knew when enough is enough”
p 212: “The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster” - Rosabeth Moss Cantor
p 216: “Luck affects everything. Let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least
expect it will be a fish” - Ovid
p 239: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking
your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting of the first one” -
Mark Twain
p 242: “Not matter how big and tough a problem may be, get rid of confusion by taking one little
step forward solution. Do something.” - Georg F. Nordenholt