The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

his aides managed time and space for him. They evaluated, in real time, whether the greatest value would be gained by continuing to talk to the person in front of him or someone else who was waiting, whether he should be here or there. This allowed Carter to let go of his time-bound cares completely, to live in the moment and attend one hundred per

But Buffett does not satisfice with his investment strategies; satisficing is a tool for not wasting time on things that are not your highest priority. For your high-priority endeavors, the old-fashioned pursuit of excellence remains the right strategy.

I’ll set a tickler, a reminder in the calendar three weeks before it’s due—that’s a week before the two weeks he needs to do it—so that he can start thinking about it and know that it’s coming up.

number of decisions per day and once we reach that limit, we can’t make any more, regardless of how important they are. One of the most useful findings in recent neuroscience could be summed up as: The decision-making network in our brain doesn’t prioritize.

A Gibsonian affordance describes an object whose design features tell you something about how to use it.

it could be said that what distinguishes experts from novices is that they know what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

there are some things that just aren’t worth your time anymore—priorities

Robert Pirsig inspired a generation to philosophical reflection—and organizing their thoughts—with his hugely popular novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, published in 1974. In a somewhat less well-known later book (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize), Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, he endeavors to establish a way of thinking about metaphysi

These chemical tags, tied to emotional events, are the reason we so readily remember important national events such as the assassination of President Kennedy, the space shuttle Challenger explosion,