What would really solve this delivery person’s problem would be something that made the job itself easier—like a cart. As the scale of the problem grows, the delivery person should be stepping back on a regular basis to look at the bigger picture, exploring tools or methods to help get the job done at scale. Ironically, we humans tend to do the opp

In my Lifehack Tribe membership community, I host a monthly event called Accountability Buddy Speed Dating. It’s essentially a networking event where members of the Tribe can quickly meet dozens of potential buddies all at once.

Knowing that, try to reserve your Mondays and Tuesdays for your priority tasks to ensure that you’re matching your best energy to your most important tasks. That’s also why I recommend planning your week and having team meetings on Fridays. That one choice has two significant impacts. First, you’ll rest easier on the weekend, knowing that you touch

“Deliberate practice”: K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,” Psychological Review 100, no. 3 (1993): 363–406, ht​tps:/​/grap​hics8​.nyti​mes.c​om/im​ages/​blogs​/frea​konom​ics/p​df/De​liber​atePr​act​ice(PsychologicalReview).pdf/.

Once a month, I review my Someday List to see if anything has gained urgency or importance. If it has, I move that task to my to-do list. In this way, your Someday List serves as a kind of limbo for bids on your time. You get the satisfaction of getting these brain flies out of your head and putting them somewhere safe, but they don’t clog up your

Sailors understand the crucial value of planning. Talk to any seasoned sailor, and they’ll tell you horror stories resulting from a failure to plan: having equipment break and being without spare parts, running into avoidable dangerous weather, or not packing enough critical supplies, among many other scenarios. They also know that no plan can pred

The principle at work here is consolidation: allowing yourself to get into a mode of action and stay in that mode. Consolidation reduces your cognitive load because doing the same types of things takes less mental energy than constantly switching between different activities. It works. You’ll find that you can get far more accomplished and not feel

I recommend you do your weekly planning somewhere incredibly fun and upbeat, or at least in a safe space.

Feel free to cancel or reschedule appointments in light of these changing circumstances, and defer Shallow Work to preserve your deep work time. Remember, this is why you scheduled UUW time into your week—so use it!