Productivity

You never had control; all you had was anxiety. And when you let go of that, even a little bit, what you’re left with is one of the most powerful reasons imaginable for taking any action that feels as though it might make life more meaningful or vibrant, which is that frankly, at the end of the day, you might as well.

What feels more challenging for me right now: committing to structure or letting go of control? What might that reveal about the type of discipline I need?

The conventional strategy for subtraction is to do it by default: Procrastinate on everything that isn’t a priority. Rebel against the escalating commitments on your time. Opt out and ignore.

This is hard for me. It’s actually easier for me to do more and work more, than to stop and listen to my energy levels and inspiration and create from that place. My brain has been trained quite well under the “putting more in, means you get MORE out of it, so, ERGO! you gotta do more” model.

Instead of checking your email first thing in the morning and then getting sucked in and reacting to other people’s priorities, deal with email at the end of the day. That way, you can use your prime hours for your Highlight and other important work. You’ll probably have a little less energy at the end of the day, but that is actually a good thing

Traditional resolutions are notorious for being abandoned by February. Instead, Itzler's approach is to focus on adding one new habit per quarter. It’s a far more realistic way to create lasting change, because it allows you to really hone in on one thing at a time. Think about this, that’s 20 new habits in five years!

by fusing the domains into a single experience, new levels of integration could be achieved. for example emails, texts and calendar events with a specific person could appear in a single timeline. you could share an event, your notes on it and the contact info of the organizers in one go.