The guidelines in this document serves a few purposes:
- 1). Help me keep the good habits.
- 2). Remind me of the good practices I want to do (so I can gradually internalize them into my daily routine).
- 3). Track the habits or practices I'm experimenting.
The ultimate purpose is to help me establish good habits in order to make the best of my life.
Review this document every two weeks (i.e., twice a month). Update the document (i.e., add the new ones I've learned and remove the old ones I find ineffective) if needed.
Specifically:
- 1). For mental models, review them and reflect if I am following them.
- 2). For habits, review them and reflect if I'm following them, and update them if needed.
在文章《巴菲特：越有闲，越有钱》(原文：Warren Buffett: "Really Successful People Say No To Almost Everything")中，巴菲特安排事务优先级的三个步骤：
- 1). 列出排名在前25的目标。
- 2). 选出前5个。
- 3). 把剩下的20个没有选中的目标放在"不惜一切代价也要避免"的清单上。
- "不管怎样，这些事情都不应该引起你的注意，除非你已经成功地完成了前5个目标。"
原因：
- 对我们的时间真正构成威胁的，...是那些"披着羊皮的狼"——这些活动让我们感觉自己在努力工作，但最终并不能改变现状。
- 优先化的真正挑战在于说"不！"
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Determine your true values. When you prioritize without having clear values, your goals often end up feeling empty. Without your own north star, the goals you set are often the result of the values of the cultures you have previously been in. Therefore, your goals aren't truly your goals. I first learned about value setting in Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decision-making.
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Determine your true goals. Without setting clear goals, your daily priorities become overwhelmed with urgent tasks that have a short-term payoff that make you feel good. Having clear values-based goals keep you focused on what matters short-term and long-term.
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Set aside time for prioritization. I recommend setting aside the following blocks in your calendar as a bare minimum: 15 minutes daily, 1 hour weekly, 3 hours quarterly, 1 day yearly.
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Make a list of everything you have to do. Getting it out of your head and onto paper is cathartic, and it gives you the fodder for the rest of the steps. I learned the power of this step from David Allen's Getting Things Done.
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Circle the top 20% of priorities that will give 80% of the results. This is where you separate the wheat from the chaff. It's where you rise above information overwhelm and get perspective on what really matters and can move the needle.
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Practice the 80/20 Rule like you would any other skill. Applying the 80/20 Rule doesn't just mean asking yourself, "What's most important?" and then moving on. Prioritization is a skill. By learning and then using different mental models such as the bottleneck analysis, ICE method, or the critical path approach, you get different ways of seeing your priorities. Every time you set your priorities is an opportunity to practice becoming better at prioritization.
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Identify the single most important priority. The 80/20 Rule is fractal. Meaning that within each 80/20 there is another 80/20. So, if you narrow down a list of 25 priorities to five priorities, you can then apply the 80/20 Rule again to focus on the one priority that gives you 80% of the results of the five priorities. I learned the power of narrowing down priorities another level via The One Thing.
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Do your "one thing" first. When our day starts, we have the most energy and the least distractions. This makes it the perfect time to tackle the hardest, most important activity. If you leave your one thing for later in the day, it will probably not get done on that day. I learned about managing my days based on my energy levels in The Power Of Full Engagement.
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Collect and measure metrics primarily on your "one thing." The mind loves metrics, especially public metrics. This is why social media platforms can so effectively train us to maximize our followers, likes, and comments. When these vanity metrics increase, we feel like we're making progress and doing important work. But, at the end of the day, if you run a business, what matters more is tracking profit first. If you run a non-profit, what matters more is improving the world. If you are trying to reduce loneliness, what matters more is how many high quality interactions you have with close friends. My business changed overnight when I took the time to identify the few metrics that really mattered and then focused religiously on them. Once you do this, your mind automatically and subconsciously thinks about maximizing these important metrics rather than vanity ones.
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Put everything else on your "avoid-at-all-cost" list. Just as Buffett suggests you do.
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Create a pre-mortem for your "avoid-at-all-cost" list. Here's the key… the reality is that it takes a ton of energy and discipline not to do certain items on your "avoid-at-all-cost" list. If you are not deliberate, you will likely fall into old habits. To make sure this doesn't happen, I recommend doing a pre-mortem. With a pre-mortem, you envision your day and ask yourself, "Let's assume I fall into old habits and get distracted. What was the cause?" By being aware of potential distractions before they happen, we drastically increase the odds of avoiding them.
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Practice saying no. Similar to how applying the 80/20 Rule is a skill, so too is saying no. The skill is recognizing areas where we should say no, but don't and then devising a solution for each situation that actually works.
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Get both accountability and coaching. In my experience, I often resist the things that are most important, because they require me to confront my fears and self-sabotaging beliefs. Therefore, I always operate more effectively when I share my priorities with others every day and every week, and when a coach forces me to be brutally honest with myself and gives expert feedback. Accountability helps me put my foot on the accelerator. Coaching helps me remove my other foot from the brake.
Parkinson's law: If you don't set a deadline, the work will take as much time as you provide.
Nowadays people like the idea of "multi-tasking" and, in my opinion, in many situations, multi-tasking is needed. But people should not forget the importance of focusing on one task and get it done.
Avoid distraction, especially social media. Try to do "deep work" [1].
When you are working on a goal, make sure all your actions cooperate with and strengthen, rather than conflict with and thus weaken, each other, to produce a greater power than doing them separately.
那些让我很担心、焦虑、害怕的事情，是阻碍我正常生活的事情，与其一味逃避它们，不如正视它们。所以我需要持续地关注这些事情。
Many times people brag about how many books they read in a year. But finishing reading the books doesn't mean the books help you improve your life. You must integrate what you have learned from the books into your daily life. Simply put: USE THEM. So what really counts is the number of books you have actually used.
You can't manage your time. What you need to do is manage your energy. [2]
学习自微信公众号"六格拉底"的《三十五岁必死之七：最应警醒的是这种边界感》：
明白了阈值是多少，那么在阈值范围内的事，就可以相对自在从容地对待之，所以说月薪八千和一万二没有差别；也就可以做好随时突破阈值的准备，比如突然有了一份工作的薪金高到可以让你买得起房，那就不要再唧唧歪歪啦。
首次知道这个字眼，也许是未到那个岁数，我并没有多大反应。再次听到，是关于疾病的一个譬喻。假如人每天吃一百块糖就要得糖尿病，那么在九十九块之内，你可以撒了欢地吃；可一旦你吃到一百块得了糖尿病，以后别说降到九十九块没一点用，就是少吃六十六块都恢复不了健康。
有了阈值思维，你就不再把数字当作匀速游戏，有时候两个数值相差好几百几千都没事儿，有时候仅仅差一个点，就再也悬崖勒不了马。这样的话，反倒可以节省你的许多心力，生活中的大部分数据，大可不必时时处于算计状态；而那个关键的临界点，怎么在意都不过分。
核心：要有"价值"和"差"。这样才能产生势能。
- 如果你只是阅读所有人都能阅读到的东西，那么你不会比别人做得更好。
学习自微信公众号"六格拉底"的《三十五岁必死之七：当二八定律变为二和九十八》：
有的时候你自命不凡侃侃而谈，以为自己表达的东西很有价值，但如果知道自己发言所针对的人群，已经具备了跟你同样的见识，人家掌握的东西比你还要深刻有趣，你那些眉飞色舞说出来的内容其实了无新意老生常谈，就应该学会及时地闭嘴。这是只有价值没有差的情况。
有的时候你自我感觉鹤立鸡群，高处不胜寒的落寞让你有了独孤求败的感觉，而事实上只是周围所处的环境太LOW了，你依然是井底之蛙中的一员，仅仅蹦高了一点点于是看到的天大那么一圈而已，就应该警醒让自己生活在一群二傻子窝里毫无快乐可言，赢得这些二杆子的赞美和艳羡毫无成就感可言。这是有了差但没有价值的情况。
- 学习"能让你在10年或20年后变得更聪明的东西"。
- 学习长期有效的"基础技能"。这些基础技能在长远的时间跨度中会形成复利效应。
- "结硬寨，打呆仗"：把不懂的知识点扎扎实实地攻克下来(Understand and fix; not work around)。看上去花费了更多的时间，但其实可以让自己的知识体系真正地融会贯通，让自己在一个长期的时间跨度中的学习能力越来越好。
- 4.1. Do morning warm-up on the balcony. The purposes are:
- Get daily sunlight exposure. [3]
- Stretch my body from the whole night sleep to prepare for the day.
- 4.2 Try to stand more during work. [3]
- 4.3 Food & drink:
- Drink more water. [3]
- Avoid as much added sugar as possible.
- Do not consume too much carbo-hydrates.
- Eat more vegetables.
- Eat more healthy protein (such as white meat and eggs).
- 4.4 Try to avoid the distraction by cellphones. [3]
- 4.5 Build up a ritual (reading books) before night sleep. The purposes are:
- Improve the sleep quality during night.
- Make time for reading.
- 4.6 Start to act if I find I spend too much time in (over)thinking. [3]
- Overshoot a goal from time to time. (See this article)