Reading gone wild! How to read five books a week (or why Scott Ginsberg is my hero)

One of the most popular topics here is reading efficiently, including How to read a lot of books in a short time and A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide". Using Leveen's terminology, I have a candidates library of at least 50 books (i.e., purchased and in my bookcase), and a pre-candidates list of around 600 (kept on Amazon, but it's not perfect). So I really want to read a lot (actually, to learn a lot), but the problem is my eyes are bigger than my stomach, and I've fallen behind. This is in spite of outsourcing voice note transcription [1].

Thankfully, I came across Scott Ginsberg's post [2] Before we make our move, let’s call... where he writes in passing:

(FYI, I read five books a week.)

This was just the whack to the head [3] I needed! The essential idea I forgot? I don't need to read the whole book. D'oh! He elaborates in How to read a book (part two here):

You don’t need to read every word.
You don’t need to devour every page.
You don’t need to understand every concept.

Just get the key ideas.

(See his post for details.) I have to say, it's great to reminded of the basics, but humbling as well.


So in true Ideamatt fashion I decided to try an experiment: I would read five books, one hour per book, for five days straight to test and cement the idea. (This is really just a straightforward application of Parkinson's law, commonly "Work expands to fill the time available," a principle I've avoided before now.)

Guess what? It works. The one hour limit really focuses the mind, and makes it a challenging kind of race. To be honest I've only tried it for three days, but so far I've read:

• Time Management is an Oxymoron (thanks to reader Frank M. for the birthday present!)
  
• Organizing Your Home Office For Success: Expert Strategies That Can Work for You
  
• Hello, My Name is Scott :-)
  
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (a book I've been meaning to read for a while, but which - frankly - seemed too long for the ideas involved. Very useful book [4], though.

I hope to keep this pace up.


Does it apply equally to every book? No; some clearly are worth further study. But can it be applied to every book? Sure! An hour will still give you a good sense of the concepts, and whether the work warrants more time. (Note that this philosophy is an nice application of The 80/20 Principle, which says not all books are of the vital few. Many books - esp. time time management books at this time - are in the trivial many.)

Up for a challenge? Try it for a week and share your results! Here's a summary of the steps:

1. Choose a nice reading spot.
   
2. Block out an hour of uninterrupted time.
   
3. Calculate briefly how fast you'll need to go. A simple baseline is average time/page. For example, a 250 page book means you can only spend about 15 seconds/page! Clearly skimming skills are crucial.
   
4. Gather your supplies - timer/watch, water, book, note-taking tool.
   
5. Start your timer and dig in using your favorite reading method. I had good luck with SQ3R, though a teacher friend of mine was able to rattle off six from the top of his head.
   
6. As you read, keep focused! You are a machine, enjoying pushing as fast as necessary.

References

• [1] Matt's Idea Blog: The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow
  
• [2] And yes, he's apparently been blogging since January, 2003!
  
• [3] Check out A WHACK ON THE SIDE OF THE HEAD: How You Can Be More Creative, the Ball of Whacks (I've been having fun with them), and Von Oech's Creative Whack Pack. (Hey - how can I resist someone who uses educational playing cards? I'm actively working on a set of Personal Productivity Playing Cards, starting with a recent LinkedIn question How do I go about producing custom educational playing cards?.)
  
• [4] Here are a few good resources: Adam Richardson's Read this book: Made to Stick, lifehack.org's book discussion, and their multi-part workshop series (start with Part 1).

Got the email blues? Only three things you can do: Get fewer, Get faster, Get control

Email is a huge problem for most of us, and there are tons of ideas for dealing with it. As I continue to work with clients, I've come to believe there are really only three things you can do to master email:

• Get Fewer,
  
• Get Faster, and
  
• Get Control

Let's break them down:

Get Fewer

First, manage your incoming volume. A few suggestions:

• Send less - not every message requires a response (yes, this means not sending thank-you-only).
• Ask others to send less, including reducing CC, Forward, and "Reply All" messages.
  
• Educate (kindly) frequent senders on best practices.
  
• Get off low-value distribution lists, and move email-based subscriptions to RSS (see Move email-based subscriptions to RSS).
  
• Use other forms of communication when relevant (see When To Use Email & When Not To).

Get Faster

Second, get more efficient at your processing. And I do mean processing, not "checking." I give clients a chainsaw analogy: Your program is a powerful, but somewhat dangerous tool, and - like a chainsaw - you shouldn't fire it up just to "check" the trees. You're doing work here, not testing ones and zeros.

My main recommendation is to learn and apply a methodology like Getting Things Done. I've found these types of approaches are the most effective way to rapidly process your inbox. You learn to be decisive, spend two minutes or less per message (that means getting briefer), manage action and delegation, and get every message out of "IN" once you've dealt with it. It ain't easy, but it's crucial.

In addition take steps like learning your program's keystrokes and shortcuts (esp. Delete and Move to Folder), keeping your SPAM filter up-to-date, and setting up templates for common responses.

Get Control

Finally, you must break the habit of near-continuous checking. Most of us check email far more often than necessary, and this impacts our focus. A study by Microsoft (see Slow Down, Brave Multitasker - paper here) examined the habits of employees over two weeks, and found it took people more than nine minutes, on average, to return to primary tasks after being diverted. And they spent 10-15 minutes before returning!

Some tips to move from reactive to proactive:

• Turn off the new mail alarm. Otherwise, it’ll rip your attention away every time.
  
• Reduce the "get new mail" setting to ~once/hour.
  
• Block out specific time for processing. Depending on your job, you might be able to limit it to a few times a day (10 am, 1 pm, and 4 pm?)
  
• Consider not checking it first thing in the morning.

What do you think? Do these three cover it? And do you have any favorite tips that fit into this (or not)?


Resources

• The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your Email Before It Manages You
  
• Hacking Email: 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips
  
• Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work
  
• Process and organize your e-mail to increase productivity
  

What the heck *is* productivity all about?

A few things got me thinking about why we try to be more productive. The first was a stimulating (and emotional) discussion of value, fees, and life purpose in my recent post A conversation with Laura Stack, the Productivity Pro. Toward the end a reader brings up the important of "Why?" The second thing was Laura Stack's post How to Be More Productive: Have you become more productive or just learned how? She's clearly given it some deep thought.

Finally, early on I wrote It's not about productivity..., and I'd like to revisit the idea. So what follows are a few "Is it all about..." thoughts. No answers here, just a some starter possibilities. Your thoughts on this are very welcome.

Time? I use the term "self management" in my work (instead of the traditional "time management") because there's a limited supply of it and it can't be saved, so how can you manage it? ("Saving time" doesn't make sense either.) However, our time is extremely precious (we've been allocated a fixed amount of it, though we don't know the number) so how we spend it is crucial. (Hmmm - maybe we should talk in terms of a time budget?)

My friend Pascal Venier called me on this a while back. His response to my post Is GTD the "Extreme Programming" of Time Management? is worth a look: Now ... is GTD really about time management?

Action? OK, so if it's not about time, how about action? A central tenet of Getting Things Done is managing action. "You can't do projects, only actions" is a key concept. This relates to the psychological stress of what Allen calls incompletes or open loops - your mind only relaxes when it trusts they're being tracked and dispatched, so that they feel as if they are complete.

But this leads to asking which actions are important. I believe strongly that getting on top of everything in our lives is a critical first step, but just because we have lots of lists doesn't mean we're living our lives like we want to.

Proactive vs. reactive? In the article Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency (which my friend Bob Walsh did not like) the author says:

Scientology says that the static in our heads is caused by "engrams." In GTD the problem is stuff.

And stuff is an important piece of Allen's thinking - it's the start of much of what we need to take care of, including problems, ideas, and opportunities.

However, this seems to frame the issue in reactive terms - things coming at us. In The Instant Productivity Toolkit Len Merson talks about "being proactive in a reactive world." To him being proactive means:

meeting new challenges head-on, not procrastinating until they become crises. Being proactive means diving into your tasks knowing you are going to accomplish them well and on time. ... thinking "That's what I'm going to do *next*," not obsessing about a stack of folders on your desk and falling into despair over what you haven't done.

(You can find related thoughts here.)

Goals? That's getting there, but how do we know what to be proactive about? Goals! Yes, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a blog post on goals. (Believe me - I have over 200 goal-related references). But knowing your goals can be difficult - that's why I wrote Where are you going? Use your actions and projects to reverse engineer your goals. The reason I do this work (coming at it bottom-up) is because it enables listening to ourselves, and getting at what's important. As I commented on Jason Womack's post What would you do if...?

It might come down to listening, which is based on the principle of Making Space: The little voice that tells us what we love, what we should do, is often so quiet that we can't hear it for the noise of our modern lives. That, combined with having many more choices these days than (say) 100 years ago, can get in the way of tuning in to what's authentic to ourselves.

Choices? Aha - choices! I wrote this response to Chris Brogan post:

Choice has (at least) two implications:

1) Self-responsibility: Making conscious choices about our lives removes the excuse to be passive and then complain about it. Example: Not having an important but difficult conversation, then complaining about a relationship.

Another example: When I'm teaching clients best practices, it's *empowering*, for some of them - too much so. (Not too many, thankfully; plunking down money tends to clarify commitment.) For example, if I get my act together, I can no longer claim it's out of my hands, or it's somebody else's fault - I explicitly take responsibility. This is not necessarily comfortable initially, and may be a big change for people.

2) Things *not* chosen, i.e., Mark Forster's "closed lists" (see Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management): Deciding to do something means you've decided *not* to do something else. For example, spending time watching TV or surfing the web means not spending time with my daughter and wife.

The vital few? So yes, we have choices, and they're important. But which of those deserve our time, action, and energy? Another dead cat (and a very important book in the field) is Richard Koch's The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less. This one blew away my scribble test - lots of ideas, many life-changing. (A big thanks to reader DM for giving me a copy.) He says overall,

keep in mind that a few things are always much more important than most things. Keep the vital few in the forefront of your brain. Keep reviewing whether you are spending more time and effort on the vital few rather than on the trivial many.

This has significant implications for productivity. Because inputs and outputs are non-linear, it's possible to spend a small amount of energy on some things that give proportionally much more back. It's the core idea behind The 4-Hour Workweek, it's big, and it applies to everything - work, life, and relationships.

Finishing up When it's (literally!) all said and done, I wonder if it's all about discovering and leading the life you want. Using our precious minutes, hours, and days doing what's important in our work and lives - for me, contributing, learning, improving myself, and loving.

What do you think?

A conversation with Laura Stack, the Productivity Pro

As I announced last week [1], I'll be interviewing the top experts in the field of personal productivity, and I'm pleased to start out with a bang - I had the pleasure of talking with Laura Stack, AKA the Productivity Pro, last week.

Laura (site, blog), a very well known expert in productivity, has created a highly recognized brand, is a top rated speaker, and is the author of Leave the Office Earlier, Find More Time, and and her forthcoming The Exhaustion Cure: Up Your Energy from Low to Go in 21 Days (available May, 2008).

We talked about her business, productivity, her love of speaking, and her thoughts on starting a new practice. I hope you enjoy it!


Who to say your biggest influences were or your models, and why?

Probably Covey. I started off years ago studying Franklin Covey, of course back then it was Franklin Quest, started off with a Franklin Quest planner, but had done a lot of reading of Stephen Covey's, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, First Things First, etc, and have had a Franklin Covey Planner for years, now I use Day-Timer, so I've done some shifting over the years. Early influences were the Priority Manager seminars that were popular back in 80s, when I first started the study in this seriously.


Are you using a Paper Planner still?

I use a Paper Planner and a handheld; I am a hybrid organizer. I find the handheld extremely ineffective as a tool to capture notes and ideas, so I do still use a Day-Timer.


Who do you say your peers are?

David Allen, Julie Morgenstern. There are a few people out there who do what I do; I consider myself a professional speaker. There are people who are organizers, people who are productivity consultants, who go in and do more organizational work, people who are, such as yourself doing blogging. I have always been a speaker, started off as a speaker. So, my main emphasis is getting the message out via the spoken word. I speak about a hundred times a year, half of them corporate work and half conferences doing keynotes, breakout sessions, etc. So, I am a speaker first and an author second.


Do you still do the one-on-one coaching and consulting?

I don't do that myself, our company offers it. I offer that through other contract organizers who teach like the Paper Tiger method, who are certified in some of those others. I do it occasionally, unfortunately I am usually too expensive, I don't charge differently to do one-on-one organizing as I would for a group of a thousand in a conference, I charge for my time and my fees don't vary. So, typically an organization cannot afford to bring me in to do one-on-one work. I have still done that on occasion, I just was hired to do that for an exec at Sunoco, for example, it just depends how much is being paid and whether they have the authority to come in and have me sit by them and hold their hand.


How much do you charge?

I charge for 90 minutes $7,500, I charge $10,000 for half-a-day and I charge $12,500 for a day.


How you get clients?

I don't have to go get clients anymore.


How did you get clients when were getting started?

Oh, when I started in '92 (my book didn't come out until 2004), I just like anybody had to build the momentum in my company. I did a lot of free speaking, I spoke pretty much to whomever would listen to me, wherever they had a speech, so I did a lot of looking in the business journal, looking in the calendar section in the back and see who is having meetings, local chapters of the national associations. I would call that person and say I am a speaker and do an hour lunch there, and it was a very slow process, it's took me couple of years really to get some momentum to start getting some spin-off business, some little bit of repeat, giving some referrals, it like was anything. Marketing is the thing that really takes the time for you to get going, but I did a lot of rotary and clubs, Lion club and I just collected coffee mugs, or free lunch, $50 if they gave me that.

I just tell people, if you want to speak, speak. There are so many people are like, "Oh! I can't go and do free speeches." I did free speeches for years and I think you have to, you've got a practice, you've got to hone your craft. You've got to get out there. I also joined Career Track (?) for a few years just to get the platform time, the knowledge, the experience of the meetings, industry, to interact with audiences of various sizes and setups and to really feel comfortable on the platform. So I paid my dues working for them for a few years, and that helped as well. I did some adjunct teaching at the University of Colorado, taught some classes.

You've just got to speak, you've got to look for any opportunity to get out there and the clients will not come until you already have a pretty nice listing of folks that you have worked with before and then they say, "Okay, now I am comfortable hiring this person," people don't want to hire someone new right off then.


Do you work to keep your material fresh?

I'm just like anybody else - keep up with reading and research and blogs, and I interview all my clients. There is a lot of preparation that goes into every speech that I do. Everyone is tailored, its custom, it's their issues and situations and stories. But being perceived as an expert helps in the way that I don't have to be out there constantly looking for what others are doing, I don't really care actually what others are doing. I create my own and have my own plans, perceptions, ideas and so now I can -- when immediate calls and interviews, I can answer any question.

I don't worry about, oh, I don't have an answer for that, I always do have an answer, but I still have to work at staying fresh, and cutting edge and innovative and keep up with friends, just like anybody would. You can't ever think that you've got into the point where you know it all and that you can't learn anything and you don't have to change your material, it does get old, you can get stagnant within a year or so. Everything is always just been changing, moving. But I don't read other people's work, I never even read David Allen's Getting Things Done.


Do you worry about competition?

I do my own thing, I don't want to be influenced by others' thinking, I have my own way of thinking. I don't feel like I compete. A lot of people think, oh, I am competing with so and so. Everyone just has a little bit of a different way of doing it and fortunately there is so much business out there, I don't feel like I have to compete with anybody. I know they feel the same way. I call it'd an abundance mentality - there is so much out there that I don't worry about what anybody else is doing. I just do my own thing and it's a quite comfortable existence.


How did your book Leave the Office Earlier come about?

That work was kind of the combination of my life's work at that point. I had some self-publishing, but that was the first time that a big house publisher was interested in my work. I had been writing a newsletter every month since 1999, I just finished 100th edition of that.

I got into a discipline of writing early on, making myself write articles, getting into newspapers, business journals, magazines, etc. I would put the articles out there, just to get into the regimen of writing, the discipline of writing, and that was kind of a collection that was prepackaged - just you have to change the writing, the tone and make it all cohesive. But my study of productivity has always been much broader than others'. I was doing productivity before productivity wasn't even a topic.

So, that's where the book came about - over ten years of work and writing by then it all came together. So, I put it in ten chapters, used the word "PRODUCTIVE," with every chapter starting with the letter of that word [2]. I came up with a fun way to say it, and that's really what the publisher was interested in. It was the creativity that I brought to the quiz, and coming up with the word PRODUCTIVE in the ten chapters. But that was the hardest part of the book - I was figuring out how to make the ten chapters fit the word "PRODUCTIVE."

When I finally came up with what I thought the ten competencies of productivity were, that was a real breakthrough in terms of getting the order of the book and getting it finally written. But it was a real kind of rehash of everything I had written for the past 12 years.

Get started (your blogging is great), that's a great discipline, just to force you to think, to write, to comment, to read, to dig. That daily discipline will go far and eventually pull that all together.


What are some of the biggest factors in your success?

Well, obviously I am good. I am good on the platform, I mean that is one of the biggest one. If you want to be a speaker, there are so many ways to do this business. You can be a productivity expert, but have various ways that that manifest itself in business. So, honing and practicing - that for me was my biggest marketing tool.

Content is important - being different, innovative, and more creative, but clients really were hiring me. So it was developing relationships. I take my clients to lunch, I take time to send them gifts, books to think of them, to write them, and I would call. There was a lot of phone time in the early days, a lot of -- and of course being a productive person as I am. I was very regimented and was making 20, 30, 40 calls a day and keep a database and everyday would open it up and I would make the calls that were scheduled and it was just not a negotiable type of thing. So, there was a lot of butts in the seat, I had sat on hard work in those few first years.

So I would say just getting really good on the platform, staying in touch, building those relationships, paying your dues, spending that phone time - connecting with people and writing and staying on top of your craft and really getting out there. You can be the best speaker in the world and I was good, but if you don't do well at marketing, you will fail, that is probably the biggest factor in my success was that I did pay my dues early until it started being able to take care of itself with enough repeat business and I'd go speak somewhere and get five more, and go speak somewhere and get six more.

It was always a lot of a critical mass actually that built. Then I didn't have to do that anymore. I don't ever make phone calls anymore, but it took many years probably when my first book hit, that's when I knew I had really gotten that critical mass was, when someone else finally acknowledged I was an expert.


How long did that take before critical mass hit?

Oh, let's say 10-12 years. It's just been in the last five years that I have enjoyed this kind of freedom, but first ten years in building a business is very hard, it's a lot of work, hard work, but once you get it started and you can make it pass the first five years of business, which is when most people tank, then you're pretty good to go.

I'd say after seven years, I was pretty solid, when you make your first $100,000 and then after that it takes off, but the first $100,000 was hard work. It came by my bootstraps and once I finally started making some money then you can hire some people and then you are not sitting on the floor at midnight, putting together mailings and press kits and making copies. I have four people now, and every time I add someone else it just takes my business to another level, but I've got at a point where I don't want to grow anymore.


What's your short definition of Productive?

Productivity is very easy, it's just output per hour per worker, that's how I look at it, output per hour per worker, meaning you could have one person that works eight hours and another person that works 12 hours and the eight hour-a-day person can be more productive than 12 hour-a-day person. So, I don't look at inputs, how many hours you are on your seat, how many things you've got done, for me it's all about results produced in terms of value and impact in worth and wage. It doesn't matter if you've got 20 things done; I'd rather have you get one thing done, if that had the more importance. So, it's all about -- for me it's the value that's created with all of your work.


How do you do as much as possible to make sure clients "get it?"

I don't worry about it. I don't look at that as my job. I do the best job that I can and some people who I am sure don't get it, but I don't do follow-up types of things, I just don't have the time and most of my clients don't have the budget. I have had people occasionally, we do pre-work and then we'll do a seminar and then we'll do some post-work and I have all of these assessments, they want to do that, but I charge extra for that follow-up.

So, typically, I am not saying that I can't do it, or won't it, typically they just choose not to and I look at it as my job to make my client happy and if they want me to come in and do a one-day seminar and go away and never come back, then, that's what they are paying me to do. And I do the very-best job that I can, but I don't look at it as my responsibility to make sure that the information sticks. I try to do as much as I can, of course as a class, in terms of a behavior and we create action plans and they have an accountability partner and someone they work with after the class. So, there are some limited things you can do, but ultimately it isn't my responsibility that they want to pay me to come in on a one-year retainer and do some consulting and follow-up.

There are many who are more consultants, but I am not a consultant, I am speaker. They want me to come in for one hour, give them three tips, a little entertainment, make them laugh and make them think and I go home, and I did a good job. That's what I am paid to do.


Could you give one suggestion to my readers on improving productivity?

Well, there is so much clutter, I think, first they have to get focused and figure out what are the things that are keeping me from doing what I know I should be doing. If they are distracted all the time and can't concentrate, maybe they need to look at some attention management types of things. If they are busy and always in meetings and never have a free moment, they should look at some availability kind of management. If they can't find things and they're spending 30 minutes a day looking for stuff and they need some accessibility management. So, I mean there is no one answer for every person, that's why I address these in "Leave the Office."


What haven't I asked you that you have a good answer for?

Oh my God! That will take me eight hours to answer that question.

I think that your service is very effective because you are trying to be a cohesive kind of unifying voice out there and you are showing a lot of different perspectives and systems and tools. I think this service is important, it's valuable - "Hey, come to Matt Cornell's site and he'll summarize it out for you." You do the work so that others don't have to go out and find all these separate little independent pieces of productivity.

I think you are doing a nice job and I am happy that you are aware of my work and thank you for your interest.


References

• [1] What can you learn from the world's best productivity consultants? Let's ask!
  
• [2] Summary here: The Ten Competencies of Highly Productive People.
  

Where are you going? Use your actions and projects to reverse engineer your goals

OK, a confession: Like almost everything I've done to create and build my productivity practice, I'm doing goals wrong unconventionally :-) Almost every time management book and blog I've read recommends having written goals, reviewed regularly. For example, Zenhabits' Top 20 Motivation Hacks - An Overview lists (among others):

• #17: Post a picture of your goal someplace visible -- near your desk or on your refrigerator, for example.
  
• #16: Get a workout partner or goal buddy.
  
• #5: Visualize your goal clearly, on a daily basis, for at least 5-10 minutes.
  
• #4: Keep a daily journal of your goal.

And The Ten Part Mental Fitness Program has extensive goal-setting tips. These are great ideas.

The confession? I have no written goals. They're not on my office wall, they're not on stickies posted around my house (a fine suggestion from Order from Chaos), and I don't reflect on them during my weekly review (see Seven Questions That Will Change Your Life for a useful list [1] of questions). I have a love/hate relationship with them: I'd love to have the list (I'm sure it's helpful), but it just doesn't work for me.


Last week (Small steps to big results) I suggested that completing one tiny high-value task a day can lead to steady progress on what's important, and provides built-in end-of-the-day satisfaction. But what's important? I'm convinced that modern "bottom-up" approaches like GTD are the best way to get our lives together. But they are just the start [2].

So here's an idea to discover your goals, bottom-up: Use your self-management system to let your goals emerge from the things you've decided to spend time on. Some examples of places to look:

• Collection: The stuff entering your life says a lot about what you care about. For me, I get: many books (from readers as well as my wish list), book notes, blog ideas, many thoughts and ideas from blogs I read, as well as the personal stuff: bills, insurance, school notes, etc.
  
• Projects and Actions: This is where the rubber meets the road, and tells you most about your priorities.
  
• Delegation/Agendas: Who you spend time with is also telling. There's a saying: "You are who you spend time with," which as absolutely true. It also impacts your health and well-being [3]. (A recent revelation: I've started applying rigorously Koch's radical ideas on relationships. He really makes you think about them.)
  
• Someday/Maybe: Listen to your dreams. In The 4-Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss says "'What are your goals' is a bad question. It's not a useful one. It's hard to answer." Instead it's better to ask "What would excite me?" I love it. A few of mine: chocolate cafe, bat house, backyard habitat.
  
• Calendar & Tickler: Where have you scheduled time? This is big commitment, and worth looking at. (Your time maps [4] will tell you something, if you use them).
  
• Reading/TV: What are you letting into your brain? Reading [5] is crucial for continued mental stimulation and development, and most TV just plain sucks.
  
• Trash: This is your first line of not doing. Nuke the non-essentials.

Here are a few goals I discovered from these:

• Establishing myself as a top personal productivity consultant. Subgoals include: establishing repute (writing this blog is an on-going project), a crash course in the field (I love this word: Autodidacticism).
  
• Being a great parent. Subgoals: Staying involved in my daughter's school, reading, discussing issues with my wife, and spending a ton of time with her.
  
• Spending lots of time with my family.
  
• Financial health. Subgoals: Stay on top of bills, multiple streams of income (rentals), build a lucrative practice, save.
  
• The essentials: Food, clothing, shelter, etc.
  
• Environment & Nature. We need to stop dirtying our nest. Period.
  
• Living simply. Subgoals: Reducing unnecessary stuff, working fewer hours, outsourcing [6].
  

But how do you use these? Simple: Cut down on those that don't align, increase those that do, and keep paying attention to what yours are. Mark Forster says in Do It Tomorrow: if you want to cut down on your workload, [goals are] where you have to focus. As I said last week, Liz Davenport makes this provocative statement: You can predict where you'll be in ten years just by looking at your to-do lists. If it's only taking care of business or survival items, in ten years, you'll be right where you are!

How about you? Do you know your goals? What are they? Do you actively track them? What changes have you made in your life as a result?


References

• [1] Some reflective questions to ask during the weekly review:
  1. What will I try to improve on next week?
     
  2. What was I most proud of this week?
     
  3. What was my biggest accomplishment this week?
     
  4. What have I done to get closer to my life goals this week?
     
  5. What was hard for me this week, and why?
     
  6. What was my biggest waste of time this week?
     
  7. What did I do this week that made me ashamed?
• [2] I like Steve Pavlina's thoughts in The Essential Missing Half of Getting Things Done. He starts at the top with purpose, then details his goals (divided into need-based and purpose-based), and finally on to standard GTD projects and actions. Pavlina asserts that:

  The high level element that is missing from standard GTD is, in my personal opinion, absolutely essential. It makes no sense to blindly apply standard GTD unless you've already secured the top level elements of purpose, mission, and goals.

• [3] E.g., Spend Time with People Who Appreciate You and Who You Spend Time With Determines How You Feel.
• [4] Julie Morgenstern's made these popular. See this newsletter article. From Organizing from the Inside Out:

  [a time map] allots specific spaces in your schedule for tending to the various core activities of your life. It serves as a foundation from which to work that forces you to keep your life in balance, giving you all the time you need to accomplish your goals.

• [5] See The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow.
  
• [6] See The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow.