Tools for Thought

Sometimes “almost” isn’t good enough. A restaurant that’s almost clean isn’t much different than one that’s totally filthy, since both discourage dining. Unfinished thinking has similar consequences for taking action. A To Do list with very broadly defined tasks, like “Write article,” will create unconscious resistance to following through on them if they contain implicit [...]

[Read more →]

A friend of mine from out of town met me yesterday in a cafe, catching me at the tail end of my weekly review. When she asked what I was doing, I explained the process, and she responded, “I used to do lists, but they just turned out to be too much work. I found [...]

[Read more →]

For anyone who works at a computer daily, few skills have higher leverage over the course of a career than fast, accurate touch typing. The benefits are by no means limited to professional typists, writers and personal assistants, any more than learning to drive is only of use to chauffeurs. Typing is as much a [...]

[Read more →]

Idleness often stems more from a lack of clarity than a lack of willpower. Taking action on a vague intention always seems to take more effort than a clearly stated task. It’s best to have the task clearly stated, either to another person, on paper or on a computer, than to have it “understood” strictly [...]

[Read more →]

Yesterday, looking at a bank building, I saw a sign whose top surface was covered four-inch wires jutting upwards, acting as a bed of nails for any birds that would have otherwise landed. I’ve always disliked this “solution” to the bird problem, since it aesthetically detracts from the sign and has probably injured more than [...]

[Read more →]

Jeff Atwood recently had an interesting post questioning the value of email as a medium, echoing similar sentiments by Merlin Mann and Tantek Çelik. All of them, not to mention other A-list bloggers, seem to share the belief that an email client’s ability to collect messages indefinitely outstrips the user’s ability to attend to them. [...]

[Read more →]

Thinking about something more than once usually represents an improvement opportunity. It means that something isn’t getting captured, evaluated, acted on or consciously dismissed. Wouldn’t it be nice not have to think about the same things over and over — things that usually start with “I should . . .”? Having the same thought twice [...]

[Read more →]