20 published lessons with this tag.
No productivity or thinking system works without a reliable capture reflex. The system is not the bottleneck — the habit that feeds it is.
A rough note you actually make is infinitely more valuable than a polished note you do not.
Having more than one way to capture thoughts reduces the chance of losing important ones. A single capture tool creates a single point of failure in your thinking infrastructure.
A single inbox that you process regularly prevents thoughts from being trapped in random places. The inbox is not storage — it is a waystation. Everything enters. Nothing stays.
If processing an item takes less than two minutes, do it immediately — deferring it costs more than completing it.
Set dedicated times to process your inbox rather than handling items as they arrive. Batch processing protects cognitive depth; continuous processing fragments it.
Doing one thing at a time produces better results faster than switching between tasks.
Every time you switch tasks, you pay a recovery tax — between 10 and 25 minutes of degraded cognition while your brain reloads the previous context. This cost is invisible because you feel busy the entire time.
Setting a fixed time limit for a task sharpens focus within that window.
Reserve low-attention tasks for times when deep focus is not available.
Your mental and physical energy follows predictable patterns you can map and leverage.
Things that feel urgent are rarely the most important — urgency is a noise amplifier.
When you change contexts you must deliberately load the relevant frame of reference.
An unwritten commitment is an invitation for your future self to renegotiate. Externalized commitments become binding infrastructure — visible, trackable, and resistant to the drift that lives between intention and action.
If you cannot point to a written list you do not have priorities you have reactions.
Tracking your energy and mood on paper reveals patterns invisible from inside the experience — because you cannot optimize a signal you never measured.
Setting deadlines for decisions prevents analysis paralysis.
Effective delegation frees your highest-value attention for your highest-value work.
Use clear criteria to decide what to delegate, what to automate, and what to keep.
Every effective delegation multiplies your capacity — the cumulative effect is exponential leverage.