Something to reflect on:

Our brain craves focus.

When it is focused, it is happy, still, powerful.

But a focused brain is a rarity in today’s world.

What do you do to keep your brain focused?

This post is hilarious:

Actually, You Should Wake Up at 4:12 a.m.—Don’t Ask Me Why, It Just Sounds Right—and Nine Reasons We Should Cyberbully People Who Wake Up Later Than That

If we did go back to sleeping as much as we need to, as much as we did a century ago, then that would cause a huge recession as people would consume an hour less every day.

In other words: If our physical needs were met, it would cause an economic crisis.

Once again, a short-term problem (economic crisis) stands in the way of long-term progress (wellbeing).

What we believe in, and in fact one of the two key messages from our book #EffectividadKENSO.

“Become A Scientist Of Yourself”

“Because of the need for being more professional, more polished, more branding for your company, for your business, for your organization, there are more virtual backgrounds that are being created,” Golden says. “It helps you look more credible, trustworthy.”

I have to disagree here. Using a virtual background makes you look less professional and less polished, unless you use a proper green screen and good lighting. In most cases, you’ll look more profesional and polished if you simply fix and arrange what’s behind you on camera.

Mastodon could use a well-designed client. This is great news.

Hello people of the Fediverse! Some of you may have heard that a new Mastodon client, Ivory,  is in development for iOS (and Mac!). This is true! Tapbots is going all in on Mastodon and we hope this place continues to grow and thrive. Tweetbot will continue to be developed alongside Ivory as a lot of code is shared.

The story you tell yourself creates your reality.

Part of the activation energy required to start any task comes from the picture you get in your head when you imagine doing it. It may not be that going for a run is actually costly; but if it feels costly, if the picture in your head looks like a slog, then you will need a bigger expenditure of will to lace up.

Slowness seems to make a special contribution to this picture in our heads. Time is especially valuable. So as we learn that a task is slow, an especial cost accrues to it. Whenever we think of doing the task again, we see how expensive it is, and bail.

That’s why speed matters.

And yes: that’s certainly how a lot of capitalist cultures think about time — as something that can be wasted or optimized. It’s often predicated on the idea that you should be focused on doing one thing, and one thing only, very efficiently: time is money, etc. etc. But that itself, sometimes referred to as a “monochronic” understanding of time, is no more or less “natural” than other ways of conceiving of time, like “polychronic” culture, which understands time as dynamic, flexible, and filled with several tasks at once, each of which will take the time that they need. Monochronic cultures may be more “efficient” in their use of time, but in their treatment of time as a commodity, they lose the richness that comes with allowing tasks, conversations, and interactions to move forward at a more natural and sustainable pace.

My quest for the rest of this year: get better at living a “polychronic” life.

It is simple:

Early is on time.  On time is late.  Late is unacceptable.

Via @Patrickrhone

Nicholas is as inspiring as usual:

Read. But the original. The long version. The fresh thinkers. Don't accept the hyperbole...Become your own expert.

I agree with @jack:

First, I don't need a Zettelkasten. If you're being honest, you probably don't either.

For most people, a simple notes app to store a curated selection of bits of information is more than enough. A full-blown Zettelkasten is overkill.

However, if you’re a thought leader and/or writer and need a systematic way to develop original thinking and store and retrieve those thoughts to combine them into new work, you may want to look at a Zetterkasten.

This quote merits to be converted into a nice poster in most offices:

If you do anything at the last minute that takes more than a minute, you’re not organizing your project properly.

The last minute is not a buffer zone, nor is it the moment to double-check your work.

The last minute is simply sixty seconds to enjoy and to remind yourself that you successfully planned ahead.

Learn to say these words more often:

No. Nope. No thanks. Not at this time. Nuh-uh. Nah. Sorry, but no.

Every person is unique. Instead of trying to follow the daily schedule of your hero’s, you should carve out your own path.

Their Daily Ritual, to whatever extent it was truly daily or truly a ritual, was likely an emergent phenomenon. They did not read tons of productivity books and then pick the routine that seemed best to them, as many of us feel compelled to do. They worked, and over time, their ideal routine for sustained output emerged. They started walking and reinforced the paths with concrete as they went. 

Does what you do during a day line up with what you said you are going to do?

When we give away our day, we give away our future.

Sí que tens temps, encara que és un recurs que està mal distribuït (igual que els diners).

(Re)plantejar la qüestió del temps és, en realitat, (re)plantejar els models de treball, de salut, d’educació, d’alimentació, de mobilitat, de consum, de reforma horària…

This resonated with me:

The difference between things and events is that things persist in time; events have a limited duration. A stone is a prototypical “thing”: we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an “event.” It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.

Most ‘things’ in life — this blog, our house, yes, even my life itself, are actually events. Like kisses.

I love this idea to schedule your “Uh Oh” moments:

Have you ever had a moment where you look at the state of your work and feel, "uh oh, I'm already halfway through my timeline, and I haven't made as much progress as I should have"?

These are your "uh oh" moments.

The workdays of so many professionals are dictated by urgencies and emergencies.

But there is another way to work, which I call ‘Calm productivity’. This is a major paradigm shift, which not many organisations are willing or able to make.

We can build slack into our lives. We can create cycles so that we don’t need to dance with a crisis around time on a regular basis.

This hit me at just the right moment as this morning I was thinking I should keep more in touch with my friends. I already texted one of them to get together for lunch next week. Thanks @Patrickrhone!

So that has me thinking a lot about friendships – especially amongst guys. We tend not to prioritize them. We tend to think that to get together there has to be a reason involved. We have to have an event or some purpose to it. A run or a round of golf. Making a batch of beer or building a deck. Or we need to get the families together, let our partners talk and kids play. Dinner or a barbecue. Often, we guys never seem to think of getting together “just because”. For no reason at all other than to connect. Have a chit chat about anything under the sun. Or, sit in silence together and just be.

Give yourself permission to be human.

• It can be easy to consider a temporary habit a "failure" because it wasn't permanent, but a temporary habit can still add value to one's life.
• Temporarily doing an activity every day can help one decide if that activity really reflects their desires and priorities.
• A temporary habit can help someone build a skill, even if it doesn't need to be continued long-term to retain the skill.

So true:

Productivity was once about time management. Increasingly it is about distraction management.

The only thing you should manage are your intentions.

I never understood the appeal of the digital nomad lifestyle. Sure, it’s cool for about a week, but after that it gets really uncomfortable.

As Oliver Burkeman explained exquisitely in his book ‘Four thousand weeks’, it is a lifestyle fueled by egoism.

If you’re thinking about taking off for far-flung locations so you can keep your job while seeing the world, think of this as a checklist of things to prepare for—and a warning that it won’t be as glamorous as you may imagine.

With al this attention for creating an external brain (David Allen) and building a second brain (Tiago Forte), we might forget this:

But it’s also important to practice holding things in mind. That’s how we exercise the brain, folding ideas into our intrinsic memory and rebuilding them when they go awry.

Nir argues that Time blocking can be useful for everybody, as long as you use it for Reflective Work (and not for Reactive Work), start small (maybe with a 15 minute block) and try to use it also for fun activities.

When you timebox fun, you’ll see what true leisure feels like, unencumbered by the nagging feeling that you should be doing something else.