Michael Wade proposes adding a fifth quadrant to the Eisenhower priority matrix and he calls it Important and Ugh.

You know the characteristics of Important and Ugh: not urgent but so distasteful that an extra effort will be required to trick/nudge/cajole you into tackling it.

WhatsApp’s canary died 😔

Uh-oh. WhatsApp's canary just died; they removed the statement that they never have access to your private keys. If you were using it because of its privacy, it's time to find something else.

Well said:

Discussions of ‘time management’ and ‘productivity’ often hide the real issue.

Soul management.

As usual, effectiveness is a question of habits. Tools come in second place.

So more than the bells and whistles, ask yourself which app feels useful to you. Which one helps you get to what you want? Which one do you feel inspired to write in? Which one feels enjoyable to write in? Which one feels like the initial seeds of a system can be enjoyable to maintain?

Nicholas Base reminds us to be a good gardener:

Although he/she wouldn't be so bold as to proclaim it, the good gardener has stumbled upon a brilliant approach for business, parenting and life.

It seems Seth was listening in on our Zoom call this morning, in which we decided to dedicate the month of January to review our processes and systems.

When will you sharpen the saw?

In any given moment, an urgency that feels like an emergency gives us the permission to abandon our systems and simply dive in and fix it, as only we can. And this permission is precisely why we get stuck, precisely why the next urgency is likely to appear tomorrow.

I love this quote about Serena Williams using Toggl Track:

Cover subject Serena Williams tells senior writer Nicole LaPorte that she uses the app Toggl to help track her time with her daughter, Olympia. Victory, for this athlete-entrepreneur-investor, is when she overindexes on parenting.

We need to be careful to not optimize everything to be efficient. Efficiency is for robots, humans are inefficient.

Discovery, adventure, every single thing that we really value as humans is terribly inefficient.

This sounds like a perfect day to me.

the goal for this day is simple: Calm

More than ever before, we’re using technology to connect with the outside world. And with so many of us now working from home, we’re relying on our phones to stay updated with colleagues and clients. However, when you’re receiving endless Zoom calls and emails, pings on Slack, and notifications from everywhere else, it begins to hinder productivity and focus.

Unexpected? Only if you’re not used to mindful communication.