Could I have your permission to republish your article on my blog at RejectionTherapy.com, with of course attribution?

I look forward to reading the rest of your blog.

I agree with what you’re saying. And I think in its another advantage of following the strategy and goal setting techniques that you’ve detailed extensively on your site. One of the not-so-apparent advantages of having those checklists in place is they minimize room for bad habits creep in. It prevents those long-term huge mistakes like you mention.

Just being alert about time management, being clear with the goals your pursuing, and proportioning appropriate effort towards them, I think, eliminates a lot of undesirable results that might otherwise occur with a less systematic, and less self-correcting approach.

One thing I will say is that it takes some time to build up that checklist, like you said. At first, I saw your list and said “I’m going to copy that list, exactly.” Mistake. But quickly learning that, I started with one major goal, made it habitual, then added another, and now I’m simultaneously balancing three large goals, and the smaller ones have taken a back seat. I still waste time when I know I shouldn’t or have unplanned down-time, but its easier to deal with, knowing my 3 major tasks are in motion. At a certain point, I’ll add more and more.

Sometimes I’m asked by people to analyze why something went wrong. They always look at the immediate term. Nuh-uh. I ask them a question to help figure it out -

“How do bad things happen?”

Usually I get a blank look. “Think – in *anything*, how do bad things happen?”

Some thinking, some talk, some rambling… then I answer – “Slowly.”

Bad things almost always happen slowly. When bad things happen quickly, you jump into action to sort them out. That Samuel Johnson quote you shared is spot on -

“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” Great post, good insights, cheers.

I also think its important to consider all arguments/feedback, good or bad, independently. But what I think the problems to avoid are, are things like group think, appeal to authority, and the like.

I figure I’ve got a waaaay more internal scorecard than the vast majority of people, but I still get off on praise and people liking my work, and I frown a little when someone I respect doesn’t like it. I recognize this as something to be overcome. Thoughts?

Definitely agree about the tone thing. As I post more, I should find a flow that is more natural and quicker to type up. I’m pretty excited about the direction I’m planning to take this in. I’m already happy to have logs of what thoughts I’ve put together so far. I’m sure in a month, 6 months, and 1 year, seeing the evolution in my writing and thinking will be exciting.

Thought of the day – more snazz/bold draws readers. I’ve been experimenting with this, and it seems like the internet was eroded the attention span of most people, so they need bold or sub-heads or something to break things up to keep reading. It’s easy for people like you and me to overlook this since we read old fashioned books and even financial reports sometimes (the horror!), but we’re like .001% of the population or something. Of course, it’s a pretty exciting .001% of the population if you can reach folks like us, but I think some of the rest of humanity is pretty good too, and they like bold

Second thought of the day – write like you’re writing to someone you like and careful about. Like, more casual, or more aggressive, or swear a little. Admittedly, this is something that took me a long time to develop, as I was writing in “neutral generic tone” for no-one-in-particular for a long time, but I’m starting to clear that up a little bit. We’re entertainers first, and informers second. If we want to inform, we should be writing white papers for thousands of dollars

I loved this paragraph -

> What is functional mental performance? At the heart, it is problem solving. How do we develop good problem solving abilities? What are the important disciplines we should borrow ideas from? Who are and who have been, some of the greatest problem solvers in history? This is another topic I hope to explore with this blog – to feature notable problem solvers, who’ve contributed to or pragmatically adopted from disciplines outside their expertise. I hope that by studying some of these figures, we can establish a generalized set of ideas for developing strong mental performance. And like the development of Crossfit, having a generalized set of ideas about problem solving will allow us to borrow from many different disciplines in a way that enhances our cognition.

Problemsolving is life, I live and breathe for it. Very exciting for your blog, I’m a daily reader now. Well, maybe every other day if I get swamped Cheers and very glad you’re writing, I’m damn near 100% sure this is going to be one of the best blogs on the internet at this time next year.