Work productivity, time management, organization, tools and tips

How much do you need to know before you can do?  I think most blog reading, web surfing folks are the kind who are engaged and thoughtful and also have a jones for new information.  I am one of them.  My father was a journalist and he would always get excited about some new thing he’d discovered.  That enthusiasm was very contagious!  Knowing about a variety of subjects and being up to date on them can make you a lively and informative writer, not to mention a scintillating cocktail party guest. 

The problem with that scenario comes when you don’t allow time to act on the information you’ve gotten, or the learning you went to some trouble to attain.  You could call this New Year’s Resolution syndrome.  It happens when you have a great idea and even a great plan to go with it, but when it comes to taking action, you’re good for a week or so and then you go back to your old ways. 

Look, forming new habits takes effort and attention to take you beyond the fascination of a new idea to the regular activity of implementing it. To create habits that stick, you also must create an environment to support them. That means making them attractive (working in a pleasant room, not a corner of the drafty basement), tying them to something that’s already a habit (deal with your mail right after you receive it, don’t separate the mail pick-up from the handling of it), and then forgetting about it (when something is really a habit, you won’t have to remember to do it). 

“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”

Thomas H. Huxley
English biologist (1825 - 1895)