Isn't it interesting that people feel best about themselves right before they go on vacation? They've cleared up all of their to-do piles, closed up transactions, renewed old promises with themselves. My most basic suggestion is that people should do that more than just once a year.
Interpretation
People feel more positive before vacations due to completed tasks and self-reflection, suggesting this mindset should be embraced more often.
David Allen points out that the sense of fulfillment and happiness people experience just before going on vacation comes from having cleared their obligations and reassured themselves of their commitments. He suggests that this state of being—marked by a sense of accomplishment and renewal—should be cultivated more frequently throughout the year, rather than being limited to the occasions of vacations.
In practice
During a motivational seminar where the speaker discusses achieving a balanced life.
It is a tricky business to know when you should set goals and objectives in order to achieve a focus, and when you would be better off dealing with the acceptance and management of your current reality so you can later step into new directions and responsibilities with greater stability and clarity. Only you will know the answer to that, and only in the moment.
Most of the stress people experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept.
Once a week, do a thorough review of all your projects in as much detail as you need to. If you do, your systems will work. If you don't, no system will work.
You don't actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it. When enough of the right action steps have been taken, some situation will have been created that matches your initial picture of the outcome closely enough that you can call it "done.
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
If you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.
Ask yourself every morning, ‘how can I increase my service today?’
Perform at your best when your best is required. Your best is required each day.
The perfect place to begin is exactly where you are right now.
My friends and I started that motto early in high school - that attitude, that mentality - from way back then: Want to go to Stanford? Why not? Want to play in the NBA? Why not?
With the opening of the New Year, all the closed portals of limitations will be thrown open and I shall move through them to vaster fields, where my worthwhile dreams of life will be fulfilled.
The biggest temptation I believe is to feel comfortable, to feel like you've worked through all of that here on Earth, and are satisfied with this life.
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