We want to help you regularly find and stay in that Sweet Spot where all the pieces line up, the enthusiasm flows, and you're ready to take on the next challenge to make it happen. That requires taking small steps regularly and changing habits. And most of us could use a buddy and little friendly reminder from time to time. Our new "daily nudge" is all about that.

In case you’ve been in a coma for 24 hours, we had a little “incident” here in Vancouver last night. Today, Vancouver is trying to make sense of it all. Online and in coffee shops, people are asking questions. Why did it happen? Who is to blame? Who are these people? Where did they come from? Is this who we are?

It’s a good question, but we need to refocus the lens to get an accurate answer.

Woody Allen says “there are two kinds of people in the world, the kind that say there are two kinds of people and everyone else.” It’s not a new idea. Aristotle was saying the same thing when he said we define something primarily by what it is not – he just didn’t have a punch line. And Aristotle’s right: it is extremely helpful – almost essential from time to time – to divide things into categories.

In my last post, I suggested that the majority of people choose not to thrive. It seems a bit crazy; after all, why would people choose to be unhappy and unfulfilled? In a way, it’s about delayed gratification, playing the lottery, and strength training.

It’s very popular in certain circles today to say things like “he’s just where he needs to be right now” or “it’s all good.” The implication is that there is some sort of preordained plan. Any misery is sent to teach you something. And when friends are clearly about to make a really stupid choice, there’s nothing you can say because they’re doing the best they can.

Everywhere I turn lately people are talking about social media. Some scammy Meetup group is hyping the power of the Interwebs or offering me 10 secrets to unlock the power of Facebook. Everyone is trying to tweet their way to profits. And I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone decide that they absolutely, positively need to have a blog... even though they aren’t sure why or what they would say.

All this hype creates a lot of noise without adding much value. 

I've told you all about my ideas around time management and my little experiment to test it out. So, not it's time to come clean on how the system is working.

In the last two posts, I told you about my idea for a new time management system and some of the nitty-gritty about how I set up my list. The goal is really about attention and energy management, though. So, the key to an effective system for me is that it helps me focus on what is important in a way that helps me keep my energy flowing. So, here's how that works.

In my last post, I told you about a new time management system I'm trying out. I thought I would tell you a little bit about the "heavy lifting" I do each week to arrange and prioritize my tasks. I tried to keep the post short, but it covers the hardest part of the work. 

Time management is like dieting - every week there's a new fad and someone claiming to have the perfect system. I don't think the problem has anything to do with which system you use. I think we just get the whole concept backwards. We tend to think of time like stretchy garbage bag: if we are careful, we can find some way to shove more junk into it.

But it isn't really about time management at all. Time will roll on its merry way without any help from you. No, it's really about attention and energy management. 

Given the number of decisions we make all the time, you’d think we would be good at it by now. Unfortunately, decision-making is still one of the hardest things for most groups (and individuals, for that matter) to do effectively. At the core, decisions are scary things. In an ideal world, we would weigh the pros and cons, everyone would agree, and a clear winner would emerge. In the real world, we often have to make big decisions on limited information in limited time.