If you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.
Interpretation
Being mindful of where you direct your focus is crucial, or it may consume more of your energy than it should.
This quote by David Allen emphasizes the importance of consciously managing one's attention. In today's world, distractions are plentiful, and if we do not actively choose where to focus our energy, we may find ourselves overwhelmed by things that do not warrant such attention, resulting in wasted time and effort. The message encourages individuals to be proactive in deciding what deserves their focus for a more balanced and productive life.
In practice
In a workshop about productivity, you might say this quote to stress the importance of prioritizing tasks.
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.
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.
Self-compassion - being supportive and kind to yourself, especially in the face of stress and failure - is associated with more motivation and better self-control.
It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
O God, help me to win, but in thy wisdom if thou willest me not to win, then O God, make me a good loser.
Merely to resist evil with evil by hating those who hate us and seeking to destroy them, is actually no resistance at all. It is active and purposeful collaboration in evil that brings the Christian into direct and intimate contact with the same source of evil and hatred which inspires the acts of his enemy. It leads in practice to a denial of Christ and to the service of hatred rather than love.
But we have received a sign, Edith - a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm... in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'... we have no ordinary pig." "Well", said Mrs. Zuckerman, "it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.
Hoping a situation will change keeps you at a distance from your true feelings-sadness, anger, fear. Each of these feelings is best appreciated up close. Feel them deeply, and they will cease to bother you. Hope they'll go away, and they'll bother you all day.
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