In our last +1, we talked about my impulsive little foray into a Dropbox Paper chat—allowing myself to get distracted reacting to some inputs BEFORE doing my (pre-inputs!) Deep Work.

I went across the Bright Line, noticed, starting sweating a bit (lol) and got back.

Bright Lines for the What’s Important Now?! W.I.N.!

It’s funny because when I sat down to write, I knew that I wanted to create a(nother) +1 on some William James wisdom that’s often quoted in books on creating systems/managing our time and our lives well.

For example, here’s how Angela Duckworth puts it in Grit: “Eventually, if you keep practicing in the same time and place, what once took conscious thought to initiate becomes automatic. ‘There is no more miserable human being,’ observed William James, than the one for whom ‘every beginning of every bit of work’ must be decided anew each day.”

Amen.

Which echoes this wisdom from the creator of Dilbert and his How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: “I never waste a brain cell in the morning trying to figure out what to do when. Compare that with some people you know who spend two hours planning and deciding for every task that takes one hour to complete. I’m happier than those people.”

So, yah.

That was my morning.

I’m back. On track. Ready to rock.

With even more appreciation for the power of systems and the playful opportunities to Optimize.

Today’s +1.

One more time…

What’s YOUR Masterpiece Morning (and Day?!) look like?

Have you taken the time to get clear?

Are you having fun experimenting and Optimizing and then rocking it with flexibility as you make your prior best your new baseline?

Fantastic.

Happy AMs!

And mid-days!

And PMs!

Carpe Diem!

P.S. We spend TWO MONTHS (!!!) helping you craft your Masterpiece Days in our Mastery Series. It’s Module IV: Carpe Diem.

P.P.S. Here’s the full William James quote we talked about in our +1 on How to Avoid Being Miserable: “For this, we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.“

How to Make Yourself Miserable #1112

And How Not to Waste Brain Cells

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This +1 Inspired by:

Grit

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This +1 Inspired by:

Grit