Getting Things Done with Relaxed Focus and Control

Would you like to get more done, have more successful outcomes, and feel more relaxed while doing it? I've spent the last 25 years researching productivity and how to accomplish more with less effort. The methods I'm going to share with you will help you manage all the details of your personal and professional life with more confidence, knowing that at any moment you are doing exactly what you should be doing from all the choices available to you.

Let's start with the educational foundation for stress-free productivity, which I call "Getting Things Done®," or GTD® as it has become popularly known. It's a work-life management system that will help you go from personal stress and being overwhelmed to an integrated system with focus and control.

What I do is based on a radically commonsense notion that with a complete and current inventory of all your commitments, organized and reviewed in a systematic way, you can focus clearly, view your world from optimal angles, and make trusted choices about what to do (and not do) at any moment. Here are some of the things I can help you with:

* Capturing anything and everything that has your attention
* Defining actionable things discretely into outcomes and concrete next steps
* Organizing reminders and information in the most streamlined way, in appropriate categories, based on how and when you need to access them
* Keeping current and "on your game" with appropriately frequent reviews of the six horizons of your commitments (purpose, vision, goals, areas of focus, projects, and actions)

My system explores each of those steps, in detail and with real-world examples. It includes simple advice for how to work (and live!), in that more efficient and productive way.

Why do we need this kind of help now?

We are faced with a world that changes overnight with the emergence of new technologies and lifestyles. We've gone from an analog world of top-40 hits on vinyl albums to a digital world of downloadable hits from every genre. We've invented new products, hoping to make our lives better — the fax machine, personal computer, PDA, Internet, cell phones, etc. — delivering data faster and faster to more people.

But we haven't necessarily become more efficient, and life hasn't necessarily changed for the better at broadband speed. While the world was being introduced to new hardware and software, no one had developed a mindset or the education to seamlessly integrate the new technologies with everyday life. We've had a lot of new stuff — more channels, more podcasts, more text messages — but not a new way of thinking.

Most everyone I talk with says he or she has far more to do than time and energy to do it. I focus on helping you get things done that are meaningful to you, with truly the least amount of invested attention and energy. I bring you the thought process for getting things done that makes all the gear and technology more usable.

Let's look more closely at how you can use my advice on Getting Things Done to make your life better.

Everyone wants to achieve more successful outcomes with a sense of relaxed focus and control. The place to begin is capturing anything and everything that has your attention. Why is that so important?

Because your mind is a lousy office. When you have a thought about something you want or should do, it is usually so simple and so obvious when you're thinking of it, you're sure you'll never forget it or that you'll remember it in the right moment. Then two minutes later, with the next thing on your mind that you're sure you'll never forget, you've forgotten that you've forgotten the first thing!

If your mind had a mind, it would only remind you of something when you could do something about it. Here's a simple example — do you have any flashlights with dead batteries? When does your mind remind you that you need batteries? At the dead ones! If your mind had a mind, it wouldn't bother you at the dead ones but would clearly let you know only when you were in a store that had live ones!

Just because we think of something, that doesn't mean that we are being productive or constructive about or with it, or that it will be fulfilled. We have to realize that the thought itself is just a beginning, and if we care at all that it brings value or improvement, we probably need to capture it, clarify what it means to us, and organize the actions and information embedded or associated with it.

Most people I meet are still letting their mind run the show. They need to learn that a flashlight with dead batteries should either have the batteries replaced the moment they notice it, or the flashlight itself should go right into the in-basket as a reminder for adding batteries to the shopping list.

How many thoughts and ideas do you have daily that represent useful things to do or potentially enhance or improve projects, situations, and life in general? How many have you had and forgotten, and forgotten that you've forgotten?

"I ought to call Susan and ask her about where she stayed in Hawaii..."
"I need to write up the meeting agenda and email it to the team."
"Wonder what marinade I'd use to cook a lamb on the grill..."
"I ought to update Bill about my conversation with his customer."
Etc.

Most people have (or could have) many more of these kinds of thoughts than they realize during the course of any 24-hour period. Most people don't get value from many of them, because they lack both the habit and the tools to collect those thoughts when they occur. If they aren't captured, they are useless, and, even worse, can add to the gnawing sense of anxiety most people feel about things "out there" they know they've told themselves they should do or would like to do but don't remember consciously what they are.

I've had thousands of ideas and fun or important to-do's actually come to pass, and kept a refreshingly empty head about all of them, because I've managed to create the habit of grabbing those thoughts when they occur. Many people view improving personal organization skills and tools as a "fix" or at best a "maintenance" need. Yet from my experience, gaining the habit of capturing and organizing all of my thinking can take on a much more creative and proactive spin.

To do this, and to make it easy, you'll need two things:
(1) A collection tool with you at all times, and (2) the habit of processing all the thoughts within a short period of time.

(1) The Tools:
Simple, portable tools are required. I use my NoteTaker wallet for this purpose, since it has my driver's license and credit cards and is always with me. I usually have my PDA/phone with me as well. Some people use a portable voice recorder. The tool doesn't matter, as long as you have it handy when and where you have thoughts to capture.

(2) The Habit:
You must process these thoughts into your organization system soon, and completely. Processing could be as simple as picking up the flashlight from your in-box and adding batteries to your shopping list that you take to the store. Of course some thoughts you capture will be about projects or larger goals, rather than simple actions.

Both elements are essential — capturing your thoughts outside your mind and organizing the results.

You'll want to get all of your commitments into an external system (externalized from your mind, that is) which you trust and review regularly. That means getting every project, appointment, and assignment off your mind and onto a list. The system can be as simple as a 3-ring binder with a list of appointments (also known as a calendar), a list of projects, and lists that contain the next actions for each of those projects. Or you could keep those lists in a digital form, using calendar and task management software. Where you externalize what's on your mind is a matter of preference, but that you externalize is an absolute best practice. Once you get in the habit of getting things off your mind, you'll be able to use your mind for more creative things.

If you leave messages unheard again on your recorder or notes piled up in a purse or briefcase, the whole process is defeated, and your motivation to continue will disappear.

But if you do get the tools, use them when you think, and organize the results into your system, I guarantee you'll have more thoughts. And good ones, too.

You can find out more about David Allen and GTD at http://www.davidco.com/
The David Allen Company is a professional training, coaching, and management consulting organization, based in Ojai, California. Its purpose is to enhance performance and improve the quality of life by providing the world's best information, education, and products in the fields of personal productivity and work/life balance.

BRAINPOWER

Would you like to strengthen your capacity to learn? How about your memory retention, gaining the ability to recall items faster, kind of like a mental filing system ready to unleash your knowledge whenever called upon? Increasing knowledge is the name of the game these days in all aspects of your life, and there's an easy, quick way to learn—well, how to learn!

In this article, we'll be showing you specific things you can do and should do to strengthen your brainpower—starting today. It's very useful to know how an internal combustion engine works, but you don't need to know that in order to drive a car. So let's get behind the wheel right now and hit the road.

To a surprising extent, this will be an experience of “back to the future.” When you were very young, literally everything you did was a learning experience. Every time you tried to say a new word or to take another step, you were opening new pathways and creating new connections in your brain. But as you get older, instead of creating new routes, you tend to stay in the ones that are already well worn. What used to be new pathways have now turned into ruts. And if there’s one thing that’s not good for keeping your brain in shape, it’s keeping it in a rut.

To see what can be done about this, we'll introduce a very useful and important word—mindfulness, which means being fully aware of what you're doing in the moment that you're doing it. When you were a child and it was time to brush your teeth in the morning, you were mindfully aware of that action. You focused on putting the toothpaste on the brush, because you had to focus in order to do it correctly. Brushing your teeth was a novel experience for the simple reason that you hadn't been doing it very long.

Well, contrast that with the act of brushing your teeth at this point in your life—or with any action that you've done ten thousand times over the years. It's not likely that your attention is fully engaged when you put the toothpaste on the brush. In fact, the chances are your thoughts are a thousand miles away. Or, here's an even more disturbing possibility. Maybe you're not having any thoughts at all. Maybe your brain is engaged only on a very minimal level, like a really low pilot light in a stove. There are lots of problems with this, and one of them is the way you can get used to that level of functioning. If your day is filled with a series of routines that can happen on autopilot, you're going to sail along on autopilot unless you make a conscious decision to do something else. And unless you do make that conscious decision, you'll eventually find that the autopilot is not very easy to turn off.

Mindfulness is the antidote to this, and mindfulness can be created in a few different ways. The first way is by introducing new experiences and endeavors into your daily life—things that you actually can't do on autopilot. Most of the ideas that we'll be offering in this article fall into that category. But it's not really possible to be doing new things all the time—which suggests another form of mindfulness. This is a matter of becoming more fully engaged with even the routine tasks that you do every day. We're not saying you can get excited about brushing your teeth, but you can make a bit of an effort not to zone out quite so easily. Just focus your attention a little more consciously. Just have a bit more awareness of what you're doing, even if it doesn't seem like that awareness is necessary.

So becoming more mindful is the first thing you can do starting right now to benefit your brain. Once you get started with this, you'll be amazed at the difference it can make in your everyday life. Once you become mindful of where you put your keys, for instance, you won't lose your keys so often. As a result, you won't have to waste a lot of time looking for your keys. You also won't have to deal with the unpleasant suspicion that your brainpower is diminishing because you're losing things all the time.

As a way of getting started with this, try making a list of six or seven mindless actions that you do every day. Putting down your keys could certainly be one of them. Making the morning coffee might be another. Maybe you watch the same TV news show every evening or read the sections of the newspaper in exactly the same order. What we're suggesting now is not that you should change those things. On the contrary, continue to do them, but do them with more conscious awareness. Do them mindfully instead of mindlessly.

As you're making this list, here's something you should definitely be mindful of. There are probably some activities that you do so automatically that you're not even aware of them and, for most people, these are not usually beneficial activities. For example, people who smoke a pack a day aren't usually aware of the fact that they light up a cigarette 20 times. The only way they know that is when they see that they need to buy a new pack. Actually lighting the cigarettes takes place completely outside their conscious awareness. It's the same with people who snack a lot between meals. Their attention may be somewhere else, or it may be nowhere, but it definitely isn't on the fact that they're eating potato chips.

Now here's the good news. Mindfulness is one of the best ways not only for increasing your brain power, but also for breaking destructive habits that have become automatic behaviors. If you want to quit smoking, you don't necessarily have to go cold turkey right way. You can give yourself permission to keep smoking, but make a conscious decision to be mindful every time you light up a cigarette. This really works and, on a physical level, ending habits like smoking and overeating will benefit your brain and your body as a whole.

So mindfulness is the first step you can take toward increased brain power. It may also be the most important step. So, be more mindful of everything in your life, including your decision to be more mindful. Start right now because in the rest of this article we're going to give you several more ways to increase your brain power.

One of the best ways to improve brain function doesn't directly involve the brain at all. It involves the feet. Running, walking, or some other form of aerobic exercise is absolutely essential for optimal brain power. As we age, our brain cells—called neurons—lose their interconnections. These interconnections, or synapses, are essential to thought. But there's now strong evidence that exercise can not only head off mental decline, but can even restore lost brain function. We can put this very simply—fit people have sharper brains compared with people who are not fit. But even people who are out of shape can make changes that benefit their brains. There's no question that exercise makes you smarter, and it does so at all stages of life.

Exercise used to be a natural part of life, but today we have to consciously and mindfully build it into the daily routine. Incredibly enough, even walking is now considered a form of exercise. It used to just be the way to get from one place to another.

As it happens, walking is especially good for your brain, because it increases blood circulation and the oxygen and glucose that reach your brain. Walking is not strenuous, so your leg muscles don’t take up extra oxygen and glucose as they do during other forms of exercise. As you walk, you effectively oxygenate your brain. Maybe this is why walking can “clear your head” and help you to think better.

All this is well documented by research. At the University of Illinois, a study was done on a group of more than 200 men and women in their early 60s. They were basically healthy, but they were also classified as sedentary individuals. They hadn't been involved in any physical exercise for at least five years, and for most of them it was much longer. Half of the subjects took long walks around the university three times a week, while the other half did light toning and stretching exercises. After six months, the walkers improved significantly in mental tests, as well as being more physically fit. An improvement of only 5-7% in cardio-respiratory fitness led to an improvement of up to 15% in mental tests. But the non-walkers, despite the fact that they had done some exercise, did not gain any benefits for their brains.

And just as you can build brain power through your feet, you can also do it through your stomach. For example, research in both animals and humans indicates that a calorie-restricted diet is helpful for both overall health and brain function. Eating wisely controls weight and decreases risk for heart disease, cancer, and stroke. It also triggers mechanisms to increase the production of nerve growth factors, which are essential to brain function.

What you eat is just as important as how much you eat. That's why researchers use the acronym CRON—for "calorie restriction with optimal nutrition." If you take in fewer calories, you must make all of those calories count. For example, certain fatty acids found in fish also make up a large portion of the gray matter of the brain. Research has shown that diets rich in fatty acids can help promote emotional balance and cognitive function, possibly because they're a main component of the brain's synaptic structures. In a similar way, studies show that fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of developing cognitive impairment.

This is because so-called free radicals play a major role in the deterioration of the brain with age. When a cell converts oxygen into energy, tiny molecules called free radicals are made. Produced in normal amounts, free radicals rid the body of harmful toxins. But when they're produced in larger, toxic amounts, free radicals can cause cell death and tissue damage. Vitamin E, Vitamin C, and beta carotene inhibit the production of free radicals—and the best natural sources for all of these are in fruits and vegetables.

If you've already done some reading on brain function, you probably know that fish oils and fruits and vegetables can be good for you. But there's an excellent chance that you're not aware of the single most important dietary factor for peak brain function—water. The fact is the human brain—like the human body as a whole—is more than 70 percent water. When a sufficient volume of water is not brought into the body, the process of dehydration begins, and this is potentially very damaging to good brain function. Most people don't drink enough water, and this is especially true as we get older. In fact, dehydration is often the underlying cause of symptoms of dementia in elderly people. It may seem like an excessive amount, but adults should drink eight 10-ounce glasses of water every day, and that water should not include artificial sweeteners, sugar, caffeine, or alcohol.

Physically helping your brain through exercise is at one end of a spectrum, but there's another side of this coin. Sleep is just as important as exercise. A study at Harvard Medical School looked at the conditions under which people come up with creative solutions to math problems. It was found that a good night's rest doubled participants' chances of finding a solution to a problem the next day. The sleeping brain, it seems, is vastly more capable of synthesizing complex information. But you don't have to be a mathematician in order to need the right amount of sleep. Many people don't realize that sleep is more than just resting. Good sleep leads to deep, regular breathing, and this allows the blood to receive generous amounts of oxygen from the lungs. If your blood isn't getting enough oxygen, you're going to have problems both physically and mentally. During sleep the volume of blood circulating through the brain is actually greater than during the waking hours. The sleeping brain is actually just as active as the waking brain —and having an active brain is always a good thing. Conversely, nothing is more destructive to brain health than lack of sleep. So keep in mind that sleep and exercise are two sides of the same coin. If you get enough exercise, you're more likely to sleep better, and if you get enough sleep, you'll feel more like exercising. Both those activities will strengthen your brain.

Mindfulness, sleep, exercise, and diet—four steps you can take right now to benefit your brain. And here's a fifth: Do whatever you can to reduce stress in all areas of your life.

You may have noticed that when you're under acute stress you have a harder time remembering things. It's a well-documented fact that stress can disturb cognitive processes such as learning and memory. The hippocampus, for example, which is the brain's primary center of memory formation, can be seriously debilitated by chronic stress. This happens all the time. You're running out the door, and you can't find your keys. Or you're having a conversation with a potentially important new client, and you suddenly can't remember the client's name. Why? Because you're stressed out about how important she is. It's the fight or flight response. When you're nervous, your body gears up to take physical action, and this has a negative impact on your mental functioning. The impact can be short term if the stress is short term, as when you're talking to the new client—but if the stress is continuous and chronic, the effects can become ingrained. So try to relax. Admittedly, it's not always easy, but there are many things you can do toward calming yourself down. Yoga and meditation are both excellent. Look into both of these if you're living a stressful life and you're not sure how to calm down.

Now, so far we’ve seen five important steps you can take to optimizing brain function, but now we’re going to explore some ideas for improving brain function by actually using your brain. This will be very beneficial because the saying “use it or lose it” is definitely true where the brain is concerned.

Like it or not, the human brain starts slowing down at about the age of 30. At one time, it seemed like nothing could be done about this, but new research shows you can train your mind to work faster and better, and you can do this at any age. With the right tools, you can recondition your brain to work as it did when you were younger. What's needed is a clearly defined regimen of brain exercise. Just as you can plan to walk or run a certain number of miles every week, you can also commit to workouts for your brain in the same period of time. The key finding in modern brain research is that the brain at any age is highly adaptable. It's "plastic," as neurologists put it. If you ask your brain to learn, it will learn. And you can speed up the process.

Introducing new forms of mental activity can strengthen the brain—such as doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku, learning a new language, or engaging in any form of new activity for you. If you have been doing puzzles every morning for your whole life, there probably is not much benefit in doing them now. That's especially true if doing puzzles has become a habitual behavior in which you're zoned out while you're doing them. So here's what we urge you to do: Whether it's crossword puzzles or Sudoku or chess or bridge, challenge your mind to try something different. So again, find something that takes your brain in a new direction, and then find ways to make it as enjoyable as you can.

Our final point is a bit more philosophical. As we mentioned, brain functions start to slow down at around the age of 30. But that's only part of the story. Throughout the body, all our systems lose approximately 1 percent of their energy every year starting in our early 20s. Now the question is—so what? Does that mean you have to resign yourself to slowly becoming a vegetable? Absolutely not! The body and the brain are marvelously designed to compensate for the process of change. What you may lose in the speed of your thoughts, you can more than make up for with your wisdom. You may not be able to process information as fast, but you can definitely process it more efficiently. In short, don't give up on yourself, and don't feel sorry for yourself just because you're changing. You can control that change in many different ways. You can slow it down by taking the positive steps we've mentioned. So enjoy the realization that your destiny is in your own hands, and then put that realization into action right now.

You probably never heard its name promoted in any classroom. But it is responsible for pretty much running your life. Without a drum roll, I would like to introduce to you an immensely powerful part inside you that has been operating off your radar screen as your silent and invisible partner—your subconscious mind. This article, based on my Nightingale-Conant program Reprogram Your Subconscious: How to Use Hypnosis to Get What You Really Want, explores why your subconscious mind, left to its own devices, may or may not help you attain truly satisfactory outcomes. In fact, you will become aware of how it is possible for your subconscious to unintentionally and mistakenly be working against your well-being, even though your subconscious is convinced that it is giving you what you want. This situation may be remedied, however, by your practicing different techniques of Reprogramming Self-hypnosis that are practical skills intended to enrich and support you throughout your lifetime.

Deleting the Negative

Hypnosis allows you to relax into that very suggestible altered consciousness state in which your subconscious is open to accepting changes. Accepting Reprogramming Hypnosis suggestions into your subconscious is one way you can modify your behaviors. An important part of behavior modification is deleting or neutralizing and thus nullifying the negative emotional associations that are attached to certain memories. You may remember what happened; yet, you can neutralize the emotions that are attached to that memory. For example, you remember that you fell off a horse, but through hypnotic suggestion, the fears and pain from that experience have been released. The memory has been rendered harmless. Subsequently, you can acknowledge that you fell off a horse without feeling pain or anxiety. You now have released the fear related to that memory. When you think about that experience now, you feel calm, even though you can remember what happened. This gives you the option of enjoying horseback riding again and regaining self-confidence, self-empowerment, and higher self-esteem. You also have more wisdom next time about how to avoid such a fall while horseback riding. The following case study exemplifies another circumstance when Reprogramming Hypnosis deleted a man's negative, low self-esteem feelings and instead raised his high self-esteem.

Jim’s New Reality

Jim came to see me when he was 42. As Jim tells it, he heard throughout his childhood that he was no good. His dad had always derided him and said Jim would amount to nothing. As a child, Jim subconsciously took in and accepted his father’s denigrating words. As a result, Jim believed since he was a young child that he was worthless and would amount to nothing. Even though as Jim’s life progressed and he experienced successes, he still felt and believed he was really a failure. He expected people would find him out one day. He avoided risks because it would likely mean failure for him. As a part of the Reprogramming Hypnosis approach, Jim created suggestions that we used in session to delete his erroneous mind-sets. Since it is always imperative to replace the deletions with positive suggestions, Jim substituted very high self-esteem statements of suggestions that he much preferred to live by. Subsequently, Jim started to feel better about himself as a worthy and successful man. His confidence grew very significantly, as did his happiness ratio.

Our Subconscious Computer

Your subconscious mind may be likened to the most magnificent computer that has yet to be invented. As a magnificent computer, your subconscious mind holds all your memories, all data about what you have experienced from all of your senses. It runs vast numbers of programs simultaneously with precision and ease. Your subconscious mind runs your body’s autonomic system without your need for conscious thought input. Did you have to remind yourself to blink or to digest food? It is just done automatically.

Delete, Merge, Copy, Cut, and Paste

You use different computer files labeled with titles or names just the way that people used the old-fashioned files that were stored in actual file cabinets. You can add information to the files and can delete them entirely whenever you want. Figuratively speaking, using the computer analogy, you can do this very same thing in your subconscious mind, using hypnosis. You can create new files, give those files titles and names, and then delete obsolete files or those that have misleading or incorrect information. Similarly in your subconscious computer, when you delete old mind-sets or harmful emotions, they are really gone, in effect totally neutralized and discarded. They no longer influence your subconscious programming. Your subconscious, like a real computer, also has the capability to program email letters to be sent at a later time than when you actually typed them in. This is just like a post-hypnotic suggestion. You can merge, copy, cut, and paste computer files that hold information. Your suggestible subconscious cooperates with your directions just the way a real computer responds to what you type as directions on your keyboard. While in hypnosis it is possible to recall happier times when you felt better about yourself and then direct your subconscious to copy those same happy feelings and paste them into your present emotional state of mind so it remains permanently as part of your reality, in the now. Hence, your high self-esteem image that brings along your positive feelings takes precedence over your most recent low self-esteem, bad feelings that you have cut and deleted. Believe it or not, your subconscious can do all of these things and more.

The Renegade

Nevertheless, there is a renegade in your subconscious computer design. A man-made computer is built to function purely on logic and logical progression. Human emotions have no place in present-day actual computers. Therefore, present-day computers are incapable of performing emotionally or impulsively when following downloaded programs. Your human subconscious computer, in contrast, does utilize the amygdala part of your brain that does respond impulsively. This is because the amygdala reacts so quickly to your stressors that it bypasses the logical part of your brain, your neo-cortex. As described in Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence, research supports the fact that after just a few milliseconds of your perceiving something, you already perceive what it is. What is more, you know how you feel about it, favorably or unfavorably. It is as if your emotions produce impulsively motivated programs that are instantly downloaded independently of your logical mind. Thus you are burdened with logically flawed subconscious programs that influence your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

What May Drive Anxiety

One illustration of this is what happens when you might pass a car on the highway and nearly have an accident. In physiological terms, the hippocampus part of your subconscious brain remembers the objective facts, while the amygdala retains the memory of the emotions created during that trauma. Next time you are in a similar situation passing a car on the highway, your amygdala will send a surge of anxiety, bringing up old feelings associated with the passing of a car on the highway. To make matters worse, the associations that the amygdala makes seem to broaden and spread with time. It may start with anxiety from that specific highway where the first trauma originated. Then later, it may include other large highways that elicit the same anxious response. Next, you may feel the anxiety on any regular highway when you are passing another car. If nothing is done to resolve this situation, the anxiety may grow to where anytime you are in the car, you feel tremendous anxiety. Since the amygdala is making choices without the benefit of your logical brain, it makes conclusions based on very loose and often incorrect associations. These spreading and mutation-like changes are characteristic of fears, anxieties, and panic attacks. They are like weeds that spread, multiply, and take root, crowding out the grass that constituted your peaceful lawn.

No Permission Granted

As emphasized before, your subconscious consistently chooses things for you without asking permission and without any of your conscious awareness at all! It is like having a computer system running a program that impacts your entire computer without your knowing anything about the existence of the anonymous program. Theoretically, this program functioned for our primordial ancestors as a benevolent program wanting to please and protect them. So when our cavemen ancestors found themselves facing a tiger, the amygdala part of their brain registered it while dipping into past data to conclude that this was a dangerous situation. So the amygdala reminded our ancestors of the fear (emotional response) they experienced from their last tangle with a tiger. They had better fight the tiger or take flight as fast as they could run (memory of past experiences.) Thus, the adrenalin necessary for either of those two options started flowing (bodily response), and our ancestors were pumped, ready for action.

Refuse Blame for the Pain

In modern, much more complicated times, however, someone such as your spouse, your boss, or your neighbor may be mistaken for that tiger. Consequently, the number of times your amygdala responds, as just described, is far more often than likely there were tiger confrontations in caveman times. So chances have increased tremendously for inappropriate emotional responses from your amygdala. With all that outdated information from which to base its reactions, it is not unusual for your amygdala to program something unwisely, and none of that programming is your fault! You are free from responsibility, blame, and/or guilt for programming choices that your subconscious made without your consent or even awareness, period. Remember, when there is a strong emotionally perceived threat, the part of your brain responsible for clear logic, the neo-cortex, never has a chance to alter the subconscious choices because the amygdala has already activated your response so quickly. It is not surprising that the choices produced this way may have negative consequences for you—like chronic anxiety, fears, racing thoughts, high blood pressure, weight gain, addictions, and so forth. Your amygdala may be responsible for creating many of your hot buttons that set you off emotionally, mentally, and physically. Every time there is a new stressful incident that your amygdala perceives as even vaguely similar to a previous incident, your reaction to the new stress seems to grow in intensity. It is as if somebody poured salt upon your open wound. Think about it. What are your current hot buttons? They represent perfect targets for reprogramming your subconscious mind for your long-term benefit and Highest Good.

Facing Down "The 6 Ghosts of Fear" That Haunt You

In his classic success book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill mentions six basic fears that you have to be vigilant about or you'll get spooked. He refers to them as "ghosts" -- appearing real, but actually imaginary. I'll walk you through these six with quotes by Hill transcribed from a Nightingale-Conant audio program entitled The Science of Personal Achievement, then give my commentary:

1. The fear of poverty "Now, why anybody should be afraid of poverty in a great nation like this where opportunity abounds on every hand is more than I can understand, but I do know that the vast majority of my students have to be treated first for the fear of poverty. They have to be made success-conscious, and you’ll never be successful at anything until you become success-conscious. You have to get over the idea of self-limitation."

Commentary: Napoleon Hill published Think and Grow Rich in 1937 as a response to The Great Depression of the 1930's. Millions of Americans went unemployed and people's money worries were at an all-time high, far worse than the current economic downturn. Hill wanted to address the negative psychological impact of not having enough money, knowing the devastating effect this has on an individual. He encouraged people to develop a "success consciousness" -- the practice of visualizing their wealth in their own mind before it actually arrived. Failure to do so leads to a "fear of poverty" -- a paralyzing state of mind in which you repeatedly think, "I'll never have enough money." And that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy leading to a downward mental spiral.

Question: Do you have a success consciousness or a poverty consciousness?

2. The fear of criticism "You're lucky indeed if you’ve come this far in life, all of you or any of you, without having suffered from the fear of criticism, the fear of what 'they' will say. And I have heard so many people say, 'Well, I’d do so-and-so if it weren’t for what “they” will say,' and I have never yet found out who 'they' were. 'They' are entirely imaginary beings, but you’d be surprised how powerful 'they' are. They stupefy enthusiasm. They cut down your personal initiative. They destroy your imagination. And they make it practically impossible for you to accomplish anything above mediocrity."

Commentary: In my opinion this is the most common fear that can hold you back -- the fear of how other people might judge you if you were to do what you wanted to do, like succeed wildly in your own business rather than becoming just another "average Joe." These judgments often come from well-meaning family members and friends who want to protect you from trying something out of THEIR comfort zone. What's interesting is that these same people have most likely never taken on anything challenging themselves -- if they don't think THEY can do it, they'll want to discourage you.

Question: How has the fear of criticism from others held you back?

3. The fear of ill health "The doctors know too well what that fear does. It results in a condition known as hypochondria, imaginary illness."

Commentary: Some people run to the doctor at the sign of the first sniffle, always acting as if they're "coming down with something." They let poor health be their alibi for underachieving -- what they're really suffering from is "excuse-itis." In order to succeed you need to develop and maintain healthy habits in three areas: Diet, exercise and rest -- no secret there, huh? Eating right, making time for regular exercise and getting a good night's sleep are all essential for staying healthy. Those who don't, or won't, practice these fundamentals typically have a cycle of sickness that robs them of the vitality needed to conquer the challenges of business.

Question: Are you taking great care of yourself to have the strength and energy to give your best?

4. The fear of the loss of love "Jealousy doesn’t require reason. It can be just as violent or just as destructive where there is no basis for it as where there is a basis, but it is a motivating force."

Commentary: Certainly jealousy can be destructive to people if they are not secure in their relationships. I want to expand this definition about the fear of loss of love to the concern that one will lose the approval of loved ones if they are unsuccessful. Dwelling on negative, approval-seeking consequences, rather than creating both a positive mindset and a clear plan of making it in business, will guarantee failure. This is similar to the fear of criticism in that you might be obsessing on how bad you'd feel if someone left you because you couldn't make a go of it in your chosen field.

Question: Whose approval are you worried about losing?

5. The fear of old age "I don’t know why men and women should be afraid that they're gonna dry up and blow away when they get to that nice, ripe old age of 40 to 50. The real achievements of the world were the results of men and women who had gone well beyond the age of 50, and the greatest age of achievement was between 65 and 75, so I don't know why one should be afraid of old age, but nevertheless they are."

Commentary: How many people do you hear say, "I can't believe I'm 40 years old!" Translation: "Man, I'm getting up there! I might be past my prime. Time is running out for me. Where did it go?" I'm of the philosophy that age is just a number -- as long as I'm learning, laughing and loving, I'm young. I keep a relaxed attitude about the coming years -- I have all the time in the world to get better. My thought is I'll be that much more experienced as time goes by. In this way, I'm convinced my best is yet to come.

Question: How old do you feel?

6. The fear of death "It’s the rarest thing in the world to find a person who hasn’t at one time or another been afraid of dying."

Commentary: I don't spend much time thinking about death because I'm too busy living. I submit this fear is about the death of anything: the end of a business or bankruptcy, the end of a job stint or getting fired, the end of a relationship via break-up or divorce. Going through traumatic times like these won't kill you but you may certainly have the panicky feeling that they will. In Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill states, "Every adversity, every heartache, every failure carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit." Everyone who's ever made it big has had these kinds of disappointments, losses and rejections, yet used them as motivation to prevail. So in the aforementioned "deaths" you have the opportunity to be "reborn" to even greater success, a new career, a solid relationship.

Question: What "death" do you fear?

I hope these words have helped you realize the six ghosts of fear aren't all that spooky, and that you're committed to becoming the successful person you were destined to become despite them. Act like its Halloween every day, and when one of these ghosts confront you, just say "BOO!"

Success Skills Coach Jim Rohrbach, "The Personal Fitness Trainer for Your Business," coaches business owners, entrepreneurs and sales professionals on growing their clientele. He has helped hundreds of individuals to achieve their goals since he developed his first coaching program in 1982. To arrange a Free Consultation with Jim, go to www.SuccessSkills.com.

Do you have more to do than time to do it? Does the quality of your work suffer and your enjoyment of life go down because you are trying to do just too much? Welcome to modern life. It’s the best of times and the worst of times. I want to help you make it just the best.

Sure, you’re doing well, you’re successful, and you enjoy life, but do you feel frustrated at how hard you have to struggle to keep up with all your commitments, opportunities, deadlines, and messages? Do you keep thinking there must be a better way? If so, I know I can help you. I’m not a marketer by nature or by training, but I understand this problem—the problem of overloaded circuits—so well that I am on a mission to reach as many people as I can and give them the practical assistance they need.

Hi, I’m Dr. Ned Hallowell, Harvard-trained psychiatrist and author of the Nightingale-Conant product Success Strategies for the Crazy Busy. This program addresses those of us who are simply driven to distraction, overbooked, overstretched, and about to snap!

Now, does that title describe you? Are you overbooked, overstretched, and about to snap? If so, welcome to the crowd. Being crazy-busy is becoming the norm in modern life, so don’t feel alone. And don’t feel that it’s your fault, or feel guilty or ashamed. Feel just the opposite! Feel proud! If you’re busy, or crazy-busy, if you’re overbooked and about to snap, you should feel proud of yourself! Why? Because it means you have a lot on the ball; it means you have lots of enthusiasm and curiosity, many interests, and tons of talent you’re trying to tap. It means you’re probably a fun kind of person, responsible but also daring, serious about what you do but also excited to be doing it. It means you’re a live wire. Dull, boring people don’t become crazy-busy. They just plod along.

But…but…but…but…why, oh why can life be such a jumbled-up mess so much of the time? Why do you wake up intending to do one thing and go to bed never having done it? Why do you say yes before you think twice and then find that you’ve overcommitted yourself once again? Why can’t you curb your enthusiasm at least enough that you complete one project before you start six others?

You love your life…but it drives you crazy sometimes. People love you…but you drive them crazy sometimes. You’re full of ideas…but you wish you could see more of them take root and grow to their fullest.

I have answers for you. I have solutions. I have researched this problem for many years, so I know what I’m talking about. And don’t worry, the answers I have are not the same-old, same-old. You know the usual advice, the usual drill. You’re supposed to slow down, you’re supposed to exercise more and meditate, you’re supposed to eat steel-cut oatmeal for breakfast and line-caught fish for dinner, and drink eight glasses of water a day. You’re supposed to make love regularly, pray often, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and make lists—like making lists is your all-time favorite thing to do! Personally, I’d rather have a root canal than make lists, but that’s just me.

Sheeeesh! If you could do that, you wouldn’t be crazy-busy. You don’t need to make yet another failed attempt at living a balanced life. You don’t need yet another set of stress-reduction tapes to listen to in your car while you struggle not to fall asleep, crash, and burn. You don’t need to watch yet another earnest guru tell you his secrets to a happy life, while you sit there thinking, This guy just doesn’t live in my world.

You don’t need or want a radical overhaul of your life. You just want to get done what you want to get done! And not feel like a wind-up toy whose spring has sprung at the end of the day.

Look, I’m not a guru. I don’t pretend to have all the answers to life. What I am is a pretty smart guy who has thought long and hard about the issues I’m talking about here. I’m a man who went through the rigors of medical school, internship, and residency, and who has spent 25 years making a living by getting to know people and the fixes they can get themselves into. Like an experienced car mechanic who’s seen a lot, I recognize knocks and pings that other people don’t, and I know how to fix them. I love my work, because I love to see people get their lives in gear.

Becoming crazy-busy is one of those fixes people can get themselves into. And their solution is usually just to spin their wheels faster and faster, going nowhere. They need to make some changes. As the people in AA say, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

So what are the changes I want you to make? Only the changes that you want to make. Only the changes that will make you happier and more successful.

You see, crazy-busy people usually make one giant mistake. They put all their faith in one principle they were taught so early in their lives that it became part of their blood and bones. It is so fundamental and basic that they never stop to question it. It would be like questioning the need to breathe.

The one giant mistake is this: They believe that hard work conquers everything. So, when they feel frustrated, overcommitted, overstretched, and at the breaking point, what do they do? They work harder! Do more! Stay up later! Suck it up until they can’t suck it up anymore.

This is crazy. Working harder doesn’t work! There is a better way. Hard work will always be a key ingredient to anybody’s success, but it can get you into trouble, too. Just like pushing the accelerator when you are stuck in the mud, working harder when you are crazy-busy will just make a big, ugly mess as it sinks you deeper into the mud.

So what do I recommend instead? Goof off? Of course not. But I do recommend you take the short amount of time it will take you to digest my materials so you can get more complete answers to questions like these. I will give short answers here, but I hope you will delve further into what I have created to learn the fuller answers.

• What is the key ingredient to peak mental performance that most people ignore? Answer: A positive emotional state.
• Why do smart people often underperform and not-so-smart people outshine them? Answer: Smart people take on too much and allow themselves to get overloaded circuits. When their circuits are overloaded, smart people underperform.
• What is the one word you need to learn to keep you from being crazy-busy? Answer: NO.
• What does a rigorous cost-benefit analysis tell you will improve your performance more than any single factor? Answer: Learning how to take control of what you can control.
• What separates people who succumb to stress from those who thrive on it? Answer: People who thrive on stress do what they’re good at most of the time. People who succumb to stress do so because they feel overwhelmed by the task, unable to perform it well.
• What can you do on the spot when you start to feel overwhelmed? Answer: STOP what you’re doing for 3 minutes. Read a joke book (which you keep in your desk!).
• How can you learn to monitor yourself so you will know when to stop or take a break? Answer: Simply notice when you start to get irritable and make mistakes.
• How can you get others to give you the feedback you need to hear? Answer: Ask them for it directly and sincerely.
• What are the danger signs of overload? Answer: Irritability; impaired performance; fatigue; forgetfulness; loss of sense of humor; inability to tolerate interruptions or conflict; loss of mental flexibility; inability to listen to others; loss of hope; tendency to blame others; musculoskeletal aches and pains; headaches; loss of focus and concentration.
• How much anxiety improves your performance, and when does anxiety start to make you mess up? Answer: Anxiety improves performance up to a point; beyond that, performance declines. You have to watch yourself to see where that point is for you.
• What is the only true learning disability (guess what, everybody has it now and then)? Answer: Fear.
• What about coffee and peak performance? Answer: Some helps. Too much hurts.
• How can you control your addictions to your cell phone, the Internet, your BlackBerry, and other screens? Answer: T.I.O. Turn it off. Judiciously.
• What are the hidden time-wasters most people are blissfully, but dangerously, unaware of? Answer: At the top of the list is what I call screensucking, mindlessly sitting in front of a screen sending and receiving unimportant messages.
• What can you do if you can’t turn down the noise in your mind? Answer: Learn to meditate. Get physical exercise. Turn off your electronic devices now and then.
• How can you deal with people who infuriate you and put you into a totally stressed-out state? Answer: Create boundaries. Most people make themselves way too available.
• What is the single greatest antidote to worry ever invented? (No, not alcohol, although it is the oldest “medication” for worry.) Answer: Human contact. I.e., never worry alone.
• How can you take your time if so many people want to take it from you? Answer: Learn to say no. Close your door. Make priorities.
• What is the secret to effective multitasking? Answer: Not doing it.
• What can you do if you know that you are the only person who can do the job right? Answer: Find people who are just as competent as you are.
• What if, no matter how much you achieve, you feel bad that you haven’t done more? Answer: This is one instance where a good therapist can make a huge difference in your life.
• What’s the good part about being a worrier? Answer: Worriers tend to be the smartest, most creative people we have. It takes a lot of intelligence and imagination to dream up all that they worry about!
• How can you control the uncontrollable parts of your life? Answer: You can’t. What you can do is develop a method for dealing with them as they arise.
• How can you resist being flattered into doing something you don’t have time to do? Answer: Realize how much you love being praised, but don’t let people manipulate you with praise.
• ….and many more questions like these.

You need a plan to manage modern life—or it will manage you. You need a plan to avoid becoming crazy busy. You do have more control than you imagine. Now, you just have to use it!