When you’re done with an application on your computer, you close it.
If you keep that program open as you open other ones, you’ll slowly start seeing a progressive lag in performance.
Especially if you leave a big program like Photoshop open.
The same is true for your mind.
Close applications before you move on to the next.
The people who work at Lexus aren’t more tired at the end of the day than those who work at Ford.
And neither are the people who work at Rolex versus the people who work at Fossil.
Creating a higher quality product isn’t about effort.
It’s the people who learn how to work smarter, not harder, that find ways to get ahead.
It’s the people who learn how to create the right systems, not try to do things with no system, that are able to facilitate faster growth.
Focusing merely on effort (of yourself and your team) is almost guaranteed to ensure that your quality problem will persist.
Focus on smarts and systems instead.
When your device is unplugged, the battery will drain. Plug it in and it’ll charge.
The opposite seems to be true for the mind.
When your mind is unplugged—from devices, work, drama—the battery recharges.
Plug it in to one of those things, however, and the battery will drain.
If you find your mind in a nonfunctional state, maybe it’s not because you’ve been plugged in too long—but, because you haven’t been unplugged enough.
Simplifying even just one thing can have a positive impact on everything else in your life.
Why?
Because finding ways to give yourself more time, energy, and space will directly impact your overall mental state.
And when you can improve your mental state by alleviating the pressures of time, saving on the expense of energy, and opening up more space to think and be—of course everything else in your day will be positively impacted.
A great exercise: As you go about your day, ask yourself: How can I simplify this task?
And find ways that you can collect a few saved minutes here, save on some energy there, and accrue some extra space wherever possible.
What you might realize is that what you needed wasn’t more time, energy, and space after all.
What you actually needed was to just expend less.
Creatives are good at creating; marketers are good at marketing; managers are good at managing.
When creatives realize they need to market their creations—they might try to learn the skills of a marketer.
When marketers realize they could profit more from their own creations—they might try to learn the skills of a creative.
And sometimes, the creative or the marketer might even decide to start and manage their own business where they must learn the skills of the creative, the marker, and the manager.
Here’s what you need to ask yourself: is the time I’m investing in learning how to improve upon my weaker areas as beneficial as the time I could be investing in tripling down on my strengths? Would I be better off teaming up with someone whose strengths compliment my weaknesses?
When you seek to strengthen a weakness, be careful you don’t end up weakening a strength.
New and better doesn’t come until there’s room.
If our minds are filled with old, redundant ideas then maybe it’s time to clear some space.
How?
Write more of your ideas down. Even (especially) the old, redundant ones.
The key here is that remembering takes up thinking space, thus consuming the exact space you need to generate new, better ideas.
Furthermore, it’s often the case that ideas piggyback on each other.
So, whatever time you spend trying to remember initial ideas, is in turn stifling the ideas that want to piggyback off those initial ideas.
Don’t rely on memory.
In paper and pens; thumbs and screens—we must trust.
Keep your headspace clean and clear and ready for whatever you might think of next.