First Things | Practical Productivity / Efficiency / Life Balance / Purpose / Passion / Identity / Happiness - Brandon Vaughn, Ph.D.

Mindset is a simple idea discovered by world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck in decades of research on achievement and success—a simple idea that makes all the difference. Every so often a truly groundbreaking idea comes along. This is one. Mindset explains: Why brains and talent don’t bring success How they can stand in the […]

We have spent 22 weeks talking about the issue of Essentialism.  We are now at the end of our study on this, and today we give an Essentialism Summary.  In this episode, we cover the last chapter of Greg’s book, as well as go through a big overview of the entire book. What is the […]

What does it mean to live fully in the now … the present moment? It means that your awareness is completely centered on the here and now. You are not worrying about the future or thinking about the past. When you live in the present, you are living where life is happening. The past and […]

As we wrap up this study on Essentialism, I wanted to play an interview with Greg McKeown. I had hoped to interview Greg myself, but our schedules didn’t work out.  Instead, I want to play you a recent interview with Greg by Michael Hyatt.  This interview comes from Platform University, a wonderful interactive environment from […]

In my life I’ve gone through periods of intense, driven productivity – months where everything fell into place, and my goals almost seemed to accomplish themselves. At the other extreme, there have been times in my life where I was completely overwhelmed, burdened by my different projects and responsibilities – and frustrated because so many […]

Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow … toward your resonators … your dreams … your essential things. We can get so “destination minded” that we forget the journey in front of us. If we do this we lose site that making any progress is better than no progress. Click […]

To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day. —Lao-tzu What is the obstacle that is keeping you back from achieving what really matters to you? By systematically identifying and removing this “constraint” you’ll be able to significantly reduce the friction keeping you from executing what is essential. Click to […]

The problem is that very few people know what buffer is, let alone ever experience it. So why don’t we have any? Why are we so overcommitted and crazy-busy? Life is a long-distance run not a sprint. If you and I are going to be effective over the long-term, we have to create buffer and pace ourselves. […]

Margin is the space between our load and our limits.  It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed.  Margin is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. If you and I are going to be effective over the long term, we have to create margin in our lives.  This is not […]

We previously likened looking at our lives as a journalist … listening, asking questions, connecting the dots, investigating. Another way to integrate Essentialism is to see yourself as an editor, where you edit your life. The root word for “decision” is cis or cid, which means “to cut.”  You see this root word in “scissors.”  A great way […]

Sometimes we truly have so much to do, we don’t know which end is up. But sometimes the frenzy is self-induced. Feeling overwhelmed is sometimes a matter of perception – if you think you have too much to do, your limbic system takes over and you can’t think creatively about alternatives. Overscheduling is a common […]

I dare you … dare you to simply say “no” to the trivial many things in your life.  But how exactly do we do this?  Sometimes that is easier said than done. Yet, the right “no” spoken at the right time can change the course of history.  Are you ready to take this dare and […]

Clarity … the first type of nonessential you’re going to learn how to eliminate is simply any activity that is misaligned with what you are intending to achieve.   We need a “mission statement” to help gain clarity in our lives.  Knowing what our goals are in life are the first step in saying “No” […]

If the answer isn’t a definite yes, then the answer should be no.  Part of essentialism is being picky about what we say yes to.  Your most effective no is a well-defined yes.   Ok ok … but how can we really do this?  How can we implement a stronger, selective criteria into our lives.  We discuss that in this episode. […]

Sleep … the last frontier.  These are the voyages of “Gee do I have to?” and “I can live off of just 4 hours” craziness.  The mission is to totally crash my life by going against every bit of research about what meaningful sleep actually is.   Ok ok … so I’m being a little […]