I often talk about the negative impact of mental pressure. But I am occasionally asked whether some pressure isn’t good. For example, a member of the Thinking Lab observed, “Just the right amount of pressure is desirable and beneficial…. I believe in values pressure — a good thing if you have good values — where […]| Thinking Directions
I had an interesting conversation the other day with a Thinking Lab member who has hated his job off and on for a long time and wants to do something constructive about it. The key word here is “constructive.” People “hate” all kinds of things: the culture, how their families treat them, organizations they disapprove […]| Thinking Directions
“Thinking” is a purposeful process of integrating new observations with your existing knowledge and values to reach new conclusions. It is not a passive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual […]| Thinking Directions
Much of the advice for curing yourself of procrastination comes down to “just get started” or “just take a little step.” Once you start on a task that you’ve been avoiding, you often find that the work develops its own momentum. If you can just get started, you can get over the initial hump of […]| Thinking Directions
I’ve been asked to explain the difference between my Eyes-Wide-Open Decision Making Process1 and a typical decision process. The short answer is — my method offers a way to validate difficult decisions, when you can’t reach certainty. Many decision methods can speed you to a conclusion when you need only a few minutes to clarify […]| Thinking Directions
One of my top life lessons learned is: if you want to create your dream life, you must stay ruthlessly committed to identifying and pursuing your top priority at each choice-point during the day. I call this “The Priorities Mindset.” It took me years to truly learn this lesson, and like all important life lessons, […]| Thinking Directions
Self-critical thoughts get a bad rap. You should neither reject self-critical thoughts nor treat them as revealed truths. Instead, treat them like crazy ideas from a brainstorming session. They, too, are products of your current knowledge, values, and skill. Used constructively, they can help you achieve your most ambitious goals. This new approach to dealing […]| Thinking Directions
I didn’t set out to teach time management, but I sure talk about it a lot in my programs. That’s because each aspect of a time-management system takes firsthand thinking to make it work. Consider the first basic problem in time management: keeping track of what you need to do when. You need a calendar, […]| Thinking Directions
We are bombarded with factoids and sound bites in political speeches, subway ads, water-cooler conversations—everywhere. It takes a sharp focus to separate the babble from the facts. For guidance with this important task, I recommend Darrell Huff’s classic book, How to Lie with Statistics. Some people might be put off by such a mathematical subject. But […]| Thinking Directions
A member of the Thinking Lab asked me for advice on how to decide whether to join a small startup or stay with his very successful, stable, lucrative job at a large company. Let’s call him Max. Max had done a lot of thinking about his choice, but he still had some nagging doubts. People […]| Thinking Directions
If you want to do creative work at a high level, you need to spend significant time developing your skills. There is no substitute for practice. Some people would say you need self-discipline to develop the skills. Others would say you need self-control to put in systematic effort. I use neither of those terms because […]| Thinking Directions
The Foundation for Managing Motivation| Thinking Directions
By far, the primary influence on my work is Ayn Rand. Her philosophy infuses my entire approach and underlies all my conclusions. One important secondary influence is F.M. Alexander, the inventor of the Alexander Technique. The Alexander Technique is training in conscious control over your body. It’s been around for over 100 years, but it’s gained popularity […]| Thinking Directions
I am often asked what’s wrong with setting a goal to “be happy” or “feel good.” The problem is that these “goals” are subjective — ultimately circular. Goals need to be objective. To understand that goals need to be objective, first you need to understand what a goal is, and how it relates to emotions. […]| Thinking Directions
In the previous article, I opined that only a productive purpose can serve as a a central purpose. Before going deeper into the positive point, I’d like to address some common questions. People ask, why not make recreation or relationships or emotional well-being your central purpose? For example, why can’t a retiree have as his […]| Thinking Directions
Whenever we experience a conflict, it can be difficult to figure out how to move forward. On the one hand, it is never right to mindlessly suppress what you think is “emotion” and go by “reason.” On the other hand, it is never right to mindlessly go by “emotion” and ignore “reason.”| Thinking Directions
In order to gain power over your own motivation, you need a rational morality — a self-consistent morality — that guides all of your choices and actions in a way that enables you to live, productively and happily, in long-term loving relationships over the course of your life. In other words, it is a morality […]| Thinking Directions
How a Central Purpose Integrates Your Life| Thinking Directions
Elsewhere I have argued on the importance of having a central purpose. To refresh your recollection, “a central purpose is the long-range goal that constitutes the primary claimant on a man’s time, energy, and resources.” (Leonard Peikoff, OPAR). Recently I’ve been chewing how a central purpose makes you happier, and I thought I’d share my […]| Thinking Directions
In my previous article titled So You Hate Your Job, I said, When you feel forced into a decision to take a job, it means you need to seriously look at the negatives of not taking the job. My Thinking Labber joked about being homeless if he didn’t work, but homelessness is […]| Thinking Directions
It’s a bromide that the holiday season can be stressful. There are plenty of reasons for that. Likely you have more social engagements than usual, so you have less time to yourself. You may undertake several seasonal projects with firm deadlines — decorating the house, hosting a party (or a house party), buying presents for […]| Thinking Directions
Jean Moroney, President of Thinking Directions, teaches managers and other professionals how to use targeted thinking to solve problems faster, make better decisions, and get projects finished. They use her tactics to be smarter about achieving their goals. She started her career as an engineer, graduating from MIT with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1985 […]| Thinking Directions
Happiness is the Fuel of Achievement| Thinking Directions
I was recently interviewed on the Yaron Brook Show on the topic of “Motivation by Love.” The main point of the interview is that it’s important to go deeper to understand the source of your motivation for any action. The fundamental motivation needs to be the desire to gain, keep, or create a value rather than […]| Thinking Directions
The Thinker's Toolkit explains the mental tools you need to solve problems faster, understand emotions, and make better decisions. These time-tested tactics come with some material support: a 4-color pen, a thinking notebook, and "mental cleanup" pads.[…]| Thinking Directions
To resolve conflict, you need to understand the root cause. It’s biological. We have two completely independent motivational systems. One system, traditionally called “motivation by love,” exists to motivate action toward values. A value in the psychological sense is something you desire to gain and/or keep, because you believe it promotes your life here on […]| Thinking Directions
The common wisdom is that you need to forgive an injustice from another. If that means “to grant a free pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.)”1 then I am not in favor of it. I’m in favor of a just response. Admittedly, that is more challenging. Often overlooked by those seeking justice […]| Thinking Directions
Achieve a Major Goal in 8 Weeks: Now is always a good time to revisit a resolution, start a new project, or just double down on a goal you've set for yourself. Accelerate your project by joining me for the latest Launch. [...]| Thinking Directions
Every few years, I re-read How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein. This little book helps me answer a crucial question: “What is the best use of my time right now?” Figuring out the answer can be difficult, particularly when I undertake new projects. It takes fresh thinking to challenge old […]| Thinking Directions
I’ve become a fan of Brooke Castillo’s “Self-Coaching Scholars” program. I find her methods to be a valuable complement to the ones I have already developed. She’s helped me speed up how I deal with distracting, unproductive emotions, while still maintaining the self-respectful, value-oriented perspective that is essential to success. For example, I recall a […]| Thinking Directions
Paradoxically, celebration and mourning* are similar processes. They involve similar steps and achieve similar purposes. And they are similarly misunderstood and neglected, despite their critical importance to a joyful life. Neither celebration nor mourning concerns an emotional experience per se. Their essence is that they involve strengthening your own values. I will explain this first […]| Thinking Directions
You already know what you need to know to complete most of the complex items on your To Do list. There’s just one problem. You can’t always access the information when you need it.[…]| Thinking Directions
Mental overload is the #1 obstacle to thinking. Whether it’s too many things to think about, too many emotions to give you space to think, or too much complexity to untangle in your head, it is THE problem. Indeed, what distinguishes humans from animals is that we have more mental abilities to deal with overload. […]| Thinking Directions
In a call on “How to Get Results Now on Your Long-Term Objective,” I was asked whether I thought “should” should be eschewed. I don’t. I think “should” should be reclaimed. However, for many people, this will involve automatizing a new meaning for the word “should.” “Should” is a moral concept. When you say you […]| Thinking Directions
What determines your productivity on a day-to-day basis? The effectiveness of your thinking. The more effective your thinking:[…]| Thinking Directions
If you’ve followed my work, you know I’m an advocate of “Thinking on Paper.” You can watch this 3-minute video explaining “thinking on paper, or read a short write-up on it here. People often ask when they should use “thinking on paper” to speed up their thinking. Like physical leverage, mental leverage entails a tradeoff. […]| Thinking Directions
The Thinking Lab is a membership program for ambitious people who believe their own mental skill is critical to help them rise to new challenges. They seek skills for developing: clarity, creativity, decisiveness, emotional resilience, and self-motivation.| Thinking Directions
Emotions are our automatic life-reporting systems. We experience joy in our successes, eagerness to achieve the next goal, fear of a deadline we need to pay more attention to. Emotions are crucial to enjoying life and keeping it on track. Unfortunately, emotions can also be wildly inappropriate, immensely disruptive, and unnecessarily paralyzing. To avoid the […]| Thinking Directions
When the desire for approval is driving many decisions, it is a “defense value.” It distorts your choices and actions and undercuts your successes and sense of self. Fortunately, this is a problem that can be remedied by taking an active approach to reprogramming your value hierarchy to eliminate this distortion. What is a defense […]| Thinking Directions
In helping some Thinking Labbers make accurate, precise value-judgments, I was reminded of a song I learned as a child. The lyrics as I remember: Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I’m going out and eat worms! The first one was easy. The second one was greasy. The third one stuck in […]| Thinking Directions
In preparation for a new series of classes on “The Work of Happiness” in the Thinking Lab, I have been doing some high-level thinking about how you raise your baseline happiness. As I wrote in How Do You Measure Happiness?, your “baseline happiness” is the overall percentage of your waking time in which you are […]| Thinking Directions
I derive my ideas on happiness from Ayn Rand, who wrote, among other things, “Morality…is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life.” (AR, The Objectivist Ethics) “The purpose of morality is to teach you, not […]| Thinking Directions
I was recently asked to explain the difference between “emotional presence” and “self-esteem.” Emotional presence “Emotional presence” is an intense awareness of your values and their importance to you at the moment. You get it, not just from identifying your emotions, but from experiencing your love, grief, desire, and/or fear as you contemplate the deep […]| Thinking Directions
In the previous article in this series, I said that confidence is the emotion that proceeds from the conclusion that you have sufficient skill that your current or proposed effort will result in success. But if the task is at all difficult, how can you reach such a conclusion with certainty? And if you aren’t […]| Thinking Directions
Confidence is a crucial aspect of happiness. In this article, I will resume my series on the “Concept of Happiness” with a focus on confidence. As a reminder of the context, happiness comes from the achievement of your values. Not a value. Your values. You need to consistently achieve your values to be happy. This doesn’t […]| Thinking Directions
After my recent article on defensiveness, I coached a member of the Thinking Lab who was concerned that productiveness was a defense value for him. He realized that he had a compulsion to prioritize getting things done over every other value — relationships, health, sanity, etc. He could see that he was driven to do […]| Thinking Directions
If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a long time, you know I advocate motivating yourself by values, not threats. In the simplest cases, this just requires introspecting your obvious emotions to identify the values landscape, meaning the values around you and the obstacles in your way to gaining and keeping them. (See my article […]| Thinking Directions
I aim to teach people to think clearly and logically about value-laden issues. As a means to this end, I exhort my Thinking Labbers to identify “deep rational values” [Footnote 1] at stake in every confusing situation. This is critical to your short- and long-term happiness. This term is introduced in the class on “Emotions […]| Thinking Directions
When you are committed to living by reason, contrary emotions can create all sorts of conundrums. For example, a Thinking Lab member recently reported some doubts about a decision he made to take a break and go for a walk. Based on our discussion, I would say that all of the evidence pointed toward his […]| Thinking Directions
This series of articles on happiness would not be possible without the philosophic foundation I got from studying Ayn Rand, with much help from other Objectivist philosophers. Ayn Rand gave me an integrated understanding of the world, how you know it, and what matters most. That integrated system of philosophy made it easier for me […]| Thinking Directions
This series of articles on happiness is based on a specific view of the relationship of the mind and the world, which Ayn Rand called “the primacy of existence.” This is the idea that “the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, […]| Thinking Directions
In a previous article, I argued that accepting reality gets you serenity. In this article, I will make a case that embracing causality gets you happiness. More exactly, my point is that consciously embracing the role of the causal agent of your own happiness is necessary to achieve an enduring happiness. Happiness, like every other […]| Thinking Directions
Peter Drucker once said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” That applies to happiness just as much as to the quality of automobiles that Toyota is producing. If you want to be happier, a good place to start is to make objective just how happy you are now. This takes some work. […]| Thinking Directions
Self-understanding is critical to achieving enduring happiness. This assertion may seem simple and obvious. Happiness requires that you consistently achieve your values. To have such consistent success, you need to factor your own capabilities into your plans. But to do that, you need to know those capabilities. Q.E.D. You are the causal agent of your […]| Thinking Directions
In the most recent article in this series on happiness, I mentioned that the next topic would be embracing causality. To be happy, you need to understand the causal factors that contribute to your present emotional state so that you can enact the causes that will create your future happiness. First and foremost, this means […]| Thinking Directions
In this series on happiness, I have distinguished short-term pleasures and temporary joys from true happiness. To be in a state of true happiness, you need to gain your values every day, week, month, and year. This requires not only that you accept facts of reality, but that your values be consistent with one another, […]| Thinking Directions
Our general topic has been happiness. We now get to the essential issue: can you make yourself happy? The answer is yes — but not by a direct process. You cannot guarantee existential success, nor can you predict your future emotions or your exact future circumstances. But you have indirect control over your own happiness. […]| Thinking Directions
In my last article, I argued that accepting reality helps you move from a state of suffering to a state of serenity. Indeed, when you are suffering, achieving serenity is a practical short-term goal. It provides an important stepping stone to a deep, lasting happiness. So let’s explore this important transitional state. Serenity and the contemplative emotions […]| Thinking Directions
In the previous article in this series on happiness, I argued that it is important to your happiness that you fight suffering, that you develop skill at minimizing it. I then gave some practical advice on how to mitigate suffering: say “no” to overload, don’t be afraid of mourning, and campaign against chronic pain. Those three […]| Thinking Directions
In the first article in this series, I explained the fundamental nature of happiness, which I learned from Ayn Rand. Elaborating on this concept, she wrote: In psychological terms, the issue of man’s survival does not confront his consciousness as an issue of “life or death,” but as an issue of “happiness or suffering.” […]| Thinking Directions
If you want to be happy, you need to know what happiness is. Yet, it is widely misunderstood. Like many abstract concepts that involve values, the concept of “happiness” has been distorted, obfuscated, and denied by philosophers, making it harder for us to understand what we need to be happy. But fortunately, Ayn Rand sorted […]| Thinking Directions
Guilt is the emotion that you feel when you believe you have failed to live up to your own moral standards. It is perhaps the most enervating emotion. It makes you want to curl up in a little ball to block it out and avoid it. But that is the worst thing you can do. […]| Thinking Directions
Courses and articles on creativity drive me crazy. None of them get at what I see as the real issue. They all focus on brainstorming quantities of ideas instead of explaining what creativity really is and how to direct it. For example, you may have participated in a well-known exercise in which your group is […]| Thinking Directions
In the last few articles, I’ve argued that a central purpose integrates your life, that it fits into a real life, that it needs to be a long-range productive goal, not something else, and how to identify your central purpose. I’ve asserted that it is important to a happy life. But how is that? Sometimes […]| Thinking Directions
Working out your central purpose is one of the most selfish things you can do. It has the biggest effect on your future and your happiness. It’s not a quick process. If you already have a general direction but need to clarify the personal significance for yourself, you may be able to sort it out […]| Thinking Directions
In the last article, I described a central purpose as a long-range productive goal that is stylized and utterly selfish. I gave a few examples of how different people in the same profession could have significantly different passions. And I argued that everyone, from young adults to retirees, benefits from having such a goal. There […]| Thinking Directions
A central purpose is your top productive goal. It’s stylized and utterly selfish, not just the name of your profession. One lawyer might have as her central purpose to defend companies against frivolous lawsuits. Another might want to get innocent people out of jail. If the lawyer works at the Institute for Justice, his central […]| Thinking Directions
In my previous article, I argued that you need to motivate all action by reference to values rather than threats. I explained how you justify the goal in terms of values before you act and then stay focused on gaining values while acting. In this article you will see how a value orientation makes a difference after you […]| Thinking Directions
In previous articles on “What is a Value Hierarchy?” and “How Values Form,” I teased readers with the idea that you can strategically reprogram your value hierarchy and I promised to write more on that topic. But first, there is a foundational skill that you need to understand if you are to direct the process. If […]| Thinking Directions
Years ago I discovered what I have jokingly decided to call the “Pierced-Ears Principle.” The name comes from the story of what happened after I pierced my ears. First, the background. As I was beginning to do more public speaking, I started working to improve my style — dress, haircut, makeup, accessories, wardrobe. I used […]| Thinking Directions
In the Launch Program and in my Thinking Lab courses on “Developing a Central Purpose” and “Evolving a Scheduling Infrastructure,” I advocate doing “daily thought work.” This means that you schedule 15-30 minutes every day to “think on paper” about a specific topic, and you keep it up for weeks or months. You may be wondering […]| Thinking Directions
In a previous article, I explained that your motivation to act results from the interaction between your present awareness and your value hierarchy. A value hierarchy is a psychological structure consisting of all of your values, interrelated with one another. Some of the connections are strong, some are weak. Some are direct, some are indirect. VIewing […]| Thinking Directions
I put together the top ten thinking tactics I teach: The Thinker's Toolkit: How to Focus Your Thoughts for Action and Other Thinking Tactics| Thinking Directions
If you want to manage your motivation, you need to understand your own value hierarchy. A value hierarchy is not a list of your top ten values or a bucket list. It is a psychological structure consisting of all of the values you have formed in relation to one another. An emotion results from the […]| Thinking Directions
Now that I live in Florida, I pay a lot more attention to hurricane season than I used to. The season started early this year, which put me in mind of the lessons I learned when Superstorm Sandy hit New York City in 2012. At the time, my husband and I were living in midtown […]| Thinking Directions
It happens to all of us. You decide your priority, you sit down to work on the project, and for one reason or another you go nowhere. Maybe you’re not doing the work — you’re resisting it. Or maybe you’re doing it, but slogging along without much to show for your effort. When a general-purpose tactic like […]| Thinking Directions
“Emotional resilience” is the ability to bounce back from emotional upheaval. You may have a moment of despair, but you recover quickly. Your buttons may be pushed, but you are able to be curious about your reaction and refocus on values. The key to emotional resilience is the ability to suspend action on an emotional […]| Thinking Directions
We had an interesting conversation about “failure” on a Launch call recently. One of the coaches for the program asked if we shouldn’t call a “failure” a “setback” instead. Calling the result a “failure” brought up a lot of old baggage and feelings of discouragement that seemed to get in the way of moving forward. […]| Thinking Directions
