My highlighted notes on “Get Your Sh*t Together: The New York Times Bestseller (A No F*cks Given Guide)” by Sarah Knight:
Stop worrying about what you should be doing.
Winning happens when you translate dreams into action and your actions change your reality.
If you’re serious about getting your shit together in the long term, you have to strategize, focus, and commit in the short term.
Spend the time now to save it later.
Getting it together takes three steps:
- Strategize: Set a goal and make a plan to achieve that goal in a series of small, manageable chunks.
- Focus: Set aside time to complete each chunk. One at a time.
- Commit: Do what you need to do to check off your chunks.
A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a goal and therefore all the small, manageable steps of a plan – your plan – neatly bundled.
You’re only as good as the last step you took.
You have to commit all the way.
Ask yourself: What’s wrong with my life? Why?
Where does your time go? Know how long it takes to do anything.
The secret to time management isn’t speeding up or slowing down. It’s about strategy and focus.
Strategy: If X is a necessary task, schedule the necessary time to get it done (= focus) and/or do X only when you have the necessary time available.
The most important thing is single-tasking: Completing one small, manageable goal at a time.
Letting go of things you can’t control is a huge part of the mental decluttering process.
Prioritize and delegate. When in doubt, hire a pro. And try to do it all without losing my mind.
Mental clutter examples: Anxiety and perfectionism.
Eventually, the fear of failure becomes just as powerful and punishing as the failure itself, and it can be crippling.
Frankin D. Roosevelt once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
When you accept that failure is an option, you move it from the realm of anxiety-inducing anticipation into a reality that you’ll deal with when (and more importantly, IF) it ever happens.
Your energy is better spent on accomplishing goals in the here and now than on worrying about failure in the future (or in your imagination).
Prioritize “doing stuff” before “doing it perfectly,”
Perfection is an illusion and a self-defeating strategy.
The more you spend trying to get one thing perfectly perfect, the less time you have for anything else.
Perfect is the enemy of the good.
Identify your pitfalls in the Game of Life: Poor time management, distraction, and fear of failure.
You cannot finish something you never start.
Pinpoint your own behavior as the cause of your problems.