Ideas without action are stillborn.

— Jim Rohn

We don’t need more information.

We know what we need to do, and we usually know how to do it. I know how to start exercising, you know how to lose a few pounds, and we all know how to carve out more time for our friends and families. These things may be difficult, but they’re not complicated. Instead of seeking new information, perhaps we should act on the information we already have.

> It's not designed to help us. It's designed to keep us hooked.

— Tristan Harris

Six months ago, I realized I had a creeping smartphone problem. At work, I constantly checked for breaking news. I looked up random facts at dinner (did you know corn is actually a grass?). I checked my email while playing with my daughter. Like many people, I was addicted to my smartphone.

Some ideas have been so perfectly expressed by others that there’s really no point in trying to say them any differently. For example, here’s Winston Churchill on the nature of truth:

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Wow, how powerful. Who’s going to top that? Not me.

Peter Drucker is generally considered the most influential management thinker of the 20th century, and in last week’s post, I praised his productivity classic The Effective Executive. The book is packed with wisdom on how to run your professional life (regardless of your title), but Drucker’s insights in The Effective Executive on the nature of time are especially compelling. Like Churchill’s comments on truth, they capture difficult ideas so well that paraphrasing is counterproductive. So rather than trying to channel Drucker, I’d like to share his thoughts with you directly. They’re below, with my comments.

A steady diet of high-quality nonfiction can help you solve many of life’s problems. But it also creates one:

What to read next?

New books are published constantly. Many are good books. Some are great books. All are competing for your reading time. Even for a discerning reader with well-defined interests, there are more worthy books published each month than there are hours in which to read them. What’s a reader to do? Increasingly, I believe the answer is this:

In researching and writing about time management for the last couple of years, I’ve explored multiple approaches, but I’ve gradually come to advocate one approach above all others. It’s called time blocking, and it’s no exaggeration to say that it can change your working life. In the two years I’ve been using time blocking, I estimate that my productivity has roughly doubled. That’s the kind of efficiency gain you don’t find every day!