There’s a beautiful painting in my parents’ basement.

It was painted by my great-grandfather Hans Spillner, and it depicts a woman looking out a window at a church on a hill.

The sketch

The painting

The painting is neither technically masterful nor original (it’s based on a sketch from a children’s reader). It’s the work of an amateur.

But it was done by someone who painted for fun. An adult with a full-time job, who, after work or on the weekends, set up an easel and got out his paints instead of staring at the television.

There are two ways to operate a canoe: drift or paddle.

Most people drift.

Most people say “Thank God it’s Friday” and ”Oh God it’s Monday” (and really mean it).

Most people spend more time planning their vacation than they do their life.

It is really easy to drift because we’re not encouraged to paddle. Some of us don’t even have our oars in the water.

This post is part three in a three-part series: The Basics of Getting Things Done. Part one is here, and part two is here!

In part one of this series, we talked about the need for an organizational system outside our own heads, one that frees up our brains to do focused work instead of trying to keep track of all the work we have to do.

In part two, we talked about the theory behind Getting Things Done and the parts that make it up.

This post is part two in a three-part series: The Basics of Getting Things Done. Part one is here, and part three is here! In the previous post, we talked about the basics of Getting Things Done, or GTD. We looked at the benefits: a feeling of focused, calm control over your work, and by extension, your life. We covered the basic concepts that make up GTD:

This post is part one in a series. Part two is here! How often do you think about your own brain? If you’re like me, not often enough. We take our brains for granted most of the time, as we do with most of the wonderful things in our lives. It’s just how we’re wired: we can’t notice everything all the time. The human brain is great at coming up with ideas and solving problems. It can do the most mind-blowing things (pun intended):