Maximizing Performance Through Applied Common Sense*

If you think about your life, there are a handful of items that are really important:  your health, your wealth, your sleep, your family, your relationships and your finances.  Those are important.  So, what is urgent?  Well, it’s putting out the latest fire, it’s the latest thing you get seduced by, it’s the “We have to clean up the house before the cleaning people arrive.” How insane is that?  If you get seduced too often by the urgent, you’ll notice that the important takes short shrift.  So write down a list of what is really important and set aside time to do those first.  When you do, you are in charge of your life.

“The Benefit of the doubt,” when I hear people say that, I think it’s insane.  In what way is there any benefit in doubt? When you think about it, the moment you hear the word “doubt” you start getting nervous and you start thinking there is a real problem. Rather, the intent of "benefit of the doubt" is actually one that is supposed to repair things as opposed to making them worse.  So, change the wording from “the benefit of the doubt” to “the benefit of the trust” or “the benefit of the confidence.”  When you say that it seems like it is repairing things rather than making them more divisive. So, change it from “doubt” to “trust” and see what happens.