David Armano has a great visual that puts ‘life’ right smack in the middle of the continuum between planning and improvisation. Without flexibility, we shrivel quickly, don’t we?

I really loved this article.
I agree with you about clarity – it is a great ingredient for getting done whatever is really a match for us and our business in the moment.
Then, as Sean said, there’s life. And the need to be flexible and shift with the moment whether that means a young child with immediate needs that comes up just at that moment when you’re ready to do your thing with clarity or other distractions that are unavoidable (I’m not talking about things like a phone ringing where the answering machine can save the day).
I think there are a lot of ingredients to the productivity recipe, clarity being one of them.
Here are some others as I see it:
- Scheduling uninterrupted time and having back up for things like needy kids, etc
- Finding a good space for yourself which fosters your creativity whether that be at your computer at home or outside somewhere
- The balance between being productive through clarity and also clarity in choosing relaxation and rejeuvenation
Your articles are excellent, as always. You put words on things for me that have been concepts floating around in my head but not fully formed.
Thanks so much.

Char

“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”
-Peter Drucker

As a student of human behavior, I have always taken an interest in how decisions beget decisions. Life presents you with options. Each decision you make influences the options you have later. Some decisions close options. Some reveal options you didn’t anticipate.[...]

Ultimately, I think we get, on a deep level, that if we’re in a fight, something’s just not right.

The good news is that clarity, like most things, has a learning curve: the more we find it, the easier it is to find it again.