How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams Page B

a thousand things to complete in a day, as Shelly often does. But it’s a good idea to have an overarching plan to move toward simple systems as opportunities allow. You can chip away at the complexity of your life over time. Simplicity is a worthy long-term goal. That’s how you will free your personal energy so you can concentrate it where you need it.
Sitting Position
    Your brain takes some of its cues from what your body is doing. My experience is that when I sit in a position I associate with relaxation, such as slumping on the couch, my brain will start the lazy relaxation subroutine. But if I sit with good posture, both feet on the floor, it seems that my body signals to my brain that it’s time to concentrate on work.
    Consistency might be more important than the specific position you choose. If you train yourself to do deep concentration when sitting on the couch with your laptop, that might become a good place for you to work. Just don’t make the mistake of using the same sitting position for work that you use for relaxation. If the couch is whereyou like to nap or watch television, it will probably be a poor place for doing serious work.
    Sleep experts will tell you that the worst place to watch television is in bed. If you do it often enough, you won’t be able to fall asleep without watching television first. Watching a thought-provoking or emotion-grabbing television show is a bad way to relax into your evening snooze. A better approach is to use your bed for sex and sleeping and nothing else. 1 , 2
    Likewise, it’s a good idea to dedicate certain sitting positions and certain work spaces to work and other spaces to relaxation or play. That makes your physical environment a sort of user interface for your brain, and it becomes a way to manipulate your energy levels and concentration. To change how you feel, and how you think, you can simply change where you are sitting.
    This is the sort of idea you’re likely to dismiss as unimportant unless you try it yourself for an extended time. In my experience, the way I sit makes a huge difference to my productivity.
Tidiness
    Tidiness is a personal preference, but it also has an impact on your energy. Every second you look at a messy room and think about fixing it is a distraction from your more important thoughts.
    I realize that clutter and messiness don’t affect everyone the same way. Some people need to have things just right and others don’t seem to mind living in chaos. My experience is that after straightening up my office and working through the piles of miscellaneous tasks, I feel more clearheaded and energetic. I don’t assume my experience is universal, but the cause and effect in my case is so strong that I do recommend you experiment with it. All you need to do is pay attention to how you feel after you have tidied up your work space compared with how you felt when it was a mess.
    Cleaning and organizing your space is boring work, and you might never see it as a priority. One trick I’ve learned is that I automatically generate enthusiasm about tidying up if I know someone is stopping by. That’s why it’s a good idea to invite people over on a regular basis. It will inspire you to keep your space straightened up, and that might in turn cause your mind to have a bit more energy.
Knowledge and the Lack Thereof
    Oneof the biggest obstacles to success—and a real energy killer—is the fear that you don’t know how to do the stuff that your ideal career plans would require. For example, you might have a terrific idea for a small business, but you don’t know how to get a fictitious name, how to do your accounting, how to build a Web site, how to outsource work to China, and so on. When you don’t know anything about a particular topic, it’s easy to assume it would be too hard to learn it quickly. I run into that all the time, and I’ve developed a few tricks and work-arounds you might find helpful.
    When my first editor of comics called