Our attention is spread over various subjects and conversations, and when we strive to do so much, we actually apply very little of ourselves to any individual activity. We feel stressed out, burned out, exhausted, frustrated, and disconnected. 

You can't change the past or act in the future. The current moment is all you have. Right now, you can affect what happens to you for the rest of your life. The future is created now, our dreams are achieved in the moment.

One challenges most of us face is balancing our time and energy. Too much time and effort spent in a single area can create burnout and a lack of fulfillment overall. Life balance is achieved when you are purposeful about how and where you spend your time, energy and effort.

Work burnout 工作倦怠

Breaking your bigger goals into 12 week segments allows you to not only make consistent progress, but also to celebrate the milestones along the way. When you are making real progress you feel greater satisfaction, feel more fulfilled, and stay motivated to see the project through to completion. 

Three principles:

1. Accountability：Accountability is a willingness to own your actions and results regardless of the circumstances. 

2. Commitment: Commitment is a personal promise that you make to yourself. Keeping your promise to others builds strong relationships, and keeping promise to yourself builds character, esteem, and success. 

3. Greatness in the moment 

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Five Disciplines:

1. Vision: A compelling vision creates a clear picture of the future. It is critical that business vision aligns with and enables your personal vision. This alignment ensures a powerful emotional connection that promotes a sustained commitment, and continual action.

2. Planning: An effective plan clarifies and focuses on the top-priority initiatives and actions needed to achieve the vision.

3. Process control: process control consists of a set of tools and events that align your daily actions with the critical actions in your plan. These tools and events ensure that more of your time is spent on strategic and money making activities. 

4. Measurement: measurement drives the process. It is the anchor of reality.

5. Time use: Using your time with clear intention is a must. 

The Emotional Cycle of Change 

There are five stages that people move through emotionally when changing their behavior:

1. Uninformed optimism

The first stage of change is most often exciting, as we imagine all of the benefits and have not yet experienced any of the costs. You see all the benefits of the change and none of the downside, so this stage is fun.

2. Informed pessimism 

It is characterized by a shift to negative emotional state. At this point, the benefits don't seem as real, important, or immediate, and the costs of the change are apparent. You start to question if the change is really worth the effort and begin to look for reasons to abandon the effort.

3. Valley of despair 

This is when most people give up. All the pain of change is felt and the benefits seem far away or less important - and there is a fast, easy way to end the discomfort: give up!

It is precisely at this stage that having a compelling vision is critical. Nearly all of us have had times in our  lives when we wanted something so badly that we were willing to pay any price and overcome any hurdle to get it.

4. Informed optimism 

At this stage, your likelihood of success is much higher. You are back in the positive emotional area of the cycle. The benefits of your actions are starting to bear fruit and the costs of change are lessened because your new thoughts and actions are becoming more routine. The key at this stage is not stop!

5. Success and fulfillment 

The benefits of your new behaviors are fully experienced and the costs of change are virtually gone. The actions, which at the beginning were difficult and uncomfortable, have now become routine. 

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You benefit from 12 week planning because of the short time horizon. Uncertainty is reduced due to the shortened time frame, and as a result you can plan effectively at the action level.

Plans can both build capacity for the future and drive short-term results. Every plan should have a goal to drive results in the current 12 weeks.

Five criteria that will help you create better 12 week plans:

1. Make them specific and measurable 

2. State them positively 

3. Ensure they are a realistic stretch 

4. Assign accountability 

5. Be time-bound 

It is one thing to identify the actions needed to create a better result, it's a whole other thing to consistently do them. 

Without structural and environmental support, follow through becomes an constant exercise of willpower. Tool to use: Weekly plan (translate 12 week plan into daily and weekly actions, the weekly plan is the instrument that organizes and focuses your week.)

structure: the state of being well organized or planned with all the parts linked together; a careful plan

Learn from life. You will make mistakes. You will not always get the result you are after, especially on the first try. These failures are full of information. Learn to view them as valuable feedback that can be used to improve future outcomes. 

Focus on the future. Accountability is not about the past, but about the future. So often we make judgements about the past as either good or bad, when, in many cases, the past just is past. Forget about blame, forget about guilt, and move forward by focusing on the future and what you can do to get better results.

Waiting for things beyond your control to change is another major pitfall. Waiting for something or someone to change is terribly unproductive and frustrating. 

To be effective you will want to focus on things that you can control. You don't control the circumstances or others. The only things you control are your thinking and your actions. Spend your energy on things you control. Work on keeping your thinking and actions productive.

Sometimes life gets in the way and you are not able to meet your commitments, so you disappoint yourself and others. When this happens, it is important to get right back on the course. Don't give up!

When things get in the way of meeting a commitment, it is important to dig into why. Confront the breakdown right away and recommit to paying the price. In that way, you grow your ability to make and meet commitments in the future. 

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Resistance Mosters 

The need for immediate gratification: given a choice, people choose immediate and certain short-term comfort over potential long-term benefits almost every time, unless there is a compelling reason to choose otherwise. 

Big change and multiple goals: the benefits of planning diminish rapidly, if not altogether, if you pursue and plan with more than one goal. The study posited that in itself the act of planning for multiple goals discourage people when they were forced to consider all of the obstacles, constraints, and forgone pleasurable activities, involved in reaching their goals. 

Two ways to "shrink" change: first, limit the initial investment in time, and second, set progress milestones that are quickly within reach. 

Victim thinking: As long as you see the solution to your greatness as being outside of you, you will remain powerless to change. The reality is that the only things you control are the way you think and the way you act; everything else, you can only try to influence.