Quotes About Control

Instead, the key to managing all of your stuff is managing your actions.

Sometimes, however, you may need greater rigor and focus to get a project or situation under control, to identify a solution, or to ensure that all the right steps have been determined. This is where vertical focus comes in. Knowing how to think productively in this more vertical way and how to integrate the results into your personal system is the second powerful behavior set needed for knowledge work.

Vertical control, in contrast, manages thinking, development, and coordination of individual topics and projects.

Anxiety is caused by a lack of control, organization, preparation, and action. —David Kekich

Anxiety is caused by a lack of control, organization, preparation, and action. —David Kekich The methods I present here are all based on two key objectives: (1) capturing all the things that need to get done—now

El pensamiento es la esencia misma de la empresa y la vida, y lo más difícil de lograr en ambas. Los forjadores de imperios dedican horas y horas a la labor intelectual… mientras otros se van de fiesta. Si no te planteas conscientemente el esfuerzo de ejercer el pensamiento creativo autoguiado… entonces estás cayendo en la pereza y ya no controlarás tu vida. —DAVID KEKICH

That's why I maintain a healthy skepticism when people want to get control of their work and life by "setting priorities." This is often just an attempt to sidestep responsibility for what they've been engaged with irresponsibly. My choice is always to go for cleaning up the garage of their work, their life, and their head. Then the priorities, the vision, and the plan emerge—grounded, with solid roots.

Horizontal control maintains coherence across all the activities in which you are involved. Vertical control, in contrast, manages thinking up and down the track of individual topics and projects.

Rule your mind or it will rule you. —Horace Between

The reason most organizing systems haven't worked for most people is that they haven't yet transformed all the stuff they're trying to organize. As long as it's still stuff, it's not controllable.

The habit of clarifying the next action on projects, no matter what the situation, is fundamental to you staying in relaxed control.

The goal for managing horizontally and vertically is the same: to get things off your mind and get things done. Appropriate action management lets you feel comfortable and in control as you move through your broad spectrum of work and life, while appropriate project focusing gets you clear about and on track with the specifics needed.

Your health doesn't just happen; it's not something that takes care of itself as you go through life. You can't leave your health in someone else's hands, and the same goes for your wealth. They're both completely in your hands.

Once the decision is out of your hands, there's no way you can be tempted into doing the wrong thing.

Humans were imperfect beings operating in a world over which they had diminishing control.

Déjà vu Orwell's 1984

The guard thought about this for a few moments. "When they first brought him here we did the standard strip search, no orifice overlooked.

He couldn't leave the area and couldn't knowingly go within a hundred feet of someone with a criminal record. He couldn't do drugs and he couldn't own or carry a weapon. The hydraulic rams came to life and

I let circumstances beyond my control define me. That's not good. That's worse than lying to yourself. It's like you're lying to your soul.

You can't command men in battle if they like you

can do this. You can make it. Forty miles per hour. He pushed the throttles ahead and crept the speed stick up to forty-five. He was almost topped out now. Even with the twin stern-drive engines he wouldn't be able to muster more speed without unduly depleting his fuel. And there

But a dictator doesn't need supporters, he just needs followers

As opposed to what? A country run by old white billionaires and their paid lackeys in Washington?

the parlance of the perception management field, the world had firmly entered the "gripper" stage, where the majority of people embraced as true everything they were told. It was far easier to accomplish this than most would care or dare to believe. It was easy to manipulate people. Folks had been doing it pretty much forever with results that had taken the world right to the edge of destruction.