Overwhelm comes from not clarifying what your intended outcome is, not deciding what the very next action is, and not reminding yourself of your intended outcome and action.

Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them.

Pretend your brain is a white board. Is it covered with to-do lists and “DO NOT ERASE”? Is there space for drawing and combining ideas?

If we don’t appropriately manage the ‘open loops’ in our life, our attention will get pulled.

You need to transform all the ‘stuff’ you attract and accumulate into a clear inventory of meaningful actions, projects, and usable information.

Getting things done requires defining what “done” means and what “doing” looks like.

Mastering your workflow involves capturing what has your attention, clarifying what it means, putting it where it belongs, reviewing it frequently and engaging with it.

If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined.

Anxiety and guilt don’t come from having too much to do; it comes from breaking agreements with yourself.

People trust I know what I'm doing. I have lots of credibility. I've had years of learning. I know and understand my business.

When I started learning the cello, I fell in love with the instrument because it seemed like a voice - my voice.

I'd always loved writing, in the same way that I'd loved painting. I wouldn't have seen it as a career.

Being thought of as sexy makes one employable, but it's not going to last forever, so I try not to think about it. It's like something that exists outside of me.

People in New York pay attention to national issues - a huge percentage of people.

PowerPoint makes us stupid.

But you can count the dead bodies from alcohol, tobacco, and legal pharmaceuticals by the millions.

I always end up hurting myself doing something mundane. If I have to do some complicated stunt, I'm fine.

The strange anthropological lesson of social media is that human beings, if given a choice, often prefer to socialize alone.

Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts.

What does it matter, if you let go? For the weight that is on you means nothing and never meant anything.

Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.

When I was incarcerated at Alderson in West Virginia for a five-month term, they had a ceramics class.

When you are paying attention to your thoughts, words, actions, feelings, food habits, reactions, decisions, secrets, patterns, and physique, you start tuning in consciously.

I'm hoping to make a new thing for the world that remains in the mind like a new species of living thing.

For a long time, I dressed like an idiot. In college, I had a fully shaved head with just two horns. Like, a coxcomb of hair that I would sculpt into two horns. I looked like a crazy person.

I lived in New York for a long time. Right after college I went there. So I got my first cell phone in New York. Back when you would flip the phone up. Way back when.

When it comes to make-up, I usually go au natural most of the time and opt for a basic blush, lip gloss and kohl for a day look.

Prayer is less about changing the world than it is about changing ourselves.

The student who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art, is the victim of a deplorable species of egotism.

Only one of my grandchildren is serious about a musical instrument. The others dabble in it.

When you first think of making a monster movie you have to realize that a lot of people may be down on you because there is a big prejudice against such films.

I believe in status symbols.

No matter how invasive the technologies at their disposal, marketers and pollsters never come to terms with the living process through which people choose products or candidates; they are looking at what people just bought or thought, and making calculations based on that after-the-fact data.