Teaching your Children Emphatic Assertiveness

In recent years there have been a lot of articles about the importance of teaching children empathy. As a psychotherapist (and a mom) who specializes in relationships, I could not agree more. I am hopeful that the emphasis on empathy will help children become happier people with more fulfilling relationships. On a larger scale, I hope a focus on empathy will make the world a better and more compassionate place.

However, I also believe that teaching our children assertiveness is just as important as teaching empathy. I like to call the balance of being a kind and empathic person while also being a person that is firm, self-assured and confident, “empathic assertiveness.” Empathic assertiveness means that we respect others and can see their perspective, but at the same time we’re firm in our boundaries and are confident in how we implement them.

In my practice, I often see confusion of how empathy and assertiveness can harmoniously work together. I see parents who appreciate empathy but have apprehension towards it and I also see people who act out of empathy but often to their own detriment. Because of this, I have come to realize that empathy is often thought of as being mutually exclusive from assertiveness.
The parents I see with an apprehension of empathy usually have a fear of the old cliché that “kindness is weakness.” A well intentioned fear of a parent is that if their child is too empathic they may be  taken advantage of. This can be a valid concern because while compassion and empathy are instrumental to positive and deep relationships, the tendency to over-identify with others may open the door for people to take advantage or push and cross boundaries.

I have seen anxious people do things that make them uncomfortable because of guilt. I have seen people let others push and bulldoze their boundaries because they felt bad about saying “no” to someone or didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. Again, while it is of the utmost importance to be able to take the perspective of another and see where they are coming from, it should not go too far to the point that we can’t speak up for ourselves, say no, or set appropriate personal boundaries.

As a parent, teaching the balance of empathy and assertiveness may feel tricky. Modeling your own empathic assertiveness in situations at home and outside of the home is a great way for children to learn how to communicate well with others in a way that is respectful to themselves and others, especially later on in life with the important figures in their lives: colleagues, friends, romantic partners and family members. Positive relationships with others are critical in professional and personal success in life.

There are also always great opportunities for teaching moments where you can emphasize that there is an importance to be compassionate of others and compassionate to ourselves. Questions like, “How do you think that made that person feel?” and “How did you feel about that?” help open the door for children to understand that others’ feelings are valid and so are their own. For children who don’t yet understand their own feelings, it’s good to help them label their feelings: “You felt very sad when Bobby took your toy and you cried.” As children get older and go through life, their ability to navigate these situations on their own and finding the balance between self-care and care of others (often the pendulum shifts and they can’t always be in perfect balance) will grow stronger.

Here are some suggestions for teaching or modeling empathic assertiveness whenever possible:

• Saying “no” to something that makes you uncomfortable does not mean you are rude or mean. Being rude means that you deliberately say or do something that is hurtful to another person. Saying no to respect yourself is not disrespecting someone else.
• You do not always have to explain yourself when you don’t want to do something. Sometimes saying “no” is enough.
• In important relationships, listen to others and validate the parts of their perspective that make sense to you but also make sure that you are in relationships where you are being heard in the same way.
• In relationships and friendships, a constructive conversation is one where both parties feel heard and work to compromise to a point where everyone is comfortable that their needs are being met.
• You can speak up for yourself and still be kind. For example, if you’re at a restaurant and you are overcharged on your bill, you can ask to have the problem fixed in a nice way. “I appear to have been overcharged on this bill. Can you please take a look at it and make the adjustments as necessary? Thank you so much!”
• If you disagree with someone in your home in front of your child(ren) you can respectfully work through the confrontation by not raising your voice or getting defensive and validating their perspective before stating your own. For example, “I can understand why you get upset when I don’t take out the garbage. However, I was incredibly overwhelmed and busy today and it slipped my mind. If you could gently remind me to do that next time, it would be helpful and I’d feel more inclined to do it.”
• Forgiveness means that you don’t hold anger, bitterness or resentment towards someone. However, that doesn’t mean you need to keep people in your life who have hurt you. You can forgive people and keep them at arm’s length or not have them in your life at all.

by Lena Aburdene Derhally - The Washington Post
Derhally is a psychotherapist specializing in anxiety and Imago relationship theory at the Imago Center in Washington DC. She has a toddler and a newborn.

What Parents Should Tell Their Kids About Finding a Career

by James M. Citrin
“After board dinners, we inevitably sit around and talk about our kids and their careers,” Dave Calhoun recently told me. “Frankly, we’re often at a loss with how to help them.” If someone with Calhoun’s experience has trouble with this – he’s chairman of Nielsen’s board, sits on boards of Boeing and Caterpillar, and is on the management committee at Blackstone – I know he can’t be alone.

The truth is, it’s difficult to advise kids about how careers really work today and how to get any job, much less a great job. All parents love their kids and want to set them up for a life of self-sufficiency, meaning, and happiness. But at the same time, your advice may be heavily discounted – the world has changed since you were job-hunting as a new grad, and your kid may not see that you realize that. Moreover, whether you intend it or not, chances are your kids will perceive that you expect them to surpass your own success, which can make even the most well-intentioned conversation feel fraught.

So what should you do — and not do — when it comes to helping your kids with their careers?

Begin by telling them that in the early going they will be valued more on their potential than on their experience and track record. I call the first couple of years in one’s career the Aspiration Phase, in which it’s all about exercising one’s intellectual and interpersonal energies, and bringing enthusiasm, work ethic, and energy to an organization. The Aspiration Phase is about discovery, the process of learning, and the development of knowledge; in other words, the time when your kids will be getting the early experiences that will inform and influence their career. The most important objective is for them to discover their strengths and interests, and to begin learning marketable skills. They should try out as many different kinds of tasks and jobs as possible, and get feedback from peers, friends, and mentors to help them identify what they’re good at (and what they’re not).

When your son or daughter gets to their middle to late twenties, they are likely to be in when I call the Promise Phase. During this stage, their value will begin to be recognized through compensation, promotions, and access to the best assignments and mentors. Your kids should continue to explore their interests and talents, but the key will be to also begin to develop a track record and reputation around specific professional skills, and in so doing make meaningful contributions to their organization. During this stage, encourage them to find out the answers to questions such as whether they prefer working on their own, in small project teams, or in larger organizations, and whether they are honestly willing to put up with the late nights and weekend work required for jobs in lucrative sectors like technology and financial services. They should reflect on whether they thrive in competitive environments, where there are stars and also-rans, or if they prefer cultures that put a premium on teamwork, or tenure. Honest answers to these kinds of questions will help guide them to the career paths more suited to them.

If your college graduate is struggling to answer these questions, help them understand that there are inevitable tradeoffs to be made between three competing forces:
Job satisfaction, which is all about the inherent quality of what they are working on, the impact of the role, how much autonomy they have and how much they’re learning, and how proud they are to be associated with a brand.
Lifestyle, which has to do with where they live, their working hours, how much control they have over their schedule, if they have to commute, and general working conditions.
Money, which includes base salary, bonus potential, and perhaps equity or long-term compensation.

This the Career Triangle. The reality is that it is relatively easy to maximize one of the points on the triangle, and it’s not impossible to optimize a second. But especially in the early years of one’s career, it’s incredibly difficult to max out all three. In other words, if your daughter is complaining about working until midnight as an investment banking intern, ask her if she really enjoys the work. If not then, she may want to consider an alternative direction as she’s only optimizing the money point of the triangle. Or if your son is having trouble making ends meet working for Teach for America, but loves the job and enjoys where he’s currently based, then encourage him to live frugally and know that there will be time to rebalance his career around compensation a little later.

Speaking about money and jobs, there is a single piece of advice you can give your kids that is so obvious that many people overlook it. If your son or daughter wants to make a lot of money, the single best way is to go into a field that pays well. To quote Ben Stein, renowned columnist for The New York Times, from advice to college freshmen that he wished he had received himself when he started Columbia University in the early 1960s, “Over the years, I have seen it. Smart men and women in finance and corporate law always grow rich, or at least well-to-do. Incredibly smart men and women in short-story writing or anthropology or acting rarely do.”

The final key point to stress with your kids about how careers really work is the power of relationships. Relationships are critical both to getting jobs and to being successful once on the job. But it is also one of the most essential factors to overall happiness. You want to encourage your kids to have a relationship mindset, always seeking to help others, making an extra effort to be polite to everyone they come into contact with, especially in a professional context, regardless of what role or how senior someone is in an organization. You want to stress the importance of following up on introductions and sending thank you emails. But I would actually advise you to not encourage your kid to network. Trust me, they have been buffeted by messages about how everything happens through networking. They are likely to believe already that they will need to network to find jobs. Not only do they not need extra pressure to do that, but in fact, they will be more effective and happier if you encourage them to focus less on networking and more on finding ways to develop meaningful relationships, based on the timeless truth of give-and-take.

No doubt your child has already gotten a lot of advice from his or her career counseling office on the basics of setting up a LinkedIn profile, writing a resume, and interviewing. They may even have been taught how to create a “target list” that organizes their first-choice companies into a spreadsheet, with contacts, follow-ups, and next steps. Books like mine and good career counselors can teach them that. But as their parent, they’re likely looking to you for something else. They don’t need you to organize their job search for them, nag them, or serve up unhelpful platitudes like “follow your passions.” Instead, help them think through the tradeoffs they’ll have to make. Resist the urge to relate everything back to your own experience – that can come across as, “Here’s how I did it, so it’s the road you should take, too.” Instead, let your daughter or son know that their career will likely follow a winding path, with multiple left and right turns.

You can’t give them a map – but you can give them encouragement that there is indeed one, and can help them learn to read it for themselves.

culled from the Havard Business Review

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren’t sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. “Lose 5 pounds” is a better goal than “lose some weight,” because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you’ll “eat less” or “sleep more” is too vague — be clear and precise. “I’ll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights” leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you’ve actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it’s not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.
To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., “If it’s Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I’ll work out for 30 minutes before work.”) Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don’t know how well you are doing, you can’t adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don’t underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won’t improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.
Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The good news is, if you aren’t particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don’t have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking …. well, there’s no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control “muscle” is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn’t get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.
To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you’d honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don’t. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur (“If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.”) It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that’s the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don’t tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it’s important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don’t try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don’t put yourself in harm’s way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., “Don’t think about white bears!”) has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.
If you want to change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like “If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down.” By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don’t need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It’s never what you are, but what you do.

To fill the gap created by absentee parents, kids find new Character Models from: Nannies, Drivers, Gardeners, TV personalities, etc #iwfi #family

The Power of doing less for our children to achieve more

 

By Eloise Cataudella, Manager of Communications, Institute of Marriage and Family, Canada.

What if the very things you did to give your child a leg up could actually hurt their chances for success? What if too much of a good thing – lessons, toys, even choices – had the opposite effect, putting your child at a disadvantage?

Family counselor and best-selling author Kim John Payne, M.Ed., says this is exactly what’s happening in modern parenting.  Some children, as a result, are nudged toward anxiety disorders, ADHD or bullying.

In an interview with the IMFC, Payne explains the problem: Parents, driven by a deep desire to provide for their children, are falling into the trap of providing “too much.” Until recently in history, the challenge for parents was to provide enough.

Every parent hopes to unleash their child’s boundless potential. They buy heaps of toys and books whilst signing their child up for classes to maximize learning, enrichment and experiences. Yet, before long, parents are providing so much stimulation that it interferes with their child’s development, thwarts their child’s concentration, blocks their creativity, drains their resilience and even rattles their sense of security.

Too much, too young

Payne describes the four pillars of “too much” in children’s lives: too much stuff, too many choices, too much information and too much speed.

We tend to think that if something is educational or enriching, then more of it must be better. But Payne warns parents that quantity is just as important as quality, and more is not always better.

Payne compares the temptation of too much enrichment with overeating. “Just as we are becoming more discerning about what we will feed a family, it’s a question about being more discerning about what comes into the day for a child.”

Too much stuff, information and busyness overwhelm children. It will come out in all sorts of unpleasant ways, depending on his or her little personality. Payne highlights that every child has what he calls quirks, which are simultaneously gifts. He warns that the ongoing, silent pressure of “too much” causes a child’s quirks to slowly slide into disorders. This is what happens when the active child becomes hyperactive, the dreamy child loses all ability to focus, and the orderly child becomes rigid and compulsive.

The war on childhood

The problem, according to Payne, is that there is an undeclared war on childhood. If that sounds a tad overdramatic, consider his experience.

Kim John Payne has traveled the world and spent time treating children in refugee camps. While running a private practice in England, he was shocked to see so many similarities between the children there and the refugee children.

Over many years, it became increasingly clear that certain kids from affluent families – living perfectly safe, privileged lives – were behaving in a manner similar to children halfway around the globe near war zones.

The refugee children were living out the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. As Payne describes: They were jumpy, nervous, and hypervigilant, wary of anything novel or new. Many had adopted elaborate little rituals around everyday tasks, such as very specific, complicated ways of navigating the maze of the camp, which they imagined would somehow keep them safe. They were distrustful of new relationships, whether with adults or their own peers, and quite a few had hair-trigger tempers.

He says the main distinction between the two groups was that the privileged children in England were physically safe. But mentally, they too were living in a sort of war zone where they needed coping strategies to feel safe.

How could a well-cared for child in the western world be living in a so-called war zone? Payne explains:

“Privy to their parents’ fears, drives, ambitions, and the very fast pace of their lives, the children were busy trying to construct their own boundaries, their own level of safety in behaviors that weren’t ultimately helpful.”

These children were suffering what Payne calls a “cumulative stress reaction.” There was no significant trauma in their lives, only the constant drip, drip, drip of too much, that they weren’t able to process or to turn off.

In England, Canada, and around the world, we protect children physically more than ever before. We legislate for car seats and prohibit tobogganing. Mentally, however, we are putting them into adult roles and schedules. Unable to control the gush of information and expectations placed on them, they look for other aspects of their world that they can control.

In our interview, Payne explained the link between today’s frenetic pace of life and the rise of bullying:

 When you have a child who is reacting in the new normal out of what I’ve described as a cumulative stress reaction, a post-traumatic stress reaction, what you see is a child that is over-controlling, a child who is desperately trying to control their environment because they feel like they’re living an out-of-control pace in the world. So they’ll seek to over-control others. Over-controlling others is just another word for bullying.

He recommends the same simplification process for bullies and for the children who are being bullied. The simplification helps bullies to feel less out of control, while it helps the victims to become more emotionally resilient.

 Rejecting the new normal

The effects of providing too much have become increasingly common. We fear our children might fall behind. We don’t want to miss an opportunity or a talent, so we sign them up for all kinds of wonderful activities – sports, music, martial arts, visual arts. We fill in every nook and cranny of their rooms with books, toys and gadgets, while also filling every spare moment with lessons, information and fun experiences. We shuttle about from one scheduled activity to another, wondering how life got so crazy.

When we stop, exhausted, to look around, we see our own frenetic pace of life mirrored by all our friends, so we conclude that it must be normal.

There is a better way. When a child is kept too busy, given too much stuff and information, it robs them of the time and ease they need to explore their world and emerging selves.

When a child has a heap of toys or books, they are too distracted to delve into any one of them deeply. Their play and learning is shallow. They lack the space – and boredom – needed for reflection and creativity. At the same time, none of the toys seem to satisfy and the child is always looking for that elusive one that they don’t have.

Simplicity parenting encourages parents to keep fewer toys so that their child will engage with them more deeply. Children need time and physical space to play and be imaginative.

Simplicity parenting also emphasizes the use of unscheduled down time to allow a child to recover and grow. Adequate down time, much like sleep, serves a vital purpose in child development. It gives children the ease they need to work through their emotions and develop a growing sense of self.

The best preparation for a changing world

Some might mistakenly think that Payne is hoping to rewind the clock to simpler times, slowing down the pace of daily life to a halt. In reality, he’s not suggesting a slowing down at all, but a filtering of unnecessary busyness. In our interview, he said simplicity parenting is actually the best way to prepare children for a future where they will have to be creative, innovative and adaptable to succeed. Since they will likely need to be able to move through jobs, they will need to be self-motivating.

When parents have a ton of scheduled activities thinking that’s going to give their child a head start, I’m suggesting that what gives their child a head start and prepares them for the future is giving them the down time they need so that they can actually be self-motivating and not reliant on scheduling or activity.

They actually can give them the gift of boredom, and let them be bored, let them self-motivate.  Simplicity parenting is a future-looking thing, quite the opposite of very fast-paced, busy parents who are unwittingly raising their children for a world that no longer exists. 

His point is underscored by a recent study on child sports. It found that the time children spent playing in organized sports was significantly tied to lower creativity as young adults, whereas time spent playing informal sports was significantly related to more creativity.

 It is not the organized sports themselves that destroy creativity; it is the lack of down time. Even two hours per week of unstructured play boosted children’s creativity to above-average levels.15

Study co-author Matthew Bowers gives a possible explanation. “Informal sports played in unstructured, unsupervised environments capture many of the elements that are linked with the developmental benefits of play for children. These environments offer children the freedom to self-govern, create rules, problem-solve and resolve social conflicts on their own terms.”

The big takeaway is the importance of balance – a core part of simplicity parenting. Children greatly benefit when parents balance scheduled time with down time and filter out the deluge of “too much.”

Balance is absolutely necessary if we are to protect childhood so that its rich developmental processes can fully unfold.

In the second half of this two-part series, we will look at the four areas where Payne advocates for simplification – and how parents can go about this worthwhile process.

Endnotes:
This article is by Eliose Cataudella of the Institute of Marriage and Family, Canada, based on an interview of Dr. Kim John Payne by Andrea Mrozek on March 14th, 2013. Dr. Payne is a family counselor and author of the 2009 bestseller Simplicity Parenting: Using the extraordinary power of less to raise calmer, happier, and more secure kids.

 

 

On the question whether any additional child is an asset or a liability

 

A child is always an asset. Liability with regards to humans is not assessed purely and only from economic view point since a human person has a great dignity because of being a child of God and also has body and soul (material and spiritual being).

A human person therefore cannot be seen and assessed in same way as other non human economic items or businesses. Nor be seen as an economic liability. This is because a human person has so many aspects and gifts & potentials endowed that he can’t but be always a great asset!! Every child or human person is a great investment waiting to mature.


Even if presently he is starving, poor sickly and uneducated with a “useless” job or future. Even in dying and in immediate death, or long after death, the immense good a human is capable of doing to others and the society is beyond quantifying financially.

Even evil men and their evil, help the society in numerous ways including reaffirming society’s resolve to improve laws and condition that reduce such evil and suffering. In summary, every child or human person is always and will always be an asset intrinsically and based primarily on his being a child of God, and not on his usefulness from a human point of view.

By Dr. Mark Nwoga, University Of Nigeria Nsukka

How to create value in less time

What three things would you like to have done today or this month? Are you working at the right time for the right projects? Are you working too long or too short of a time for certain tasks? These are some questions that help to keep you going. It is desirable, being able to accomplish personal and organisational objectives at all times. To this end, certain actions must be carried out to achieve success. This is also true for every form of activity whether corporate, social, family or religious. To help man achieve and accomplish tasks, a lot of suggestions and comments have been given, downloadable algorithms that help with time management have been written, videos that teach how to organize emails are available, articles and textbooks also written on interrelated subjects. It may seem as it were, there is no secret to living a more productive lifestyle as it is practically a discussion for everyday.

Yet there is high concern 
It is evident however, that in business and personal environments (like the family) the concern is still high on how to achieve good results. Colleagues continue to wish for a higher or complain about their output levels while parents are still stressed out trying to fulfil their role towards their families – given all the on hand information on productivity. Perhaps more than equating productivity to a given formula it should be considered mainly as an issue of personal behavior, an attitude to continuously improve oneself and the things in one’s environment.

A basis for good results
A proper assessment of some models designed to encourage output levels reveals that the key to increasing productivity lies in doing well what is important at that moment and to do well requires monthly, weekly and daily review of yearly goals. The advice is that the simplest of tools be applied in capturing information and procrastination should be avoided in decision making.
Leo Babuata suggests that getting things done should have its focus on doing in the here and now, instead of on planning and on the type of system. While planning is necessary, more focus should be on how to actually complete a task. Using simple tools to capture information, making quick decisions, setting 'most important tasks' for the week and/or day, doing one task at a time without distractions, having a place for everything, reviewing your system and goals weekly are some ways to get the productivity you desire.