I have a great admiration for the concept of the assembly line.
Inputs enter on one side, there’s a series of defined, meticulously-curated actions, and then an output emerges from the other end. It’s a thing of beauty.
You can think of a lot of the processes in your life as working like that, and then you can find it easier to make improvements. If you think of all outside stimuli as inputs – from unwelcome news to challenging assignments to interesting blog posts – you can create a series of tasks to do for each of them.
Where do you put things to keep track of them? How do you devote time to them? Who do you speak to about them? All of these questions are stops on the assembly line.
It might seem a little mechanical, but many of the tasks in your life are just that. You shouldn’t put everything on the assembly line; some things are sublime and deserve to be treated as a whole experience. But not everything – some things just need to be processed.
Keeping them separate leaves you more time for the good stuff.
The Opportunity Machine 