I suspect that you can go from being Joe to being Bob just by thinking. At least, that's what happened to me - I read David Allen's book Getting Thing Done, and

I suspect that you can go from being Joe to being Bob just by thinking. At least, that's what happened to me - I read David Allen's book Getting Thing Done, and then over a few years of trying to figure out why the GTD system wasn't quite working for me, I slowly re-invented the Zettelkasten system. (I thought that I was on to something big, and then had quite a shock when I saw it hit the front page of HN) To clarify: by "thinking" I mean "thoughtful analysis and introspection" - that is, if you're not being productive, or if you're not able to organize your thoughts, actually sit down and think really hard about it until you start getting a better understanding of your problems and ideas to fix them. My personal observations of those around me seem to indicate a pattern where those who aren't productive haven't done any analysis as to why (although I know many productive people who haven't done any analysis either).