When I started waking up at 5 AM, everything changed. Regardless of when I went to bed the night before, I had clarity and energy.

I could get more done before 8 AM than I would normally achieve in an entire day. In time, waking up at 8 AM began to feel like more of a hardship than waking at 5. I was missing my best time of day.

I’ve come to suspect that there’s nothing intrinsic to the morning hours that makes me so productive. Rather, the act of waking up early makes me feel virtuous and on top of things. I’m starting my day with an achievement that I feel good about.

Read More

What happens when you clear the decks to make room for your work — that most challenging work that you have been putting off but you know you need to do?

For many of us, nothing.

One of the weirder discoveries in observing my work habits, as well as those of my students, employees, and the people I coach, is that time has so little to do with whether something gets done.

Read More

Parkinson's law is the well-established idea that the time it takes to do a task expands to fit the time allotted for it.

We must be aware of this potential pitfall if we want to get more work done in a shorter period of time. 

However, this is awfully tricky to do. Because of the way our brains automate our habits to make us more efficient, we will just do what we’ve always done. Without conscious intervention, nothing changes. We have a set point that we return to when we’re not actively pushing against it. To make the shift to do things differently and overcome this set point requires us to see what we don’t see, a skill that usually requires the help of a trusted teacher or coach.

Read More

When I wake up in the morning, if I have been unwise enough to charge my phone beside my bed overnight, my phone is the first thing that I reach for in the morning. After all, it’s my alarm clock, my weather report, and my connection to everything else in the outside world.

It’s also huge distraction. Every morning, under such circumstances, I have to be aware that every moment spent looking at my phone is another moment in which the traffic is stacking up outside; I’m not only delaying my arrival at my office, I’m increasing the total amount of time that I will spend commuting. Unfortunately, my phone is set up so as to increase the perceived rewards of engaging with it and to decrease the sense of immediacy I have about my obligations. With every click and swipe, I get a little hit of dopamine that creates a conflict: Will I listen to the little voice inside the tells me it’s time to put down the phone and go, or will I linger and keep hunting for the next thing that will give me that little neurotransmitter high?

Read More

The human brain is extraordinarily good at optimization.

You do something a few times, and your brain goes, “Okay, I get it — we’re doing it this way from now on.” The neural pathways are strengthened so that next time, it takes less effort to get the same result. Meanwhile, unused pathways are ignored, like decommissioned highways.

Our nervous system facilitates and streamlines our learning. It gives us the so-called “muscle memory” we rely on when it comes to developing complex skills like learning a musical instrument, typing, or skateboarding. It allows us to chunk smaller pieces of information together, like recipes, times tables, and addresses, in order to memorize them.

Read More