“I don’t think it has anything to do with the amount of work you are doing.”

When you look for a certain kind of car on the road, you start seeing it everywhere. This explains manifestation.

You know that feeling, right? When you incorporate a new productivity habit, you see everything you’re accomplishing, and you feel invincible?

When you get really good at something, you can fall into the delusion that good work doesn’t take much time. 

I’ve tried a lot of them—these are the tools that stuck for me.

Behind every “how do I” question is a deeper question. Anytime someone asks “how do I…” and then follows it with something practical, like “find more clients?” or “grow my audience?” or “generate more profit?” there is one deeper question behind all of that. 

We hold ourselves to a higher productivity standard than machines. When we get tired, or emotionally exhausted, or lose focus, or when we can’t find any motivation, the tendency for ambitious people like us is to be hard on ourselves. Meanwhile, we expect the cars we drive to fail. 

It may not be the most technically efficient way to pay the least amount of money, but it has proven to be the most psychologically efficient. When people feel they are making progress, and can see the number of loans decreasing early on, they’re more motivated to keep going.

We all spend time going down rabbit holes. This is the experience of being on social media. Social media, however, is usually not very productive. 

It’s a grid of eight boxes, with a few scattered titles, bullet points, and lines on it. It helps me reduce stress, improve my health, stay productive while I work, remember my long-term projects, and achieve work-life balance. 

Reframing is free. It changes nothing—but it could change everything for you. 

Beyond the sheer amount of time it wastes, daydreaming gives a sense of satisfaction before anything is accomplished. It sets our expectations for success way too high, especially early on. 

Your mind is waiting near the host’s booth, craning its neck over a phone, checking its watch every two minutes, tapping its foot while it glances daggers at you. 

I had never (successfully) written a book before, but I was confident I could get it done because I had seen the breadcrumbs. 

The things I’ve failed at in the past are better indicators of a future path than new things. If I’ve failed at them before, that means I’ve already gotten far enough to fail. 

The idea of “decision fatigue” is common in popular science right now. The theory goes that we only have so much mental energy to give to decision-making, and when that decision-making energy is depleted, we are more susceptible to “make choices that seem impulsive or irrational.”

Instead of feeling like a failure for not accomplishing some vague whisper of a goal, mapping out your ideal week shows you that you never had time for it in the first place. 

When I was in high school and college, my father tried relentlessly to get one lesson into my head: you can’t do everything. I resisted this lesson with everything in me.

Everyone is busy. Even great composers and Nobel Prize winning authors. The difference between you and people who create great work is not a clearer schedule or more resources or a DNA of genius. 

Working on a plane is funny. The easiest thing to do it to keep working. It’s almost more work to reach below your seat to grab your bag and put your laptop away.