18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done

Second, I made significant progress on challenging projects. The kind that require thought and persistence. The kind I usually try to distract myself from, like writing or strategizing. Since I refused to allow myself to get distracted, I stayed with them when they got hard, and experienced a number of breakthroughs. Third, my stress level dropped

So, once you’ve got your categorized list of things to do, take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. And by “the beginning of the day,” I mean, if possible, before even checking your email. That will make it most likely that you’ll accomplish what you need

Instead of looking for how things are the same, we can look for how they are different. Instead of seeking evidence to confirm our perspectives, we can seek to shake them up. Instead of wanting to be right, we can want to be wrong. Of course, this takes a tremendous amount of confidence. Let’s face it, we’d all prefer to be right rather than wrong.

We do this all the time. We think someone is angry with us, so we respond aggressively to a gesture and they become angry with us. See? We were right all along. We think a customer isn’t going to give us business, so we don’t pursue them, and they don’t renew our contract. We knew it! Our neglect was justified. What can we do about it? As Einstein

So when you create your to-do list, do it in the categories of your five things. Then add a sixth category, titled The Other 5%. Mine, for a particular day, looks like this: Do Great Work with Current Clients Call John to set up interviews. Create feedback report for Lily. Design strategy offsite for X, Inc. Set up travel for Portland trip. Create

A brief pause will help you make a smarter next move.

But I wasn’t the person who needed to use it. Here’s what I figured out: My perfect is not their perfect. They don’t have a perfect. In fact, there is no they. There are two thousand individuals, each of whom wants something a little different. The more perfect I think it is, the less willing I’ll be to let anyone change it. The only way to make it

ingredients that encourages opportunity, persistence, and luck. I call them the four elements. The four behaviors around which you should shape your next year: Leverage your strengths. Embrace your weaknesses. Assert your differences. Pursue your passions.

A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine put 811 overweight adults through four different diets, each one a different proportion of fat, carbohydrates, and protein. The result? On average, participants lost twelve pounds after six months and kept nine pounds off after two years. No matter which diet they followed. Certainly, some di