18 Minutes

Create an established time to second-guess yourself, a time when you know your commitment won’t be weakened by the temptations of the moment. If you’re going to break the diet, do it when your need for willpower is at its lowest. Decide to decide the next day, maybe after a healthy breakfast or a little exercise, when you know your inclination to s

In other words, step up to the buffet with a plate that has enough room for five different foods and no more. Since you’re selecting only five, make sure they are nourishing and tasty. What’s the time equivalent of nourishing and tasty? Make sure that your list leverages your strengths, embraces your weaknesses, asserts your differences, and reflec

Maybe you need to take the car in for an oil change. Maybe you need to read all the reviews about the iPad (and then wait in line to buy one). Those are all fine uses of your 5 percent. But if it becomes 20 percent, it means you’re spending too much time on other people’s priorities, your frivolity, and life maintenance,

Who am I if you take away my work? That’s a question to which we’d better have a solid answer. And yet many of us don’t. Fortunately, once we realize this we can do something about it. We can diversify. I don’t mean diversifying your money, though that’s a good idea, too. I mean diversifying your self. So that when one identity fails, the other one

If you believe that your talents are inborn or fixed, then you will try to avoid failure at all costs because failure is proof of your limitation. People with a fixed mind-set like to solve the same problems over and over again. It reinforces their sense of competence.

After a tremendous amount of trial and error—mostly error—I’ve come to the number five. I’ve decided to focus my year on five things. Three work-related, two personal. (Almost) everything I do must fit in one of these five areas. If it doesn’t, then I politely decline. Why five? Because for me, it seems to work. It covers the most important things

According to the data, most of us spend a total of almost 20 hours of each day sleeping (8.68 hours/day), working (7.78 hours/day), and watching television (3.45 hours/day). I know: Shocking, right? I mean, who sleeps that much?

When an unsettling event occurs, pause before reacting. In that pause, ask yourself a single question: What is the outcome I want? Then, instead of reacting to the event, react to the outcome. In other words, stop reacting to the past and start reacting to the future. If someone yells at you, pause before yelling back. Then ask yourself what outcom

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