Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind (99U)

Frequency nurtures frequency. If you develop the habit of working frequently, it becomes much easier to sit down and get something done even when you don’t have a big block of time; you don’t have to take time to acclimate yourself.

The second key finding is that our bodies follow what are known as ultradian rhythms—ninety-minute periods at the end of which we reach the limits of our capacity to work at the highest level.

If you want to create something worthwhile with your life, you need to draw a line between the world’s demands and your own ambitions.

ultradian rhythms—ninety-minute periods at the end of which we reach the limits of our capacity to work at the highest level.

We may tell ourselves that we’ll just answer one quick e-mail or make one short phone call. But in reality, switching tasks sends us down a rabbit hole, pulling our attention away from our priority work for much longer than we anticipate.

only truly multitask when it comes to highly automatic behaviors like walking. For activities that require conscious attention, there is really no such thing as multitasking, only task switching—the process of flicking the mind back and forth between different demands.

to begin with an hour at a time, then add fifteen minutes to each session every two weeks.

tomorrow you also have to know what you are doing, and you have just signed up for a lifetime of knowing what you are doing.

big things.

ultradian rhythms—ninety-minute periods at the end of which we reach the limits of our capacity to work at the highest level.