Apply the components of perfect practice each time you set out to do meaningful work: •Define a purpose and concrete objectives for each working session. •Ask yourself: What do I want to learn or get done? •Focus and concentrate deeply, even if doing so isn’t always enjoyable. •Single-task: The next time you feel like multitasking, remind yourself

people who are “chronic” multitaskers are worse at filtering out irrelevant information, slower at identifying patterns, and have worse long-term memories.

We love multitasking because when we do multiple things at once, we feel more productive and experience greater emotional satisfaction. An internal voice in our subconscious mind says, “Look at everything I am accomplishing. Look at all of the boxes I am checking off my list.” In a society that encourages and rewards “optimization” and “multiple pr

His insistence on single-tasking ensures that he learns and grows from every document he drafts and every interaction he’s involved in. “It’s not that I can’t multitask,” he says. “But when I do multitask everything suffers. So I just don’t multitask. Ever.”

Across the board, when great performers are doing serious work their bodies and minds are 100 percent there. They are fully engaged in the moment.

Expertise is not about a certain number of hours practiced. Rather, it’s about the type of work that fills those hours. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.

It isn’t experience that sets top performers apart but the amount of deliberate practice they put in.

•If you feel anxious or so aroused that you can’t focus, dial things down a notch.

you should regularly seek out just-manageable challenges: activities that take you out of your comfort zone and force you to push at the point of resistance for growth.