When we create a space in which to practice our craft, it is beneficial to surround ourselves with objects that invite desired actions and eliminate ones that do not.

On average, American workers leave 5 vacation days unused at the end of each and every year. When you add all of this up, as Gallup did in 2014, you find that the typical American workweek is 47 hours, not 40. In other words, American workers are grinding away for almost an entire extra day each and every week. Against this backdrop, it’s by no

Joyner has designed not only his days but, really, his entire life around eliminating distractions and decisions “that don’t really matter.” In doing so, he reserves energy and willpower for the activities that are critically important to him. In other words, the secret to Joyner’s accomplishing so much, to being a “maximalist” in his field, is

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

given all of the emotional activity that happens in our sleep, scientists are beginning to wonder if insomnia is not only the result of many mood disorders but also a cause. Much like sleep helps us make sense of information, it also helps us make sense of our emotions.

Great performers, Ericsson found, generally work in chunks of 60 to 90 minutes separated by short breaks.

particular, The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal, PhD, Give and Take by Adam Grant, The Sports Gene by David Epstein, Quiet by Susan Cain, Drive by Daniel Pink, and Presence by Amy Cuddy.

Even if failure doesn’t mean physical injury, our ego doesn’t like emotional injury, either—it doesn’t want to risk getting embarrassed, so it ushers us down the safe route. It’s only when we transcend our “self” that we can break through our self-imposed limits. In a paradoxical twist, the less we think about ourselves, the better we become.

geniuses: the brightest minds spend their time either pursuing an activity with ferocious intensity, or engaging in complete restoration and recovery. This approach, Csikszentmihalyi discovered, not only prevents creative burnout and cognitive fatigue, but it also fosters breakthrough ideas and discoveries