the whiteboard effect: Creative energies produced by team members while bouncing ideas and experiments off one another. Social pressure to make progress towards a mutual goal.

Rhythmic deep work is the habit of performing deep work daily, ideally at the same time and place and for the same duration. An example is dedicating the first two hours of each morning to deep work.

There are two different types of metrics, and one matters more than the other: Lag measures are metrics of the final result. Lead measures are metrics that track behaviors and inputs that lead to the final result. In other words, lag measures are the output. Lead measures are the input.

When Roediger studied elite memory athletes like Kilov, he found that the biggest difference was not a direct measure of memory, but rather attentional control. In other words, memory training is correlated with (and may increase a person's ability in) focus and concentration, which can be applied to school or work.

Newport proposes a more rigorous approach called the craftsman approach to tool selection, which involves a careful evaluation of a tool's pros and cons as it relates to your most important goals and activities.

A good process-centric email does two things: Anticipates the conversation and tries to get to a resolution with the fewest possible emails. Maintains control of your schedule and puts the burden of work on the sender.

K. Anders Ericsson, a professor at Florida State University, found that outstanding performance isn't a result of natural talent. Rather, it is a result of hard work in the form of deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice is a complex topic. In a nutshell, it is practice designed to improve a specific skill using intense focus, repetition and continuous feedback. Deliberate practice is cognitively demanding, requires intense concentration and cannot be done with distraction. As Ericsson explains, "Diffused attention is almost antithetical to

2. Try a 30-Day Social Media Ban Ryan Nicodemus, looking to reduce the clutter in his life, used a simple tactic to identify the non-essentials out of his belongings. He packed all of his possessions into boxes, and over the next week, he went through his normal life routines. If he needed an item, he unpacked it. At the end of the week, he found that