You’re doing better than you think. Here’s why. - Ozan Varol

If you anchor to the old world where good work meant physical action, it’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that the most productive use of a knowledge-worker’s time could be sitting on a couch thinking.

In the absence of more sophisticated measures of effectiveness, we also gravitate away from deeper efforts toward shallower, more concrete tasks that can be more easily checked off a to-do list. Long work sessions that don’t immediately produce obvious contrails of effort become a source of anxiety—it’s safer to chime in on email threads and “jump

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The key is that you’ll probably do your best work when your’ve earned your colleagues’ trust, which is the hidden value of staying put. This is especially true if your job involves making good decisions vs. doing something physical with your body. Good decisions require lots of quiet time alone in your head, maybe sitting on the couch thinking or g... See more

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push... See more