Supritha S

Where there’s stress, there’s a story, and you probably don’t need to hear it. Or tell it.

So rather than beating yourself up over a mistake, plan for it. We all get off track, what separates top performers from everyone else is that they get back on track very quickly.

As David Epstein has also reported in his recent book Range, influential scientists are much more likely to have diverse interests outside their primary area of research than the average scientist, for instance.

Choose tasks that are simple to maintain and capable of producing the outcome you want.

There are, of course, some good reasons why we might be hesitant to pursue multiple interests. One is the fear that we might spread ourselves too thinly if we devote ourselves to more than one avocation. With a divided attention, we would fail to achieve success in any domain – the idea that the “Jack of all trades is the master of none”.

You could say that the pursuit of happiness ultimately drives everything we do, no matter how dumb those things are. This is a peculiar fact of life for our species: well-being is what we all want and need, yet it’s so delicate and fickle and overall we are embarassingly bad at achieving it.

Why is it so difficult to do what we say we’re going to do?The lizard brain.