From the Author

Follow me, if you will, in a brief thought experiment: Visualize yourself floating down a river. You may be hanging onto an inner tube, on a raft, in a boat, or whatever you prefer. The river is mostly tranquil, flowing smoothly and peacefully through a lovely landscape. But there are areas containing white water, sharp […]

Much of what I write, speak, and teach about involves focus: focusing on getting on your most important tasks, projects, and goals completed as effectively and efficiently as you can. But it’s also true that “all work and no play makes for a dull person.” That’s why it’s helpful to spend a portion of your

Did you really mean to do that? Whatever the last thing you said or did, was that really what you intended? Or were you drawn by outside forces or influences to spend time on something you didn’t plan, didn’t care about, and didn’t intend? This is an important question because the power of intention in

There are times when making an abrupt change is appropriate: quitting a bad job, closing a failing business, killing a worthless project, terminating an experiment, and so forth. But in far more instances than we often realize, gradualism is a better strategy than abrupt change. This is particularly true when the change is about starting

A few months ago, I first wrote about improving your performance under pressure. In that piece, I focused on dialing up and down the factors causing you to feel pressured so you could more often operate in the “sweet spot” where your performance would be optimum. In addition to that approach, however, there are several

In a previous post, I wrote about self-motivation to succeed, and how you can increase your level of motivation by changing the ways you think and the things you do. I got a lot of feedback on that one, including some people who asked about ways to maintain their motivation over the long haul. This

Unless you’re a “rookie” at the tasks, projects, and goals you’re trying to accomplish, you’ve most likely developed some fairly routinized ideas, habits, methods, tools, procedures, rules of thumb, and other settled ways of thinking and working. These are probably helpful and effective. But it’s possible for them to take on too much importance and

We all join various groups at various times in our work and our life. When we do, the experience is often fraught with a measure of uncertainty, anxiety, dread, or discomfort. These feelings impair our normal ability to function at our usual level of productivity. They will also interfere with the ordinary human processes of

Ambition is good. Without it, most of us would sit around doing whatever’s easy, and thinking no farther ahead than our next meal. But with enough ambition, we are usually able to improve our lives and the lives of others, conceive and execute truly remarkable tasks, projects, and goals, and generally make the world a

It doesn’t matter whether you’re retired or still working, you still have to get through every day and face tomorrow. The simple fact is this: if those days feel good to you, you’ll have a better life than if they don’t. Fortunately, behavioral scientists have gained an in-depth understanding of what makes us feel good