Stop Trying to Make Hard Work Easy

What people don’t realize is that if you’re buried in your email inbox instead of doing your most important work, you are just as distracted as if you went on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. Anything that is not what you planned to do is by definition a distraction.

And I think that things like email, or small todo list items are actually the most pernicious distractions because they feel productive. If I’m checking something off of my todo list that feels productive.

So if you want to deal with distraction the first thing you have to do is deal with the negative emotional triggers that lead to it.

None of the other shit works, whatever any productivity guru says. You first and foremost have to start with the internal triggers.

If you don’t have the tools to deal with emotional discomfort, none of the life hacks work.

There are three life domains that are important to consider: You, Your Relationships, Your Work.

I want you to block time on your schedule tomorrow for each of those three life domains. The project is to figure out how to turn your values into time. So, if one of your values is your mental well-being the question is: how much time are you going to put on your schedule for meditation, or therapy, or whatever else supports you in that way? When are you going to do it?

When I’m wearing the concentration crown it sends a signal to my daughter that I can’t be interrupted. By the way, this also works for co-workers too. You don’t necessarily need a silly hat — you just need a way of letting people know when you can and can’t be interrupted.

In my closet I have a calendar, and pinned to the calendar is a $100 bill. For each day on the calendar I can either burn the calories by going to the gym, or I have to burn the $100 bill. Each day I move the bill to the next day on the calendar and make the choice over again.

And guess what? It's been years now and I've never burned the money.

Most people are shocked by this.

“Do you really have to burn the money?” they ask.

The answer is yes. You have to burn it. It's called burn or burn. Why? Because giving it away feels good, you have to feel bad about it in order for this to work.