The One Thing Part 2

We come by it naturally. With an average of 4,000 thoughts a day flying in and out of our heads, it's easy to see why we try to mult.i.task. If a change in thought every 14 seconds is an invitation to change direction, then it's rather obvious we're continually tempted to try to do too much at once. While doing one thing we're only seconds away from thinking of something else we could do. Moreover, history suggests that our continued existence may have required that human beings evolve to be able to oversee multiple tasks at the same time. Our ancestors wouldn't have lasted long if they couldn't scan for predators while gathering berries, tanning hides, or just idling by the fire after a hard day hunting. The pull to juggle more than one task at a time is not only at the core of how we're wired, but was most likely a necessity for survival.

But juggling isn't mult.i.tasking.

Juggling is an illusion. To the casual observer, a juggler is juggling three b.a.l.l.s at once. In reality, the b.a.l.l.s are being independently caught and thrown in rapid succession. Catch, toss, catch, toss, catch, toss. One ball at a time. It's what researchers refer to as "task switching."

When you switch from one task to another, voluntarily or not, two things happen. The first is nearly instantaneous: you decide to switch. The second is less predictable: you have to activate the "rules" for whatever you're about to do (see figure 6). Switching between two simple tasks-like watching television and folding clothes-is quick and relatively painless. However, if you're working on a spreadsheet and a co-worker pops into your office to discuss a business problem, the relative complexity of those tasks makes it impossible to easily jump back and forth. It always takes some time to start a new task and restart the one you quit, and there's no guarantee that you'll ever pick up exactly where you left off. There is a price for this. "The cost in terms of extra time from having to task switch depends on how complex or simple the tasks are," reports researcher Dr. David Meyer. "It can range from time increases of 25 percent or less for simple tasks to well over 100 percent or more for very complicated tasks." Task switching exacts a cost few realize they're even paying.

FIG. 6 Mult.i.tasking doesn't save time -it wastes time.

BRAIN CHANNELS.

So, what's happening when we're actually doing two things at once? It's simple. We've separated them. Our brain has channels, and as a result we're able to process different kinds of data in different parts of our brain. This is why you can talk and walk at the same time. There is no channel interference. But here's the catch: you're not really focused on both activities. One is happening in the foreground and the other in the background. If you were trying to talk a pa.s.senger through landing a DC-10, you'd stop walking. Likewise, if you were walking across a gorge on a rope bridge, you'd likely stop talking. You can do two things at once, but you can't focus effectively on two things at once. Even my dog Max knows this. When I get caught up with a basketball game on TV, he gives me a good nudge. Apparently, background scratches can be pretty unsatisfying.

Many think that because their body is functioning without their conscious direction, they're mult.i.tasking. This is true, but not the way they mean it. A lot of our physical actions, like breathing, are being directed from a different part of our brain than where focus comes from. As a result, there's no channel conflict. We're right when we say something is "front and center" or "top of mind," because that's where focus occurs-in the prefrontal cortex. When you focus, it's like shining a spotlight on what matters. You can actually give attention to two things, but that is what's called "divided attention." And make no mistake. Take on two things and your attention gets divided. Take on a third and something gets dropped.

The problem of trying to focus on two things at once shows up when one task demands more attention or if it crosses into a channel already in use. When your spouse is describing the way the living room furniture has been rearranged, you engage your visual cortex to see it in your mind's eye. If you happen to be driving at that moment, this channel interference means you are now seeing the new sofa and love seat combination and are effectively blind to the car braking in front of you. You simply can't effectively focus on two important things at the same time.

Every time we try to do two or more things at once, we're simply dividing up our focus and dumbing down all of the outcomes in the process. Here's the short list of how mult.i.tasking short-circuits us: There is just so much brain capability at any one time. Divide it up as much as you want, but you'll pay a price in time and effectiveness.

The more time you spend switched to another task, the less likely you are to get back to your original task. This is how loose ends pile up.

Bounce between one activity and another and you lose time as your brain reorients to the new task. Those milliseconds add up. Researchers estimate we lose 28 percent of an average workday to mult.i.tasking ineffectiveness.

Chronic mult.i.taskers develop a distorted sense of how long it takes to do things. They almost always believe tasks take longer to complete than is actually required.

Mult.i.taskers make more mistakes than non-mult.i.taskers. They often make poorer decisions because they favor new information over old, even if the older information is more valuable.

Mult.i.taskers experience more life-reducing, happiness-squelching stress.

With research overwhelmingly clear, it seems insane that-knowing how mult.i.tasking leads to mistakes, poor choices, and stress-we attempt it anyway Maybe it's just too tempting. Workers who use computers during the day change windows or check e-mail or other programs nearly 37 times an hour. Being in a distractible setting sets us up to be more distractible. Or maybe it's the high. Media mult.i.taskers actually experience a thrill with switching-a burst of dopamine-that can be addictive. Without it, they can feel bored. For whatever the reason, the results are unambiguous: mult.i.tasking slows us down and makes us slower witted.

DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION.

In 2009, New York Times reporter Matt Richtel earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting with a series of articles ("Driven to Distraction") on the dangers of driving while texting or using cell phones. He found that distracted driving is responsible for 16 percent of all traffic fatalities and nearly half a million injuries annually. Even an idle phone conversation when driving takes a 40 percent bite out of your focus and, surprisingly, can have the same effect as being drunk. The evidence is so compelling that many states and munic.i.p.alities have outlawed cell phone use while driving. This makes sense. Though some of us at times have been guilty, we'd never condone it for our teenage kids. All it takes is a text message to turn the family SUV into a deadly, two-ton battering ram. Mult.i.tasking can cause more than one type of wreck.

We know that mult.i.tasking can even be fatal when lives are at stake. In fact, we fully expect pilots and surgeons to focus on their jobs to the exclusion of everything else. And we expect that anyone in their position who gets caught doing otherwise will always be taken severely to task. We accept no arguments and have no tolerance for anything but total concentration from these professionals. And yet, here the rest of us are-living another standard. Do we not value our own job or take it as seriously? Why would we ever tolerate mult.i.tasking when we're doing our most important work? Just because our day job doesn't involve bypa.s.s surgery shouldn't make focus any less critical to our success or the success of others. Your work deserves no less respect. It may not seem so in the moment, but the connectivity of everything we do ultimately means that we each not only have a job to do, but a job that deserves to be done well. Think of it this way. If we really lose almost a third of our workday to distractions, what is the c.u.mulative loss over a career? What is the loss to other careers? To businesses? When you think about it, you might just discover that if you don't figure out a way to resolve this, you could in fact lose your career or your business. Or worse, cause others to lose theirs.

On top of work, what sort of toll do our distractions take on our personal lives? Author Dave Crenshaw put it just right when he wrote, "The people we live with and work with on a daily basis deserve our full attention. When we give people segmented attention, piecemeal time, switching back and forth, the switching cost is higher than just the time involved. We end up damaging relationships." Every time I see a couple dining with one partner trying earnestly to communicate while the other is texting under the table, I'm reminded of the simple truth of that statement.

BIG IDEAS.

Distraction is natural. Don't feel bad when you get distracted. Everyone gets distracted.

Mult.i.tasking takes a toll. At home or at work, distractions lead to poor choices, painful mistakes, and unnecessary stress.

Distraction undermines results. When you try to do too much at once, you can end up doing nothing well. Figure out what matters most in the moment and give it your undivided attention.

In order to be able to put the principle of The ONE Thing to work, you can't buy into the lie that trying to do two things at once is a good idea. Though mult.i.tasking is sometimes possible, it's never possible to do it effectively.

6 A DISCIPLINED LIFE.

"It's one of the most prevalent myths of our culture: self-discipline."

-Leo Babauta There is this pervasive idea that the successful person is the "disciplined person" who leads a "disciplined life."

It's a lie.

The truth is we don't need any more discipline than we already have. We just need to direct and manage it a little better.

Contrary to what most people believe, success is not a marathon of disciplined action. Achievement doesn't require you to be a full-time disciplined person where your every action is trained and where control is the solution to every situation. Success is actually a short race-a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.

When we know something that needs to be done but isn't currently getting done, we often say, "I just need more discipline." Actually, we need the habit of doing it. And we need just enough discipline to build the habit.

In any discussion about success, the words "discipline" and "habit" ultimately intersect. Though separate in meaning, they powerfully connect to form the foundation for achievement-regularly working at something until it regularly works for you. When you discipline yourself, you're essentially training yourself to act in a specific way. Stay with this long enough and it becomes routine-in other words, a habit. So when you see people who look like "disciplined" people, what you're really seeing is people who've trained a handful of habits into their lives. This makes them seem "disciplined" when actually they're not. No one is.

And who would want to be, anyway? The very thought of having your every behavior molded and maintained by training seems frighteningly impossible on one hand and utterly boring on the other. Most people ultimately reach this conclusion but, seeing no alternative, redouble their efforts at the impossible or quietly quit. Frustration shows up and resignation eventually sets in.

You don't need to be a disciplined person to be successful. In fact, you can become successful with less discipline than you think, for one simple reason: success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right.

The trick to success is to choose the right habit and bring just enough discipline to establish it. That's it. That's all the discipline you need. As this habit becomes part of your life, you'll start looking like a disciplined person, but you won't be one. What you will be is someone who has something regularly working for you because you regularly worked on it. You'll be a person who used selected discipline to build a powerful habit.

SELECTED DISCIPLINE WORKS SWIMMINGLY.

Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps is a case study of selected discipline. When he was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, his kindergarten teacher told his mother, "Michael can't sit still. Michael can't be quiet... . He's not gifted. Your son will never be able to focus on anything." Bob Bowman, his coach since age 11, reports that Michael spent a lot of time on the side of the pool by the lifeguard stand for disruptive behavior. That same misbehavior has cropped up from time to time in his adult life as well.

Yet, he's set dozens of world records. In 2004 he won six gold and two bronze medals in Athens and then, in 2008, a record eight in Beijing, surpa.s.sing the legendary Mark Spitz. His 18 gold medals set a record for Olympians in any sport. Before he hung up his goggles in retirement, his wins at the 2012 London Olympic Games brought his total medal count to 22 and earned him the status of most-decorated Olympian in any sport in history. Talking about Phelps, one reporter said, "If he were a country he'd be ranked 12th over the last three Olympics." Today, his mom reports, "Michael's ability to focus amazes me." Bowman calls it "his strongest attribute." How did this happen? How did the boy who would "never be able to focus on anything" achieve so much?

Phelps became a person of selected discipline.

From age 14 through the Beijing Olympics, Phelps trained seven days a week, 365 days a year. He figured that by training on Sundays he got a 52-training-day advantage on the compet.i.tion. He spent up to six hours in the water each day. "Channeling his energy is one of his great strengths," said Bowman. Not to oversimplify, but it's not a stretch to say that Phelps channeled all of his energy into one discipline that developed into one habit-swimming daily.

The payoff from developing the right habit is pretty obvious. It gets you the success you're searching for. What sometimes gets overlooked, however, is an amazing windfall: it also simplifies your life. Your life gets clearer and less complicated because you know what you have to do well and you know what you don't. The fact of the matter is that aiming discipline at the right habit gives you license to be less disciplined in other areas. When you do the right thing, it can liberate you from having to monitor everything.

Michael Phelps found his sweet spot in the swimming pool. Over time, finding the discipline to do this formed the habit that changed his life.

SIXTY-SIX DAYS TO THE SWEET SPOT.

Discipline and habit. Honestly, most people never really want to talk about these. And who can blame them? I don't either. The images these words conjure in our heads are of something hard and unpleasant. Just reading the words is exhausting. But there's good news. The right discipline goes a long way, and habits are hard only in the beginning. Over time, the habit you're after becomes easier and easier to sustain. It's true. Habits require much less energy and effort to maintain than to begin (see figure 7). Put up with the discipline long enough to turn it into a habit, and the journey feels different. Lock in one habit so it becomes part of your life, and you can effectively ride the routine with less wear and tear on yourself. The hard stuff becomes habit, and habit makes the hard stuff easy.

FIG. 7 Once a new behavior becomes a habit, it takes less discipline to maintain.

So, how long do you have to maintain discipline? Researchers at the University College of London have the answer. In 2009, they asked the question: How long does it take to establish a new habit? They were looking for the moment when a new behavior becomes automatic or ingrained. The point of "automaticity" came when partic.i.p.ants were 95 percent through the power curve and the effort needed to sustain it was about as low as it would get. They asked students to take on exercise and diet goals for a period of time and monitor their progress. The results suggest that it takes an average of 66 days to acquire a new habit. The full range was 18 to 254 days, but the 66 days represented a sweet spot-with easier behaviors taking fewer days on average and tough ones taking longer. Self-help circles tend to preach that it takes 21 days to make a change, but modem science doesn't back that up. It takes time to develop the right habit, so don't give up too soon. Decide what the right one is, then give yourself all the time you need and apply all the discipline you can summon to develop it.

Australian researchers Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng have even found some evidence of a halo effect around habit creation. In their studies, students who successfully acquired one positive habit reported less stress; less impulsive spending; better dietary habits; decreased alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine consumption; fewer hours watching TV; and even fewer dirty dishes. Sustain the discipline long enough on one habit, and not only does it become easier, but so do other things as well. It's why those with the right habits seem to do better than others. They're doing the most important thing regularly and, as a result, everything else is easier.

BIG IDEAS.

Don't be a disciplined person. Be a person of powerful habits and use selected discipline to develop them.

Build one habit at a time. Success is sequential, not simultaneous. No one actually has the discipline to acquire more than one powerful new habit at a time. Super-successful people aren't superhuman at all; they've just used selected discipline to develop a few significant habits. One at a time. Over time.

Give each habit enough time. Stick with the discipline long enough for it to become routine. Habits, on average, take 66 days to form. Once a habit is solidly established, you can either build on that habit or, if appropriate, build another one.

If you are what you repeatedly do, then achievement isn't an action you take but a habit you forge into your life. You don't have to seek out success. Harness the power of selected discipline to build the right habit, and extraordinary results will find you.

7 WILLPOWER IS ALWAYS ON WILL-CALL.

"Odysseus understood how weak willpower actually is when he asked his crew to bind him to the mast while sailing by the seductive Sirens."

-Patricia Cohen Why would you ever do something the hard way? Why would you ever knowingly get behind the eight ball, deliberately crawl between a rock and a hard place, or intentionally work with one hand tied behind your back? You wouldn't. But most people unwittingly do every day. When we tie our success to our willpower without understanding what that really means, we set ourselves up for failure. And we don't have to.

Often quoted as a statement about sheer determination, the old English proverb "Where there's a will, there's a way" has probably misled as many as it's helped. It just rolls off the tongue and pa.s.ses so quickly through our head that few stop to hear its full meaning. Widely regarded as the singular source of personal strength, it gets misinterpreted as a cleverly phrased, one-dimensional prescription for success. But for will to have its most powerful way, there's more to it than that. Construe willpower as just a call for character and you miss its other equally essential element: timing. It's a critical piece.

For most of my life I never gave willpower much thought. Once I did, it captivated me. The ability to control oneself to determine one's actions is a pretty powerful idea. Base it on training and it's called discipline. But do it because you simply can, that's raw power. The power of will.

It seemed so straightforward: invoke my will and success was mine. I was on my way. Sadly, I didn't need to pack much, for it was a short trip. As I set out to impose my will against defenseless goals, I quickly discovered something discouraging: I didn't always have willpower. One moment I had it, the next-poof! I didn't. One day it was AWOL, the next- bang! It was at my beck and call. My willpower seemed to come and go as if it had a life of its own. Building success around full strength, on-demand willpower proved unsuccessful. My initial thought was, What's wrong with me? Was I a loser? Apparently so. It seemed I had no grit. No strength of character. No inner fort.i.tude. Consequently, I gutted it up, bore down with determination, doubled my effort, and reached a humbling conclusion: willpower isn't on will-call. As powerful as my motivation was, my willpower wasn't just sitting around waiting for my call, ready at any moment to enforce my will on anything I wanted. I was taken aback. I had always a.s.sumed that it would always be there. That I could simply access it whenever I wanted, to get whatever I wanted. I was wrong.

Willpower is always on will-call is a lie.

Most people a.s.sume willpower matters, but many might not fully appreciate how critical it is to our success. One highly unusual research project revealed just how important it really is.

TODDLER TORTURE.

In the late '60s and early '70s, researcher Walter Mischel began methodically tormenting four-year-olds at Stanford University's Bing Nursery School. More than 500 children were volunteered for the diabolical program by their own parents, many of whom would later, like millions of others, laugh mercilessly at videos of the squirming, miserable kids. The devilish experiment was called "The Marshmallow Test." It was an interesting way to look at willpower.

Kids were offered one of three treats-a pretzel, a cookie, or the now infamous marshmallow. The child was told that the researcher had to step away, and if he could wait 15 minutes until the researcher returned, he'd be awarded a second treat. One treat now or two later. (Mischel knew they'd designed the test well when a few of the kids wanted to quit as soon as they explained the ground rules.) Left alone with a marshmallow they couldn't eat, kids engaged in all kinds of delay strategies, from closing their eyes, pulling their own hair, and turning away, to hovering over, smelling, and even caressing their treats. On average, kids held out less than three minutes. And only three out of ten managed to delay their gratification until the researcher returned. It was pretty apparent most kids struggled with delayed gratification. Willpower was in short supply.

Initially no one a.s.sumed anything about what success or failure in the marshmallow test might say about a child's future. That insight came about organically. Mischel's three daughters attended Bing Nursery School, and over the next few years, he slowly began to see a pattern when he'd ask them about cla.s.smates who had partic.i.p.ated in the experiment. Children who had successfully waited for the second treat seemed to be doing better. A lot better.

Starting in 1981, Mischel began systematically tracking down the original subjects. He requested transcripts, compiled records, and mailed questionnaires in an attempt to measure their relative academic and social progress. His hunch was correct-willpower or the ability to delay gratification was a huge indicator of future success. Over the next 30-plus years, Mischel and his colleagues published numerous papers on how "high delayers" fared better. Success in the experiment predicted higher general academic achievement, SAT test scores that were on average 210 points higher, higher feelings of self-worth, and better stress management. On the other hand, "low delayers" were 30 percent more likely to be overweight and later suffered higher rates of drug addiction. When your mother told you "all good things come to those who wait," she wasn't kidding.

Willpower is so important that using it effectively should be a high priority. Unfortunately, since it's not on will-call, putting it to its best use requires you to manage it. Just as with "the early bird gets the worm" and "make hay while the sun shines," willpower is a timing issue. When you have your will, you get your way. Although character is an essential element of willpower, the key to harnessing it is when you use it.

RENEWABLE ENERGY.

Think of willpower like the power bar on your cell phone. Every morning you start out with a full charge. As the day goes on, every time you draw on it you're using it up. So as your green bar shrinks, so does your resolve, and when it eventually goes red, you're done. Willpower has a limited battery life but can be recharged with some downtime. It's a limited but renewable resource. Because you have a limited supply, each act of will creates a win-lose scenario where winning in an immediate situation through willpower makes you more likely to lose later because you have less of it. Make it through a tough day in the trenches, and the lure of late-night snacking can become your diet's downfall.

Everyone accepts that limited resources must be managed, yet we fail to recognize that willpower is one of them. We act as though our supply of willpower were endless. As a result, we don't consider it a personal resource to be managed, like food or sleep. This repeatedly puts us in a tight spot, for when we need our willpower the most, it may not be there.

Stanford University professor Baba Shiv's research shows just how fleeting our willpower can be. He divided 165 undergraduate students into two groups and asked them to memorize either a two-digit or a seven-digit number. Both tasks were well within the average person's cognitive abilities, and they could take as much time as they needed. When they were ready, students would then go to another room where they would recall the number. Along the way, they were offered a snack for partic.i.p.ating in the study. The two choices were chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit salad-guilty pleasure or healthy treat. Here's the kicker: students asked to memorize the seven-digit number were nearly twice as likely to choose cake. This tiny extra cognitive load was just enough to prevent a prudent choice.

The implications are staggering. The more we use our mind, the less minding power we have. Willpower is like a fast-twitch muscle that gets tired and needs rest. It's incredibly powerful, but it has no endurance. As Kathleen Vohs put it in Prevention magazine in 2009, "Willpower is like gas in your car... . When you resist something tempting, you use some up. The more you resist, the emptier your tank gets, until you run out of gas." In fact, a measly five extra digits is all it takes to drain our willpower dry.

While decisions tap our willpower, the food we eat is also a key player in our level of willpower.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

The brain makes up l/50th of our body ma.s.s but consumes a staggering 1/5th of the calories we b.u.m for energy. If your brain were a car, in terms of gas mileage, it'd be a Hummer. Most of our conscious activity is happening in our prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain responsible for focus, handling short-term memory, solving problems, and moderating impulse control. It's at the heart of what makes us human and the center for our executive control and willpower.

Here's an interesting fact. The "last in, first out" theory is very much at work inside our head. The most recent parts of our brain to develop are the first to suffer if there is a shortage of resources. Older, more developed areas of the brain, such as those that regulate breathing and our nervous responses, get first helpings from our blood stream and are virtually unaffected if we decide to skip a meal. The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, feels the impact. Unfortunately, being relatively young in terms of human development, it's the runt of the litter come feeding time.

Advanced research shows us why this matters. A 2007 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology detailed nine separate studies on the impact of nutrition and willpower. In one set, researchers a.s.signed tasks that did or did not involve willpower and measured blood-sugar levels before and after each task. Partic.i.p.ants who exercised willpower showed a marked drop in the levels of glucose in the bloodstream. Subsequent studies showed the impact on performance when two groups completed one willpower-related task and then did another. Between tasks, one group was given a gla.s.s of Kool-Aid lemonade sweetened with real sugar (buzz) and the other was given a placebo, lemonade with Splenda (buzzkill). The placebo group had roughly twice as many errors on the subsequent test as the sugar group.

The studies concluded that willpower is a mental muscle that doesn't bounce back quickly. If you employ it for one task, there will be less power available for the next unless you refuel. To do our best, we literally have to feed our minds, which gives new credence to the old saw, "food for thought." Foods that elevate blood sugar evenly over long periods, like complex carbohydrates and proteins, become the fuel of choice for high-achievers-literal proof that "you are what you eat."

DEFAULT JUDGMENT.

One of the real challenges we have is that when our willpower is low we tend to fall back on our default settings. Researchers Jonathan Levav of the Stanford School of Business in California, along with Liora Avnaim-Pesso and Shai Danziger of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, found a creative way to investigate this. They took a hard look at the impact of willpower on the Israeli parole system.

The researchers a.n.a.lyzed 1,112 parole board hearings a.s.signed to eight judges over a ten-month period (which incidentally amounted to 40 percent of Israel's total parole requests over that period). The pace is grueling. The judges hear arguments and take about six minutes to render a decision on 14 to 35 parole requests a day, and they get only two breaks-a morning snack and late lunch-to rest and refuel. The impact of their schedule is as spectacular as it is surprising: In the mornings and after each break, parolees' chances for being released peak at 65 percent, and then plunge to near zero by the end of each period (see figure 8).

The results are most likely tied to the mental toll of repet.i.tive decision making. These are big decisions for the parolees and the public at large. High stakes and the a.s.sembly-line rhythm demand intense focus throughout the day As their energy is spent, judges mentally collapse into their "default choice," which doesn't turn out so well for hopeful prisoners. The default decision for a parole judge is no. When in doubt and willpower is low, the prisoner stays behind bars.

And if you're not careful, your default settings may convict you too.

When our willpower runs out, we all revert to our default settings. This begs the question: What are your default settings? If your willpower is dragging, will you grab the bag of carrots or the bag of chips? Will you be up for focusing on the work at hand or down for any distraction that drops in? When your most important work is done while your willpower wanes, default will define your level of achievement. Average is often the result.

FIG. 8 Good decisions depend on more than just wisdom and common sense.

GIVE WILLPOWER THE TIME OF DAY.

We lose our willpower not because we think about it but because we don't. Without appreciating that it can come and go, we let it do exactly that. Without intentionally protecting it every day, we allow ourselves to go from a will and a way to no will and no way. If success is what were after, this won't work.

Think about it. There are degrees of willpower strength. Like the battery indicator going from green to red, there is willpower and there is "won't" power. Most people bring won't power to their most important challenges without ever realizing that's what makes them so hard. When we don't think of resolve as a resource that gets used up, when we fail to reserve it for the things that matter most, when we don't replenish it when it's low, we are probably setting ourselves up for the toughest possible path to success.

So how do you put your willpower to work? You think about it. Pay attention to it. Respect it. You make doing what matters most a priority when your willpower is its highest. In other words, you give it the time of day it deserves.

WHAT TAXES YOUR WILLPOWER.

Implementing new behaviors Filtering distractions Resisting temptation Suppressing emotion Restraining aggression Suppressing impulses Taking tests Trying to impress others Coping with fear Doing something you don't enjoy Selecting long-term over short-term rewards Every day, without realizing it, we engage in all manner of activities that diminish our willpower. Willpower is depleted when we make decisions to focus our attention, suppress our feelings and impulses, or modify our behavior in pursuit of goals. It's like taking an ice pick and gouging a hole in our gas line. Before long we have willpower leaking everywhere and none left to do our most important work. So like any other limited but vital resource, willpower must be managed.

When it comes to willpower, timing is everything. You will need your willpower at full strength to ensure that when you're doing the right thing, you don't let anything distract you or steer you away from it. Then you need enough willpower the rest of the day to either support or avoid sabotaging what you've done. That's all the willpower you need to be successful. So, if you want to get the most out of your day, do your most important work-your ONE Thing-early, before your willpower is drawn down. Since your self-control will be sapped throughout the day, use it when it's at full strength on what matters most.