A planned-out day is an anti-anxiety pill.

During busy periods, we convince ourselves that there’s too much to do, that it won’t all get done, and that maybe we should abandon our current half-completed task and switch to another that’s even more important.

We may think we need to do eight things at once to keep up, but this is obviously impossible. The day’s tasks come to us single-file, like grains of sand through an hourglass, and it can’t be any other way. If we can quiet our minds enough to actually do the work in front of us instead of ruminating about the thousand other things on our plate, we’ll probably be fine. If we continually task-switch, we’re sunk.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. — Viktor Frankl

Consider these three approaches to interpreting our emotional states:

1. “My feelings determine my actions.”
2. “My feelings help determine my actions, but they are not the only factor.”
3. “My feelings are important, but they do not determine my actions.”

Children (and childish adults) take the first approach. Most productive members of society embrace the second. Extraordinary people tend to use the third.

If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. — Scott Adams

Success always has a price.

The price of becoming a doctor is spending much of your 20s with your nose in a book (not to mention accruing a mountain of student loan debt). But if you pay the price, you get to spend a lucrative career unambiguously helping people.

The price of attaining a job in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is spending your youth in a practice room (not to mention working nights and weekends, when most of your friends and family are off). But if you pay the price, you get to make music for a living—a very good living—with some of the best musicians in the world.

As I learn more and more about productivity, I find less and less about willpower and self-discipline. The research seems to suggest that we’re largely better off avoiding temptation than learning to resist it. (This approach appeals to me, probably because I don’t seem to have much self-discipline.) It’s an idea that goes back at least as far as ancient Greece.

In The Odyssey, Odysseus ordered his men to lash him to the mast of the ship and plug their own ears with wax as they sailed past the Sirens so he could hear their irresistible song without being lured to his death. Odysseus wasn’t interested in productivity—he just wanted to hear what all the fuss was about, Siren-wise—but we can take a cue from him nonetheless.

On Practicing at Work

What is it you do to train that is comparable to a pianist practicing scales? — Tyler Cowen

The world of knowledge work is a lot more like practicing the piano than most of us realize.

When we join the workforce, many of us leave behind the idea of deliberate practice—working in a highly focused way to master a difficult skill, like a pianist practicing her instrument. Yet the skills we need to excel in our jobs—data science chops, fluency in Arabic or Ruby on Rails—are absolutely deserving of deliberate practice. They’re every bit as technical and prone to decay as a pianist’s finely-tuned abilities.