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.

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: “My feelings determine my actions.” “My feelings help determine my actions, but they are not the only factor.” “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.

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).

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.

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.