Nir and Far

How to Protect Your Focus Without Burning Bridges

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Jenny Wood, a former Google executive who led one of the company’s biggest career programs, helping thousands take charge of their professional growth. Her new book, Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It, is a bold guide to standing out and getting ahead by embracing 9 unexpected traits.

Most professionals don’t struggle with time management. They struggle with people-pleasing.

From an early age, we’re conditioned to say “yes.” Yes to additional responsibilities. Yes to impromptu meetings. Yes to anything that signals we’re cooperative team players. But this automatic response creates a significant dilemma: every time we say yes to something inessential, we’re implicitly saying no to work that actually matters.

As Nir Eyal points out in Indistractable, if you don’t take control of your time, someone else will.

An illustration showing an hourglass filled with sand and a hanging spotlight, emphasizing that achieving goals isn't about having more time but about directing your energy with greater focus

The Hidden Cost of Interruptions

A study by Gloria Mark from the University of California, Irvine shows that the average knowledge worker is interrupted every 11 minutes. Once that interruption occurs, it takes approximately 23 minutes to fully regain concentration.

This isn’t just frustrating—it’s fundamentally incompatible with meaningful work. A few unexpected notifications, messages, or drop-by conversations can completely derail your productivity and transform your workday into a cycle of distraction and reaction rather than intentional action.

The constant context-switching doesn’t just feel exhausting—it is exhausting. This pattern increases stress, mental fatigue, and error rates, while dramatically reducing your capacity for focused work.

What’s even more concerning is how these interruptions compound over time. If you’re interrupted just five times in a workday (a conservative estimate for most professionals), you’re losing nearly two hours of productive time—not counting the interruptions themselves. Over a week, that’s an entire day of work evaporating into the ether.

The People-Pleasing Trap

Why do we keep falling into this trap? The answer lies in our deeply ingrained fear of social rejection.

During my time at Google, I noticed a pattern among even the most brilliant professionals. Many of us were unconsciously prioritizing short-term social harmony over long-term impact. We’d say yes to a 30-minute coffee chat to avoid potentially hurting someone’s feelings, even if it meant pushing an important deadline into evening hours.

This isn’t just about being nice—it’s about a fundamental misunderstanding of how respect is earned in professional settings. Counter-intuitively, setting clear boundaries often increases others’ respect for you, while constant accommodation can diminish it.

Becoming Intentional With Your Time

Having led major career development programs at Google, I’ve seen firsthand how the highest performers handle their time. They don’t just manage it—they defend it with an almost religious fervor.

I address this challenge in my new book, Wild Courage: Go After What You Want and Get It, where I identify being “brutal” with your time as essential for high performance, a concept that aligns with Eyal’s strategies for becoming “indistractable.”

I used to say yes to everything: meetings I didn’t need to attend, projects that weren’t mine to own, and favors that drained my capacity. While I thought I was being collaborative, I was actually avoiding the discomfort of setting boundaries.

When I finally began protecting my time as if my career depended on it (because it did), I discovered something surprising: no one seemed to mind. My colleagues didn’t keep score of declined meeting invitations or take offense at my newfound boundaries. Instead, I finally had bandwidth for the work that truly mattered.

The Psychology of Saying No

What makes saying “no” so difficult? Neuroscience offers some insights. When we anticipate potential social rejection, our brains activate the same regions associated with physical pain. This helps explain why declining requests feels so uncomfortable—we’re literally wired to avoid it

Understanding this biological response is the first step toward overcoming it. The discomfort you feel when setting boundaries isn’t a signal that you’re doing something wrong—it’s simply an outdated survival mechanism firing in a context where it’s no longer helpful.

The good news is that this discomfort diminishes with practice. Each time you successfully protect your time without damaging relationships, you’re retraining your brain to associate boundary-setting with positive outcomes rather than social danger.

Practical Ways to Protect Your Time

If you want to reclaim your schedule this week, try this five-step approach:

Audit your calendar: Identify your biggest time-wasters and recurring distractions. Look for patterns—are there specific people, projects, or meeting types that consistently drain your energy without proportional returns?
Practice saying no—without over-explaining: Keep it simple with “I can’t commit to this right now.” Research suggests that using the word “can’t” rather than “don’t want to” is perceived as less personal and more acceptable to the receiver.
Time-block your focus work: Schedule and defend periods for focused work as if they were unmissable meetings. Eyal calls this technique “timeboxing” in Indistractable and it’s one of the most powerful tools for ensuring that your priorities actually get your time.
Create friction for interruptions: Make it slightly harder for others to access your time. This might mean closing your office door, working from a different location, or using status indicators in communication tools to signal when you’re in focused work mode.
Batch similar activities: Group similar tasks like email checking, Slack responses, or approval reviews into dedicated time blocks rather than allowing them to fragment your entire day.

When you need to decline requests gracefully, these three simple scripts can help:

For meeting requests: “I’d love to help! Can we start by collaborating via email to get ideas flowing? If we need more time after that, I’m happy to explore meeting options.”

For timeline management: “I’m deep into a priority project this week, but I’d be happy to circle back next week. Does that timeline work for you?”

For clarity on commitments: “Happy to discuss this further. Could you send over a quick agenda first, so I can see where I can best contribute?”

These approaches allow you to maintain relationships while protecting your most valuable resource—your attention.

Traction, Not Busyness

Being busy doesn’t build success. Being intentional does.

The path to meaningful productivity isn’t about filling every minute of your calendar. It’s about creating the time and space for traction—making progress on what matters most to you. This connects directly to Eyal’s concept of “traction” versus “distraction,” where traction pulls you toward what you want while distraction pulls you away.

I’ve found that the professionals who advance most rapidly aren’t necessarily working more hours—they’re working more focused hours. They’ve mastered the art of saying no to the trivial many so they can say yes to the vital few.

By setting appropriate boundaries around your time and attention, you aren’t being difficult or uncooperative. You’re creating the conditions necessary for your best work to emerge. You’re telling the world that your contribution matters enough to be protected.

What’s one boundary you could set this week to protect your time and attention?

The Real Culprit Behind Plummeting Children’s Mental Health

Before treating kids with therapy and medication, make sure they’re getting enough “psychological nutrients.”

Kids are suffering. In the United States, 13 percent of three- to 17-year-olds had a mental or behavioral health diagnosis. That number climbs to 20.3 percent among teens aged 12 to 17 (as of 2023). Globally, 15 percent of 10- to 19-year-olds have a mental health disorder.

You’re right in thinking it hasn’t always been like this. There’s been a sharp spike in recent years—even before the COVID-19 pandemic’s contribution. Between 2012 and 2018, there was a 34.6 percent increase in child mental illness. ADHD, anxiety, depression, and behavior/conduct problems are the most common conditions afflicting youth. Diagnoses of depression in children aged 3 to 17 grew 27 percent from 2016 to 2020.

Parents and teachers often blame social media for rising teen depression rates. But many studies show only a correlation between the two (and a low one at that), not causation. It’s just as or more likely that kids experiencing poor family dynamics, a lack of autonomy, academic pressures, or other issues find solace and distraction in excessive social media use. Too much tech use is a symptom of a deeper problem, not the sole cause.

As mental health diagnoses surge, so does the reliance on therapy and medication. While these interventions can be helpful, they are reactive rather than preventive. To support children’s mental health, we need to focus on one of the root causes.

But what exactly about modern childhood environments is making kids so unhappy? The answer lies in understanding the stark gap between what children need psychologically and what their daily lives actually provide.

Kids’ Lives Aren’t Easy

What many people don’t know is that many childhood struggles stem from lifestyle factors rather than chemical imbalances. Addressing those factors should be the first step in helping a suffering child.

“If we treat children with mental, emotional, and behavioral problems without individually and collectively addressing social and relational health risks, or even assessing them, which is often the case, we are missing some of the biggest factors driving the mental and emotional suffering of our children,” says Christina Bethell, professor at Johns Hopkins and director of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative at the Bloomberg School.

The truth is, kids have a lot bringing them down. For starters, school.

“Schools produce anxiety and depression in children,” according to Boston College research professor Peter Gray. He notes that U.S. school systems have reacted by spending tons of money on mental health professionals and programs (more than $1.7 billion in the 2021–22 school year went to social and emotional learning). But, he wrote, “if schools would stop stressing kids out as they do, and stop preventing them from being kids, our kids wouldn’t need so much therapy!”

A survey of 65,000 third- through 12th-grade students, released in January 2025, showed that kids’ severe lack of agency in school is part of the problem. It found that 26 percent of 10th graders say they love school, compared to 74 percent of third graders, which Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop—co-conductors of the survey and authors of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better—attribute to 33 percent of 10th graders saying they don’t develop their own ideas in school. “School feels like prison, many teenagers told us over three years of research,” Anderson and Winthrop wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “The more time they spend in school, the less they feel like the author of their own lives, so why even try?”

The comparison to prison isn’t an exaggeration. Robert Epstein, the researcher who wrote “The Myth of the Teen Brain” in Scientific American, has a similar conclusion: “Surveys I have conducted show that teens in the U.S. are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons.”

Most formal schooling in America and similar industrialized countries is the antithesis of a place where kids have the autonomy to make their own choices. And that’s not the only problem.

While some standardized tests like the SAT serve an important role in providing an objective measure of academic achievement, the sheer volume of testing in schools can take a toll on students’ well-being. Kids today take standardized tests in mathematics and English language arts every year from third to eighth grade and once in high school, plus less frequent science tests. In-class tests account for a significant percentage of students’ grades—as high as 40 to 60 percent in some school districts. This constant assessment creates an environment where many students feel perpetually evaluated rather than focused on learning; that potentially undermines their sense of competency and increases stress levels.

The education system has begun recognizing these challenges. The 2015 U.S. Every Student Succeeds Act, which replaced the No Child Left Behind Act, reduced some testing requirements. Poor test scores and grades can make children feel incompetent. Persistent stress in schools is shown to adversely affect children’s physical and mental health into adulthood.

No, traditional Western school isn’t the only factor that contributes to poor mental health in children. However, kids consistently report that school is the primary source of their distress. In one survey, 83 percent of the teens said school pressures were responsible for some of their stress.

Perhaps the most damning indictment of our educational environment comes from this sobering statistic: teenage suicide attempts drop by 28% during summer months when school is not in session. Let that sink in—the very institution we trust to nurture our children’s minds may be contributing significantly to their psychological distress.

Recognizing the challenges of children’s day-to-day life allows us to understand that raising happy, healthy kids means addressing these challenges. Instead of jumping to therapy, we should first assess whether children’s basic psychological needs are being met.

The Psychological Nutrients Kids Need to Thrive

According to self-determination theory, all humans—kids included—need three psychological nutrients to flourish, a widely accepted theory of human motivation and flourishing developed by renowned human-behavior researchers Richard Ryan and Edward Deci.

Autonomy: A sense of control over their own lives. Many kids feel anxious because their lives are overly structured and controlled.
Competency: Feeling capable and effective. Without opportunities to succeed at meaningful tasks, kids may develop low self-esteem.
Relatedness: Feeling connected to others. Genuine connection and supportive relationships, not just therapy sessions or structured socialization, are essential for emotional well-being.

Even if kids don’t get all these nutrients at school, caregivers can provide them in other ways.

Before medicating our children, let's ask: Are they getting their psychological nutrients? Autonomy, competence, and connection are the real antidepressants kids need. #ParentingTruth Share on X

How to Give Your Kid a Rich Life

What does feeding your kid the psychological nutrients they need look like? My wife and I have a teenage daughter, but our approach to raising her isn’t the only way and may not even apply to yours.

Instead of prescribing advice, I offer several studies that point to what kids need to be mentally healthy.

1. Make Their Choices Count

A 2009 study examined children’s attention and learning during an experiment with Guatemalan Mayan and European American five- to 11-year-olds. Two children were brought into a room where an adult taught one of them how to build a toy while the other one waited; researchers observed what the nonparticipating child, the observer, would do while waiting. In the United States, most of the observer children shuffled in their seats, stared at the floor, and generally showed signs of disinterest. But the Mayan children concentrated on what the other child was learning and sat still in their chairs as the adult taught the other child.

Overall, the study found that American children could focus for only half as long as Mayan kids, even though the Mayan children had less exposure to formal education. Less schooling meant more focus. How could that be?

Psychologist Suzanne Gaskins, who has studied Mayan villages for decades, told NPR that Mayan parents give their kids a tremendous amount of freedom. “Rather than having the mom set the goal—and then having to offer enticements and rewards to reach that goal—the child is setting the goal. Then the parents support that goal however they can,” Gaskins said. Mayan parents “feel very strongly that every child knows best what they want and that goals can be achieved only when a child wants it.”

Any parent can offer their child this same freedom. A great way to start is by helping them build an indistractable summer. Kids may not have much autonomy during the school year, but in the summer, they have unlimited free time. Caregivers can support kids in planning a balanced schedule for spending their time how they want.

Other ways to give kids autonomy:

Let them choose their extracurricular activities instead of pushing them into what we think is best.
Give them choices in everyday life, such as picking out their clothes and meals.
Allow them to take (reasonable) risks, like climbing trees, biking to a friend’s house, or picking up an ingredient at a nearby grocery store.

2. Connect with Them

Another multi year study, led by Bethell, concluded that strong family connections and resilience can offset kids’ mental health conditions.

Nearly 70 percent of children with mental health conditions in the study experienced at least one of eight social or relational health risk factors including economic hardship, food insecurity, unsafe neighborhood, racial discrimination, and adverse childhood experiences such as substance abuse or domestic violence.

Relational health risks—namely, poor caregiver mental health, low levels of caregiver coping, or high aggravation with their child—in particular influence children’s mental health: Compared to social health risks, they are not only more prevalent among kids with mental health conditions but also more strongly associated with those conditions, according to Bethell’s study.

Strong relational health can alleviate mental health problems by promoting children’s self-regulation and resilience. For example, children with a strong parent-child connection were 5.73 times more likely to demonstrate good self-regulation and 2.25 times more likely to do so “when their family reported staying hopeful and could identify strengths to draw on during difficult times.”

To build strong family connections, try having regular family dinners without screens, or go on one-on-one outings with your kids. When she was younger, my daughter and I used to have a fun jar of activities we would pull from, and today we have planned spontaneity together.

3. Take Care of Yourself

Did you hear? Poor caregiver mental health can adversely affect kids’ mental health. So if you ever needed an evidence-backed reason to practice self-care, this is it.

To convince you further, this study found that “people who are surrounded by many happy people and those who are central in the network are more likely to become happy in the future.” Your happiness, as the guardian of a child, is important. Devote time to yourself. Taking care of yourself is at the core of the three life domains—you, your work, and your relationships—because the other two depend on your health and wellness. If you’re not taking care of yourself, your relationships, including with your kids, suffer.

4. Let Them Play

Remember playing pickup games at the basketball court, hanging out at the mall on weekends, or simply roaming around the neighborhood until you found a friend? Sadly, spontaneous socializing for kids isn’t as common as it used to be.

“But the world is different now,” some parents argue. “We can’t just let kids roam free like in previous generations.” While safety concerns are valid, the data doesn’t support the level of restriction many children experience today. Crime statistics show that children are safer now than in previous decades, despite parental perceptions to the contrary. The real danger may lie in overprotection itself—depriving children of the very experiences that build confidence, resilience, and social skills.

Peter Gray, who has studied the decline of play in America, reported that since about 1955, “children’s free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children’s activities.” Parents restrict outdoor play due to “child predators, road traffic, and bullies,” according to a survey in an Atlantic article—even though kids today are statistically the safest generation in American history.

Kids have no choice but to stay indoors, attend structured programs, or rely on technology to find and connect with others.

Although virtual social interactions can be positive because they allow people to feel relatedness, the loss of in-person play has real costs, including social isolation and loneliness. According to Gray, “Learning to get along and cooperate with others as equals may be the most crucial evolutionary function of human social play.”

Gray argues that schools should integrate more play into the day. Until that happens, caregivers can make sure kids have time for free play outside of structured academic or athletic activities.

Considerations Before Therapy or Medication

The environmental factors discussed throughout this article—school stress, lack of autonomy, limited play, and poor relational health—create the foundation for children’s mental well-being. By addressing these fundamental needs first, we can prevent many mental health challenges before they require clinical intervention.

That said, we must acknowledge an important truth: some children will need professional support even with the most nurturing environments. The key is approaching mental health as a spectrum rather than a binary choice between “environment fixes everything” or “medication is always necessary.”

When environmental changes don’t fully address a child’s struggles, consider these principles:

1. Normalize emotions without pathologizing them

There’s a crucial difference between experiencing anxiety and having an anxiety disorder. Teaching children that uncomfortable emotions are normal parts of life—not symptoms to be eliminated—builds emotional resilience. This perspective helps them develop healthy relationships with their feelings rather than fearing them.

2. Seek support thoughtfully

If professional help becomes necessary, approach it with intentionality. Find practitioners who consider the whole child—their environment, relationships, and unique circumstances—not just their symptoms. The best mental health professionals for children recognize that diagnosis should inform care, not define identity.

3. Maintain agency in treatment

Even within therapeutic contexts, children need autonomy. Involve them in decisions about their care when appropriate, and ensure that any intervention strengthens rather than diminishes their sense of competence and connection.

The path to better mental health for our children isn’t found in either rejecting or embracing therapy and medication wholesale. Instead, it lies in creating environments where children can thrive naturally while recognizing when additional support serves their well-being. By addressing the root causes first—the environmental factors that deprive children of autonomy, competence, and relatedness—we give them the best chance at flourishing, with or without clinical intervention.

Our responsibility isn’t to shield children from all difficult emotions or experiences, but to ensure they have the psychological nutrients and supportive relationships that allow them to navigate life’s challenges with resilience and hope.

What You Can Do Today:

Audit your child’s schedule for balance between structured activities and free time. Does it allow for daily periods of self-directed play?
Evaluate your own expectations about achievement, grades, and performance. Are they serving your child’s well-being?
Advocate within your school system for more unstructured time, less testing pressure, and greater student agency.
Become an “Indistractable” parent by modeling healthy technology use. Children learn more from what we do than what we say. When you set boundaries around your own screen time—putting your phone away during meals, establishing tech-free zones in your home, and being fully present during family time—you teach powerful lessons about attention management. Show your children that technology is a tool to be used intentionally, not something that controls your attention. This modeling is far more effective than rules and restrictions that apply only to them but not to you.
Teach the “why” behind technology boundaries, not just the rules. Empower them with strategies to maintain control over their attention. When children understand the psychology behind distraction, they develop critical thinking skills that serve them throughout life.

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The mental health crisis among children isn’t inevitable—it’s the product of environments we’ve created, and we have the power to change them. Our children’s well-being depends on our willingness to examine and transform the worlds they inhabit, not just treat the symptoms that result from environments that fail to meet their most basic psychological needs.

The 4 Secrets to Storytelling for Business

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Will Storr, an acclaimed author and journalist known for his deep exploration into human behavior, storytelling, and psychology. His newest book, “A Story is a Deal: How to Use the Science of Storytelling to Lead, Motivate, and Persuade,” reveals how powerful storytelling techniques can be harnessed in business, leadership, and communication to drive impactful results.

Every successful leader, marketer, or entrepreneur is, at heart, a great storyteller. Storytelling is not just an art—it’s a science, grounded in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral design. Here are four science-backed principles for crafting persuasive narratives, adapted from my new book, A Story is a Deal.

1. Make Your Audience Identify

For stories to persuade effectively, your audience must identify with the protagonist or the situation. Identification triggers a psychological phenomenon where listeners subconsciously experience the protagonist’s journey as if it were their own. When people see their struggles reflected, they engage deeply and retain more of your message.

Neuroscience supports this: A BBC StoryWorks study involving 2,179 participants globally revealed that emotional storytelling significantly enhances long-term memory formation. The intensity and frequency of emotional peaks—not necessarily the type of emotion—drive lasting impact. Crucially, engaging emotional moments early in the narrative amplify recall.

Insight for business storytelling: To increase brand retention and customer loyalty, frame your narrative around relatable, emotionally resonant situations or characters that mirror your audience’s lives, challenges, or aspirations.

Every successful leader, marketer, or entrepreneur is, at heart, a great storyteller. Storytelling is not just an art—it’s a science, grounded in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral design. –Will Storr (@wstorr) Share on X

2. Keep it Simple

Reality is complex, but persuasive storytelling thrives on simplicity. Human brains crave clarity; complexity increases cognitive load, causing audiences to disengage. Simple stories, focusing on one clear protagonist and straightforward language, dramatically outperform complicated narratives.

Psychologists explain this with the “Identifiable Victim” effect. For instance, a heartbreaking image of three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi on a Turkish beach increased donations to the Migrant Offshore Aid Station by a factor of fifteen. Conversely, overcomplicated language—like a recent Chanel ad’s overly abstract narrative—can obscure your message and reduce effectiveness. Research even suggests that excessive jargon often signals lower status, not sophistication.

Insight for business storytelling: When crafting your business pitch or marketing messages, opt for clear, simple language that directly resonates with your audience’s experience. Avoid jargon or overly abstract descriptions to maintain engagement and clarity.

3. Clarify Obstacles and Goals

Humans evolved storytelling to share lessons on overcoming life’s challenges within social groups. Persuasive stories clearly illustrate how a relatable protagonist encounters and overcomes specific obstacles, ultimately achieving their goal. The climax isn’t just victory; it’s also the lesson learned or the moral of the story.

In business contexts, the “lesson” should highlight precisely how your product, service, or vision solves the protagonist’s problem. People remember solutions that clearly connect a challenge to a tangible outcome, particularly when the story concludes with demonstrable success.

Insight for business storytelling: Clearly define the problem your customer faces, demonstrate how your solution resolves it, and highlight the resulting transformation. This method strengthens customer belief and encourages action.

4. Be Specific and Concrete

Vague storytelling is easily forgettable. Specific, concrete details activate the brain’s visual imagination, making your story vivid and memorable. Leaders particularly benefit from this technique: clear, concrete visions significantly increase employee motivation and clarity of purpose.

NASA’s goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth,” outlined by President Kennedy, replaced ambiguous aspirations with a tangible, achievable mission. Employees vividly envisioned their roles within this clear narrative. Similarly, Bill Gates’ concrete objective—”a computer on every desk in every home”—galvanized Microsoft’s workforce.

Insight for business storytelling: Define your vision, products, or outcomes using specific, concrete language that your audience can visualize. Abstract terms like “sustainability” or “growth” are less persuasive than clear, vivid goals people can immediately picture.

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Remember, a great story isn’t just told—it’s felt. When you harness these four rules of storytelling—Identification, Simplicity, Obstacles and Goals, and Specificity—you don’t just share information; you make deals. You persuade. You move people to action.

Adapted from “A Story is a Deal: How to Use the Science of Storytelling to Lead, Motivate, and Persuade” by Will Storr.

The Hidden Power of Social Comparison

I’ll never forget the day I learned about Facebook’s $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition. Instead of celebrating my own recent success as an author, I found myself spiraling into a pit of self-doubt. “Why hadn’t I created a simple messaging app?” I wondered, mentally berating myself for missing out on what seemed like an obvious opportunity.

Sound familiar?

We’ve all been told that comparing ourselves to others is toxic. It’s the ultimate happiness killer, the thief of joy, the fast track to misery—or so conventional wisdom tells us. But here’s the thing: If comparison is so destructive, why do our minds keep returning to it? What if there’s more to this story than meets the eye?

Recent research suggests that watching others succeed doesn’t just make us feel bad; it lights a fire under us, pushing us toward our own achievements. While comparison can certainly be a bad habit, there might be a hidden upside we’ve been missing.

A friend recently shared something intriguing with me. For years, she’s maintained what she calls a “secret mentor”—someone she follows online who serves as her unofficial measuring stick for success. This person changes periodically, but the pattern remains the same: Usually, it’s someone similar to her in age and background who’s achieved something she aspires to.

Yes, she admits, sometimes this comparison leaves her feeling inadequate. But more often, it serves as a north star, showing her what’s possible. These “comparison targets” prove her goals are achievable, not just pipe dreams.

Given that comparative thoughts comprise 12 percent of our daily mental activity, we’d better learn to harness them constructively. The key lies in developing a self-compassionate relationship with ourselves while acknowledging our natural tendency to measure ourselves against others.

The Fascinating Science Behind Social Comparison

To understand why comparison affects us so deeply, we need to dive into the psychology behind it.

Social comparison theory shows that humans have an innate drive to evaluate themselves against others. We measure everything from our wealth and social status to our physical appearance and professional achievements.

This comparison typically takes three forms:

Upward comparison: Looking at those we perceive as “ahead” of us
Downward comparison: Looking at those we perceive as “behind” us
Lateral comparison: Looking at those we see as our peers

For years, psychologists assumed upward comparisons were inherently harmful to well-being. However, recent research reveals something surprising: Depending on how we frame them, both upward and downward comparisons can have positive and negative effects.

The game changer? Understanding the difference between “assimilative” and “contrastive” comparisons and the two distinct types of envy they produce.

When we make assimilative comparisons, we focus on our similarities with the person we compare ourselves to. This tends to spark what psychologists call “benign envy”—the kind that makes us think, “If they can do it, so can I.”

Contrastive comparisons, on the other hand, emphasize differences and often lead to “malicious envy”—the kind that makes us want to see others fail.

This distinction explains why so many studies have mistakenly concluded that social media is universally bad for mental health. They primarily looked at contrastive comparisons, missing the potential benefits of assimilative thinking.

Some cultures explicitly recognize these two responses to others’ success. While both involve that familiar sting, benign envy channels our energy into personal growth, creating what psychologists call “approach motivation“—a fancy term for the drive to move toward our goals or what I like to call “traction.”

In contrast, malicious envy triggers avoidance motivation: We either try to distance ourselves from the person we envy or, worse, give up on our own similar aspirations.

Have you ever caught yourself unfollowing someone successful on social media or avoiding their latest achievement? That’s avoidance motivation in action.

The takeaway? Comparison, when channeled correctly, can be a powerful catalyst for personal growth.

When Comparison Becomes Toxic

Of course, not all comparisons are created equal. Comparison becomes harmful when it triggers thoughts like “That ship has sailed for me” or “I’ll never achieve what they have.” This is known as the “contrast effect,” a cognitive bias that distorts our perception of reality.

The contrast effect can turn a perfectly good day into an emotional tailspin. You might be feeling great about your life until you hear about someone else’s success, and suddenly, your own achievements seem insignificant. It’s like having your personal highlight reel interrupted by someone else’s championship game.

Take my reaction to the WhatsApp deal. The previous year, my book Hooked had become a bestseller, selling 5,000 copies in its first year (and eventually exceeding 500,000 copies worldwide). Yet one piece of news about someone else’s success temporarily blinded me to my own achievements—malicious envy in full effect.

Consider wealth, for instance. While society often equates success with income, some studies show that money stops contributing to emotional well-being once basic needs are met—around $60,000 to $75,000 annually. Unexpectedly, people earning $95,000 more often report lower life satisfaction than those making less.

A 2023 study somewhat contradicted those findings: It discovered that most people do experience an increase in happiness with an increase in income—with the caveat that the unhappiest 20 percent of study participants saw their happiness plateau at $100,000. Also, the level of happiness people experienced with a rise in income depended on their overall emotional well-being. The higher your emotional well-being generally is, the happier you’ll be with an income increase. Why is that? Income isn’t the only factor that influences happiness. You can be rich and unhappy, and more money won’t help you.

“Money is just one of the many determinants of happiness,” Matthew Killingsworth, one of the study’s researchers, told Penn Today. “Money is not the secret to happiness, but it can probably help a bit.”

This finding illustrates how our assumptions about “more is better” comparison can lead us astray. We chase higher salaries, thinking it’s the key to greater satisfaction when the data suggests money alone isn’t the answer; we should focus on other aspects of our lives, too.

Social comparison becomes harmful when it triggers thoughts like “That ship has sailed for me” or “I’ll never achieve what they have.” This is known as the “contrast effect,” a cognitive bias that distorts our perception of reality. Share on X

Harnessing the Power of Positive Comparison

When used wisely, comparison can spark inspiration and motivation. Research shows that we’re particularly inspired by role models, people similar enough to relate to but successful enough to admire. As one study found, focusing on how we can become more like these role models often leads to genuine inspiration.

Therapist Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, offers an interesting perspective: “Follow your envy; it tells you what you want.” Our envious feelings often point to our deepest desires, even when we’re unaware of them.

Dr. Susan Biali Haas suggests viewing envy as a tool for personal clarity and growth. Each twinge of envy is an opportunity to practice gratitude and cultivate goodwill toward others.

Practical Steps for Healthy Comparison

Here’s how to make comparison work for you:

1. Check Your Mental State Before Scrolling

Research shows that upward comparison during depressive episodes can trigger a negative spiral. Wait until you’re in a better headspace to engage with others’ success stories.

2. Build Authentic Self-Esteem

Studies show that secure self-esteem leads to benign envy, while fragile self-esteem triggers the malicious kind. You can build up your self-esteem by noting your accomplishments, such as how often you practice an instrument or go for a run. Track your progress using my free habit tracker and celebrate your wins, no matter how small.

3. Practice Active Gratitude

Research consistently links gratitude with life satisfaction. When comparison triggers negative feelings, redirect your focus to what’s going right in your life.

4. Remember the Incomplete Picture

Everyone’s struggling with something, even if it’s not visible on social media. My friend’s revelation about her comparison target’s personal struggles helped her develop a more nuanced, compassionate perspective about that person’s public successes.

5. Get Specific About Your Envy

List exactly what triggers your envy and why. Use this information to identify your true goals and aspirations. Consider reaching out to those you admire; you might gain valuable insights and demystify their success in the process.

6. Define Your Own Success Metrics

While it’s fine to draw inspiration from others, make sure you’re working toward your own definition of success. Start by clarifying your core values and align your goals accordingly.

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7. Let Go

Instead of unfollowing successful people, follow them mindfully. Take inspiration from others’ cultural practices when acknowledging their achievements. For example, people in Arabic-speaking cultures use the expression “Mashallah” (Arabic for “God has willed it” to express admiration and gratitude. As one Washington Post writer noted, this practice helps transform envy into genuine admiration and respect.

The key question isn’t whether to compare yourself to others. It’s how to use comparison constructively. Are you using it as a stepping stone to growth or a stumbling block to success? The choice and the power lie in your hands.

Is Psychiatry Keeping Us Sick?

The iatrogenic effects of psychiatry.

Something is deeply wrong with the mental health system. Instead of leading to recovery, it often perpetuates cycles of dependency on therapy, medication, and diagnoses.

Psychiatric diagnoses, which are unreliable to begin with, have become our identities rather than tools for recovery. While more people are going to therapy than ever before, our collective mental health isn’t improving. For some disorders, such as ADHD and PTSD, medication is prioritized over education or therapy that teaches people how to cope; thus, we see medication as a cure-all and don’t learn tools that can help us heal.

As mental health awareness and interventions become increasingly common, we have to be aware of the iatrogenic effects—unintended, harmful consequences—of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment.

Is psychiatry keeping us sick?

Normal Behavior, Pathologized

Medical professionals and unqualified individuals alike routinely medicalize normal behavior and feelings. Sadness and anxiety, once considered everyday emotions, have become problems to eradicate. As a result, many of us have succumbed to the false idea that negative emotions are bad when, in reality, they are healthy and useful. Just like hunger prompts us to eat, emotions are siren calls that alert us to tend to our well-being. But as emotions have become pathologized, there’s a growing belief that any emotional discomfort needs to be “fixed.”

Psychiatry has a history of categorizing normal feelings and behaviors as disorders. Homosexuality was listed as a mental illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) until 1973, and “sexual orientation disturbance” until 1987. Controversy remains over the addition of prolonged grief disorder to the DSM in 2022, which many researchers have argued will “lead to medicalization of normal grief responses and overdiagnosis.”

As mental health awareness has increased, it’s led to both more accurate diagnoses and “overinterpretation,” or over-pathologizing “common psychological experiences,” a 2023 study showed. Psychiatric terms have crept into the way we talk about ourselves, spurred by “wellness” culture. Someone particular about the cleanliness or organization of their home describes themself as OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). Another person has a few nights of poor sleep and fears they’re an insomniac. People who are shy or introverted describe themselves as “socially anxious,” even taking it as far as avoidant personality disorder or social anxiety disorder. An overconfident person gets dubbed a “narcissist.”

Worse, overinterpretation engenders a self-fulfilling prophecy: “Interpreting difficulties as a mental health problem,” the study authors wrote, “can lead to changes in self-concept and behavior that ultimately exacerbate symptoms and distress.” They warn that the more mental health awareness increases, the higher the rates of mental health problems.

For example, I’ve heard several people say they think they have ADHD because they can’t concentrate at work or they never seem to get everything done. The mental health system reinforces these beliefs by making it simple to get a diagnosis and prescription: All it takes is one trip to a psychiatrist or physician, or they can even do it on an app. (Meds for anxiety are also super easy to get a hold of.)

This recently happened to a friend of mine. He complained to me that he just never seemed to be able to get anything done at work and that he was a procrastinator who could only work late at night when the pressure was on. He believed he had ADHD.

But when I asked my friend to describe his work day, he told me about being in meetings for five hours a day—and sometimes all day. No wonder he couldn’t get anything done! And no wonder he waited till the quieter hours of the evening to focus.

Between the distraction of constant meetings, which were often ineffective and inefficient, and trying to task-switch to focused work, I’m not surprised he found it difficult to concentrate. His environment, not his brain, was the problem.

Still, he walked away from his doctor’s appointment with a prescription in hand, yet little advice on how to cope with his diagnosis. Unfortunately, pills don’t teach skills.

As mental health awareness has increased, it’s led to both more accurate diagnoses and “overinterpretation,” or over-pathologizing ”common psychological experiences.” Share on X

Has Therapy Become Too Routine?

The pathologization of normal feelings and behavior has made many of us think we need therapy, even when we don’t. Furthermore, there’s ample evidence that many people who spend years in therapy don’t get much better.

Richard Friedman, professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, wrote that psychotherapy, even for people who legitimately need it, is “simply not designed for long-term use.” Freidman says therapy should last only until patients learn how to cope with their problem; terminating therapy and returning to it when needed is fine, but continuous long-term therapy is problematic.

A 2023 meta-analysis of studies on how cognitive behavioral therapy helps people with anxiety disorders suggested that long-term therapy is no more effective than short-term therapy. However, psychologist Juli Fraga said those results make sense, as cognitive behavioral therapy teaches people to manage their symptoms rather than to address the root cause of their problems.

Some people say they are quitting therapy because it causes them to dwell on their issues rather than move on from them.

Perhaps that’s why mental well-being is decreasing even as more people are going to therapy. “That’s not true for cancer [survival], it’s not true for heart disease [survival], it’s not true for diabetes [diagnosis], or almost any other area of medicine,” psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Insel, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, told Time magazine.

People are unsure when to end therapy, and the mental health system doesn’t help.

Getting Stuck in the Mental Health System

The mental health system tends to medicate rather than rehabilitate, mainly because it’s easier. Doctors are so burned out that they tend to prioritize easy patients—or easy fixes, like medication—over challenging cases because they don’t have enough time to give all types of patients the care they need.

According to Time magazine, psychiatrist Paul Minot “feels psychiatry leans on medications so it doesn’t have to do the more difficult work of helping people understand and fix life circumstances, habits, and behaviors that contribute to their problems.”

Fraga says doctors are taught to rely on medication. “I supervise psychiatry residents,” she says. “They have virtually zero training in psychotherapy. When I finished my doctorate, I had close to 100 hours of clinical work, and my internship and postdoc resulted in 2,000 more hours. Guess how many therapy cases most third-year psychiatric residents have seen? Three! Psychiatry leans on medications because this is what residents are trained to do.”

Overreliance on medication means some people never recover, even when they otherwise could. For example, experts are starting to wonder whether antidepressants prevent PTSD patients from healing. Another example: People often think an ADHD diagnosis is for life. But that’s not true. A third of kids diagnosed with ADHD don’t have it as adults.

If, through behavioral therapy, people learn the coping skills to control impulses, foster positive behavior, and build executive functions like organization and time management, they can manage their ADHD to the point that they don’t exhibit symptoms. Yet, up to 81 percent of children with ADHD are on medication in some US states. These medications come with side effects, while behavioral interventions, like teaching kids to become Indistractable, do not. Are we medicating kids for their benefit, or are we doing so to make life easier for doctors, teachers, and guardians?

Of course, some people do suffer from severe psychiatric disorders and require special care. In those cases, overmedication is often used as a band-aid for a broken mental health system. There’s not enough funding for mental health and not enough beds in psychiatric hospitals to give patients the thorough, long-term treatment they need.

“Since the earliest days of deinstitutionalization, the number of psychiatric hospital beds in America has declined relentlessly, so that it is rarely possible to treat the full episode of illness in hospital,” Harold I. Schwartz, a psychiatrist in chief emeritus at the Institute of Living, Hartford Hospital, wrote in an opinion letter to The New York Times. “It is not unusual to be discharged after three or four days, even when hospitalization was prompted by a suicide attempt or a psychotic episode.” In a 2021 study, 87 of the 88 U.S. pediatric hospitals used their emergency rooms to “regularly board” children who had to wait for an average of 48 hours for space to free up in a psychiatric hospital.

Mental health experts admit that we “lean on therapies and medications that only skim the surface of a vast ocean of need.” Rehabilitation is a lot harder for psychiatry to achieve. Instead, it medicates.

No Offboarding Plan

Unlike physical health care, mental health care—medication, but also therapy—often lacks an

“offboarding” plan.

Once a mental health patient is on medication, there’s little emphasis on helping them get off it.

Take antidepressants, for example. According to Professor Friedman, “Doctors are experts at prescribing medication but not so good at … knowing when a drug has served its purpose and can be safely stopped.”

In 2004, the American Psychological Association said that antidepressants are typically recommended for 16 to 20 weeks after depressive symptoms end. However, the guidelines “further recommend that maintenance treatment be strongly considered in order to prevent relapse. Recent research [from 2003] has indicated that continued antidepressant therapy for at least one year and as long as three years can significantly reduce the risk of relapse.” In 2011, the APA said that the “continuation phase” should last four to nine months and that people who have a chronic major depressive disorder or have had three or more episodes of major depression should maintain their use of antidepressants.

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service says that antidepressants are typically recommended for at least six months after a depressive episode, but they may be prescribed long-term if the patient is at a high risk of recurrent illness (i.e., has had more than one depressive episode before, which increases the likelihood of it occurring again).

About 2 million people in England have been taking antidepressants for five years. In the United States, more than 60 percent of people on an antidepressant have taken it for two-plus years; 14 percent have taken it for 10 years or longer. So, does that mean all those people are at high risk of recurrence? Not according to one 2021 study, which found that 44 percent of U.K. participants on long-term antidepressants were able to stop taking the medication without relapsing.

Therapy, too, lacks an offboarding plan. For example, measurement-based care (MBC), the process of assessing patients’ progress during mental and behavioral care, has been shown to improve patient outcomes. Yet, less than 20 percent of behavioral health practitionaers use MBC.

One study found that 84 percent of people who had recently ended their psychotherapy said they, rather than the therapist, initiated the termination; 23 percent said the therapy continued too long. “While there is widespread agreement that an ideal termination of psychotherapy occurs naturally, with an agreement of the timing between therapist and client, our research reveals that more often than not—this does not happen,” said study conductor David Roe, a clinical psychologist, and professor at the University of Haifas’ Department of Community Mental Health.

Bad Actors in Health Care

The psychiatric diagnosis process is “scientifically meaningless,” as Dr. Kate Allsop famously put it in a 2019 study that analyzed the DSM and found it wanting. The study notes that diagnoses “mask the role of trauma,” “use different decision-making rules,” and have many symptoms in common with each other, among other issues.

An iconic 1973 Stanford study demonstrated that point by having eight healthy people pretend to have hallucinations so they could be committed to a psychiatric hospital; once admitted, they acted normally, yet all were diagnosed with severe mental disorders. In the second phase of the experiment, the study leader, psychologist David Rosenhan, told a doctor at a prestigious hospital that he would be sending a “pseudopatient” at some point during the next three months. Of the 193 patients the hospital saw in that time, psychiatrists labeled 23 as fake patients. But Rosenhan never sent anyone at all. After the three-year study, he concluded that the psychiatric diagnostic process is unreliable.

That’s a dangerous weakness, and bad actors have exploited it.

Acadia Healthcare, one of the largest chains of psychiatric hospitals in the United States, has been accused of hospitalizing people longer than necessary—against their will—all to squeeze the highest insurance payout. It has been able to do this by falsifying psychiatric reports and exaggerating patients’ symptoms.

This is more common than you think. Across the United States, substance abuse centers, residential treatment centers for kids, and psychiatric centers (including in Colorado, Arkansas, and Texas) have allegedly held people against their will for profit.

How to Navigate Psychiatry

It is important that people who are suffering get the care they need. This post is not intended to discourage anyone from seeking help.

But those who enter the mental health system need to know that it’s riddled with problems. Individuals and families need to be careful that the psychiatric system is helping them get better, not keeping them sick.

Here are some strategies to help people navigate the mental health system and get better rather than get stuck.

1. Be an Informed Patient

Before accepting a diagnosis or starting a medication, take the time to research and understand it. Ask your doctor about the medication’s pros and cons, potential side effects, and alternative treatments. Remember that you have the right to a second (or third) opinion.

2. Learn Behavioral Coping Skills for Your Diagnosis

Medication is an essential part of treatment for some, but it’s not the only solution. Prioritize therapies designed to help you form strong, healthy habits and skills for managing your mental illness or disorder.

3. Build a Support System

It’s not enough to have a doctor. Therapy is not a replacement for friendship (and friendship is not a replacement for therapy). Surround yourself with people who understand and support you, whether they’re friends, family, or members of a support group.

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4. Set Clear Recovery Goals

Enter treatment with a clear understanding of what recovery looks like for you. Work with your therapist or doctor to set tangible, achievable goals that signify progress and a clinical plan. This will help you track your recovery and prevent you from becoming stuck in a treatment rut.

Therapists should invite feedback from you so they know what’s working or not, and they can tailor treatment more effectively—yet many therapists don’t do this. So, be proactive about sharing your thoughts.

Getting professional mental health support is critical. But we must always remember, “caveat emptor,” buyer beware.

Why You’re Always Busy but Never Productive (and How to Fix It)

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Sahil Bloom, an entrepreneur, investor, and writer known for his engaging content on personal development, finance, and wealth-building. He is the creator of “The Curiosity Chronicle,” a biweekly newsletter that captivates millions of readers with insights on various topics. His new book, The 5 Types of Wealth, is a guide to building a life around the things you truly care about.

Most of us don’t think about how we spend our professional time—we just try and keep up. But the secret to working smarter (not harder) lies in managing our most precious resource.

Luckily, we have the best time-management technique—timeboxing—to help us. The concept is simple: Block off windows of time for distinct tasks.

Nir Eyal’s book, Indistractable, describes the steps each individual can take to build a custom timeboxed calendar. Part of his process involves splitting time into three life domains—you, your relationships, and your work—and categorizing your tasks and activities accordingly.

I break down timeboxing categories even further in the work domain to ensure each type of work gets its due.

I developed a model that splits professional time across four areas:

Management
Creation
Consumption
Ideation

You can use these four areas to reclaim your day, be creative, and make progress on the things that matter most.

Quadrant set against a brick wall, with 4 cells indicating types of professional time: management, creation, consumption, and ideation

The four types of professional time

Type 1: Management

Management Time is dedicated to coordinating, organizing, and overseeing tasks and people. It largely comprises reactive work, such as checking notifications and emails and being available to colleagues. Management Time is a staple of large organizations, and it’s where most of us spend the majority of our professional lives.

Typical activities of Management Time include:

Meetings
Calls
Presentations
Email processing
Team and people management

Management Time can be highly productive and efficient. But more often than not, related tasks are done without intentionality or time constraints, and they become a huge time suck.

Unscheduled Management Time inherently values movement over progress. Replying to emails and attending meetings morph into distractions instead of meaningful work. You might have a major project due next week that requires your focus, but as long as you’re responding to time-sensitive emails and group chat messages, you tell yourself you’re being productive.

Does that lie sound familiar? It’s much easier to answer every ping, ding, and interruption from coworkers than it is to do reflective work—the focused work that requires deep thinking.

We have to limit Management Time so it doesn’t take over our professional calendars.

Type 2: Creation

Creation Time, the second most common type of professional time, is when we produce and advance work. It’s when meaningful progress is made, as it focuses on generating new ideas, solutions, and outputs. Unfortunately, Creation Time is what most of us scramble to get done in the gaps between Management Time blocks.

Creation Time activities include:

Writing
Coding
Building
Preparing

Thriving organizations prioritize the reflective work performed in Creation Time and ensure that Management Time doesn’t infringe on it. Google, for example, has historically practiced “20 percent time,” a rule that a team or employee should spend 20 percent of their time exploring new projects. It reportedly led to the launch of Gmail, Google News, and AdSense.

Yet few organizations help their workers protect Creation Time. A 2021 Zapier survey found that although most employees (90 percent) spend five hours a day on messaging apps, about 18 percent spend under an hour a day on their core responsibilities; 81 percent allot less than three hours for creative work. If employees spend all day on management tasks without devoting their attention to meaningful work, they’ll be fast-pedaling to nowhere.

Type 3: Consumption

Consumption Time is one of the two forgotten types of professional time. It is when professionals absorb information that fuels new ideas for creation and growth.

Consumption Time may involve:

Reading or listening to articles, podcasts, and books
Studying
Attending a class, workshop, or industry conference

To paraphrase Atomic Habits author James Clear, everything you create is downstream from something you consume. Consumption Time focuses on quality upstream to ensure quality downstream.

Some of the greatest leaders and thinkers in history had dedicated Consumption Time. Benjamin Franklin’s daily routine included an hour block every morning to “prosecute the present study” (translation: to consume and learn something new).

Type 4: Ideation

Ideation Time is the second of the two forgotten types of professional time. It is when new ideas for creation and growth are cultivated and grown.

Ideation Time activities are:

Brainstorming
Journaling
Walking
Self-reflecting

Most of us have zero time for stillness and thought in our day-to-day professional lives. As a result, we make only linear progress, missing out on the asymmetric opportunities that require creative, nonlinear thinking.

Imagine a salesperson who spends their days making calls, following up on leads, and trying to hit quotas. If they ideated for 30 minutes every week, they might develop a new way to handle objections, a compelling storytelling technique, or a refined discovery process that consistently wins deals.

A Simple Hack to Assess Your Work Calendar

Before you can optimize your professional time, you need to understand how you currently spend it. A quick calendar exercise helped me identify my balance across the four types of time, and you can use it too. Starting on a Monday, at the end of each weekday, color-code the events from that day according to this key:

Management
Creation
Consumption
Ideation

At the end of the week, review the mix of colors on the calendar. The trends should leap out at you immediately, but you can also ask yourself:

What color dominates the calendar?
Are there distinct windows for Creation Time?
Are the colors thin and randomly scattered, meaning you’re constantly task-switching and losing focus, or do they appear as thicker chunks, meaning you’re giving each type of time the attention it needs?

Next, take those insights and follow Nir’s process of refining your weekly timeboxed calendar to reach an optimal balance.

Weekly schedule with segments devoted to 4 types of work: management, creation, consumption, and ideation

Use our schedule maker to create your own workweek

Three Tips for an Optimal Balance

Tip 1: Batch Management Time

Management Time is necessary but can dominate our days if we let it. Calls, meetings, presentations, and emails fill every moment of the day, making us feel constantly busy—which leads to burnout.

To fix this, we can enact Parkinson’s law, which asserts that work expands to fill the time available to complete it, and add time constraints with timeboxing:

Create discrete blocks of time each day for handling major Management Time activities.
Schedule one to three email-processing blocks per day.
Schedule one to three call and meeting blocks per day.

The goal is to avoid a schedule where the red bleeds out across every day. Management Time windows should be as discreet as possible to create space for the other types of time.

Your ability to do this will rise with your career progress. When you’re just starting your career, you likely won’t have as much flexibility or control over your calendar because you have to be available to your managers on their schedule. So, having one long period of Management Time won’t be conducive to your role; it is better to start with short, incremental periods of Management Time. People further along in their careers gain more control of their calendars and may be able to schedule larger blocks of Management Time.

Tip 2: Increase Creation Time

Creation is what propels us forward with more interesting projects and opportunities.

Of course, giving our attention to Creation Time means we are unavailable to answer messages and emails or attend meetings. So how do we get our employers, managers, and coworkers on board with that?

Nir came up with an answer: schedule-syncing. It’s a tool for clear communication and harmony with your manager and teammates.

Bring your timeboxed calendar, which should include blocks for Creation Time, to a meeting with your manager. Explain why you need this time for uninterrupted reflective work. Once you have your manager’s approval, you can share your timeboxed calendar with your coworkers so they know when you have Creation Time and are thus unavailable.

Tip 3: Create Space for Consumption and Ideation Time

People typically don’t consider Consumption and Ideation activities to be part of their job. But they are essential to new ideas and progress.

To start, schedule one short block per week for Consumption and one short block per week for Ideation. Maybe you give just 30 minutes to each type of time. Practice doing Consumption and Ideation activities when you said you would. Once you prove your ability to stick to that routine, consider increasing the presence of these types of time in your schedule.

Employers can help their workers find this time by creating fixed rules (as Google did). For example, they might implement a weekly hourlong “think block” (say, Friday at 2 p.m.) during which no meetings can be scheduled. This tactic similarly applies to Creation Time: Employers can enforce a daily Creation window for priority tasks.

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Balancing your workday isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing what matters. By structuring your time intentionally, you can carve out space for meaningful work. The key isn’t to eliminate Management Time but to contain it, ensuring that your best energy goes toward the work that truly moves the needle. Try it for a week—your future self will thank you.

The Surprisingly Strong Case for Luck in Sales

Studies show sales teams can harness luck to increase revenue.

My wife and I started our first business together in 2003. We sold solar panels in Long Island, New York, which meant making thousands of in-home sales calls.

Before we entered a potential customer’s home, we had a little ritual. We always looked at each other before we opened our car doors and said, “Let’s go sell a solar system.” It was cheesy and a bit silly, but somehow, we had to say it, or we thought we’d be jinxed and lose the sale.

Though we didn’t know it then, we had tapped into one of several practices that research has shown salespeople can use to close more deals. It turns out there’s a science to superstition, and whether the supernatural exists or not doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, there are practices anyone can use to increase their business’s good fortune.

The intersection of luck and sales success isn’t just anecdotal. It’s backed by rigorous research. After a decade-long study, psychologist Richard Wiseman concluded that some people truly can engineer luck. Dr. Tina Seelig at Stanford University developed a systematic approach to increasing good fortune in business ventures. Joël Le Bon, professor at Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School, has extensively researched how luck affects sales.

Their research shows that luck exists and can sharpen salespeople’s competitive edge. Here’s how:

How Salespeople Make Their Luck

All three experts have discovered that luck comes only after effort.

In his research, Le Bon calls this “provoked luck”: “unexpected events that come about because their strategic behavior has maximized the opportunities.” Their “strategic behavior” could include sales activities such as making phone calls, taking meetings, qualifying, and gathering intelligence on prospects. His interviews with experienced salespeople and a study of sales students revealed that provoked luck played a huge role in their success.

Le Bon’s study of 250 university sales students produced striking results. Out of the total sales generated by all students, approximately 60% came from lucky circumstances. Of those lucky sales, between 76% and 88% resulted from “provoked luck,” meaning the students’ strategic actions created the conditions for luck to occur.

Len Bon wrote in HBR that harnessing luck comes down to belief. Whether luck really exists doesn’t matter; whether a salesperson believes luck exists does.

If salespeople—be they real estate agents, mortgage brokers, or insurance salespeople—believe that if they put in the work, luck will come to them eventually, they will complete more sales activities. Thus, a salesperson who believes in luck will complete more sales activities, which causes more opportunities, which increases their provoked luck, which leads to a higher chance of success—ultimately reinforcing the salesperson’s belief in luck.

Le Bon says feeling lucky improves salespeople’s performance and builds self-assurance, optimism, and resiliency in the face of failure.

Wiseman determined through his 10-year study that there are four characteristics of a lucky person:

They are open to opportunity, pursue it, and make the most of what comes their way.
They trust their intuition.
They are optimists, which acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
They are extremely resilient (which Wiseman says is the most important of the four)

Based on those characteristics, Wiseman developed a “luck school” that taught people how to grow their luck.

Dr. Tina Seelig identified three ways people can “build a sail that captures the winds of luck”:

Get out of your comfort zone and take risks.
Show appreciation to those who help you or engage with you.
Don’t think of ideas as good or bad. Look at them through the lens of possibility.

These experts share strategies for how sales teams can build luck into their sales strategy—plus success stories of salespeople who have put them into practice.

Find Luck Outside Your Comfort Zone

“Salespeople should be encouraged to disrupt their habits, get out of their routines and comfort zones, and meet new people,” Le Bon wrote in HBR. “They should do new things, expand their networks by going to unusual places, and build new alliances. In sales, opportunities lie not among the people you know but among those you don’t.”

One salesman told Le Bon that he had won back an important account he had lost by helping a client of the account, who later spoke well of him. He regained business just by nurturing his network.

To encourage her students to push their limits, Seelig has them fill out a risk-o-meter to determine their willingness to take risks. She then asks them to do one activity outside of their established comfort zone.

“Tina Seelig’s risk-o-meter: a radar chart with spokes measuring risks in categories such as Social, Financial, Intellectual, Political, Physical, and Emotional.”

Tina Seelig’s “risk-o-meter” from What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

Sales managers can use that risk-o-meter to help salespeople navigate sales activities they would otherwise avoid.

Seelig has her own sales story of how risk-taking led to luck: She started a conversation with a stranger on a plane who turned out to be a publisher. During that flight, she pitched him a book proposal that he rejected on the spot. But Seelig continued to nurture the relationship with him—inviting him to speak to her college class on the future of publishing, sending him videos of her students’ projects—and, eventually, she sold that same book proposal to an editor who was a coworker of that publisher. That book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, sold 1 million copies within two years.

Research Makes You Lucky

Le Bon advises that sales teams be trained to seek knowledge about customers, prospects, competitors, and the overall market. This knowledge helps salespeople be smarter and luckier by opening them up to unexpected opportunities and increasing their luck.

According to Wiseman’s study, people who immerse themselves in learning and networking within their fields are well-connected, aware of their surroundings, and, thus, more likely to notice opportunities.

Feeling knowledgeable is also a boon for salespeople because it increases their confidence in interacting with and pitching their clients.

When I worked at Boston Consulting Group fresh out of undergrad, I had to get up to speed on many topics to excel at my job. I figured out a way to learn any subject so I could go from feeling incompetent to confident.

One study found that organizations with a system of knowledge sharing among employees become more agile and perform better; knowledge-related agility may help them recognize and react to opportunities.

Showing Appreciation Improves Your Good Fortune

According to Seelig, everyone who helps you on your journey plays a role in getting you to your goals. Not showing appreciation is a missed opportunity.

At the end of every day, Seelig reviews her calendar and sends thank-you notes to everyone she interacts with that day. This practice fosters gratitude, appreciation, and luck, she says.

Salespeople can use this tactic with their existing and prospective accounts, helping them develop strong working relationships.

During her TED Talk on luck, Seelig shared another story about the power of appreciation. She once received a thank-you from a student who had been rejected twice from an entrepreneurial fellowship she oversaw. The student thanked her for the opportunity and said he learned through the application process. The note moved Seelig so much that she invited the student to chat over coffee and ultimately decided to advise him on an independent study that he later turned into a business.

Optimistic People Are Luckier

Having a positive outlook pays off. As Wiseman said, optimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy that drives success. My wife and I felt somehow more optimistic and confident when we said, “Let’s go sell a solar system,” before attempting a sale, and I know that reflected in our interactions with potential customers.

One study showed that the “psychological resourcefulness” of optimism and resilience helps salespeople to build better customer relationships. That, in turn, boosts their sales performance. The study found that optimism and resilience correlate with “more diverse, exploratory, and novel behaviors,” which enables salespeople to use creative problem-solving to meet their customers’ needs. Salespeople with these skills may be “luckier” in overcoming challenging sales situations.

According to the study, sales managers can help their salespeople become more optimistic and resilient. They can foster psychological safety among their team and have honest conversations about challenges, such as the constant rejection salespeople face. For example, after a failed cold call, managers can help salespeople recover from the sting by “separating the immediate adversity from deeply held beliefs” that they are ill-qualified, assuring them that the rejection is not “a personal insult or sign of wrongdoing.”

Le Bon suggests that sales teams can also foster optimism by encouraging salespeople to set high goals, such as beating their past performance or securing a meeting with a dream account. This kind of goal makes salespeople more creative and strategic and “drives forward-looking behaviors.”

Fail better

Salespeople face rejection all the time—it’s part of the job. But staying positive in the face of failure isn’t just a good idea; it’s a strategy. Wiseman says that resilience is the most important of the four characteristics of a lucky person because it allows them to reframe “bad” luck as opportunities.

My wife and I learned this firsthand when we sold solar panels. Not every homeowner was a match for our product, for whatever reason; in those moments, it was easy to feel like the door had slammed shut. Instead, we looked for a window. Though we’d lost the sale, we’d ask if the homeowner wanted a referral to one of our competitors who sold electric heat pumps. At first, our competitors were baffled—why would we send business their way? But soon, they started sending potential solar customers our way as well. Eventually, we took it a step further and trained their sales teams to sell solar panels on commission. By rethinking competition as collaboration, we turned our competitors into one of our biggest sales drivers.

Salespeople face rejection all the time—it’s part of the job. But staying positive in the face of failure isn’t just a good idea; it’s a strategy Share on X

Le Bon says sales managers should encourage their teams to set failure goals, such as X number of sales calls that resulted in no deals. This prevents people from feeling ashamed about failures and prevents salespeople from overfocusing on the end goal of reaching a certain sales number, which can sap motivation.

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Seelig’s approach to making her students more resilient is to ask them to describe failure. Usually, students have very different answers, which helps them understand that failure can be reframed into something more positive. “They start realizing that’s something they can shape and change,” she said in an NPR interview.

Luck isn’t just something that happens to you. It’s something you create. A little reframing, a little persistence, and a lot of resilience can turn tough breaks into breakthrough moments. In sales, luck doesn’t just close deals—it keeps them coming.

Fail! Fail a Lot! It’s Good for You

Failure + resilience = success

“There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” —Brené Brown

Failure is baked into the human experience. So why are we so terrible at dealing with it?

Fear of judgment and the stigma that our failures reflect poorly on us discourage us from trying new things. Negative self-talk and rumination convince us that our failures mean we’re incapable and undeserving.

But failure is typical in all professions.

Organizations across industries see an average win rate of 43 percent for the requests for proposals (RFPs) they send to solicit bids for potential business; that means 57 percent of their RFPs fail.

New surgeons have a 30-day mortality rate of 6.2 percent—meaning 6.2 percent of patients they operated on died within 30 days after surgery—and experienced surgeons have a 4.5 percent rate.

One in four businesses fail within the first year. Within 10 years, 70 percent of companies fail.

Amazon was once predicted to fail. Imagine if Jeff Bezos allowed that to deter him.

Why make ourselves feel miserable for failing when it’s a factor of progress and a prerequisite for success?

If we want to succeed, we must become resilient to failure. Thankfully, resilience is a skill that can be learned.

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Understand the Failure Response

To overcome failure, it’s helpful to recognize that what we feel in the aftermath is not particular to each of us as individuals. Every person knows what failure feels like. Maybe that will allow you to show yourself a little more compassion when you experience it yourself.

Humans take failure hard.

For starters, we have a physiological response to failure: It triggers the fight-or-flight response in the body.

Imagine you receive an email from a client, coworker, or boss expressing dissatisfaction with a task you performed. The subject reads “Feedback,” and the first few words say, “This wasn’t what I was expecting…” or “I’m disappointed to see…” Your heart rate leaps, and you break out in a sweat. Instead of thinking through the email and dealing with your emotions, you tell yourself, “I can’t deal with this right now,” click over to check sports scores or watch a YouTube video to escape your distress by wallowing in distraction.

Reading the email triggers your brain’s neural processes associated with failure. These processes include emotional regulation, interoceptive awareness(awareness of sensory information), error detection, and social information processing. This activity stimulates the production of hormones and neurotransmitters, such as the stress hormone cortisol, and, ultimately, the fight-or-flight response.

Like many other human characteristics, this response helped our ancestors survive thousands of years ago when failure was closely linked to death. Today, our failures are rarely fatal—so the response is far out of proportion to what we experience. Our bodies make us feel that receiving an email with criticism is life-threatening.

Our response extends to our behavior and emotions as well. A rush of negative emotions, such as shame, guilt, and anger, is typical. We feel shame because we fear failure affects our relational value, or “the extent to which one feels valued by important others.” Failure is a hit to our self-esteem, and we may feel cognitive dissonance, which is discomfort that arises when our behavior clashes with our values. If we perceive ourselves to be a good worker or competent or reliable, then receiving feedback or doing something to the contrary sends us into a tailspin.

The failure response is drastic, and we can’t change it. But we can manage it.

The Building Blocks of Resilience

No resilient attitude toward failure can exist without self-compassion and positivity.

Self-Compassion

Your inner critic is one of the limiting beliefs holding you back. That voice loves to come out after any failure to criticize you, tell you you’ll never be good enough, and make you feel worthless for the slightest offense. If you feel useless, you can’t bounce back from failure.

So, to become resilient, you first have to become self-compassionate.

Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston, has spent decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. In 2010, she gave a TED Talk about vulnerability with 22 million views on YouTube, and two years later, she gave one about shame with more than 19 million views.

Brown encourages people to embrace failure because it’s part of the path to progress. Failing means you’re trying. She also says empathy is the best antidote to shame, which is “an epidemic in our culture.”

A great way to foster self-compassion is by sharing failures with others to normalize the experience and reduce feelings of isolation.

Brown’s second TED Talk was, in itself, a practice in failure sharing (she described the shame and vulnerability she felt after giving her first TED talk). “If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment,” she said. “If you put the same amount in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive. The two most powerful words when we’re in struggle: me too.”

Positivity

Adopting a positive outlook is critical to resilience. Richard Wiseman, a psychologist who spent a decade studying what makes lucky people tick, determined that their most important quality is resilience: They use a positive attitude to turn bad luck into promising opportunities.

The science behind “manifestation” supports this idea, showing that good things come to those with a positive outlook. First, people who think they can do something attempt it; simply trying increases their chances of success.

When we use positivity to see failure as a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block, we learn to approach failure with courage and optimism.

To build a positive outlook in the face of failure, try lucky people’s tactic: Reframe your failure as an opportunity. You can also repeat a science-backed affirmation that resonates with you and inspires positive emotions. For example, we’ve all heard that “practice makes perfect.” In reality, “practice makes progress.”

Design and Practice an “I Failed” Process

If you set yourself to succeed, you set yourself to fail first. So, if you plan to get out of your comfort zone and try new things, it’s best not to make yourself feel like crap every time they don’t work.

For those who plan to succeed, developing a procedure for what to do when you fail is smart. Develop it and practice it for failures, small to large. Each time you use it, it will reinforce your resilience.

Here’s what to do when you experience failure.

Step 1: Pause.

Take a moment to reflect and process your emotions and thoughts. Don’t catastrophize. Focus on your emotional response to failure rather than trying to rationalize it.

Part of my four-step process to master internal triggers, or negative feelings that drive us to distraction, is to explore those feelings with curiosity rather than contempt. This approach allows you to shift your mindset away from blame and shame.

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Step 2: Gather more information on the failure itself.

Seek feedback from others, objective metrics, or evidence from similar experiences if this type of failure appears to be a pattern.

Collecting more information helps us to beat confirmation bias, or the human tendency to seek, interpret, and remember information that confirms preexisting beliefs—e.g., a belief that you suck and aren’t good at your job. With more intel, we can consider explanations and perspectives other than the ones that fit our assumptions.

Take that email of negative feedback you received from your client, coworker, or boss, who said that the project you completed needed more work. In examining the situation, you might note that the project was more complex than most. On top of that, your client’s or boss’s request hadn’t been clear, so you had been operating under fuzzy direction. And, if you were being honest, the project was due the day after you had an argument with your partner that you couldn’t stop thinking about.

These pieces of information give context as to what went wrong. And none of them amount to “you suck.”

Step 3: Respond calmly.

Once you’ve had time to react privately and collect more information, you’ll likely feel ready to respond calmly to the failure. Identifying the best action is easier when you’re not reeling from a chaotic failure response.

You can’t be impervious to failure. But you can be an expert at dealing with it. Learning not to be derailed by failures is incredibly empowering. So, go fail! And practice responding well.

You Are Not Your Mental Health

You are not your mental health. Thinking a diagnosis is a permanent part of you may be doing more harm than good.

For many people, receiving a diagnosis of a mental health issue is a revelation, a kind of validation that explains the confusing symptoms they’ve endured, sometimes for years. Suddenly, the world feels a bit more manageable because now, there’s a label for their experience. For the first time in a long time, they feel understood.

Take my friend, Thomas (not his real name). In his mid-thirties and already a few years into this demanding, high-stakes job , at a tech company, he needed some time off to, in his words, “get his head right.” Luckily, his employer was supportive; they even covered sessions with a specialist, and, before long, he received a list of diagnoses, including generalized anxiety disorder.

When we met for coffee after his first meeting with a psychiatrist, he looked more relaxed than he had in ages, almost surprisingly happy with the results.

He seemed relieved.

Thomas’s reaction is not uncommon. When someone gets a diagnosis, many of their past struggles—anxiety and behavioral issues—finally make sense. A diagnosis provides structure to what once felt like chaos and new potential strategies for coping. At last, they have the piece of the puzzle they lacked to better understand themselves: an adversary.

But over time, I started to notice changes in Thomas. His identity increasingly became interwoven with his conditions. Conversations that used to range widely across everything from our favorite movies to new tech gadgets were now about his symptoms, his medications, and his therapy sessions. Thomas’s focus had moved almost entirely inward, leaving little room for his usual curiosity or connection with others–our conversations turned into monologues.

He seemed less interested in spending time with our mutual friends, and when he did, he acted differently. When he didn’t join us for a get-together, he’d let us know over WhatsApp that he felt too tired, chalking up his fatigue to his anxiety or the medications he was taking.

What was meant to be a temporary break from work stretched into something much longer. A few years passed, yet he never returned to working at the tech company. Rather than seeing himself as resilient despite his diagnosis, Thomas began to over-identify with his anxiety, which only made him feel worse.

This reaction, again, is common. Systemic issues within mental health care can hold patients back from healing. For example, psychiatric experts are studying iatrogenesis, or how “health care causes harm to patients.” In mental health, an iatrogenic illness is “a disorder precipitated, aggravated, or induced by the physician’s attitude, examination, comments, or treatment,” according to the American Psychiatric Association.

Being diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder subjects a person to society’s stigma associated with it: The person may feel they are treated like a mentally ill person, which makes it harder for that person to disentangle the illness from their identity down the line.

None of this is to say anyone struggling shouldn’t get help. However, as with any treatment protocol, we should never accept someone’s advice blindly without asking important questions, even if they are wearing an official-looking lab coat and have a PhD after their name. The healthcare system isn’t flawless and shouldn’t be given carte blanche to label people for a lifetime.

A diagnosis should help people not only manage their disorder effectively but also uncover the root cause of their troubles and what healing looks like for them. It should lead to eventual recovery whenever possible, just like any other medical diagnosis. We must not allow a diagnosis to become an identity.

Psychiatric Diagnoses Are Far From Perfect

Over the past 40 years, mental health diagnoses have increased dramatically, not just in the United States, but worldwide. Contributing to that is insurance companies’ requirement that medical professionals diagnose patients to receive reimbursement for services.

The increase is also partially attributed to widespread mental health awareness—which has led to both improved recognition of mental illness and, unfortunately, overinterpretation, or people’s misinterpretation of common psychological distress as mental illness. Overinterpretation is exacerbated by the “wellness” industry, which has taken to using terms like ADHD and trauma as if they are everyday occurrences.

That has encouraged a culture in which more and more people seek a diagnosis rather than a deeper understanding of the source of their symptoms.

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The spike in mental illness worldwide is also spurred by the globalization of Western psychiatry, according to Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us. Watters believes we have made mental health diagnosis and treatment a one-size-fits-all model that does not fit all cultural contexts.

In his book, Watters describes how pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline launched a mega-marketing campaign for an antidepressant pill in Japan that was intended to fundamentally change the country’s cultural definition of depression.

Previously, Japan approached depression very differently than the West. Called utsubyô, it was considered as chronic as schizophrenia, and only a tiny portion of the population was diagnosed with it. But that meant GlaxoSmithKline’s pill would have a small market. The company set out to redefine depression in Japan to expand its customer base.

Watters interviewed Dr. Laurence Kirmayer of McGill University in Montreal, who said that a Japanese man will express mental health symptoms differently than a Nigerian man, who will express them differently than an Iranian man, and that ignoring those different expressions “obscures the social meaning and response the experience might be indicating.”

Through his research, Kirmayer also found that the symptoms an American doctor might diagnose as depression would be viewed as “social, spiritual, or moral discord” in other cultures rather than an illness. We’re giving diagnoses to people who, according to their cultural norms and beliefs, are not ill.

That’s not the only bias that lives within the healthcare system and skews psychiatric diagnoses.

Let’s start with diagnostic overshadowing, “the misattribution of symptoms of one illness to an already diagnosed comorbidity.” This means that a physician may assume a person’s symptoms relate to their existing known condition rather than investigate whether they indicate a new condition. According to a 2022 concept analysis of the term, diagnostic overshadowing is related to other common cognitive biases in health care, such as:

Anchoring: “the focus on a single-often initial piece of information when making clinical decisions without sufficiently adjusting to later information.”
Premature closure: “acceptance of a diagnosis before it has been objectively established and alternative diagnoses have been fully investigated.” It’s one of the most common cognitive biases in health care.
Implicit bias: “attitudes and beliefs about race, ethnicity, age, ability, gender, or other characteristics that operate outside our conscious awareness” and how they affect patient care.

All of these cognitive biases lead to diagnostic errors in mental health. Mental illness and disorders are notoriously difficult to diagnose because, unlike physical conditions, they don’t usually have an objective, definitive test. A 2021 study found that just over 39 percent of patients with severe psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, were misdiagnosed.

Meanwhile, ADHD diagnoses—and treatment—are soaring. Today, about 7 million U.S. children aged 3–17 years, or 11.4 percent, have been diagnosed with ADHD. From 2016 to 2022 alone, 1 million U.S. children aged 3–17 years received an ADHD diagnosis.

The reason for the drastic increase in kids with ADHD, according to some experts, is that ADHD is overdiagnosed and misdiagnosed. The disorder has many symptoms in common with other conditions, even medical and environmental (not just mental) ones. Stress from childhood trauma may be misdiagnosed as ADHD because they share symptoms, including difficulty concentrating in school, disorganization, and high distraction. One study found that kids who are born closest to the cut-off for the school-start age tend to be diagnosed and treated with ADHD at a higher rate than their older peers, suggesting that relative maturity is overlooked in diagnosis.

ADHD overdiagnosis in kids may be facilitated by the “easy patient” mentality, stemming from yet another bias: completion bias, which occurs because “human brains are wired to seek completion and the pleasure it brings.” For the average person, being able to complete a small task, like sending an email, offers an immediate, satisfying reward. For doctors, it means prioritizing more straightforward cases (e.g., medicating children with ADHD) over complex problems.

Unfortunately, pills don’t teach skills. But doctors, stretched thin and subject to completion bias, often don’t have the time or desire to help patients learn to manage distraction without pharmaceuticals.

My point in calling out these systemic issues is not to disparage the healthcare system but to demonstrate why it’s not foolproof. It’s to show anyone suffering from a mental disorder or illness why they shouldn’t make their diagnosis their entire identity.
It’s important to seek help if you’re suffering. But make sure your diagnosis doesn’t overshadow your whole self. Even a correct diagnosis is still only a piece of who you are. We have to be careful how we label ourselves.

Be Careful How You Label Yourself

We all label ourselves, and often these labels hold us back. “I’m a procrastinator,” many people tell me. But all that does is make them think procrastination is inevitable when it isn’t. Innumerable others say, “That won’t work for me” upon hearing about a productivity technique, for example—but that self-sabotaging excuse prevents them from trying anything new.

How we label ourselves sets expectations for ourselves, and expectations shape our reality. So we shouldn’t use fixed nouns—including diagnoses—to describe ourselves.

Addiction researchers know the negative consequences of identifying as nouns, which is why they avoid calling people “addicts.” Instead, they call them “people who are struggling with impulse control.” That language tweak reduces stigma, separates people from their diagnosis, and reframes the addiction in their minds as something they can overcome rather than who they are.

Some behavior researchers are even reconsidering addiction’s classification as a chronic brain disease because they’ve found the label is counterproductive to recovery. The classification makes people believe addiction is an “internal uncontrollable urge.” But many emotions- and trauma-focused therapists have come to understand that addiction is “a defense mechanism against painful emotions (shame, anxiety, sadness, anger) that have never been named, validated, and expressed in the presence of a supportive other,” says psychologist Juli Fraga.

“I don’t think it helps to tell people they are chronically diseased and therefore incapable of change,” Kirsten E. Smith, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, told The New York Times.

That’s why people suffering from addiction—or any mental illness or disorder—shouldn’t let their diagnosis become their identity. They don’t need a label; they need better ways of managing those painful emotions. By focusing on our behaviors, not fixed characteristics, we can release harmful perceptions of ourselves that hold us back from healing.

Doctors, too, need to check themselves in treating diagnosis as identity. “Research consistently demonstrates that health-care providers tend to hold pessimistic views about the reality and likelihood of recovery, which is experienced as a source of stigma and a barrier to recovery for people seeking help for mental illnesses,” according to a Healthcare Management Forum article. This bias keeps people centered on their psychiatric diagnoses. It reinforces a “victim” mindset, making patients believe bad things just happen to them rather than recognize they can take steps toward meaningful change.

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Researchers have found that illness identity—“the set of roles and attitudes that a person has developed in relation to his or her understanding of having a mental illness”—plays a critical role in a person’s recovery. They suggest that buying into the definition of oneself as mentally ill adversely affects a person’s hope and self-esteem and inhibits recovery: People offered “services such as supported employment or illness management may not take advantage of or benefit from them because they lack hope that any progress in treatment is possible.” Another study found that reclaiming any lost sense of identity is an important part of recovery.

People who are struggling with mental health should not hesitate to seek professional help. But those who receive a diagnosis may find value in viewing it as a recovery tool rather than as their identity.

Author Matt Haig, who speaks freely online about his experience with depression, ADHD, and autism, put it well when he wrote:

On an individual level it can be dangerous to set ourselves in stone. To say ‘I am like this because I have x or y or z’ so I will keep acting like this because that is who I am. … There was always a temptation to use mental illness not as an excuse but as a kind of fatalism. You know. I will always secretly drink/be grumpy because I am depressed. And sometimes you need to say no. … I can be better. And by embracing that possibility we can change.

Don’t let your diagnosis define you.

Control Your Calendar (Not Your To-Do List) and Success Will Follow

Stop measuring productivity by checking cute little boxes. Do this instead.

Our society celebrates getting things done. Long hours, overflowing inboxes, and maxed-out calendars become badges of honor. But this relentless pursuit of output can leave us feeling drained, disconnected, and unfulfilled. We neglect the things that truly matter to us–family, personal growth, health–because tasks, not our values, dictate our days.

When it comes to getting the most out of our time, we should stop worrying about outcomes we can’t control and instead focus on the inputs we can.

Take a friend of mine who is a freelance editor. In order to manage her work day and clients better, she tracked her word count for years to discover how fast she could edit a given number of words, then used that knowledge to schedule as many projects as she could reasonably fit into a day.

Seems reasonable, but the strategy failed miserably.

Whether each project needed a heavier level of editing than anticipated or a quick-turnover project came in from another client, my friend often found herself off track. That meant she frequently worked longer days than planned and often canceled plans with family and friends.

Analyzing her editing speed was nice, but no matter how many productivity metrics we have, something will always get in the way of what we intend to do. If my friend wanted a better work-life balance, she should have blocked off the hours she wanted to work and honored them by starting and ending when she said she would.

Successfully managing our time means sticking to what we say we will do no matter what. It’s about living with integrity to yourself and others.

The outputs of our time spent doing something are a hope, not a certainty. We can’t control how many tasks we complete in a day, but we can control our input—the time and the attention we put into a task.

Turn Your Values into Time

Living by your values is the antidote to society’s dysfunctional approach to productivity, and timeboxing is a productivity tool to help you turn your values into time.

Timeboxing helps you focus on input (your time and attention), rather than output (which you can’t always control). But society’s obsession with output means people often misuse a timeboxed calendar as a scheduled to-do list.

While my editor friend’s approach to time management was well-intentioned, it was not timeboxing. Timeboxing is not output-based. It’s not meant to help you cram as many tasks into a day as you can.

To timebox correctly, you must identify your values, which are attributes of the person you want to be. Values are not end goals or outcomes, like being wealthy. We never achieve our values—just as we don’t say we’ve achieved “determination” by finishing one goal.

Values can’t be taken away from you, as money can be. They are core traits of our ideal selves that guide our actions. For example, your values may include being a vital community member, being a loving parent, or being determined.

Write down your values (using this list of values if you need a starting point). It is helpful to categorize your values into three life domains: yourself, your work, and your relationships.

Now, turn those values into time. List the activities and tasks that exercise your values. These are the activities that you will plot into your weekly timeboxed calendar.

Timeboxing helps you focus on input (your time and attention), rather than output (which you can’t always control). Share on X

Use my free schedule maker to add each activity to your week. (This process will help you prioritize important tasks, since you can’t fit everything!) Every week, schedule 15 minutes to review last week’s calendar and make adjustments to your following week to make next week’s plan easier to follow.

The best way to be productive is to devote time and attention to the activities that matter, without distraction—not showing up guarantees failure. Using timeboxing, we create a map that shows us what we need to do to live our own definition of a full, productive life.

Time and Attention

Once you’ve built a timeboxed calendar, you need to learn to control your attention and keep it on the tasks you planned to do, when you planned to do them.

Endless distractions pull us away from what we plan to do, and it’s a massive drain on our productivity. How often has distraction caused you to need four hours to complete a task that should have taken two, for example?

That’s why I developed a four-step model for becoming Indistractable and devoting our attention to traction, toward what we plan to do.

The four steps to become Indistractable:

Master internal triggers: Understand and manage the feelings that prompt you to distractions like social media when you plan to do something else.
Make time for traction: The topic of this article, timeboxing allows us to make time for our values and identify distractions.
Hack back external triggers: Curb external notifications and interruptions that steal your attention.
Prevent distraction with pacts: Precommit to doing what you plan to do.

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Forget trying to fit in as much as you can in a day. Giving your full attention, without distraction, to planned values-based tasks makes you productive.

Input is much more certain and specific than outcome. Productivity and success can’t be measured only by the number of items crossed off on your to-do list. When it comes to living the life you want, making sure you allocate time to living your values is the only thing you should focus on.

Stop trying to squeeze everything in, and start making space for the things that make life truly meaningful. Plan your time, control your attention, and the outcome will follow.

The Hidden Cost of Interruptions

The People-Pleasing Trap

Becoming Intentional With Your Time

The Psychology of Saying No

Practical Ways to Protect Your Time

Traction, Not Busyness

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