Decades of work from multiple different subfields within psychology all point toward the conclusion that regularly resting your brain improves the qu… - Cal Newport

When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done.

The relevant research literature also helps clarify this sense of overload. In their original 2004 study on attention fragmentation, Victor M. González and Gloria Mark partitioned the efforts of the employees they observed into distinct working spheres, each representing a different project or objective. They found that on average their subjects worked on ten different spheres per day, spending less than twelve minutes on one before switching to another.36 A follow-up study in 2005 found the observed employees touching on eleven to twelve different working spheres per day on average.37 The large number of different spheres these subjects tackled in a given day, combined with the reality that each sphere demands the accomplishment of many smaller tasks and presumably dozens of emails, provides a harried portrayal of modern knowledge work. “At night, I often wake in a panic about all the things I need to do or didn’t get done,” writes journalist Brigid Schulte in Overwhelmed, her 2014 book on this busyness epidemic. “I worry that I’ll face my death and realize that my life got lost in this frantic flotsam of daily stuff.”38

You’ve got to find what you love…. [T]he only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle.

Basic economic theory tells us that if you want something that’s both rare and valuable, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return — this is Supply and Demand 101.