We cannot guarantee outcomes based on effort only. We could get sick, lose someone, miss an important meeting. The number of imponderables is infinite. All we can do is try our best.

Scientific experiments are not designed to succeed. They are designed to explore a question, and potentially increase knowledge of a problem. Scientists do not design their experiments to obtain a specific result—if they already knew what result they would get, there would be no point in performing the experiment.

hen you are learning, you may realise the goal you have been pursuing is no longer aligned with your overall objectives or principles.

In this graph, the head represents our rational intentions, our explicit goals, and our commitment to act in a certain way to achieve them. The heart represents the emotional sphere. It’s not only our unconscious needs and motives, but also the emotions underlying a certain task, such as fun, pleasure, or fear. Finally, the hand represents our skills, abilities, knowledge and experiences that are relevant to the task at hand .

Every time you decide to accomplish a goal or to perform a task, these figurative head, heart, and hand come into action. Your rational intentions, your emotions, and your actual and perceived skills all have an impact on your motivation levels. For optimal motivation, all three components need to be fulfilled. When this happens, we get in the flow. However, if one of the three components is missing, we struggle to feel motivated. This is what most people call demotivation .

Every day, thousands of choices like these happen inside your brain. It’s a constant battle between your desire to create great work and your primal need to know what’s going on around you.

Your attentional field is the combination of everything inside of you—such as thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations—and everything outside of you—including what you see and what you hear. Focus is the ability to concentrate on cues inside or outside of you in a deliberate way .

Research actually shows that the neurons in these two regions emit pulses of electricity at different rates: slower frequencies for the deliberate and intentional work of the prefrontal region, faster frequencies for the automatic processing of the parietal region.

Extrinsic motivation: the most common sources of extrinsic motivation are external rewards, such as earning money, winning a prize, or getting good grades. Extrinsic motivation can also be negative, for example being scared of getting fired or of having a fight with your partner. While extrinsic motivation works great in the short term, it will only last as long as you consider the external rewards to be satisfying

intrinsic motivation is the desire to seek out new things and new challenges, to test and analyse your abilities, and to achieve your goals in and for themselves—for example, learning something new. It was first discovered in animals engaging in playful and curiosity-driven behaviours, even without a given reward. With intrinsic motivation, the reason why you act is internal. While intrinsic motivation takes longer to build, it also has longer-lasting positive effects on performance

plete a battery below 30% is that deep discharges significantly degrade battery life. I mean very significantly. D

The same way context switching comes with a cost in performance for computers, multitasking has its cost for humans too. Research shows that constantly switching context between different tasks has a terrible effect on attention. We’re basically less focused and less performant when trying to do several things at the same time.

break down your tasks into manageable chunks that can be done between these response times. Each chunk needs to be realistic, with a beginning and an end.

Being busy is a defense mechanism

Having responsibilities, deadlines, a long task list… Overloading our senses can make us believe we are moving in the right direction, or at least in a direction. But the constant cycle of tasks we tackle without ever thinking often leaves us stagnant

Not just the quality of the output, as usually measured by externally-designed metrics, but the quality of the impact it has on our mental and physical well-being

A habit usually manifests itself as an automatic urge to do something, often triggered by a particular cue. The stronger the connection between the trigger and the habit, the more ingrained the habit.

Both habits and routines are regular and repeated actions, but habits happen with little or no conscious thought, whereas routines require a higher degree of intention and effort.

rituals are viewed as more meaningful practices which have a real sense of purpose .