Productive Stress
How Boredom Can Lead to Breakthrough
What do you do when you feel bored? There was a time in the past when the answers may have been diverse and varied. Read a book, call a friend, go for a walk, play a game, or if you’re a child, make up an entire adventure. Now, we all inevitably have the same reaction:…
Read MoreMoney is Not the Best Motivator (Here’s What Is)
Anyone who tells you that money isn’t important is either delusional or has so much money they’ve become blind to how important it actually is. That said, above a certain amount—between 75K and 100K with adjustments in both directions for geography, according to research conducted by the Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman—additional money is not…
Read MoreWhen Something that is Supposed to be Easy Feels (Really) Hard
On Thursday, June 22nd, Jim Ryun ran a mile in 4:07. In his training log, he wrote “was hard.” The mile race was the prelims for the AAU National Championship. Ryun had advanced to the final. But as someone who was just a few years removed from gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated when he…
Read MoreThe Science of Freaking Out
This post is based on our new book, Do Hard Things. Check it out! Acute stress can be debilitating. It can cause professional baseball players to lose the ability to throw a ball 30 feet, something they’ve been doing since elementary school. In theater, it can cause stage fright, freezing, and forgetting lines that you’ve…
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