Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving

by Celeste Headlee

hedonic treadmill. It’s a tendency in our species to adjust our mood so that no matter what terrible things happen, we quickly return to the same level of happiness we enjoyed before the traumatic event.

A separate study from Princeton revealed that the stronger your belief that you can rise through the income ranks, the more likely you are to defend the status quo.

nearly 70 percent of citizens believe they will achieve the American Dream and that the most important factors in achieving economic success are hard work and personal drive.

When time is money, idle hours are a waste of money.

Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives.

The voice is an underappreciated and incredible instrument. It supplies us with data that we can get in no other way.

One of the enduring mysteries is why we consistently choose to do things that hurt us and hurt our communities,

Perhaps the most significant cause of our overuse of technology is an underlying belief that digital methods are always superior to analog options.

Now, twenty-somethings are more demanding of themselves than ever and more demanding of others. They expect perfection and are far less forgiving of mistakes than previous generations.

‘It is the busiest man who has time to spare.’ ”

human brains are not designed to put in excessive hours of uninterrupted work.

When you have fewer hours available to you, you automatically focus on the task at hand and ignore what’s irrelevant.

Once you break your focus for any reason, it takes an average of twenty-three minutes to get back to full concentration.

you’re far more likely to make a mistake when you switch regularly.

total hours worked is a meaningless statistic.

The Wisdom of Crowds. “The more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.”

“Not all who wander are lost.”

If success were a function of a man’s good character, then failure must be evidence that his character was weak.”