Chapter 4: Willpower Is Always on Will-Call

Your ability to focus is a finite resource that depletes as you use it. This concept, called attention capital theory, reveals why protecting your focus is crucial:

• Our brains have a limited amount of high-quality cognitive bandwidth each day
• Each decision y...

Willpower is not a finite resource but instead acts like an emotion. And it can be managed and used as such.

When we perform a difficult task, it is more helpful to believe a lack of motivation is temporary than to tell ourselves that it is all spent. The lack of willpower could be see...

Working deeply, due to its effortful nature, is the very thing most of us don’t want to do. Add to this an environment and culture that makes deep work difficult, and a finite amount of willpower that gets depleted as we use it, and you have a recipe for shallow work. To make deep work a staple i...