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Chapter 1 kicks off with a discussion about our rat brains and why email is so addictive.

Short story: Research shows that rats respond to rewards. No surprise there, of course. But, oddly, rats actually prefer “random” rewards than consistent, “fixed-schedule” rewards.

The difference? Imagine giving a rat a pellet every 100th time it pulls a lever. That’s a fixed schedule. Alternatively, you could give a rat a pellet every 20th time then every 200th time then every 48th time, etc. That’s a random or variable schedule. For whatever reason, rats are WAY more motivated on the random reward system.

Guess what? We’re a lot like rats.

Guess what again? According to behavioral economist Dan Ariely (who studies irrational behavior), “email is a near-perfect random rewards system.”

Which makes it VERY (!) addictive.

Wondering how addictive? Well, get this: The average person checks their email 74 (!!!) times a day. SEVENTY-FOUR!!! And they spend 28% of their day in email. (And, note: That’s just email. Throw in all the other random-reward generating stuff we consume via push notifications and the stats get even wackier.)

The obvious question we need to ask ourselves is this: Do we want to get all jacked up with rat-like random rewards via email or do we want what Jocelyn calls the REAL rewards that come from doing meaningful work?

That’s not a rhetorical question. Which do you want? Real rewards or (rat-like) random rewards?

Your behavior will (always!) give us clues to your honest answer.

Here’s the #1 clue: Do you start each day with email?

If so, I hate to break the news to you, but you’re not *that* committed to real rewards. (I’m tempted to type: *rubs your furry little rat head* but I’ll pass. Hah.)

Good news is that the solution is straight-forward and the rewards are significant. After the withdrawal symptoms typical of dropping an addictive behavior, it’s actually super easy.

The Organize Tomorrow Today guys echo Jocelyn’s advice. They tell us: “To set yourself on the right track, ask yourself these two critical questions: (1) What are the three most important things I need to get done tomorrow? and (2) What is the single most important task I must get done? The questions work within your brain’s ‘channel capacity’ to give you direction and prioritization in manageable doses. When you start your day, you know the three most important things you need to get done by the end of the day, and you know which of those three things is the big, glow-in-the-dark priority. You’ll be amazed at how much clearer your decision-making becomes—and how much more efficiently you’ll use your time—just by taking this simple organizational step.”

Your 3 things? Your #1? <– Can you get that done before going online?!

P.S. We echo that wisdom in Your Brain at Work as well. David Rock tells us we have finite mental energy for hard stuff and that it makes no sense to blow up our brains with email before prioritizing and doing the important stuff.

P.P.S. In our interview on her other books, Jocelyn said that this book was inspired in part by a Q&A she did with Dan Ariely for Manage Your Day to Day where he told her: “So if your e-mail is running and it is telling you that a message is waiting for you, that’s going to be very hard to resist. In your mind, you’ll keep thinking about what exciting things are waiting for you. Now, if you never opened your e-mail, you would do much better.

It would be probably be best if managers went to the IT department and asked them that e-mail not be distributed between eight and eleven every morning. The idea that the best way to communicate with people is 24/7 is not really an idea about maximizing productivity.”

<— Such a great idea. :)

That’s from another chapter in the “Psychology” section that walks us through what Jocelyn calls “The Progress Paradox.”

She says: “This is the progress paradox: by dint of technology, it’s easy to see our progress when we’re doing relatively meaningless short-term tasks, while it’s quite difficult to see our progress when we’re engaged in the long-term, creative projects that will ultimately have the most impact on our lives.”

Getting our inbox to zero is a GREAT way to *feel* like we’re making a lot of progress but is most certainly NOT the most powerful gauge of whether we’re actually doing the work that matters most. Jocelyn says that “Inbox zero is an addictive game not a meaningful goal.”

(For the record: I used to be an inbox zero aficionado. Now I’m 100% out of email. :)

To counter this progress paradox, we need to create some progress hacks.

I do almost exactly what Jocelyn describes. And, it’s almost silly how much I’ve structured my day to be one “small win” after another. But, it works. So… :)

I start with my big ol’ wall calendar. (Check out this video for a peek at how I approach it.) On that calendar, I basically set it up to track one small win after another. There’s my little movement wins: “1 + 10 + 100 + 1,000 + 10,000 + 25 + Walks” I talk about all the time where I systematically cross off each one as I incrementally rock it throughout the day—celebrating tiny (!) wins with an internal virtual high five and a “YES!”

Then there’s the monthly goals of creating 10 new Notes every month. That forces me to chunk down my big goal and show up consistently. I track that progress on the calendar every day. And, as it turns out, a good month is pretty much just filling in each of those days. The more ink in those boxes, the better my day and the better the month. One small win at a time.

Then there’s the growing stack of Optimal Living 101 Master Class Workbooks I always have on the corner of my desk—visually reminding me of how much progress I’ve made and that it all happened very slowly over an extended period of time.

What “progress hacks” do YOU have in your life? And, how can you +1% optimize?! Let’s make REAL progress toward meaningful goals and leave the whack-a-mole Inbox Zero goal to the rats.

OK. So, small wins are super important. But, the reality is, we can’t create meaningful progress until we have a meaningful goal.

Jocelyn’s model is all about three categories in which our meaningful work typically falls: Mission-based work + Project-based work + Skills-based work.

Your Mission is the super jumbo big picture view. For Elon Musk, it’s “to create a true spacefaring civilization.” (Laughing at the sheer awesomeness of that.) For Jocelyn, it’s “to help people find more meaning and creativity in their work lives.” For me, it’s “to help people optimize their lives.” What is it for YOU?

Then we have Project-based work that supports the Mission. It can be anything from raising $1m to fund your startup to finishing a piece of art. For Jocelyn, it was two things: “finishing this book” and “building a new web site.” For me, it’s getting to 500 Notes (this is #401! Yay!). You?

Finally, we have Skills-based work. Pretty straightforward. What skills do you want to improve? How do you want to improve? For Jocelyn, it’s to “get better at promoting my work” and to “hone my public speaking ability.” For me, it’s to step up my training in preparation for a Spartan Race in a couple months (and their Trifecta of challenging races next year). (Yes, I see my energy as a “skill” and I love optimizing it. :) You?

So, three ways to do meaningful work.

Let’s capture yours:

My Mission: ___________________________________________________.

My Projects: _____________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________.

My Skills: _____________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________.

P.S. If you’re looking for more insight on the Mission-based work side of things, check out Purpose 101. It’s one of my favorite classes and comes with a special bonus Workbook with 25 of the most powerful journal exercises to help you get even more clarity on what you’re here to do.

Plus, check out our growing collection of Notes on Purpose. Two of my favorites: Mastery by Robert Greene (he calls our mission our “Life’s Work” and tells us we have a DESTINY to fulfill) and The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope (who calls it our “dharma” or “sacred work”).

P.P.S. Cal Newport echoes this wisdom brilliantly in Deep Work where he says: “As the authors of The 4 Disciplines of Execution explain, ‘The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.’ They elaborate that execution should be aimed at a small number of ‘wildly important goals.’ This simplicity will help focus an organization’s energy to a sufficient intensity to ignite real results.

For an individual focused on deep work, the implication is that you should identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours. The general exhortation to ‘spend more time working deeply’ doesn’t spark a lot of enthusiasm. In a 2014 column titled, ‘The Art of Focus,’ David Brooks endorsed this approach of letting ambitious goals drive focused behavior, explaining: ‘If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasborg; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.’”

What’s WILDLY important to you? What arouses a “terrifying longing” for you? What will you say a *resounding* “YES!!!!!!!!” to in your life?

There’s simply no (!) way we’ll win the battle for our attention unless we have very clearly articulated goals that fire us up. What are yours?

That’s the first chapter in the “Strategy” section of the book. The Physics of Email.

Sir Isaac tells us that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

That law holds true in your inbox. The more email you send, the more email you get. (Take a moment to reflect on that. Notice how that works?)

That’s not the only one of Newton’s law that applies here. Let’s look at his First Law of Physics: “An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted on by a larger force.”

This is one of my chief forms of kryptonite—when I get online and do shallow work early, I tend to STAY online and do shallow work throughout the day. It’s like the trap door to that part of my brain gets lit up and it’s gone from there.

God bless you if you don’t have that issue. Hah. For me, I need bright lines to make sure I do what I really want to do. Current extreme game: No online time before 2pm and done no later than 4pm.

Whether you stay offline until *that* late in the day or not, the #1 tip for increasing your truly meaningful productivity is to DO REAL WORK *before* you go online. (See Masterpiece Days 101 for more!)

Here’s how Jocelyn puts it in a section that helps us create the systems to rock it: “Despite the fact that one in two people look at their email before breakfast, it is rarely productive to check your email first thing in the morning. In fact, it’s usually counter-productive to start your day by letting other people’s demands set your priorities. Instead, devote the first 60-90 minutes of your day to a task that advances your most important and challenging work when your brainpower is at its peak rather than later in the day, when you’re harried and your energy is depleted. It also means that when you do turn your attention to email, no matter what you find there—what fires you have to put out, what unanswered questions you have to respond to—you’ve already gotten some good work done that day.”

How’re you doing with The Physics of Email? Opportunities for optimization?

At the end of the day, it’s all (!) about attention management. “Having the wherewhital—and the willpower—to set priorities, stay the course, and ignore irrelevant ‘opportunities’ is a skill that’s second to none in this cacophonous and demanding digital age.”

Cal Newport echoes this: “Deep work is so important that we might consider it, to use the phrasing of business writer Eric Barker, ‘the superpower of the 21st century.’”

Let’s remember that “Success has always gone to those who could apply their talents in a single-minded manner over an extended period of time to achieve a given outcome.”

What’s your target? What’s getting in the way of you hitting it?