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A Reminder From Neuroscience: Discipline Is Not the Key to Productivity
When best-selling author Dan Pink sat down to write his latest book, the going was tough. By then, Pink was already the author of six other titles, so you’d think he would have figured out what worked for him productivity-wise.
But, he confessed recently on LinkedIn, “I’d sit down, open the file — and 20 minutes later I’d be watching sports highlights.”
Pink initially suspected the problem was distraction. “My first instinct was to blame the phone: delete the apps, block the sites, buy a timer. The usual suspects,” he continues. These efforts to knuckle down and force some self-discipline didn’t help much, though.
After thrashing around for a while, he finally figured out what was keeping him from being more productive. It wasn’t a lack of willpower or even the siren song of the endless scroll. He just didn’t know why he was writing this book.
“I had a contract and a deadline. I didn’t have a purpose,” he says he realized. He sat and puzzled out his why, posting the results on his office wall. “The work started flowing again,” he says.
