If there is one thing I know how to do, it is how to be mega productive, how to hyper focus, how to laser in on a goal. The key is to avoid distractions, hit the ground running 1st thing in the morn, usually before the sun rises, stay on task until well after the cows come home. Keep your mind/energy/efforts directly on point, do not waver. Stop only for feedback, to ensure that your activity is yielding your desired result, that no course corrections are in order. Most do not know, do not fully understand, this level of intensity.

To be able to burn with this level of magnitude, to direct my will with such power and vigor, has allowed me to create a life beyond my wildest imaginings, scale heights I never envisioned. And yet as I near the end of my 7th decade, I must confess to making different choices. I tell the world that I am retired and that I refuse to work more than 40, max 50 hours a week, far cry from the 70 plus hours of yesteryear (I can testify from personal experience that Elon is correct in his quote below about the pain level increases exponentially above 80). Truth is, both the number of my hours and their intensity has diminished.

I am a voracious consumer of the written word and consider it my patriotic duty as a good citizen to be well informed and from a variety of reliable sources as well. Yet, as much as I enjoyed it, I always postponed reading the news until evening hours, when the day’s work was well done.

To complete my confession, I now frequently read the news in the early morning (NYT, WSJ, local paper), often by my son’s bedside before he wakes. I lose a bit of momentum but I feel I’ve earned the right. I doubt others can sense the difference but I know it’s there.

Closing Quotes:

“Nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week. Takes 80 sustained, peaking above 100 at times. Pain level increases exponentially above 80.” – Elon Musk, b. 1961

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical. I play tennis, I play bridge, I spend time with my family.” – Bill Gates, b. 1955

“Very few persons, comparatively, know how to desire with sufficient intensity. They do not know what it is to feel and manifest that intense, eager, longing, craving, insistent, demanding, ravenous desire which is akin to the persistent, insistent, ardent, overwhelming desire of the drowning man for a breath of air; of the shipwrecked or desert-lost man for a drink of water; of the famished man for bread and meat.” – Robert Collier, 1885-1950

As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier