It's been said that "we all have the same 24 hours in a day." That's only partially true. There are people with genetic advantages that require less sleep, or those with malnutrition that have to get their daily tasks done with less energy to spare. But the important part of this statement is that our choices over how we spend our time have real consequences on how satisfied we each are with our lives. There are some stories of wildly successful individuals that wake up early, do some ritual, and then spend many hours of their day doing extraordinary things. We often react to these stories with some incredularity that it's possible to be focused on productivity for so long before recharging, and with less sleep than we are accustomed to. And here, again, individual differences account for some of this. Because for those most successful people, productivity, in the form of identifying and solving the toughest challenges is wildly invigorating. This energizes them.

You probably experience this, if not nearly as often, when doing an activity that challenges you but also interests you. You lose track of time. You tune out nearby stimuli, and feel a compulsion to move forward within your project, trying, failing, retrying, getting ahead, learning and seeing all this positive feedback affirming your success. It's almost addicting, but there are a lot of addictions, habits, distractions pulling on us and vying for our time. How do the most successful among us wind up spending so much more of their time in a euphoric, productive state, rather than a merely content (if not lethargic) distracted state? Or, more importantly, how can you change the ratio in your own life?