Je me suis réveillé un matin il y a environ un mois et je me suis soudainement rendu compte que j'étais au bout du rouleau. D'habitude, j'ai hâte de me rendre au travail, mais ce jour-là j'ai dû lutter pour sortir de chez moi.

Les trois premiers mois de l'année...

I woke up one morning about four weeks ago and realized in a flash that I'd hit a wall. Most days I can't wait to get to work. On this day, I struggled to get myself out of the house.

The first three months of the year had been intensely...

For more than a decade now, I've struggled to define what fuels the most sustainably productive work environment -- not just on behalf of the large corporate clients we serve, but also for my own employees at The Energy Project. Perhaps nothing I've uncovered is as important as trust.

Much...

No single challenge has been greater for me as a leader than learning how to take better care of the people I lead, and to create a safe, supportive space in which they can thrive. Like most men I know, I grew up with very little modeling around empathy --...

The first morning I met Kevin Crain, a Managing Director at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, he was feeling tired, as he did most days.

We were at a conference Kevin was hosting for the institutional retirement team and a group of their corporate clients. He'd invited me to the event...

If you're like most people I work with in companies, the demands come at you from every angle, all day long, and you have to make difficult decisions without much time to think about them. What enduring principles can you rely on to make choices that reflect openness, integrity and...

"How can I get 7-8 hours of sleep when I'm with my kids from the moment I arrive home, and I need some time for myself before bed?"

"How can I find time to exercise when I have to get up early in the morning and I'm exhausted by the...

Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, is not an empty suit.

It's not just that Schultz doesn't favor suits (at the talk I heard him give last week, he was wearing a cardigan sweater) but also that he has a heart, which he is willing to wear on his sleeve,...

I just got back from the SXSW interactive conference in Austin. I went there to give a talk about fueling sustainable productivity by balancing periods of fully absorbed attention with intermittent renewal.

Peering out into that vast hall, I fear I saw the future: a sea of the digital elite...

Do you have the feeling, as I do, that in the overwhelm of everyday life, we're getting too much of stuff we don't need, and not enough of what we do? Herewith my first set of suggestions about how to redress the imbalance:

Let's cut to the chase.

Say you decide to go on a fast, and so you effectively starve yourself for a week. At the end of seven days, how would you be feeling? You'd probably be hungry, perhaps a little weak, and almost certainly somewhat thinner. But basically you'd be...

As I sit down to write this blog, I'm facing a blank page. I know it's going to be difficult, because it always is. Maybe I'll just check my email first, or update on Facebook or Twitter, or read the morning headlines on The New York Times, or sneak a...

For nearly a decade now, I've begun my workdays by focusing for 90 minutes, uninterrupted, on the task I decide the night before is the most important one I'll face the following day. After 90 minutes, I take a break.

To make this possible, I turn off my email while...

Change is hard. New Year's resolutions almost always fail. But at The Energy Project, we have developed a way of making changes that has proved remarkably powerful and enduring, both in my own life and for the corporate clients to whom we teach it.

Our method is grounded...

Are you working longer hours, attending more meetings, taking shorter vacations, answering more e-mails and eating lunch at your desk, if you eat lunch at all?

Does demand in your life just keep getting higher, so you're struggling more and more just to keep up? Are you utterly sick of...

I ended my most recent post with this line:

"The true measure of greatness is our capacity to navigate between our opposites with agility and grace -- to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never to stop trying to get better."

Over the past week, I've thought...

Consider the following qualities:

Confident.....................Humble
Courageous.................Prudent
Tenacious....................Gentle
Honest.........................Compassionate
Decisive.......................Flexible
Disciplined...................Playful
Strong..........................Vulnerable
Deliberate....................Spontaneous
Discerning...................Intuitive
Outgoing.....................Introspective

Which quality do you value more in each pair?

Is there any doubt that most of us tend to choose up sides between qualities, valuing one in...

In August, I posted a blog titled "Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything" on the Harvard Business Review. Over the subsequent three months it has become one of the site's most widely read blogs ever.

The notion that we can be excellent at anything prompted passionate...

If there is anything this nasty, fear-driven, dispiriting political season has demonstrated, it's that no politician -- Democrat, Republican, or otherwise -- has any compelling solutions to what ails us. Even as partisan a figure as Jeb Bush is suggesting voters are feeling "disgust with the political class."

We live...

There are many stunning moments in the documentary Inside Job that brilliantly demystifies the story behind the global financial crisis that began in 2008. For me, the most powerful was something the CEO of a large bank said to his fellow guests at a party held by Treasury...