Harvard Business Review Guides Ultimate Boxed Set (16 Books)

CHAPTER 24

Don’t Endure; Recharge

by Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan

As constant travelers and parents of a two-year-old, we sometimes fantasize about how much work we could do if we could just get on a plane, undistracted by phones, friends, or Finding Nemo. And so in advance of a trip, we race to get all our groundwork done: packing, going through TSA, doing a last-minute work call, calling each other, boarding. But then when we try to have that amazing in-flight work session, we find that we get nothing done. Even worse, after refreshing our email or reading the same studies over and over, we are too exhausted when we land to soldier on with the emails that have inevitably still piled up.

Why can’t we be tougher—more resilient and determined ...