Steve Jobs once described the difference between good work and great work with a simple image:

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

That idea has always stuck with me. It captures something deeply unintuitive about how exceptional quality is created.

We tend to assume that effort and results go hand in hand. That more energy input reliably produces higher quality output. That the relationship between energy and output quality is linear, stable, and fixed.

But here’s the truth: It isn’t...

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Apple CEO Tim Cook called my first book "a powerful call to action to think deeply about what lights you up."

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Second Cup: Don't waste the daylight

Before Breakfast

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