--- title: Top Mistakes Really Smart People Make Without Realizing description: These mistakes can ultimately hurt your productivity and career paths canonical: https://time.com/3765038/top-mistakes-without-realizing/ author: Every Vowel article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-31T19:15:19.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:31.441Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Top Mistakes Really Smart People Make Without Realizing og:description: These mistakes can ultimately hurt your productivity and career paths og:url: https://time.com/3765038/top-mistakes-without-realizing/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt06d050ac79fb7350/698785fae53abab3fa4d8587/138708772-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=338&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 338 og:image:height: 190 og:image:alt: man-working-face-covered og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Top Mistakes Really Smart People Make Without Realizing twitter:description: These mistakes can ultimately hurt your productivity and career paths twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt06d050ac79fb7350/698785fae53abab3fa4d8587/138708772-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=338&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Top Mistakes Really Smart People Make Without Realizing > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=477d9cc5-9518-4681-a8ae-9163c495b09c&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Complaining at Work Hurts Your Career [Watch (HLS stream): How Complaining at Work Hurts Your Career](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/BiVS6RWX.m3u8) (2:04)  _Published 2015-08-10. The Science of Motivation: Rick Tamlyn on Complaining at Work_ by [Every Vowel](https://time.com/author/every-vowel/) ## Every Vowel Mar 31, 2015 7:15 PM UTC  Man working in office Man working in office Getty Images by [Every Vowel](https://time.com/author/every-vowel/) ## Every Vowel Mar 31, 2015 7:15 PM UTC Why do smart people make stupid mistakes? No, this isn’t about the time you “accidentally” watched seven straight hours of _Keeping Up With The Kardashians._ It’s about the mistakes we make at work. The ones we don’t even realize, but ultimately hurt our productivity and career paths. In this week’s TL;DR, we’ll discuss: * Why being highly competent can be a curse * Why planning your goals can actually keep you from accomplishing them * How multitasking can hurt your productivity and how to avoid it 1. [**The No. 1 Career Mistake Capable People Make**](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20121206081322-8353952-the-1-career-mistake-capable-people-make) **Author:** Greg McKeown **TL;DR:** If you’re an overachiever, your career likely follows three steps: 1. You enter a new job eager to impress 2. You take on many different projects and somehow juggle them successfully 3. You earn the reputation as a “go-to” person and get more projects Then something funny happens. You take on so many projects that you feel overworked _and_ underutilized. To use a camping metaphor — you’re adding poles of the same height to your career tent, hoping it’ll go higher. But it doesn’t. Instead, ask yourself: are you rejecting enough projects? And when you pursue one, does that project raise an existing tent pole? Changing this means having honest conversations with ourselves as well as our managers. It means having the guts to turn down good opportunities to focus on great ones. 1. [**The Mistake Smart People Make: Being in Motion vs. Taking Action**](http://jamesclear.com/taking-action) **Author:** James Clear **TL;DR:** Smart people often confuse motion and action. Motion is when you’re preparing; action is when you’re producing. For example, * If I research 10 potential sales leads, that’s motion. If I contact and convert them into customers, that’s action. * If I outline 20 ideas for articles I want to write, that’s motion. If I actually write and publish an article, that’s action. If motion doesn’t yield results, why do we do it? Sometimes we need to plan or learn more. But more often, motion makes us feel like we’re progressing without risking failure. * Yes, I’d like more clients. But, if I ask for the sale, I might get turned down. So maybe I should just research 10 more leads instead. * Yes, I’d like to write more. But I worry about what people will say. So I’ll just brainstorm article ideas instead. That’s the danger: preparation becomes your procrastination. Except unlike watching _The Kardashians_ (but seriously, when are Khloe and Lamar getting back together?), you don’t realize you’re procrastinating. You tell yourself you’re being productive when you’re not. 1. [**Quit Multitasking: How To Unitask & Get More Done**](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/09/19/quit-multitasking-how-to-unitask-and-get-more-done-2/) **Author:** Jacquelyn Smith **TL;DR:** Make no mistake about it — multitasking is a myth. In reality, we switch-task, interrupting ourselves and lowering our productivity. Instead, here’s how to unitask: 1. **Schedule meetings for projects, not just people.** Plan time in your calendar. This helps protect yourself from others grabbing your time. Your pals Fred Sheets, Ward Dox, and Powell Point will thank you. 2. **Empty your desk.** If your desk looks like mine (read: tornado of Post-It notes), then it’s time to wipe it clean. The sight of unfinished paperwork can distract even the most focused people. 3. **Find your special spot.** Maybe your desk is too messy. Or your colleagues are too social. If so, step away, find another spot, and block all distractions. Soon enough, you’ll condition yourself to get more work done when stepping inside that space. _This_ [_article_](http://www.everyvowel.com/2015/03/31/mistakes/) _originally appeared on_ [_Every Vowel_](http://www.everyvowel.com/)_. Brett Kopin is the co-author._ ## Transcript what complaining does to our life and our career is huge. Our life moves in the direction of what we think about, what we talk about to each other primarily. So if we spend a good portion of our day complaining about what's not working, it actually starts to generate more of what's not working. [ MUSIC ] Motivation comes from having a conversation about what do we Create. Rather than the complaining conversation that we have most of our days. Many of use get caught here. Because it's easy to complain with each other, it feels good. As a coach and as a trainer, a motivator. I come along and say let's flip that. Rather than talk about what are you complaining about in your life, what's not working. Lets talk about what's working. Because then all of a sudden your life will start to go in that direction. There's little fibers in the brain, like the neural pathways they're called. And the more we complain, that neural pathways of that complaint actually grows a little bit every time you think about it. Remember the vinyl records? You play that record over and over again in the same groove, what happens it gets stuck in that groove and that's what happens in the brain. So it literally becomes a habit because the chemical nature of the brain says I have a thicker wire over there. I'm going to go there. We don't even notice it. We don't even notice it. So I come along and start to have a person think and really push against that and say stop doing that. Let's flip the conversation What is it you want to create? What is it you want to have in your life? Rather than what's not working in your life. A game to play is literally what are the thoughts that come in and what are you talking about? Catch it and have a little post it. Go okay, that was a negative moment and do a little check mark to negative moment or creative moment. Because I think those are the distinctions. Make two little lists and the end of the day go oh 80 % was spent over there. No wonder. These are very simple tool but it creates consciousness. 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