Managers today must balance their day-to-day work with multiple “ands,” such as delivering on quarterly objectives and thinking strategically. Given these numerous demands, managers tend to deprioritize their own career development. It doesn’t have to be that way. The more managers take control of their development, the better able they’ll be to avoid the common career mistakes that will get in the way of their growth. And the more their team members see the positive impact of investing in their career development, the more likely they are to do the same.

Einstein and Mozart were massively productive because they understood the value of easing back and chilling out. Modern theories of learning say that success is impossible without some degree of failure. Aim for the Goldilocks zone when setting a failure rate: roughly 16 percent.

If you want to succeed really, really badly, the paradoxical solution proposed by many successful people is to ease up. Albert Einstein was obscenely productive, but his productivity came in bursts. Between those bursts, he was gentle with himself. “If my work isn’t going well,” he said, “I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination.”