The Japanese have a word for death by overwork: Karoshi. A recent survey said 40 percent of all Japanese workers fear that they will actually work themselves to death.

Karoshi is not my idea of success. Sure, I talk about "Never Settling for Success," but that's not a prescription for becoming an obsessive or a workaholic. That type of single-mindedness is more likely to lead to burnout than peak performance. Never settling for success simply means that you commit to maximum effort within the hours of your life that you've allotted for pursuing a particular pursuit. And you do that in spite of the 1001 excruciatingly attractive reasons, excuses, distractions and temptations that you can find for doing less.

Tip: Focus is a good buzzword. Multi-tasking is a bad one. Computers multi-task, and usually lose efficiency when they do. When people do it, it's usually not multi-tasking at all; it's usually that older cliché, spreading yourself too thin.

Tip: During working hours, consider working.

Tip: During non-working hours, consider doing something else.

Now obviously given the realities of life today, there are likely to be times when you're going to have to work during what you would like to be non-working hours. Sometimes. But you'll never be really successful unless you can find a way to be comfortable with the amount of your life you're devoting to the job. Then you make those hours as productive as possible.

"If I worked as much as others," Stephen Wright said, "I would do as little as they." There's more than a grain of truth to that statement.