# Four Thousand Weeks ## Metadata - Author: [[Oliver Burkeman]] - Full Title: Four Thousand Weeks - Category: #source/books ## Highlights - Introduction: In the Long Run, We’re All Dead ([Location 32](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=32)) - Note: Chapter - we’ve been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically no time at all to put them into action. ([Location 43](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=43)) - “This space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live,” lamented Seneca, the Roman philosopher, in a letter known today under the title On the Shortness of Life. ([Location 44](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=44)) - time management is all life is. ([Location 51](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=51)) - The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder. ([Location 55](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=55)) - Note: Ugh! This resonates! - Life on the Conveyor Belt ([Location 63](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=63)) - Note: Section - It’s because our time and attention are so limited, and therefore valuable, that social media companies are incentivized to grab as much of them as they can, by any means necessary—which is why they show users material guaranteed to drive them into a rage, instead of the more boring and accurate stuff. ([Location 80](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=80)) - Note: Truth - It’s hard to imagine a crueler arrangement: not only are our four thousand weeks constantly running out, but the fewer of them we have left, the faster we seem to lose them. ([Location 87](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=87)) - The problem isn’t exactly that these techniques and products don’t work. It’s that they do work—in the sense that you’ll get more done, race to more meetings, ferry your kids to more after-school activities, generate more profit for your employer—and yet, paradoxically, you only feel busier, more anxious, and somehow emptier as a result. ([Location 105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=105)) - It turns out that when people make enough money to meet their needs, they just find new things to need and new lifestyles to aspire to; they never quite manage to keep up with the Joneses, because whenever they’re in danger of getting close, they nominate new and better Joneses with whom to try to keep up. As a result, they work harder and harder, and soon busyness becomes an emblem of prestige. Which is clearly completely absurd: for almost the whole of history, the entire point of being rich was not having to work so much. ([Location 131](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=131)) - On Getting the Wrong Things Done ([Location 138](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=138)) - Note: Section - We sense that there are important and fulfilling ways we could be spending our time, even if we can’t say exactly what they are—yet we systematically spend our days doing other things instead. ([Location 140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=140)) - Our struggle to stay on top of everything may serve someone’s interests; working longer hours—and using any extra income to buy more consumer goods—turns us into better cogs in the economic machine. But it doesn’t result in peace of mind, or lead us to spend more of our finite time on those people and things we care most deeply about ourselves. ([Location 157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=157)) - Four Thousand Weeks is yet another book about making the best use of time. But it is written in the belief that time management as we know it has failed miserably, and that we need to stop pretending otherwise. ([Location 160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=160)) - Note: Pseudo book summary - Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster. ([Location 163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=163)) - Part I Choosing to Choose ([Location 172](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=172)) - Note: Part - 1. The Limit-Embracing Life ([Location 175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=175)) - Note: Chapter - The real problem isn’t our limited time. The real problem—or so I hope to convince you—is that we’ve unwittingly inherited, and feel pressured to live by, a troublesome set of ideas about how to use our limited time, all of which are pretty much guaranteed to make things worse. ([Location 177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=177)) - We imagine time to be something separate from us and from the world around us, “an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences,” in the words of the American cultural critic Lewis Mumford. ([Location 201](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=201)) - Historians call this way of living “task orientation,” because the rhythms of life emerge organically from the tasks themselves, rather than from being lined up against an abstract timeline, the approach that has become second nature for us today. ([Location 219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=219)) - The End of Eternity ([Location 245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=245)) - Note: Section - This is widely held to be how the first mechanical clocks came to be invented, by medieval monks, who had to begin their morning prayers while it was still dark, and needed some way of ensuring that the whole monastery woke up at the required point. (Their earlier strategies included deputizing one monk to stay awake all night, watching the movements of the stars—a system that worked only when it wasn’t cloudy, and the night-shift monk didn’t fall asleep.) Making time standardized and visible in this fashion inevitably encourages people to think of it as an abstract thing with an independent existence, distinct from the specific activities on which one might spend it; “time” is what ticks away as the hands move around the clockface. ([Location 249](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=249)) - From thinking about time in the abstract, it’s natural to start treating it as a resource, something to be bought and sold and used as efficiently as possible, like coal or iron or any other raw material. Previously, laborers had been paid for a vaguely defined “day’s work,” or on a piecework basis, receiving a given sum per bale of hay or per slaughtered pig. But gradually it became more common to be paid by the hour—and the factory owner who used his workers’ hours efficiently, squeezing as much labor as possible from each employee, stood to make a bigger profit than one who didn’t. Indeed, some cantankerous industrialists came to feel that workers who didn’t drive themselves hard enough were literally guilty of stealing something. “I have by sundry people [been] horribly cheated,” fumed the iron magnate Ambrose Crowley, from County Durham in England, in a memo from the 1790s, announcing his new policy of deducting pay for time spent “smoking, singing, reading of news history, contention, disputes, anything foreign to my business [or] in any way loitering.” The way Crowley saw it, his lackadaisical employees were thieves, illegitimately helping themselves to containers from the conveyor belt of time. ([Location 258](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=258)) - once “time” and “life” had been separated in most people’s minds, time became a thing that you used—and it’s this shift that serves as the precondition for all the uniquely modern ways in which we struggle with time today. Once time is a resource to be used, you start to feel pressure, whether from external forces or from yourself, to use it well, and to berate yourself when you feel you’ve wasted it. When you’re faced with too many demands, it’s easy to assume that the only answer must be to make better use of time, by becoming more efficient, driving yourself harder, or working for longer—as if you were a machine in the Industrial Revolution—instead of asking whether the demands themselves might be unreasonable. ([Location 270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=270)) - The fundamental problem is that this attitude toward time sets up a rigged game in which it’s impossible ever to feel as though you’re doing well enough. Instead of simply living our lives as they unfold in time—instead of just being time, you might say—it becomes difficult not to value each moment primarily according to its usefulness for some future goal, or for some future oasis of relaxation you hope to reach once your tasks are finally “out of the way.” ([Location 282](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=282)) - The trouble with attempting to master your time, it turns out, is that time ends up mastering you. ([Location 294](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=294)) - Confessions of a Productivity Geek ([Location 295](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=295)) - Note: Section - I was like an alcoholic conveniently employed as a wine expert.) ([Location 307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=307)) - What I had yet to understand, at that point, was why all these methods were doomed to fail, which was that I was using them to try to obtain a feeling of control over my life that would always remain out of reach. ([Location 318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=318)) - (“We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life,” wrote Nietzsche, “because to us it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.”) ([Location 351](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=351)) - this illustrates what might be termed the paradox of limitation, which runs through everything that follows: the more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more you confront the facts of finitude instead—and work with them, rather than against them—the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes. ([Location 365](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=365)) - An Icy Blast of Reality ([Location 371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=371)) - Note: Section - Eigenzeit, or the time inherent to a process itself. ([Location 388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=388)) - There is an alternative: the unfashionable but powerful notion of letting time use you, approaching life not as an opportunity to implement your predetermined plans for success but as a matter of responding to the needs of your place and your moment in history. ([Location 390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=390)) - Charles Garfield Lott Du Cann wrote a short book, Teach Yourself to Live, in which he recommended the limit-embracing life, and he responded saltily to the suggestion that his advice was depressing. “Depressing? Not a bit of it. No more depressing than a cold [shower] is depressing … You are no longer befogged and bewildered by a false and misleading illusion about your life—like most people.” ([Location 406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=406)) - 2. The Efficiency Trap ([Location 413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=413)) - Sisyphus’s Inbox ([Location 442](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=442)) - Note: Section - How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. ([Location 445](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=445)) - Note: Book prospect. Author: Arnold Bennett - “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” the English humorist and historian C. Northcote Parkinson wrote in 1955, coining what became known as Parkinson’s law. ([Location 479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=479)) - The general principle in operation is one you might call the “efficiency trap.” Rendering yourself more efficient—either by implementing various productivity techniques or by driving yourself harder—won’t generally result in the feeling of having “enough time,” because, all else being equal, the demands will increase to offset any benefits. Far from getting things done, you’ll be creating new things to do. ([Location 498](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=498)) - Note: Primary summary of this section. - Once you stop believing that it might somehow be possible to avoid hard choices about time, it gets easier to make better ones. You begin to grasp that when there’s too much to do, and there always will be, the only route to psychological freedom is to let go of the limit-denying fantasy of getting it all done and instead to focus on doing a few things that count. ([Location 510](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=510)) - The Bottomless Bucket List ([Location 513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=513)) - Note: Section - The technologies we use to try to “get on top of everything” always fail us, in the end, because they increase the size of the “everything” of which we’re trying to get on top. ([Location 551](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=551)) - Why You Should Stop Clearing the Decks ([Location 554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=554)) - Note: Section - the more firmly you believe it ought to be possible to find time for everything, the less pressure you’ll feel to ask whether any given activity is the best use for a portion of your time. ([Location 560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=560)) - Note: It is really wild. We throw objectiveness and rationale out the door. - The more efficient you get, the more you become “a limitless reservoir for other people’s expectations,” in the words of the management expert Jim Benson. ([Location 568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=568)) - like the dutiful and efficient worker I was, I’d put my energy into clearing the decks, cranking through the smaller stuff to get it out of the way—only to discover that doing so took the whole day, that the decks filled up again overnight anyway, ([Location 577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=577)) - To approach your days in this fashion means, instead of clearing the decks, declining to clear the decks, focusing instead on what’s truly of greatest consequence while tolerating the discomfort of knowing that, as you do so, the decks will be filling up further, with emails and errands and other to-dos, many of which you may never get around to at all. ([Location 583](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=583)) - The Pitfalls of Convenience ([Location 593](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=593)) - Note: Section - Convenience, in other words, makes things easy, but without regard to whether easiness is truly what’s most valuable in any given context. ([Location 612](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=612)) - When you render the process more convenient, you drain it of its meaning. ([Location 617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=617)) - 3. Facing Finitude ([Location 658](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=658)) - Note: Chapter - Everyday language reflects our everyday ways of seeing. But Heidegger wants to slide his fingernails under the most basic elements of existence—the things we barely notice because they’re so familiar—so as to prize them away for our inspection. That means making things unfamiliar, using unfamiliar terms. So you stumble and trip over his writing, but sometimes, as a consequence, you bang your head against reality. ([Location 669](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=669)) - Thrown into Time ([Location 672](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=672)) - Note: Section - Our limited time isn’t just one among various things we have to cope with; rather, it’s the thing that defines us, as humans, before we start coping with anything at all. ([Location 689](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=689)) - As I make hundreds of small choices throughout the day, I’m building a life—but at one and the same time, I’m closing off the possibility of countless others, forever. (The original Latin word for “decide,” decidere, means “to cut off,” as in slicing away alternatives; it’s a close cousin of words like “homicide” and “suicide.”) Any finite life—even the best one you could possibly imagine—is therefore a matter of ceaselessly waving goodbye to possibility. ([Location 697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=697)) - Obviously, from any ordinary perspective, this all sounds intolerably morbid and stressful. But then, to the extent that you manage to achieve this outlook on life, you’re not seeing it from an ordinary perspective—and “morbid and stressful,” at least according to Heidegger, are exactly what it is not. On the contrary, it’s the only way for a finite human being to live fully, to relate to other people as full-fledged humans, and to experience the world as it truly is. What’s really morbid, from this perspective, is what most of us do, most of the time, instead of confronting our finitude, which is to indulge in avoidance and denial, or what Heidegger calls “falling.” Rather than taking ownership of our lives, we seek out distractions, or lose ourselves in busyness and the daily grind, so as to try to forget our real predicament. ([Location 709](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=709)) - Getting Real ([Location 722](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=722)) - Note: Section - If you really thought life would never end, he argues, then nothing could ever genuinely matter, because you’d never be faced with having to decide whether or not to use a portion of your precious life on something. ([Location 724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=724)) - If our earthly existence were merely the prelude to an eternity in heaven, threats to that existence couldn’t matter in any ultimate sense. ([Location 738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=738)) - Note: Im not sure if I full agree here. I think this oversimplifies "the nature" of humans, especially when you explore human motivation and purpose. - In case this needs saying, it isn’t that a diagnosis of terminal illness, or a bereavement, or any other encounter with death is somehow good, or desirable, or “worth it.” But such experiences, however wholly unwelcome, often appear to leave those who undergo them in a new and more honest relationship with time. ([Location 758](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=758)) - Everything Is Borrowed Time ([Location 766](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=766)) - Note: Section - maybe it’s not that you’ve been cheated out of an unlimited supply of time; maybe it’s almost incomprehensibly miraculous to have been granted any time at all. ([Location 779](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=779)) - when you turn your attention instead to the fact that you’re in a position to have an irritating experience in the first place, matters are liable to look very different indeed. All at once, it can seem amazing to be there at all, having any experience, in a way that’s overwhelmingly more important than the fact that the experience happens to be an annoying one. ([Location 796](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=796)) - It is the thrilling recognition that you wouldn’t even really want to be able to do everything, since if you didn’t have to decide what to miss out on, your choices couldn’t truly mean anything. ([Location 820](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=820)) - Note: Everything is nothing - 4. Becoming a Better Procrastinator ([Location 827](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=827)) - Note: Chapter - the core challenge of managing our limited time isn’t about how to get everything done—that’s never going to happen—but how to decide most wisely what not to do, and how to feel at peace about not doing it. ([Location 831](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=831)) - The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things. ([Location 837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=837)) - The Art of Creative Neglect ([Location 854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=854)) - Note: Section - Principle number one is to pay yourself first when it comes to time. ([Location 855](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=855)) - work on your most important project for the first hour of each day, and to protect your time by scheduling “meetings” with yourself, marking them in your calendar so that other commitments can’t intrude. ([Location 875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=875)) - The second principle is to limit your work in progress ([Location 879](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=879)) - The third principle is to resist the allure of middling priorities. ([Location 900](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=900)) - You need to learn how to start saying no to things you do want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life.” ([Location 913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=913)) - Perfection and Paralysis ([Location 915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=915)) - Note: Section - “The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself,” Bergson wrote, “and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.” ([Location 985](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=985)) - The Inevitability of Settling ([Location 991](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=991)) - Note: Section - But since time is finite, the decision to refuse to settle—to spend a decade restlessly scouring online dating networks for the perfect person—is also a case of settling, because you’re opting to use up a decade of your limited time in a different sort of less-than-ideal situation. ([Location 1001](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1001)) - Once, in an experiment, the Harvard University social psychologist Daniel Gilbert and a colleague gave hundreds of people the opportunity to pick a free poster from a selection of art prints. Then he divided the participants into two groups. The first group was told that they had a month in which they could exchange their poster for any other one; the second group was told that the decision they’d already made had been final. In follow-up surveys, it was the latter group—those who were stuck with their decision, and who thus weren’t distracted by the thought that it might still be possible to make a better choice—who showed by far the greater appreciation for the work of art they’d selected. ([Location 1032](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1032)) - 5. The Watermelon Problem ([Location 1049](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1049)) - Note: Chapter - Philosophers have been worrying about distraction at least since the time of the ancient Greeks, who saw it less as a matter of external interruptions and more as a question of character—a systematic inner failure to use one’s time on what one claimed to value the most. Their reason for treating distraction so seriously was straightforward, and it’s the reason we ought to do so, too: what you pay attention to will define, for you, what reality is. ([Location 1068](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1068)) - A Machine for Misusing Your Life ([Location 1115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1115)) - Note: Section - 6. The Intimate Interrupter ([Location 1188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1188)) - Note: Chapter - Mary Oliver calls this inner urge toward distraction “the intimate interrupter”—that “self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels,” promising an easier life if only you’d redirect your attention away from the meaningful but challenging task at hand, to whatever’s unfolding one browser tab away. ([Location 1229](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1229)) - The Discomfort of What Matters ([Location 1235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1235)) - Note: Section - whenever we succumb to distraction, we’re attempting to flee a painful encounter with our finitude—with the human predicament of having limited time, and more especially, in the case of distraction, limited control over that time, which makes it impossible to feel certain about how things will turn out. ([Location 1242](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1242)) - The overarching point is that what we think of as “distractions” aren’t the ultimate cause of our being distracted. They’re just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation. ([Location 1269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1269)) - The most effective way to sap distraction of its power is just to stop expecting things to be otherwise—to accept that this unpleasantness is simply what it feels like for finite humans to commit ourselves to the kinds of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold. ([Location 1279](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1279)) - Part II Beyond Control ([Location 1295](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1295)) - Note: Part - 7. We Never Really Have Time ([Location 1298](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1298)) - Note: Chapter - Anything Could Happen ([Location 1349](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1349)) - Note: Section - Blaise Pascal understood: “So imprudent are we,” he wrote, “that we wander in the times which are not ours … We try to [give the present the support of] the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching.” ([Location 1377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1377)) - We go through our days fretting because we can’t control what the future holds; and yet most of us would probably concede that we got to wherever we are in our lives without exerting much control over it at all. Whatever you value most about your life can always be traced back to some jumble of chance occurrences you couldn’t possibly have planned for, and that you certainly can’t alter retrospectively now. ([Location 1380](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1380)) - Minding Your Own Business ([Location 1400](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1400)) - Note: Section - a life spent “not minding what happens” is one lived without the inner demand to know that the future will conform to your desires for it—and thus without having to be constantly on edge as you wait to discover whether or not things will unfold as expected. ([Location 1419](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1419)) - The real problem isn’t planning. It’s that we take our plans to be something they aren’t. What we forget, or can’t bear to confront, is that, in the words of the American meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein, “a plan is just a thought.” We treat our plans as though they are a lasso, thrown from the present around the future, in order to bring it under our command. But all a plan is—all it could ever possibly be—is a present-moment statement of intent. It’s an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply. ([Location 1429](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1429)) - 8. You Are Here ([Location 1436](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1436)) - Note: Chapter - Inevitably, we become obsessed with “using it well,” whereupon we discover an unfortunate truth: the more you focus on using time well, the more each day begins to feel like something you have to get through, en route to some calmer, better, more fulfilling point in the future, which never actually arrives. ([Location 1438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1438)) - This future-focused attitude often takes the form of what I once heard described as the “‘when-I-finally’ mind,” as in: “When I finally get my workload under control/get my candidate elected/find the right romantic partner/sort out my psychological issues, then I can relax, and the life I was always meant to be living can begin.” The person mired in this mentality believes that the reason she doesn’t feel fulfilled and happy is that she hasn’t yet managed to accomplish certain specific things; when she does so, she imagines, she’ll feel in charge of her life and be the master of her time. Yet in fact the way she’s attempting to achieve that sense of security means she’ll never feel fulfilled, because she’s treating the present solely as a path to some superior future state—and so the present moment won’t ever feel satisfying in itself. Even if she does get her workload under control, or meet her soulmate, she’ll just find some other reason to postpone her fulfillment until later on. ([Location 1453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1453)) - The Causal Catastrophe ([Location 1474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1474)) - Note: Section - “Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up,” Herzen says. “But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what only lives for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment … Life’s bounty is in its flow. Later is too late.” ([Location 1525](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1525)) - The Last Time ([Location 1528](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1528)) - Note: Section - the old parable about a vacationing New York businessman who gets talking to a Mexican fisherman, who tells him that he works only a few hours per day and spends most of his time drinking wine in the sun and playing music with his friends. Appalled at the fisherman’s approach to time management, the businessman offers him an unsolicited piece of advice: if the fisherman worked harder, he explains, he could invest the profits in a bigger fleet of boats, pay others to do the fishing, make millions, then retire early. “And what would I do then?” the fisherman asks. “Ah, well, then,” the businessman replies, “you could spend your days drinking wine in the sun and playing music with your friends.” ([Location 1552](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1552)) - Our obsession with extracting the greatest future value out of our time blinds us to the reality that, in fact, the moment of truth is always now—that life is nothing but a succession of present moments, culminating in death, and that you’ll probably never get to a point where you feel you have things in perfect working order. And that therefore you had better stop postponing the “real meaning” of your existence into the future, and throw yourself into life now. ([Location 1573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1573)) - Absent in the Present ([Location 1587](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1587)) - Note: Section - 9. Rediscovering Rest ([Location 1639](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1639)) - The Decline of Pleasure ([Location 1655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1655)) - Note: Section - To the philosophers of the ancient world, leisure wasn’t the means to some other end; on the contrary, it was the end to which everything else worth doing was a means. Aristotle argued that true leisure—by which he meant self-reflection and philosophical contemplation—was among the very highest of virtues because it was worth choosing for its own sake, whereas other virtues, like courage in war, or noble behavior in government, were virtuous only because they led to something else. ([Location 1679](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1679)) - Pathological Productivity ([Location 1727](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1727)) - Note: Section - To rest for the sake of rest—to enjoy a lazy hour for its own sake—entails first accepting the fact that this is it: that your days aren’t progressing toward a future state of perfectly invulnerable happiness, and that to approach them with such an assumption is systematically to drain our four thousand weeks of their value. “We are the sum of all the moments of our lives,” writes Thomas Wolfe, “all that is ours is in them: we cannot escape it or conceal it.” ([Location 1764](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1764)) - Rules for Rest ([Location 1769](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1769)) - Note: Section - Hiking as an End in Itself ([Location 1817](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1817)) - Note: Section - a country walk, perhaps the most mundane of leisure activities—and yet, as a way of spending one’s time, it does have one or two features worth noting. For one thing, unlike almost everything else I do with my life, it’s not relevant to ask whether I’m any good at it: all I’m doing is walking, a skill at which I haven’t appreciably improved since around the age of four. Moreover, a country walk doesn’t have a purpose, in the sense of an outcome you’re trying to achieve or somewhere you’re trying to get. ([Location 1826](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1826)) - Kieran Setiya calls an “atelic activity,” meaning that its value isn’t derived from its telos, or ultimate aim. ([Location 1834](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1834)) - when your relationship with time is almost entirely instrumental, the present moment starts to lose its meaning. ([Location 1845](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1845)) - Rod Stewart, Radical ([Location 1861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1861)) - Note: Section - And so in order to be a source of true fulfillment, a good hobby probably should feel a little embarrassing; that’s a sign you’re doing it for its own sake, rather than for some socially sanctioned outcome. ([Location 1871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1871)) - Results aren’t everything. Indeed, they’d better not be, because results always come later—and later is always too late. ([Location 1895](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1895)) - 10. The Impatience Spiral ([Location 1898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1898)) - Note: Chapter - Escape Velocity ([Location 1922](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1922)) - Note: Section - Must Stop, Can’t Stop ([Location 1960](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=1960)) - Note: Section - Psychotherapists call it a “second-order change,” meaning that it’s not an incremental improvement but a change in perspective that reframes everything. ([Location 2016](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2016)) - Note: I like this dimensional concept of change and growth. These are the changes that are not prescriptive, but discovered and evolved within you. - 11. Staying on the Bus ([Location 2026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2026)) - Note: Chapter - But as society accelerates, something shifts. In more and more contexts, patience becomes a form of power. In a world geared for hurry, the capacity to resist the urge to hurry—to allow things to take the time they take—is a way to gain purchase on the world, to do the work that counts, and to derive satisfaction from the doing itself, instead of deferring all your fulfillment to the future. ([Location 2033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2033)) - Note: This is good - Watching and Waiting ([Location 2086](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2086)) - Note: Section - if you’re willing to endure the discomfort of not knowing, a solution will often present itself ([Location 2103](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2103)) - Three Principles of Patience ([Location 2115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2115)) - Note: Section - develop a taste for having problems. ([Location 2117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2117)) - Once you give up on the unattainable goal of eradicating all your problems, it becomes possible to develop an appreciation for the fact that life just is a process of engaging with problem after problem, giving each one the time it requires—that the presence of problems in your life, in other words, isn’t an impediment to a meaningful existence but the very substance of one. ([Location 2124](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2124)) - embrace radical incrementalism ([Location 2127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2127)) - originality lies on the far side of unoriginality. ([Location 2145](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2145)) - 12. The Loneliness of the Digital Nomad ([Location 2170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2170)) - Note: Chapter - In and Out of Sync ([Location 2205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2205)) - Note: Section - Keeping Together in Time ([Location 2284](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2284)) - Note: Section - The Freedom to Never See Your Friends ([Location 2332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2332)) - Note: Section - 13. Cosmic Insignificance Therapy ([Location 2380](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2380)) - Note: Chapter - The Great Pause ([Location 2404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2404)) - A Modestly Meaningful Life ([Location 2446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2446)) - Note: Section - the understandable tendency to judge everything from the perspective you occupy, so that the few thousand weeks for which you happen to be around inevitably come to feel like the linchpin of history, to which all prior time was always leading up. These self-centered judgments are part of what psychologists call the “egocentricity bias,” ([Location 2473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2473)) - No wonder it comes as a relief to be reminded of your insignificance: it’s the feeling of realizing that you’d been holding yourself, all this time, to standards you couldn’t reasonably be expected to meet. And this realization isn’t merely calming but liberating, because once you’re no longer burdened by such an unrealistic definition of a “life well spent,” you’re freed to consider the possibility that a far wider variety of things might qualify as meaningful ways to use your finite time. You’re freed, too, to consider the possibility that many of the things you’re already doing with it are more meaningful than you’d supposed—and that until now, you’d subconsciously been devaluing them, on the grounds that they weren’t “significant” enough. ([Location 2496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2496)) - 14. The Human Disease ([Location 2515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2515)) - Note: Chapter - The Provisional Life ([Location 2534](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2534)) - Note: Section - The same realization that struck me on that park bench in Brooklyn struck the French poet Christian Bobin, he recalls, at a similarly mundane moment: “I was peeling a red apple from the garden when I suddenly understood that life would only ever give me a series of wonderfully insoluble problems. With that thought an ocean of profound peace entered my heart.” ([Location 2571](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2571)) - Five Questions ([Location 2575](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2575)) - Note: Section - 1. Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort? ([Location 2579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2579)) - 2. Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet? ([Location 2594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2594)) - 3. In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be? ([Location 2610](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2610)) - 4. In which areas of life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you’re doing? ([Location 2633](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2633)) - 5. How would you spend your days differently if you didn’t care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition? ([Location 2650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2650)) - The Next Most Necessary Thing ([Location 2666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08FGV64B1&location=2666)) - Note: Section