Four Thousand Weeks

No wonder it comes as a relief to be reminded of your insignificance: it’s the feeling of realising that you’d been holding yourself, all this time, to standards you couldn’t reasonably be expected to meet. And this realisation 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.

Truly doing justice to the astonishing gift of a few thousand weeks isn’t a matter of resolving to ‘do something remarkable’ with them. In fact, it entails precisely the opposite: refusing to hold them to an abstract and overdemanding standard of remarkableness, against which they can only ever be found wanting, and taking them instead on their own terms, dropping back down from godlike fantasies of cosmic significance into the experience of life as it concretely, finitely – and often enough, marvellously – really is.

The reason time feels like such a struggle is that we’re constantly attempting to master it – to lever ourselves into a position of dominance and control over our unfolding lives so that we might finally feel safe and secure, and no longer so vulnerable to events.

You have to accept that there will always be too much to do; that you can’t avoid tough choices or make the world run at your preferred speed; that no experience, least of all close relationships with other human beings, can ever be guaranteed in advance to turn out painlessly and well

it, it’s only unbearable for as long as you’re under the impression that there might be a cure.

it’s only unbearable for as long as you’re under the impression that there might be a cure.3 Accept the inevitability of the affliction, and freedom ensues: you can get on with living at last.

Choose uncomfortable enlargement over comfortable diminishment whenever you can.

Procrastination, distraction, commitment-phobia, clearing the decks and taking on too many projects at once are all ways of trying to maintain the illusion that you’re in charge of things.

Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?

Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort?

What would you do differently with your time, today, if you knew in your bones that salvation was never coming – that your standards had been unreachable all along, and that you’ll therefore never manage to make time for all you hoped you might?

Once you no longer feel the stifling pressure to become a particular kind of person, you can confront the personality, the strengths and weaknesses, the talents and enthusiasms you find yourself with, here and now, and follow where they lead.

When we stop hoping that the awful situation we’re in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free – truly free – to honestly start working to resolve it.’

Once you no longer need to convince yourself that the world isn’t filled with uncertainty and tragedy, you’re free to focus on doing what you can to help.

once you no longer need to convince yourself that you’ll do everything that needs doing, you’re free to focus on doing a few things that count.

when you’re open enough to confront how things really are, you’re open enough to let all the good things in more fully, too, on their own terms, instead of trying to use them to bolster your need to know that everything will turn out fine.

this book, I’ve made the case for embracing the truth about your limited time and limited control over that time – not simply because it’s the truth, so you might as well face it, but because it’s actively empowering to do so. By stepping more fully into reality as it actually is, you get to accomplish more of what matters, and feel more fulfilled about it.

Much advice on getting things done implicitly promises that it’ll help you get everything important done – but that’s impossible, and struggling to get there will only make you busier (see chapter 2). It’s better to begin from the assumption that tough choices are inevitable and to focus on making them consciously and well.

keep two to-do lists, one ‘open’ and one ‘closed’. The open list is for everything that’s on your plate and will doubtless be nightmarishly long. Fortunately, it’s not your job to tackle it: instead, feed tasks from the open list to the closed one – that is, a list with a fixed number of entries, ten at most.

train yourself to get incrementally better at tolerating that anxiety, by consciously postponing everything you possibly can, except for one thing. Soon, the satisfaction of completing important projects will make the anxiety seem worthwhile