Are We Too Busy to Enjoy Life?
Our exhausting tendency to grind without relief, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, is more arbitrary than we recognize. It’s true that many of us have bosses or clients making demands, but they don’t always dictate the details of our daily schedules—it’s often our own anxieties that play the role of the fiercest taskmaster. We suff
... See moreCal Newport • Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
Tempted and titillated at every turn, we seek to cram in as much consumption and as many experiences as possible. As well as glittering careers, we want to take art courses, work out at the gym, read the newspaper and every book on the bestseller list, eat out with friends, go clubbing, play sports, watch hours of television, listen to music, spend
... See moreCarl Honore • In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed
Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity. Ours is a culture that measures our worth as human beings by our efficiency, our earnings, our ability to perform this or that. The cult of productivity has its place, but worshipping at its altar daily robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living... See more
Maria Popova • 13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings
We suffer from overly ambitious timelines and poorly managed workloads due to a fundamental uneasiness with ever stepping back from the numbing exhaustion of jittery busyness.
Cal Newport • Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
describes what happens as a result: “our lives become about the struggle to keep up.” She continues, “To truly feel our experience with depth and presence, we would have to slow down a lot (which would make us less efficient consumers, students, workers, prisoners, soldiers…).”
Tara McMullin • What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting
For many of us, time seems to slip through our fingers. We rush around in furious activity but at the end of the day, what can we say we did? It’s all a blur. We’re swept along in the river of experience, immersed in what’s happening, at the mercy of every passing demand, whether from inside ourselves or from others.