Meditations for Mortals

Stephen Lloyd Webber’s book Deep Freewriting: How to Masterfully Navigate the Creative Flow conveys a good feel for the profound psychological benefits of the practice. One day, I’ll try the twenty-four-hour freewriting marathon he recommends.

Zen and time management come together in Paul Loomans’s Time Surfing: The Zen Approach to Keeping Time on Your Side,

That said, titles on the topic that have genuinely helped trigger action in my own life include Steve Chandler’s Time Warrior and Gregg Krech’s The Art of Taking Action: Lessons from Japanese Psychology.

Besides, it’s always the same list: nurture your relationships, pursue challenging goals, spend time in nature, and make room for fun. You knew that already. If following a list was all it took, we’d have solved the challenge of human happiness long ago.

The less I’m trying to get something out of an experience, the more I find I can get into it, and the more I can be present for other people involved in it. This is not to say that life becomes a matter of unbroken good cheer; after all, it’s sad that a beautiful moment arises then vanishes. But it’s the flavour of sadness conveyed by the Japanese

a to-do list is by definition really a menu, a list of tasks to pick from, rather than to get through.

In his book Anti-Time Management, Richie Norton boils this philosophy down to two steps. One: ‘Decide who you want to be’. Two: ‘Act from that identity immediately’.

Really, though, showing up more fully in the present is about how you pursue your plans for the future; it certainly doesn’t require that you abandon them.

this part matters just as much as any other and arguably even more than any other, since the past is gone and the future hasn’t occurred yet, so right now is the only time that really exists. If instead you take the other approach – if you see all of this as leading up to some future point when real life will begin, or when you can finally start en