I think there’s a certain kind of clichéd version of memento mori in the culture that says that life is very short, so you’ve therefore got to cram every minute of every day with being as impressive or unusual or generally high-octane as you possibly can.

And I don’t think that’s the point. I think the point is that when you really begin to let it... See more

The truly valuable skill is the one the three-to-four-hour rule helps to instill: not the capacity to push yourself harder but the capacity to stop and recuperate, despite the discomfort of knowing that the work remains unfinished.

Do we really need to say that the only viable way for making a difference in the world has to be from this place of deficit? Do we all have to be what psychologists call “insecure overachievers” who are doing lots of things in the world but doing them fundamentally to fill a void or plug a hole?

So where I’m headed with all of this is to try to... See more

the sense of fighting against time, the sense of being hounded by or oppressed by time — that is a very modern thing.

I think it’s a thing that people in the medieval period, for example, just wouldn’t have had to trouble with. This specific sense of racing against time — of trying to get on top of our lives and in control — and to make this the... See more

Burkeman’s question is really the reverse: What if rather than starting from the presumption that it can all be brought under control, you began with the presumption that it can’t be? What if you began with a deeper appreciation of your own limits? How then would you live?