You should update and clean your lists once a week.

This leaves open a free slot that you can fill by pulling in a new project from the holding tank. For larger projects, you might want to instead pull onto your active list a reasonable chunk of work toward its completion. For example, if “write book” is in your holding tank, and a free slot opens up on your active list, you might pull in “write

and the push for individuals to be more efficient in their every action creates conditions that promote injury and exhaustion.

it frees you from needing to attack every day with frantic intensity.

projects, and then double their length. For example, if your initial instinct is to plan for spending two weeks on launching a new website, revise this goal to give yourself a full month.

There are few things we value more than the esteem of our fellow humans.

I came to believe that alternative approaches to productivity can be just as easily justified, including those in which overfilled task lists and constant activity are downgraded in importance, and something like John McPhee’s languid intentionality is lauded.

assign regularly occurring classwork to specific times on specific days, and sometimes even specific locations,

Oliver’s forest strolls weren’t just about finding quiet. This outdoor context pulled on rich threads from her past, resulting in a perception of work that was more alive, varied, and natural in its pace than if she had spent those exact same hours writing at a perfectly nice home office desk. This