We have to give up. You surrender to the reality that things just take the time they take, and that you can’t quiet your anxieties by working faster, because it isn’t within your power to force reality’s pace as much as you feel you need to, and because the faster you go, the faster you’ll feel you need to go. If you can let those fantasies crumble, Brown’s clients discovered, something unexpected happens, analogous to the alcoholic giving up his unrealistic craving for control in exchange for the gritty, down-to-earth, reality-confronting experience of recovery. Psychotherapists call it a “second-order change,” meaning that it’s not an incremental improvement but a change in perspective that reframes everything. When you finally face the truth that you can’t dictate how fast things go, you stop trying to outrun your anxiety, and your anxiety is transformed.There is nothing passive or resigned about the kind of patience that arises from this effort to resist the urge to hurry. On the contrary, it’s an active, almost muscular state of alert presence—and its benefits, as we’ll see, extend far beyond art appreciation.

We have to give up. You surrender to the reality that things just take the time they take, and that you can’t quiet your anxieties by working faster, because it isn’t within your power to force reality’s pace as much as you feel you need to, and because the faster you go, the faster you’ll feel you need to go. If you can let those fantasies crumble, Brown’s clients discovered, something unexpected happens, analogous to the alcoholic giving up his unrealistic craving for control in exchange for the gritty, down-to-earth, reality-confronting experience of recovery. Psychotherapists call it a “second-order change,” meaning that it’s not an incremental improvement but a change in perspective that reframes everything. When you finally face the truth that you can’t dictate how fast things go, you stop trying to outrun your anxiety, and your anxiety is transformed. There is nothing passive or resigned about the kind of patience that arises from this effort to resist the urge to hurry. On the contrary, it’s an active, almost muscular state of alert presence—and its benefits, as we’ll see, extend far beyond art appreciation.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

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Oliver Burkeman • It’s Worse than You Think

So a surprisingly effective antidote to anxiety can be to simply realize that this demand for reassurance from the future is one that will definitely never be satisfied—no matter how much you plan or fret, or how much extra time you leave to get to the airport. You can’t know that things will turn out all right. The struggle for certainty is an int... See more

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

The most effective way to sap distraction of its power is just to stop expecting things to be otherwise – to accept that this unpleasantness is simply what it feels like for finite humans to commit ourselves to the kinds of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold.

Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks

The most effective way to sap distraction of its power is just to stop expecting things to be otherwise—to accept that this unpleasantness is simply what it feels like for finite humans to commit ourselves to the kinds of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

And it leads to the insight that meaningful productivity often comes not from hurrying things up but from letting them take the time they take, surrendering to what in German has been called Eigenzeit, or the time inherent to a process itself. Perhaps most radically of all, seeing and accepting our limited powers over our time can prompt us to ques

Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

as society accelerates, something shifts. In more and more contexts, patience becomes a form of power. In a world geared for hurry, the capacity to resist the urge to hurry – to allow things to take the time they take – is a way to gain purchase on the world, to do the work that counts, and to derive satisfaction from the doing itself, instead of d

Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks

I still think it’s the single best antidote to the feeling of time pressure, a splendidly liberating first step on the path of embracing your limits: the problem with trying to make time for everything that feels important – or just for enough of what feels important – is that you definitely never will.

Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks

FRUITION” IMPLIES that at some future time you will feel good. One of the most powerful Buddhist teachings is that as long as you are wishing for things to change, they never will. As long as you’re wanting yourself to get better, you won’t. As long as you are oriented toward the future, you can never just relax into what you already have or alread

Oliver Burkeman • It’s Worse than You Think

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks

Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks

Pema Chodron • Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion