Why Can’t You Just Deal With It? | the New Yorker
When you try to focus on something you deem important, you’re forced to face your limits, an experience that feels especially uncomfortable precisely because the task at hand is one you value so much. Unlike the architect from Shiraz, who refused to bring his ideal mosque into the world of time and imperfection, you’re obliged to give up your godli
... See moreOliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks
We’re made so uneasy by the experience of allowing reality to unfold at its own speed that when we’re faced with a problem, it feels better to race toward a resolution—any resolution, really, so long as we can tell ourselves we’re “dealing with” the situation, thereby maintaining the feeling of being in control. So we snap at our partners, rather t... See more
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Digging in to a challenging work project that can’t be hurried becomes not a trigger for stressful emotions but a bracing act of choice; giving a difficult novel the time it demands becomes a source of relish. “You cultivate an appreciation for endurance, hanging in, and putting the next foot forward,” Brown explains.
Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
None of that will be solved by self-help alone; as the journalist Anne Helen Petersen writes in a widely shared essay on millennial burnout, you can’t fix such problems “with vacation, or an adult coloring book, or ‘anxiety baking,’ or the Pomodoro Technique, or overnight fucking oats.” But my point here is that however privileged or unfortunate yo
... See moreOliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“Why is this so hard? Because you’re utterly habituated to steady progress—to completing things, to producing, to solving. When progress is subtle or slow, when there’s no clear way to proceed, you flinch away. You redirect your attention to something safer, to something you can do. You jump to implementation prematurely; you feel a co
... See moreAndy Matuschak • Cultivating Depth and Stillness in Research
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. Digging in to a challenging work project that can
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