Meditations
a life task, which emerges, by definition, from whatever your life circumstances are. It’s what’s being asked of you, with your particular skills, resources and personality traits, in the place where you actually find yourself.
Oliver Burkeman • Meditations for Mortals
The three-to-four hour rule functions, too, as a reminder of the profound truth that for finite humans the work is never done. A central point of the Jewish and Christian tradition of the Sabbath is that you have the stop anyway - not because you’ve finished, but just because it’s time to stop. - Meditations for Mortals
The advice here is: go into the shed. Don't do anything yet, just look around. Observe and take stock. Make the space your own. And the first solutions will present themselves. A number of items will change hands and be donated to others. Other things will wait until that Saturday afternoon when you say to yourself, ‘And now it’s time to clean out
... See moreIncluded in Olver Burkeman’s ‘Just go to the shed’ essay - how to befriend your rats and come at anxiety inducing tasks thinking about what you are willing to go and starting there
Marcus Aurelius reassures readers of his Meditations: ‘Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.’
Oliver Burkeman • Meditations for Mortals
Steve Chandler writes. They don’t see ‘that leaving things unfinished is what’s causing the low levels of energy.’ (He suggests spending one day robotically completing as much unfinished business as you can: ‘Notice at the end of that day how much energy you’ve got. You’ll be amazed.’)
Oliver Burkeman • Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
Because the irony, of course, is that just doing something once today, just steering your kayak over the next few inches of water, is the only way you’ll ever become the kind of person who does that sort of thing on a regular basis anyway. Otherwise – and believe me, I’ve been there – you’re merely the kind of person who spends your life drawing up
... See moreOliver Burkeman • Meditations for Mortals
Actions don't have to be things that we grind out, day after day, in order to qualify as adequate humans, instead they can just be enjoyable expressions of the fact that that's what we already are - Meditations for Mortals
treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket. That is to say: think of your backlog not as a container that gradually fills up, and that it’s your job to empty, but as a stream that flows past you, from which you get to pick a few choice items, here and there, without feeling guilty for letting all the others float by.
Oliver Burkeman • Meditations for Mortals
As a counterstrategy, keep a “done list,” which starts empty first thing in the morning, and which you then gradually fill with whatever you accomplish through the day.