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- Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Episode 1: Book Summary
Trent Buenzli
October 06, 2022
Copied from the first email that started it all…
I included you on this list because I can recall at least 1 deep conversation in the past where you've introduced me to a new way of thinking or influenced my perception of the world. First off, thank you for your willingness to be open. I don't take those types of conversations for granted and I don't take my relationship with you for granted.
Second, I plan to use this email thread to share summaries of books or podcasts that I find interesting (the first summary is shared below). I tend to jot down notes as I'm reading or listening. Then, summarizing the notes helps me retain the info. So, since I have these summaries typed up, I figured I might as well share them with my closest relationships.
So, whether you're a family member, friend, mentor, colleague, or random stranger whose email I accidentally typed, I hope the content can serve as a jumping-off point for future conversations together. Feel free to reply with your thoughts, bring it up the next time we talk, or never mention it whatsoever. I'm sending this out into the ether with zero expectations.
If you don't want to be included in future emails, then please don't hesitate to let me know. No offense taken, I promise. Digging out of email is already challenging enough.
Be well & thank you,
Trent
The first summary is for Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Don't expect summaries this long in the future, but this one was particularly rich and struck a chord with me. As someone who is obsessed with "using time well", this book transformed my relationship with time and my perspective on whether it should be "used" at all. To call it a book on "time management" would do a disservice to the depth of the message. Also, "finitude" is an objectively fun word to add to the arsenal. Enjoy!
Themes
Gratitude for having existed at all
When I stop to consider that the odds of being born at all are effectively zero, it's hard to feel anything but gratitude
Relationship with time
My experience of my life is inseparable from my experience of time, as it's unfolding
The experience of my life is the sum of all of the things that I give my attention to
To try to live in the moment implies that I'm somehow separate from "the moment," and thus in a position to either succeed or fail at living in it. All I am is this moment in time, so no modification is needed
Embracing Finitude
The acknowledgment of my finitude and my extreme insignificance on a cosmic scale ought to make me feel liberated, as opposed to fearful
I’m guaranteed to miss out on nearly every experience and accomplishment that this world has to offer, but missing out is what gives meaning to the ones I do pursue
"You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results"
Settling for something is inevitable in order to do anything
Confronting my finitude won't necessarily make me "happier" but it will make my reality "realer"
The reward for accepting my finitude is that I actually get to be here now. There is no other option. Accepting this limitation is what makes it bearable
Entering the present, just as it is
Pay full attention to what is happening and drop my desire for things to be going differently
Embracing my inability to control the future
I have no ability to accurately predict the future, nor would I really want to
Perfection exists only in imagination. "The future" is a manifestation of my imagination. I will inevitably have to settle to do anything at all
It's fine to have a preference for the future, but worry stems from demanding certainty over it. Fully letting go of how things turn out leads to peace
"A plan is a present-moment statement of intent" that the future is under no obligation to comply with
I align my "plan" with my priorities of the day. As my experiences and environment (including the people around me) change, my priorities will change as well. Thus, the plan will change. To stay attached to the previous plan would mean living misaligned with my new priorities. So the expectation is that the the plan will change
Trying to "use time well"
Instrumentality of time: the belief that time is only "used well" insofar as it lays the groundwork for something else
Leisure time is an end in itself. It need not be in service of some future state outcome or future state self
Where am I doing things for their own sake?
Just do the "Next Most Necessary Thing"
Patience as a superpower
The spiral of impatience is fed by the anxiety created by my desire to move faster in order to keep up with an impossible volume of demands
To confront the anxiety, surrender to my limits & the limits of the world
Some activities just take the time they take
Resist the urge to hurry. Allow things to take the time they take. Do work that counts. Derive satisfaction from the doing itself, instead of deferring all of my fulfillment to the future
Personal freedom vs coordination with others
Tradeoff between controlling my schedule and being in sync with others & my community
Creating a "meaningful life"
Problems are just situations that demand my attention, so they are the substance of a meaningful existence. An existence void of problems is a meaningless one
The future will carry on without me. I will become entirely forgotten one day. Realizing this truth about my insignificance gives me a far wider option set to consider what I deem a meaningful life. And deciding what constitutes a "meaningful life" is entirely up to me
Nobody really cares what I do with my life. That validation from others will never come. Even if the validation did come, it won't bring the peace of mind that I expect to accompany it
"Let my impossible standards crash to the ground. Then pick a few meaningful tasks from the rubble and get started on them today"
Don't rely on hope for change. Own the power that I do have. Then simply do the work
Drop the false beliefs:
I can do all that is asked of me and all that I ask of myself
I can reach perfection
I can exercise control over the future
I will feel peace of mind & freedom at some point in the future
I will reach some hypothetical future state of completion or full control
There is another, better life experience waiting for me in the future
I can keep my options open indefinitely by not choosing
Full sovereignty over my personal schedule will lead to a meaningful life
I will always feel like doing the things that are most important to me
I can give attention to everything that needs doing
10 tools for embracing my finitude:
Adopt a "fixed volume" approach to productivity
Serialize, serialize, serialize (1 big project at a time)
Decide in advance what to fail at
Focus on what I've already completed, not just on what's left to complete
Consolidate my caring (pick my battles)
Embrace boring and single-purpose tech
Seek out novelty in the mundane
Be a "researcher" in relationships (attitude of curiosity)
Cultivate instantaneous generosity
Practice doing nothing
Introduction: In the long run, we're all dead
"It's the very last thing, isn't it, we feel grateful for: having happened. You know, you needn't have happened. You needn't have happened. But you did happen." - Douglas Harding
The odds of me even being born is effectively zero. The fact that I'm even here is the only reason I need to be grateful
Assuming you live to be 80 years old, you'll have about 4K weeks
All of human civilization is ~310K weeks
We've been granted the mental capabilities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically not time at all to put them into action
The world is bursting with wonder... maybe the ultimate point of our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder
The struggle is trying to fit higher quantity of activities in nonincreasing quantity of daily time
Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster
Busyness becomes an emblem of prestige
For almost the whole of history, the entire point of being rich was not having to work so much
We sense that there are important and fulfilling ways we could be spending our time, even if we can't say exactly what they are
We feel the uncomfortable misalignment that comes with spending your time for someone else's ends
Part 1: Choosing to Choose
Chapter 1: The Limit-Embracing Life
Before invention of clocks and schedules
You wouldn't have a sense of having "too much to do"
You wouldn't experience time as an abstract entity, a "thing" to be "saved" or "spent"
Visual of containers constantly passing on a conveyor belt
We feel busy when there's too many tasks to fit into the containers allotted
We feel bored when there are too few tasks for the containers allotted
We are wasting time if we let too many containers pass by unfilled
We feel guilty if we use containers labeled "work time" for the purposes of leisure
Task orientation: rhythms of life emerge organically from the tasks themselves, rather than being lined up against an abstract timeline
As soon as you want to coordinate the actions of people, you need a reliable, agreed-upon method of measuring time
Treating time as a resource
Once time is a resource to be used, you start to feel pressure to use it well, and to berate yourself when you feel you've wasted it
Instead of just being time, we are made to value each moment primarily according to its usefulness for some future goal
Reflects our nature to prioritize future benefits over current enjoyments
Oliver's personal realization
Suddenly realized that none of this was ever going to work. I would never feel "on top of everything"
Realization ushered in peace of mind. Once you become convinced that something you've been attempting is impossible, it's a lot harder to keep berating yourself for failing
This life is it
We recoil from the notion that this is it - that this life, with all its flaws and inescapable vulnerabilities, its extreme brevity, and our limited influence over how it unfolds, is the only one we've got
Tactics for control
Procrastination
We never have to experience failure if we never start the project
Busyness
Never have leisure time to stop and think
Planning
Deluding ourselves that we have control over our future
Ideal (illusion) of individual control
Almost everything worth doing requires the cooperation of others
The more individual sovereignty you achieve over your time, the lonelier you get
Avoid the temptation to "keep your options open", as opposed to deliberately making big, daunting, irreversible commitments, which you can't know in advance will turn out for the best
"Missing out" is what makes our choices meaningful
"Letting time use you": responding to the needs of your place and your moment in history, not invoking your predetermined plans on the world
Chapter 2: The Efficiency Trap
It can't be the case that you must do more than you can do
You'll do what you can, you won't do what you can't, and the tyrannical inner voice insisting that you must do everything is simply mistaken / irrational
Inbox Zero
Telling yourself that you will achieve inner peace once you reach Inbox Zero. Then a new email comes in
Bottomless bucket list
Retiree ticking off travel destinations
Hedonist stuffing weekends full of fun plans
Guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer
Prioritizing new opportunities
The more firmly you believe you'll have time for everything, the less pressure you'll feel to ask whether any given activity is the best use of your time
Become a "limitless reservoir for other people's expectations"
"You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results"
Chapter 3: Facing Finitude
We don't have time, we are time
Finitude: our limited time isn't just one among various things we have to cope with; rather, it's the thing that defines us, as humans, before we start coping with anything at all
Decisions are limited based on your current situation and every decision you make closes more doors
Limited retrospectively: I am already who I am and where I am, which determines what possibilities are open to me
Limited forward-looking: choosing to do any given thing automatically sacrifices an infinite number of potential alternative paths
As I make 100s of small decisions throughout the day, I'm building a life, while simultaneously closing off the possibility of countless others, forever
Sometimes we tell ourselves that we don't have a choice, we sacrifice this agency in choosing
We must get married
We must stay in the soul-destroying job
Confronting this finitude doesn't necessarily make you "happier" but it does make reality "realer"
Terminal cancer isn't a "happy" occasion, but it can increase the depth of life and bring this finitude toward the forefront
Illusion of entitlement
Why assume that an infinite supply of time is the default, and mortality the outrageous violation?
Why treat 4k weeks as a very small number, because it's so tiny compared to infinity, rather than treating it as a huge number, because it's so many more weeks than if you had never been born?
Finitude gives our choices meaning
It's not defeat, it's an affirmation that the thing we chose is what counts right now
JOMO: Joy of missing out
Chapter 4: Becoming a Better Procrastinator
The most important decision for time management is choosing what NOT to do, and then to feel at peace about not doing it
At any given moment , you'll be procrastinating on almost everything (except the 1 thing that you're doing)
Pay yourself first
If you don't make time for your most important project / relationship / activity, then the time won't magically appear
Work on most important project for the first hour of the day
Protect your time by scheduling "meetings with yourself" on your calendar
Limit your work in progress
Temptation to keep multiple projects going half-baked
Each time a project starts to feel difficult or frightening or boring you can bounce off to a different one instead
The cost is never finishing anything important
Fix a hard upper limit on your to-dos: at most 3 at any given time
All other incoming demands on your time must wait until 1 of the 3 items has been completed (or entirely abandoned), thus freeing up a slot
Effortlessly breaking down my projects into manageable chunks in order to avoid clogging up the system with excessively large to-dos (move houses, write book)
Resist the allure of middling priorities
Exercise: list Top 25 things you want out of life
Top 5 is how you should organize your time
The remainder should be actively avoided at all costs
They're the ambitions insufficiently important to form the core of your life, yet seductive enough to distract you from the ones that matter most
You need to start saying no to the things you do want to do
It's the moderately appealing opportunities (fairly interesting job, semi-enjoyable friendship) that can command an overweight proportion of your finite time
Temptation of perfection in imagination
If you're procrastinating on something because you're worried you won't do a good enough job, you can relax - because judged by the flawless standards of your imagination, you definitely won't do a good enough job. So you might as well make a start
Temptation of perfection in the future
The future is a version of our imagination
Can fantasize about multiple futures unfolding simultaneously and flawlessly
So the result is an actual life that will inevitably be disappointing in comparison with the perfect fantasy future
Torn between "two selves"
When faced with two competing priorities, we either confront the choice or feel the agony of being torn between two selves
Day job and creative calling
Hometown and big city
Inevitability of settling
Making a choice means closing yourself off to other possibilities, so you're settling
But refusing to settle is also a version of settling - you're opting to use up your limited time in a different version of a less-than-ideal situation, one where you're living in limbo without having chosen
Dating: spending 10 years searching for the "perfect" mate to avoid settling, means spending 10 years without any mate at all
In order to strive, you have to settle. You have to settle on what to strive for
You can't become an ultra-successful lawyer or artist without settling on law or art
Not only should you settle, you should settle in a way that makes it harder to back out
When people do finally choose in a relatively irreversible way, they're usually much happier as a result
Moving in together, getting married, having a kid
Chapter 5: The Watermelon Problem
Distraction is the enemy of attention allocation
Attention is life. Your experience of being alive consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention
"Attention is the beginning of devotion"
To have a meaningful experience you must be able to focus on it, at least a bit
Can you have an experience you don't experience?
Finest meal at a Michelin-star restaurant might as well be instant noodles if your mind is elsewhere while eating
Attention economy and social media
Attention economy is designed to prioritize whatever's most compelling, not what's most true or most useful
Each time you open a social media app there are "a thousand people on the other side of the screen" paid to keep you there
Chapter 6: The Intimate Interrupter
The problem is not the activity / discomfort / boredom itself, but our internal resistance to experiencing it
Buddhist: tossing icy water on his head. It stopped feeling like torture when he leaned into the experience as opposed to resisting it
Intimate interrupter: inner urge towards distraction that "self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels" promising an easier life if only you'd redirect your attention away from the meaningful but challenging task at hand and toward the distraction
Distractions are just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting our limitation
Most effective way to diminish the power of distraction is to stop expecting things to be different
Accept the unpleasantness associated with commitment
Zen Buddhists: the entirety of human suffering is attributed to our effort to resist paying full attention to the way things are going, because we wish they were going differently
Part 2: Beyond Control
Chapter 7: We Never Really Have Time
Hofstadter's law: any task you're planning to tackle will always take longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law
The obsessive planner is demanding reassurances from the future that the future cannot provide
No matter how early you leave, you can't guarantee that you won't be late to the airport
No matter how far out you plan, the frontier of uncertainty just gets pushed further and further towards the horizon
It's September. Once Christmas plans are set, then you'll have to make plans for January, then February, etc.
When we claim to "have time", what we really mean is that we "expect it"
Fuel behind worry is the internal demand to know that things will turn out as you wish
It's fine to have a strong preference, but stress comes from demanding certainty
You don't get to order around the future. It simply doesn't care
Coincidence of the future
We fret because we can't control the future. Yet most of us would concede that we got to where we are mostly via unplanned / out-of-our-control coincidences
Getting invited to party where spouse showed up
Parents moved towns where you met inspiring teacher
All of the things that had to happen to make you you is a dizzying matter of coincidence that was all utterly beyond your control
Your swimmer winning
Parents meeting and getting together
Grandparents meeting and getting together...
You might not even want such control, given how much of what you value in life only ever came to pass thanks to circumstances you never chose or controlled
Krishnamurti: "You see, I don't mind what happens"
Planning as an essential tool
Critical for exercising our responsibilities towards other people
"A plan is a present-moment statement of intent"
Your current thoughts about how you'd ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. But the future is not obligated to comply.
Chapter 8: You Are Here
Trying to "use time well" means you are using the present solely as a path to some superior future state - and so the present moment won't ever feel satisfying in itself
"When-I-finally" mind:
"When I finally find the right romantic partner, then the life I was always meant to be living can begin"
The purpose of childhood
"Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose it so be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what only lives for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment... Life's bounty is in its flow. Later is too late."
The Last Time
Thanks to finitude, our lives are inevitably full of activities that we're doing for the last time
Instrumentality of time: time is only used well insofar as it lays the groundwork for something else
Corporate lawyer valuing all of his time off of the "billable hour". Commodity to be sold off in 60 minute chunks. An hour not sold is an hour wasted
Viewed this way, it's an expensive choice to go to his kid's piano recital
Capitalism
Capitalism is a giant machine for instrumentalizing everything it encounters - the earth's resources, your time and attention (human resources) - in the service of future profit
Why do some rich people tend to be miserable despite their material wealth?
Parable of Mexican fisherman being approached by capitalist
Present moment is the moment of truth
Our obsession with extracting the greatest future value out of our time blinds us to the reality that the moment of truth is always now - that life is nothing but a succession of present moments, culminating in death, and that you'll probably never get to a point where you feel you have things in perfect working order
By trying too hard to make the most of his time, he misses his life
Trying too hard to be present
Like trying too hard to fall asleep
To try to live in the moment implies that you're somehow separate from "the moment," and thus in a position to either succeed or fail at living in it
All we are is this moment in time. We don't need to modify our relationship to the present moment
Chapter 9: Rediscovering Rest
Experiencing leisure only in terms of its usefulness for other things
Read for knowledge to make you better at your job
Resting up will make you more productive
Taking a day off working out will make you stronger tomorrow
Exacerbated when you have more leisure options available
The wealthy can not only read or go for a walk, but also attend the opera or plan a ski trip to the Alps
Ancient philosophers treated leisure as the ultimate end, not a means to an end
Self-reflection and philosophical contemplation was true leisure and was among the highest virtues because it was worth choosing for its own sake
Spending your time off "well"
Spending at least some of your leisure time "wastefully," focused solely on the pleasure of the experience, is the only way not to waste it - to be truly at leisure, rather than covertly engaged in future-focused self-improvement
Roots of capitalism
Calvinist merchants who felt relentless hard work was the best way to prove to others and themselves that they were preordained to go to Heaven (ordination was determined at birth), paired with commitment to frugality
People work hard generating vast amounts of wealth (demonstrate hard work), but also feel obliged not to spend it on luxuries (demonstrate frugality), so the result is large accumulations of capital
So now we shouldn't be surprised that the activities that fill our leisure hours can look a lot like work, or even physical punishment (CrossFit, SoulCyle). The self-flagellation of guilty sinners anxious to expunge the stain of laziness before it's too late
Why be lazy? Why rest?
Being lazy for its own sake is a recognition that your days aren't progressing toward a future state of perfectly invulnerable happiness
The sabbath is an invitation to spend 1 day per week "in the awareness and practice of the claim that we are situated on the receiving end of the gifts of God."
Possibility that today, at least, there might be nothing more you need to do in order to justify your existence
Doing things for their own sake
"Atelic activity": the value of the activity isn't derived from its telos (ultimate aim)
"You can stop doing the activity (and eventually will), but the activity itself will never be completed
Going for a walk
Hobbies
A good hobby probably should feel a little embarrassing; that's a sign that you're doing it for its own sake, rather than for some socially sanctioned outcome
It's fine, and perhaps, preferable, to be mediocre at them
When you give up hope of being exceptional at it, then you can drop the need to "use time well" on improving at the activity
Chapter 10: The Impatience Spiral
Tao: things are just the way they are, no matter how much you wish they weren't. Your only hope to exercise any real influence over the world is to work with that fact, instead of against it
Tech progress exacerbates our impatience
Each new advancement brings us closer to the point of transcending our limits
Surrender to the reality that things will take the time they take
Reading can be uncomfortable because it just takes the time it takes. No apparent cheat code for reading faster
Addiction to high-speed living
Bears resemblance to alcoholism
Except this addiction is socially celebrated since you're deemed "driven"
Spiral
Grow anxious about keeping up - so to quell the anxiety and feel in control, we move faster. But this generates more anxiety…
Superpower of patience
First, give up the demand of instant resolution
Clear-eyed awareness of your limitations
Cultivate an appreciation for endurance and persistence
Chapter 11: Staying on the Bus
Patience is disturbingly passive but its 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 do the work that counts and derive satisfaction from the doing itself, instead of deferring all your fulfillment to the future
Fixing a car example:
"I've never been able to fix those kinds of things!"
"That's because you don't take the time"
If you're willing to endure the comfort of not knowing, a solution will often present itself. Until you sit with the problem, how can you expect a solution?
Temptation to make progress and "deal with" situations
We want to feel in control of all situations in our life, so sometimes we give up in order to exercise control and achieve "certainty" (the certainty is that it's over)
Abandon difficult creative projects
Break off nascent romantic relationships
3 Principles of Patience
Develop a taste for having problems
A life devoid of problems is a meaningless one, since it would contain nothing worth doing
Problems are simply situations that demand your attention
Embrace radical incrementalism
Fight temptation to hasten work beyond its appropriate pace in order to race to the point of completion
Set a limit for amount of work each day. Makes it easier to show up tomorrow and the next day...
Ex: writers only writing ~60 minutes per day and taking weekends off
Originality lies on the far side of unoriginality
Example of Helsinki buses taking the exact same route out of the station, making the same stops, only diverging once they're well outside of the city
"Stay on the bus... Distinctive work begins only for those who can muster the patience to immerse themselves at the earlier stage - the trial-and-error phase of copying others, learning new skills, and accumulating experience"
In personal life
Live this stage to the fullest
To experience the profound mutual understanding of the long-married couple, you have to stay married to one person
To know what it's like to be deeply rooted in community, you have to stop moving around
Chapter 12: The Loneliness of the Digital Nomad
Time is not a normal "good", it’s a "network good"
The value of time comes not from the sheer quantity you have but from whether you're in sync with the people you care about most
Ex: Mario Salcedo - spends every day of his life aboard cruise, but he's alone
Max free time and individual sovereignty, but entirely out of sync with close relationships on land
Mistake of treating our time as something to hoard, as opposed to something to be shared
Digital nomads vs Traditional nomads
Traditional nomads were not solitary wanderers, they're intensely group-focused and group-reliant members of tribes
Social regulation of time
Allowing oneself to fall into the rhythms of community. To sacrifice some personal freedom for collective experience
Examples
Swedes happiness increased when they were on vacation when other people were on vacation
Sabbath
French summer vacation period
Fika: well-attended Swedish tradition of mid-day coffee break
Can make commitments that remove flexibility from your schedule in exchange for the rewards of community
Chapter 13: Cosmic Insignificance Therapy
"The Great Pause" of COVID
"Possibility shock": understanding that things could be different on a grand scale if only we collectively wanted that enough
"The Great American Return to Normal is coming... Think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal…”
The danger of pursuing "what matters most"
Creates a grandiose view of how we ought to be using our time
Places an increased emphasis on our responsibility to do something great with our life
Ego-centricity bias: we're made to feel like the linchpin of history, to which all prior time was always leading up
New Age definition: each of us has some cosmically significant Life Purpose, which the universe is longing for us to uncover and then to fulfill
Overvaluing your existence gives an unrealistic definition of what it would mean to use your finite time well. It sets the bar too high
You need impressive accomplishments
You need to impact future generations
You need to "transcend the common and mundane"
You need to "put a dent in the universe"
Cosmic Insignificance
Assuming 100 year lifespans of all humans:
Egyptian pharaohs: 35 lifetimes ago
Jesus born: 20 lifetimes ago
Renaissance: 7 lifetimes ago
The universe carries on regardless, calm and imperturbable
It doesn't care about your preferences or anxieties
You can almost guarantee that you won't put a dent in the universe
Even the most influential historical figures will ultimately be forgotten
The truth of our insignificance is liberating
We are freed to consider the possibility that a far wider variety of things might qualify as a meaningful use of our finite time
Chapter 14: The Human Disease
The Human Disease of "not enough"
Manifests as trying to master our time, becoming so productive and efficient that we never have to experience:
Guilt of disappointing others
Worry about underperforming
Dying without having fulfilled our greatest ambitions
Anxiety about committing to something that might not work out
Always getting ready to live
"There is a strange attitude and feeling that one is not yet in real life... There is a terrific fear of being pinned down, of entering space and time completely, and of being the unique human that one is."
What it means to "enter space and time completely"
Admit defeat
Let illusions die
Accept that there will always be too much to do
Accept that you can't avoid tough choices
Accept that you can't make the world run at your preferred speed
Accept that you can't dictate, or even accurately predict, so much of what happens in the finite time you do get
Accept that no experience, especially relationships, can ever be guaranteed in advance to turn out painlessly and well
Accept that when it's all over, it won't have counted for very much anyway
Reward for that acceptance:
You get to actually be here
5 questions to evaluate your own life:
Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what's called for is a little discomfort?
When making a decision, ask yourself the question, "Does this choice diminish me or enlarge me?"
Asking "what will make me happy?" is an easy way to be lured to the comfortable option while your soul shrivels with each passing day
Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?
Let your impossible standards crash to the ground. Then pick a few meaningful tasks from the rubble and get started on them today
In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are; not the person you think you ought to be?
Treating your life as a journey toward becoming someone you ought to become...
A quest to justify one's exist in the eyes of some outside authority is futile and unnecessary
Futile: life will always feel uncertain
Unnecessary: peace of mind & freedom won't come from achieving another's validation
"At a certain age, it finally dawns on us that, shockingly, no one really cares what we're doing with our life…”
A radical question to ask ourselves, "how would I enjoy spending my time?"
In which areas of life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you're doing?
Treating your life as a dress rehearsal to acquire the skills and experience to give you total control later on
"There is no institution, no walk of life, in which everyone isn't just winging it, all the time"
"The feeling of total authority is never going to arrive, so you might as well not wait any longer to give such activities your all - to put bold plans into practice, to stop erring on the side of caution"
How would you spend your days differently if you didn't care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?
What is meaningful to you today, even if you never saw the results?
The Next, Most Necessary Thing
Jung: “…if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate.”
Afterword: Beyond Hope
The curse of hope
Hope means placing your faith in something outside yourself (God, government), and outside the current moment (the future, next generation)
Hoping that X suffering stops means:
Assuming X suffering will continue, at least in the short-term
Sacrifices one's own ability to participate in stopping X suffering
To give up hope means re-inhabiting the power you actually have. Then simply doing the work
This book being an argument for giving up hope
Give up hope that you will:
Meet others' limitless demands
Realize every ambition
Excel in every role
Give to every good cause
Feel in control
Feel certain painful experiences aren't coming your way
Someday experience a different reality, that this isn't really it
Once you no longer need to convince yourself that you'll do everything that needs doing, you're free to focus on doing a few things that count.
“Giving up hope kills a the fear-driven, control-chasing, ego-dominated version of you, about not disappointing anyone or stepping too far out of line, in case the people in charge find some way to punish you for it later. You find that civilized you died. The victim died. And the you that remains is more alive than before. More ready for action, but also more joyful, because it turns out that when you're open to confront how things really are, you're open enough to let all the good things in more fully, too, on their own terms…”
“The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn't a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It's a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible - the quest to become the optimized infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you're officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what's gloriously possible instead.”
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