Appendix
- Adopt a fixed volume approach to things: limit the “doing” with an open and close list and setting boundaries for work and life
- Focus on one big project at the time. Don’t spread yourself so thin
- Decide what to fail and ignore. Fail on a cyclical basis
- Focus on what you already completed.
- Consolidate your caring
- Embrace boring technology- systems over will
- Seek out novelty in the mundane
- Be researcher in the relationship
- Instantaneous generosity
Our life is sooo short, if we are lucky we’ll live around 4 thousand weeks, as an average.
The brevity of life has been a subject of philosophers.
It feels like we are dying only when we are just getting ready to live.
The modern discipline known as time management – like it’s cousin, productivity – is a depressingly, narrow-minded affair, focused on how to crank through as many work tasks as possible, or devising the perfect morning routine, or on cooking all your dinners for the week in one big batch on Sundays.
The world is full with wonder and we should experiment more of that wonder.
Because of the capitalist system we are persuaded to think that indeed there is more time to use as commodity.
We are obsessed with time.
And because time is so valuable we feel compel to use it in a way that makes sense. Because we need to make time works for us, time managements titles come to our aid and they work when we get more done in the same span of time, more time means we have more time to fill the void.
Time speed as we age.
Can you optimise time?
We need to rethink how we see and experience time, the trap of productivity and you never will get everything done. We are never going to get everything done.
Because of advances in technology we should feel as it we have more time. We grow more impatient.
Work only to buy slivers of time to spend on the things we love? We live mentally in the future and worrying that we are not getting enough done. Getting things done is certainly serving someone’s interest, have we really processed is it ours?
There is no work life balance.
The limit-embracing life
The problem is not time per se, is how we perceive the set of ideas and actions that must take place within time. Before clocks were invented activities revolve around activities (meaningful). The medieval farmer would not have had any issues of time because he did not experience time at a thing at all. He never felt he had too much or too little of it (expectations).
You did not have time management problems
Time is a way of thinking that we don’t see it like that.
The medieval farmer did not conceive time like that, as an abstract but rather as a space to act.
Sometimes it happens to ourselves and we get caught in islands of deep time today. It is not that time does not exist or we stop time but that we don’t hear the clock ticking.
Before time was just the medium in which life unfolded, the stuff that life was made of.
Do we stop and think if the demands are unreasonable?
Are we being time? Timeends up dominating us.
Productivity obsession hides an emotional agenda. We then avoid dealing with this. There is no time to stop and think.
Time to use us. Facing reality as crude as is. Limit embracing life- face the fear.
The productivity trap
Busyness is a never ending struggle and it could numb the actual life changing decisions.
What matters is subjective. Being efficient would result not in having more time but in being more busy.
Do you see yourself as someone who gets things done? ->> James Clear who you are.
Being uncomfortable and inconvenient could be an issue that gets solved when it should not and takes away the moments that make it worth it. Send it a letter instead of a WhatsApp or a relationship with a taxi man.
What makes them worth is that it takes time to make them.
To being is to be finite and understand the limitations and possibilities of it.
Heidegger and the simpler happiness- the idea the many paths not taken and but being conscious of those decisions. We are time.
Facing death, this might even come as a blessing since realising the finitude, the fact that we tomorrow is not guaranteed and we hope gives us gratitude.
Shift of focus regarding time (annoying time) waiting on traffic etc and the learning that we do have time to make them.
Becoming a better procrastinator
How would we put this into practice: Neglecting what NOT TO DO.
Can we fit all the rocks? First things first but they are too many rocks and many things feels important. How to differentiate between what matters and what does not.
- Pay yourself first – we are terrible at long term planning – no matter how little we do – the law of marginal gains.
- For an hour work on the most important task for the day and schedule meetings with myself
- Limit your work in progress – limit the amount of projects you can work on
Capacity to work is finite.
We don’t know how to set priorities. Top 5 and forget the rests. Avoid paying attention. The courage to say no to the things you do want to do.
Procrastination is an emotional avoidance.
Perfection is a trap for not starting something, since it would mean bringing it to life, with its finitude and a the fact it could be all a mirage, a dream.
Kafka and his indecisiveness craving perfection. Leaving the possibility of a relationship without making the actual decision. We can’t do it all in actuality but only fantasise.
The inevitability of settling – dating and passion. Our partner is finite- Esther Perel
The watermelon problem
Attention and distraction to escape. External interruption. Attention is not a resource.
We get distracted and is normal and we can’t have complete control over our bottom up attention (it keeps us alive) and it is not an ancient problem, the Greeks used to think that it was mainly a human will issue and that, with perseverance it could be solved. However, naturally distractions are part of how we interact in the world (an incoming vehicle and a beautiful sunset) help us to be anchored in the present for dangers or beauty.
More than that, distractions represent an issue, because more than that we try to get away from the present moment by doing a pleasant activity (the we barely do enjoy) , they means the thing we are engaging with is uncomfortable and we are not capable of facing that or realising why we are feeling that way.
The intimate interrupter
Face with a painful experience we tried to escape (cold water bath) but instead the ceremony will requiere concentrating in the pain of the daily chore, holding to the pain and therefore making it bearable.
The discomfort and desire of wanting to escape are amplify when instead could be diminished by paying attention.
With Social Media we usually collaborate with the “intimate interruptor” and are eager to escape at every chance we have. We sabotage by micro pleasures the fear of getting out most needed dreams done.
Attempt to escape our experience of finitude.
We crave feeling unconstrained.
The answer is stop or accept the urge of the finitude of things, and that escaping to feel unconstrained is just postponing the actual things that matter. Appreciating the everyday feelings and moments no matter how dull or uncomfortable.
Beyond control- we really never have time
Hofstadter’s law or every task assign will take longer to complete even if you consider the law. This means that even if we try to plan our lives moving forward we will never be as content since there will be something else to plan (borrowing time in the future and stressing because of it)
Why bother then? it everything will take longer
The activities that we plan to do resist our planning.
Even with careful planning everything seems to be an attempt to control.
Here is the critic:
Is this an encouragement to stop planning, be more relaxed – the individualistic notion of enjoy the moment and be spontaneous or to recognise what activities need to be planned and controlled. Government and elections.
Most of the activities we actually never had control over and were serendipitous. How can we put ourselves in situations where that could happen?
You are here
We treat time as a means to an end and barely enjoy the activities for their own sake – we live in the future.
Don’t care for the morrow, sufficient to the day is the ever thereof
We are never going to be done. ✔️
This moment could be the last one.
Focus on being too present and failing at that too.
A plan is just a thought
We are living in the moment anyway.
Resting
Why should be resting an excuse to be more productive but instead as a being itself. We feel like resting is another to do list ✅ and the anxiety that comes with it.
Work is also where we escape to deal instead of dealing with our internal and external issues.
The right to be lazy.
Guide to rest- religion and ways to actually rest. Resting is more than not working.
what is your sabbath?
Rules to rest- we need pressure to get ourselves to rest. Intention and preparation. Boosted by habit.
Be off when other people are off
Rest – time to discern A hobby should feel a little embarrassing. Not profit should be gain from it.
The impatient spiral 🌀- the way things as they are
Daoism is about accepting the things we cannot change and being patience about the way things are. The wiser man is the one that accepts.
Our right to be faster – fast, apeed and velocity and the drive that is celebrated when it shouldn’t. We expect things to be fast.
Reading problem and concentration- one sentence, maybe 2 or 3 sentences and then we are drawn to something else. It’s not that we don’t have time to read but that we are inclined to distractions.
Reading takes the time it takes and with many things.
Staying on the bus
Look at a painting for 3 hours since it can be easy to rush so it is easy to not appreciate the complexity of things.
Do we actually take the time??? To master things, to do the work.
- learn to have problems – quality problems
- Radical incrementalism – patience to tolerate
- Originality lies on the far right of unoriginality
The loneliness of a digital nomad
The person that thinks has more time because they can control their schedule might not be as happy as one that doesn’t. Since the ability to enjoy time with others would be predicated on others having the same routine as yours. Same as mobile phones.
Finland on holidays makes more sense when they are all on holidays.
Synchronous vacations and keeping together in time – singing is a great way to get better and go further.
What kind of freedom do we want?
We do need to set boundaries but still individualistic. However we don’t want to relinquish our time and therefore don’t wager organised and make changes.
Cosmic insignificance therapy
5 questions and Carl Young: the best next thing
Appendix:
On 15 December 1933, Carl Jung wrote a reply to a correspondent, Frau V. responding on several questions on the proper conduct of life:
“Dear Frau V. Your questions are unanswerable, because you want to know to live. One lives as one can. There is no single definitely way. If that’s what you want, you had best join the Catholic Church, where they’ll tell you what’s what. By contrast, the individual path is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being itself when you put one foot in front of the other. The sole advice for walking such a path was to quietly do the next and most necessary thing. So as long as you think you don’t yet you know what that is, you still have too much money to spend in useless speculation. . But if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by fate .
