Four Thousand Weeks (Oliver Burkeman, 2021) - Notes by Sacha Chua 2024-11-02-03

• The faster you go, the faster things get. ex: email
• The more you try to fit in, the less time you have for what's important.
  • impossible standards
• Accept that you'll never feel on top of things.
• Infinite possibilities: existential overwhelm
  • the joy of missing out
• Face our limits
• It's amazing to be here at all. We get to choose!
  • (also: cosmic insignificance)
• Control over time vs freedom in the constraints of community
  • Leisure in sync with others
• Distraction: fleeing the present; our limits are uncomfortable
  • Accept the discomfort of not knowing. (sometimes sitting with something long enough → insight)
• I don't mind what happens.
  • amor fati
• Tips:
  1. Develop a taste for having problems
  2. Embrace radical incrementalism
  3. Unoriginality: stay on the bus
• The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.
• Fantasizing vs living
• Settle, burn the bridge
• Q:
  1. Uncomfortable enlargement vs. comfortable diminishment?
  2. Impossible standards?
  3. Yet to accept that you are who you are?
  4. Holding back until you feel you know what you're doing?
  5. What if you didn't care about seeing the results?
• Tools:
  1. fixed volume
  2. Serialize.
  3. Decide what to fail at
  4. Done list
  5. Pick your battles in caring
  6. Boring, 1-purpose tech
  7. Novelty in mundone
  8. Curiosity
  9. Instant generosity [impulse]
  10. Practice doing nothing
• Childhood is not just preparation for adulthood
• Getting the hang of hopelessness
  • Do the next right thing