Summary

The modern phenomenon of time orientation leads to an efficiency trap wherein we are too caught up in keeping up with the Joneses. Realize you can’t do everything; therefore, essentialism is paramount. Follow Warren Buffet’s 5/25 rule: set three key priorities, procrastinate on the others, and strictly avoid priorities 6-25 as they are the most seductive but not important enough. Finally, embrace patience and take time to live in the moment - you only have four thousand weeks here.

Key Takeaways

• Efficiency trap: any saves in efficiency will be offset by increasing demands
• Set 3 key priorities, procrastinate on the others, and strictly avoid priorities 6-25
• Be patient. Sometimes the road commonly traveled must be patiently followed before the novel, exciting, exploratory, unique part arrives. Doesn’t always have to be unoriginal / unique from the start
• Smell the flowers: take time to live in the moment and enjoy what’s good in life

“Life is a succession of transient experiences, valuable in themselves, which you’ll miss if you’re completely focused on the destination which they might be leading”

10 tools for embracing your finitude

1. Productivity as fixed-volume: time box work, have a fixed # of active TODOs
2. Serialize: no parallel tasks
3. Decide in advance what to fail at / deprioritize
4. Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just what’s left to complete
5. Consolidate your caring: worry about fewer things (eg. social media)
6. Embrace technological simplicity to reduce distraction
7. Seek out novelty in the mundane: enjoy the simple things
8. Be a researcher in relationships
9. Cultivate instantaneous generosity
10. Practice doing nothing

Notes

Introduction

• Modern life’s efficiency affordances lead to fitting more tasks in, more stressful lives
• John Maynard Keynes prediction in 1930 that in 100 years labor-saving technologies → only working 15 hours a week
  • Instead we’re caught keeping up with the Joneses

Part 1: Choosing to Choose

1 Limit-Embracing Life

• Time has only recently become a fundamental concept (eg. medieval)
• Task vs. time orientation
• Time has become an asset to trade, master instead of just living in it
• Productivity geek: trying to master time + life
• Endless, unachievable goal: try and fit in more until failure
• Need to learn to consciously made hard choices

2 The Efficiency Trap

• Efficiency trap: any saves in efficiency will be offset by increasing demands
• Crossing items off bucket list can be just as demanding as work - world has a seemingly unending list of experiences to offer
• Often ends up being less fulfilling and enriching than expected
• Essentialism
• Friction isn’t always bad: can forge relationships, encourage thought
• Joy of missing out: realization you can’t do everything (finite life) and that’s what makes your choice worthwhile and fulfilling

3 Facing Finitude

• The finitude of life defines us
• We are not living in a time, we are a time
• Decision means to cut off choices
• Even the best life results in having to make limiting choices

4 Becoming a Better Procrastinator

• Pay yourself first: Work on most important projects at beginning of day (schedule it)
• Procrastinate on less important things
• Have a set number (3) key priorities and add all others to a queue
• 5/25 Warren Buffett Rule: rank top 25 life priorities and strictly avoid 6-25 (most seductive but not important enough)
• Need to start saying no to things you do want to do
• Settling: must be done in all facets of life in order to make way for other priorities

5 Watermelon Problem

• Unforeseen distractions are the greatest thief of productivity
• Bottom-up attention: distraction necessary for survival (eg. attacking tiger)
• Online is a machine for getting you to care about what you didn’t want to care about

6 Intimate Interruptor

• Distraction / procrastination to avoid something painful
• Why does something we want to do seem so boring or intimidating?
• Because it’s painful and forced us to face limitations / choice - have to embrace the discomfort, focus wholeheartedly on the task / experience at hand

Part 2: Beyond Control

7 We Never Really Have Time

• Hofstadter’s law: any task will take longer than expected, even accounting for this law
• We simply can’t control the future
• Plan: a present moment statement of intent, current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy modest influence over future

8 You Are Here

• “We treat everything in life valuable insofar as it lays the groundwork for something else”
• We’re always striving for the goal in front of us (this is a good thing?)
• “Life is a succession of transient experiences, valuable in themselves, which you’ll miss if you’re completely focused on the destination which they might be leading”
• By trying to be in the moment you can take yourself out of it. Don’t consciously try to savor the moment?

9 Rediscovering Rest

• We have more free time than ever: ~5h/day
• Feel pressure to use free time productively
• The sabbath used to force us to take a day off, enjoy the gifts of god
• Atelic activity: done for their own sake, not in order to achieve a particular goal (eg. walking through unmarked forest trial)
• Hobby that you’re embarrassed of - likely a more genuine, atelic hobby

10 The Impatience Spiral

• The increasing efficiency provided by modern day maddens us as we get ever closer to the asymptote of efficiency
• Need for speed similar to alcoholism: anxious about keeping up → faster → spiral

11 Staying on the Bus

• Patience has a passive connotation
• Patience: being able to clear the mind and enjoy current moment rather than striving
• Eg. Harvard art professor assignment to stare at piece of art for 3 hours straight unbroken
• 3 principles of patience:
  • Develop a taste for having problems
  • Embrace radical incrementalism: don’t binge on task at risk of losing patience and getting frustrated
  • Originality lies of the far side of unoriginality: sometimes the road commonly traveled must be patiently followed before the novel, exciting, exploratory, unique part arrives. Don’t always have to be unoriginal / unique from the start

12 The Loneliness of the Digital Nomad

• Free Time (or time in general) is only valuable when it’s in sync with other people
• Time is not meant to be hoarded but rather shared
• A digital nomad lacks the shared rhythms required to forge deep relationships

13 Cosmic Insignificance Therapy

• Think: what would maximize the worthwhileness of your time?
• Cosmic insignificance therapy: Entirety of modern civilization only 60 lifetimes, everyone plays basically zero effect
• Egocentricity bias: attributing more value to current timespan as if point of all history
• Everyone is destined to fit their role - much like a chair is for sitting, not boiling tea, but still has real value

14 The Human Disease

• Where in your life / work are you pursuing comfort where what’s needed is a little discomfort?
• Are you judging yourself by productivity standards which are impossible to meet?
• In what ways have you you not accepted you’re who you are and not who you ought to be?
• How would you spend days differently if you know you won’t live to see fruits of your labor (eg. Extraterrestrial search SETI)