Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

The Buddhist teacher Susan Piver points out that it can be surprisingly radical and discomfiting, for many of us, to ask how we’d enjoy spending our time.9 But at the very least, you shouldn’t rule out the possibility that the answer to that question is an indication of how you might use your time best.

5. How would you spend your days differently if you didn’t care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?

Truly doing justice to the astonishing gift of a few thousand weeks isn’t a matter of resolving to “do something remarkable” with them. In fact, it entails precisely the opposite: refusing to hold them to an abstract and overdemanding standard of remarkableness, against which they can only ever be found wanting, and taking them instead on their own

What would you do differently with your time, today, if you knew in your bones that salvation was never coming – that your standards had been unreachable all along, and that you’ll therefore never manage to make time for all you hoped you might?