Saved by Keely Adler
The way we view free time is making us less happy
Work, now, demanded to be seen as the real point of existence; leisure was merely an opportunity for recovery and replenishment, for the purposes of further work.
Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
the more you focus on using time well, the more each day begins to feel like something you have to get through, en route to some calmer, better, more fulfilling point in the future, which never actually arrives. The problem is one of instrumentalisation. To use time, by definition, is to treat it instrumentally, as a means to an end, and of course
... See moreOliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.
Societal pressures used to make it relatively easy to take time off: you couldn’t go shopping when the shops weren’t open, even if you wanted to, or work when the office was locked. Besides, you’d be much less likely to skip church, or Sunday lunch with the extended family, if you knew your absence would raise eyebrows. Now, though, the pressures a... See more
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Despite the headline focus on happiness, Robinson’s most unexpected insights were about American discontent. We may constantly complain about our harried schedules, but the real joy-killer seemed to be the absence of any schedule at all. Considerably less happy than the just-rushed-enough, he said, were those with lots of excess time.