Waste Your Time, Your Life May Depend on It
Why, exactly, are we rendered so uncomfortable by concentrating on things that matter—the things we thought we wanted to do with our lives—that we’d rather flee into distractions, which, by definition, are what we don’t want to be doing with our lives? Certain specific tasks might be so unpleasant or intimidating that a preference for avoiding them... See more
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
As this modern mindset came to dominate, wrote Mumford, “Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.” In its place came the dictatorship of the clock, the schedule, and the Google Calendar alert; Marilynne Robinson’s “joyless urgency” and the constant feeling that you ought to be getting more done. The trouble with
... See moreOliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
The first principle of democratic socialism is that we measure our wealth—both individual and collective—in terms of socially available free time. Our free time depends on social and institutional forms because it does not concern a mere quantity of time. Rather, our quantity of free time is inseparable from the quality of our free time, which requ
... See moreMartin Hägglund • This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom
There will always be too much to do – and this realisation is liberating. Today more than ever, there’s just no reason to assume any fit between the demands on your time – all the things you would like to do, or feel you ought to do – and the amount of time available. Thanks to capitalism, technology and human ambition, these demands keep increasin
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