Sublime

To remember how little you matter, on a cosmic timescale, can feel like putting down a heavy burden that most of us didn’t realize we were carrying in the first place.

1. Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity.

The second piece of advice is to resist the urge to stockpile knowledge. At least where non-fiction sources are concerned, it’s easy to fall into the assumption that the point of reading or listening to things is to add to your storehouse of knowledge and insights, like a squirrel hoarding nuts, in preparation for a future when you’ll finally get t

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.

we naturally tend to make decisions about our daily use of time that prioritise anxiety-avoidance instead. Procrastination, distraction, commitment-phobia, clearing the decks and taking on too many projects at once are all ways of trying to maintain the illusion that you’re in charge of things. In a subtler way, so too is compulsive worrying, which