Ten ways to make your time matter
Parent Post
Oliver Burkeman
Accepting our mortality helps us let go of busyness and focus on what’s most important to us in order to live a happier, more meaningful life.
Decide in advance what
Decide in advance what to fail at
You’ll inevitably underachieve at something because your time and energy are finite.
But strategic underachievement—nominating in advance areas of your life where you won’t expect excellence—helps you focus your time and energy more effectively.
For example, you might decide in advance that it’s OK to have a cluttered kitchen while you finish your novel, or to do the bare minimum on a particular work project so that you can spend more time with your children.
To live this way is to replace the high-pressure quest for work-life balance with something more reasonable: a deliberate kind of imbalance.
Consolidate your caringSocial media
Consolidate your caring
Social media exposes us to an unending stream of atrocities and injustices, each of which might have a legitimate claim on our time and our charitable donations, but which add up to something no human could ever effectively address comprehensively.
Once you grasp that fact fully, it’s good to consciously pick your battles in charity, activism, and politics—and devote your spare time only to those specific causes. Focus your capacity for care so you don’t burn out.
Be a researcher in
Be a researcher in relationships
The desire to feel in control of our limited time causes numerous problems in relationships: controlling behavior, commitment-phobia, the inability to listen, boredom, and missing out on communal experiences with others.
When faced with a challenging or boring moment in a relationship, try being curious about the person you’re with, rather than controlling.
Curiosity is a stance well-suited to the inherent unpredictability of life with others because it can be satisfied by their behaving in ways you like or dislike—whereas if you demand a certain result instead, you’ll often be frustrated.
Adopt a “fixed volume”
Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity
You need to make tough choices about what you can realistically get done so that you can prioritize the activities that matter most, instead of reacting to a constant barrage of demands.
One way is to keep two to-do lists—one for everything on your plate and one for the 10 or fewer things that you’re currently working on.
Another strategy is to set a pre-established time boundary for certain types of daily work—for example, to resolve to write from 8 to 11 a.m.—and to make sure you stop when time’s up.
Cultivate instantaneous generosityWhenever a
Cultivate instantaneous generosity
Whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind, give in to it right away rather than putting it off.
Don’t wait to figure out if the recipient deserves your generosity or if you really have the time to be generous right now. Just do it.
The rewards are immediate, too, because generous action reliably makes you feel much happier.
Serialize Focus only
Serialize
Focus only on one big project at a time. Though it’s alluring to try to alleviate the anxiety of having too many responsibilities or ambitions by getting started on them all at once.
Multitasking rarely works well—and you’ll soon find that serializing helps you to complete more projects anyway and helps relieve your anxiety.
Focus on what you’ve
Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just what’s left to do
Since the quest to get everything done is interminable by definition, it’s easy to grow despondent and self-reproachful when you can’t get through your whole to-do list.
One counter-strategy is to keep a “done list,” which starts empty first thing in the morning, but you can gradually fill in throughout the day as you get things done. It’s a cheering reminder that you could have spent the day doing nothing remotely constructive…yet you didn’t.
Practice doing nothing Doing
Practice doing nothing
Doing nothing means resisting the urge to manipulate your experience or the people and things in the world around you, and letting things be as they are.
You can try the “do-nothing” meditation, where you set a timer for 5-10 minutes and then try doing nothing; if you catch yourself doing something—thinking, or even just focusing on your breath—gently let go of it.
As you keep letting go, you’ll increase your ability to do nothing and gradually regain your autonomy. You’ll learn to calm down and make better choices with your brief allotment of life.
The modern discipline of
The modern discipline of time management (or productivity) is depressingly narrow-minded, focused on devising the perfect morning routine or trying to crank through as many tasks as possible while investing all your energy on reaching some later state of well-being and accomplishment
When we recognize the shortness of life—and accept the fact that some things have to be left unaccomplished, whether we like it or not—we are freer to focus on what matters.
Rather than succumbing to the mentality of “better, faster, more,” you can embrace being imperfect and be happier for it.
Here are 10 suggestions about how to live with your limited time in mind.
Embrace boring and single-purpose
Embrace boring and single-purpose technology
Digital distractions allow us to escape to a realm where painful human limitations don’t seem to apply: scrolling idly around online, you need never feel bored, which doesn’t happen while doing work that matters.
You can combat this by making your devices as boring as possible, removing social media apps, and if you dare, email.
It’s also helpful to choose devices with only one purpose, such as the Kindle reader. Otherwise, temptations will be only a swipe away, and you’ll feel the urge to check your screens anytime you’re bored or facing a challenge in your work.
Seek out novelty in
Seek out novelty in the mundane
Children have many novel experiences, and time, therefore, seems slower to them, while the routinization of older people’s lives means that time seems to pass at an ever-increasing rate.
You can combat this by cramming more novel experiences into your life.
An alternative is to pay more attention to every moment, however mundane—to find novelty by plunging more deeply into your present life.
Try going on unplanned walks to see where they lead you, taking up drawing or birdwatching, or playing “I Spy” with a child—whatever draws your attention into the moment more fully.