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Summary:

Why does the achievement that follows busyness and hustle fade so quickly? Why is it so unfulfilling? Inevitably, the to do list fills up again, there is a new project, or a new goal. Do we strap on our boot straps and hit the gas pedal again – hustle till it’s done? Burkeman presents a new lens to the argument and helps paint a picture of why hustle culture is both an alarming lifestyle choice and doomed to failure. In this excellent book, Burkeman gives language to describe why our approach to time management is inherently flawed and based in delusion. He leaves you not with a refreshing solution but rather a perspective shifting philosophy of time management that is based in reality.

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Important Points:

Finitude

Burkeman reminds us that the popularity of hustle culture is simply a rebranding of an age old problem of busyness.

…busyness has been rebranded as “hustle” – relentless work not as a burden to be endured but as an exhilarating lifestyle choice, worth boasting about on social media. In reality, though, it’s the same old problem, pushed to an extreme: the pressure to fit ever-increasing quantities of activity into a stubbornly non increasing quantity of time.

To counter and deny our finitude, we cling to the idea that we can master our time. We delude ourselves into thinking that with just “the perfect system” or once I finally clear this to do list or any other such distraction – that we can master time and accomplish everything we want and further we’ll arrive at that place where we have accomplished everything and we can finally rest and live peaceful happy lives. 

The fundamental problem is that this attitude toward time sets up a rigged game in which it’s impossible ever to feel as though you’re doing well enough. Instead of simply living our lives as they unfold in time-instead of just being time, you might say – it becomes difficulty not to value each moment primarily according to its usefulness for some future good, or for some future state of relaxation you hope to reach once your tasks are finally “out of the way”…

This actually has been taught to us by culture – to prioritize future benefits over current enjoyments. Our urging to master time and use our present moment for some future benefit puts our attention elsewhere denying us the gifts of the present moment and living immediately. 

The Procrastinator and the Optimizer

The procrastinator and the optimizer both sacrifice the present moment for a future state albeit in two different ways. The procrastinator resists completing mistakes or moves onto another project – adding to the to do list to resist the finitude of his life. The optimizer, in the same vein, tinkers with systems and hacks to get more done faster – to speed through the work to get to the other side of the idealized future. Both the procrastinator and optimizer work hard to avoid fully expressing the reality in which they find themselves. 

…we recoil from the notion that this is it – that this life, with all its flaws and inescapable vulnerabilities, its extreme brevity, and our limited influence over how it unfolds, is the only one we’ll get a shot at. Instead, we mentally fight against the way things are…Our troubled relationship with time arises largely from the same effort to avoid the painful constraints of reality. And most of our strategies for becoming more productive make things worse, because they’re really just ways of furthering avoidance.

…Denying reality never works though. It may provide some immediate relief, because it allows you to go on thinking that at some point in the future you might, at last, feel totally in control. But it can’t ever bring the sense that you’re doing enough – that you are enough – because it defines ‘enough’ as a kind of limitless control that no human can attain. Instead, the endless struggle leads to more anxiety and a less fulfilling life. 

Embrace

We must confront the paradox of limitation and embrace the finitude of our lives.

…the more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more you confront the facts of finitude instead – and work with them, rather than against them – the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.

In practical terms, a limit-embracing attitude to time means organizing your days with the understanding that you definitely won’t have time for everything you want to do, or that other people want you to do – and so, at the very least, you can stop beating yourself up for failing. Since hard choices are unavoidable, what matters is learning to make them consciously, deciding what to focus on and what to neglect, rather than letting them get made by default…

Every decision to use a portion of time on anything represents the sacrifice of all the other ways in which you could have spent that time, but didn’t – and to willingly make that sacrifice is to take a stand, without reservation, on what matters most to you.

We can confront the limitation of our time in an alternative and more liberating way: Identifying our priorities and changing our relationship with time. Burkeman suggests that rather than forcing time to fit into allocated blocks, to find the ultimate system and hustle to accomplish everything you want – you can relinquish your hold and approach life with the mentality of letting time use you.

…Approaching life not as an opportunity to implement your predetermined plans for success but as a matter of responding to the needs of your place and moment in history.

It is fruitless to resist the finitude of time, to delude yourself into thinking you can accomplish it all.

…so long as you continue to respond to impossible demands on your time by trying to persuade yourself that you might one day find some way to do the impossible, you’re implicitly collaborating with those demands. Whereas once you deeply grasp that they are impossible, you’ll be newly empowered to resist them, and to focus instead on building the most meaningful life you can, in whatever situation you’re in.

Embracing the limits of our lives means making hard choices and choosing which ‘balls to let drop, which people to disappoint, which cherished ambitions to abandon, which roles to fail at’. Contrast this with the contemporary advice where we tell ourselves that if we could just do more or get more done

We try to “…address our busyness by making ourselves busier still

Solving the problem with more busyness only begets more busyness – perpetuating the cycle of speed, overwhelm, and burnout. What remains when you begin to embrace the reality of limits and to let go of the idea that you will achieve a state in the future where you will feel peace of mind and accomplish all of your demands is peace of mind in the present

…Once you stop investing in the idea that you might one day achieve peace of mind that way, it becomes easier to find peace of mind in the present, in the midst of overwhelming demand, because you’re no longer making your peace and dependent on dealing with all the demands

…The only route to psychological freedom is to let go of the limit-denying fantasy of getting it all done and instead to focus on doing a few things that count.

Prioritization

Recognizing the finitude of time means choosing a few things to prioritize. Burkeman highlights a few principles to help us prioritize and actually make sure we take action on those items rather than procrastinating our time away – another self-delusion tactic where we essentially evade the responsibility of our finite time and debate ourselves into thinking that we’ll always have more time later.

1. Pay yourself first

…the only way to be sure it will happen is to do some of it today, no matter how little, and no matter how many genuinely big rocks may be begging for your attention

• Work on your most important project for the first hour of each day
• Protect your time by scheduling “meetings” with yourself, making time in your calendars so that your commitments can’t intrude

2. Limit your work in progress

• Work on no more than 3 items

…The most appealing way to resist the truth about your finite time is to initiate a large number of projects at once; that way you get to feel as though you’re keeping plenty of irons in the fire and making progress on all fronts – because each time a project starts to feel different or frightening, or boring, you can bounce off to a different one instead. You get to preserve your sense of being in control of things, but at the cost of never founding anything important.

3. Resist the allure of middling priorities

“ You need to learn how to start saying no to things you do want to do, with the recognition that you only have one life”

Middling priorities are those priorities that are things you want to do but distract you from the other more important priorities, enough so to sabotage your progress on those priorities. 

…they’re the ambitions insufficiently important to him to form the core of his life yet seductive enough to distract him from the ones that matter most.

Burkeman highlights the difference between the good and bad procrastinator. He describes the bad procrastinator as one who ignores the finitude of life and deludes himself by taking on too many projects or is consistently switching between these projects to avoid the truth of his limitations. The good procrastinator recognizes their limitations and decides as wisely as possible “what tasks to focus on and what to neglect”.

Personal Note

So much wisdom packed into this book.  Ultimately this commonplace book practice is to reinforce what I read for myself but also share my thoughts with friends and family. To be transparent, I started transcribing these notes from my loose leaf notebook in January. Since then I have bounced around to my other “middling priorities” putting out fires and jumping on and off projects. I’ve returned to it only after I stopped stretching in multiple directions. A perennial issue for me but I do not bemoan my constant shifting. Lessons from this book remind me to not waste time lamenting and instead, when I return to this reality of my finitude, return to cruising speed and start taking action. Do yourself a favor and read this book. 

Quotations:

…The only route to psychological freedom is to let go of the limit-denying fantasy of getting it all done and instead to focus on doing a few things that count.

…the only way to be sure it will happen is to do some of it today, no matter how little, and no matter how many genuinely big rocks may be begging for your attention

…the more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more you confront the facts of finitude instead – and work with them, rather than against them – the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.

Similar Books/Further Reading:

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman

Help!: How to Be Slightly Happier, Slightly More Successful and Get a Bit More Done by Oliver Burkeman

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Image Source: Google Images

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