We should all get comfortable with accomplishing less.
Restoring our capacity to live sequentially — that is, focusing on one thing after another, in turn, and enduring the confrontation with our human limitations that this inherently entails — may be among the most crucial skills for thriving in the uncertain, crisis-prone future we all face. |
 | | Janet Mac |
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A simple logic underpins most advice on becoming more productive, and on building a more effective and enjoyable relationship with time, and it runs like this: There's far too much to do, so it's important to find ways to accomplish things more quickly and efficiently, or even simultaneously, in order to get through everything that matters, and thus to quell the ubiquitous modern anxiety that you're not doing enough. |
My book "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" explores some of the reasons this approach actually makes matters worse, chief among them the fact that the supply of incoming tasks is effectively infinite, so getting through them faster won't bring calm. Choosing a handful of things to focus on to the exclusion of others is a stance that better fits the reality of our temporal limitations, resulting in both more productivity and more peace. |
So it was something of a shock to realize recently that I remained, in at least one subtle way, addicted to trying to do more than one thing at a time: I never went running, or drove anywhere, or cleaned up the kitchen, without also pressing Play on a podcast or audiobook. This prompted the experiment I write about in a recent guest essay — to try abandoning that habit, and to focus fully on whatever it was I was doing. |
The experience proved surprisingly uncomfortable. It helped me see more clearly that the urges we feel to do more and more things, to multitask or to distract ourselves aren't solely a question of external forces diverting our focus. To some degree, we also actively choose not to show up fully in the moment, because to do so would require us to acknowledge the troubling truth of life as a finite human: that we can be in only one place at a time, and that we'll only ever have the chance to do a tiny proportion of all the things we could potentially do with our lives. |
In this acknowledgment, though, lies freedom. I invite you to read more — ideally without doing anything else at the same time. |
| READ OLIVER'S FULL ESSAY HERE | | |
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