The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1533
A snippet on time management from the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
"the average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short... Assuming you live to be eighty, you’ll have had about four thousand weeks."
Lee Byron made a visual essay for this book, and upon inputting my DOB, I was told I have lived 1,164 of the weeks. That's almost 30% of my 4000 weeks on this Earth. What will I do with the 70% I have left?
No matter what I do, these tools will help me approach them in a more healthy, earthly manner.
- Adopt a fixed volume approach to productivity. Establish predetermined boundaries for daily work.
- Serialize: focus on one big project at a time.
- Decide in advance what to fail at
- Focus on your what you've completed, not just on what's left to complete. Keep a "done" list
- Consolidate care. Consciously choose which causes to support
- Embrace boring & single purpose technology
- Seek out novelty in the mundane. Pay more attention to every moment.
- Be a researcher in relationships; deliberately adopt an attitude of curiosity with others.
- Cultivate instantaneous generosity; act on generous impulses immediately
- Practice doing nothing; bear the discomfort of not acting