once you deeply grasp that fact that doing everything is impossible, you’ll be newly empowered to resist doing everything, and to focus instead on building the most meaningful life you can
know that you will not achieve peace of mind just by doing more things. Find peace of mind in the present.
stop believing that it might be somehow possible to avoid hard choices about time.
focus on doing a few things that count
filling your life with pleasurable activities proves less satisfying than you’d expect, because the world has an infinite number of experiences to offer, therefore doing a handful of them gets you no closer to a sense of having feasted on life’s possibilities
“Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem. Instead, you get to focus on fully enjoying the tiny slice of experience you actually do have time for - and the freer you are to choose, in each moment, what counts the most.”
“the original Latin word for “decide,” decidere, means “to cut off,” as in slicing away alternatives; it’s a close cousin of words like “homicide” and “suicide””
being able to have any experience is amazing, even if its annoying
we should settling, bc once a decision is made the anxiety is gone
acknowledge the inevitability of discomfort
Chapter 5 starts talking about distraction and specifically social media and internet distraction
“what you pay attention to will define, for you, what realty is”
much of the time we give into distraction, whether its social media or not
something in us wants us to be distracted - what is it ?
we are distracted because we are motivated by the desire to flee something painful about our experience of the present
we are trying to “dull the pain of finitude” by feeling unconstrained
distractions are the place we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitations
to sap distraction of its power, stop expecting things to be otherwise
accept that this unpleasantness is simply what it feels for finite humans to commit ourselves to the kinds of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold
“there is a very down to earth kind of liberation in grasping that there are certain truths about being a limited human from which you’ll never be liberated”
no matter how much you plan, things will never be certain
Worry is when your mind tries to generate security about the future and continues to fail at that task. “The fuel behind worry is the internal demand to know, in advance, that things will turn out fine.”
many spiritual traditions converge on the same advice: confine our attentions to the only portion of time that really is any of our business - this one, here in the present
all a plan is a present moment statement of intent and the future is under no obligation to comply
the moment of truth is always now, not in the future
“life is nothing but a succession of present moments, culminating in death”
you will never feel you have things in perfect working order
Chapter 9 - Rediscovering Rest
“To rest for the sake of rest entails first accepting the fact that this is it: that your days aren’t progressing toward a future state of perfect invulnerable happiness, and that to approach them with such an assumption is systemically to drain our 4,000 weeks of their value”
rest for the sake of rest is going to cause discomfort, which is a sign you should be doing it
Chapter 10 - Impatience
we are inclined to interruption (which is bad)
Reading is an activity that operates according to its own schedule. You can’t hurry it. Reading something properly takes time.
Psychotherapist Stephanie Brown
our modern addiction is to speed, to rushing things
face the truth that you cannot dictate how fast things go - you cannot outrun your anxiety
dig into a challenging project
you can cultivate an appreciation for endurance, hanging in, and putting the next foot forward
give up “demanding instant resolution, instant relief from discomfort and pain, and magical fixes”
have a clear eyed awareness of your limitations - acquire patience
patience is a form of power
derive value from doing itself, instead of deferring fulfillments to the future
do nothing
if you are willing to endure the discomfort of not knowing, a solution will often present itself
Three principles of patience
Develop a taste for having problems
embrace radical incrementalism
stop when your daily time is up. Stopping helps strengthen the muscle of patience
originality lies on the far side of unoriginality
Chapter 12 - The Loneliness of the Digital Nomad
digital nomad lacks shared rhythms required for deep relationships to take root
Chapter 13 Cosmic Insignificance Therapy
“what you do with your life doesn’t matter all that much - and when it comes to how you’re using your finitie time, the universe could absolutely not care less”
whatever you are doing is indistinguishable from nothing at all
Ask yourself five questions
Where in your life or work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort?
Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?
In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be?
In which area of life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you’re doing
How would you spend your days differently if you didn’t care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?