When I heard about this book, I was intrigued by the idea of a time management book more about your lifetime rather than getting things done. I was not disappointed. Here are the take-aways I found the most interesting.

  • Often, you’re looking at your phone to escape an uncomfortable/boring situation.
  • If you focus totally on the current uncomfortable situation (accept you are there, and life is full of uncomfortable situations, rather than trying to escape) it will become bearable. As finite humans, we don’t get to dictate the course of events.
  • Having tricky problems means you’re alive, it’s the normal state. Life “is a process of engaging with problem after problem, giving each one the time it requires … the presence of problems in your life isn’t an impediment to a meaningful existence but the substance of one.”
  • Don’t wait for some future perfection when you get X, Y or Z or on top of things. There is always more to do, and things are always broken, and there will always be far more to do than you have time for. It is fine to neglect many things. Resign yourself to this finite reality. Serially choose one or a few things to focus on.
  • “Pay yourself first” – do what you really want to do first with your time each day, the rest will work out. Otherwise there won’t be time for what you want to do after doing the rest.
  • You don’t have time, your life is made up of time, “you are time”.
  • Making a decision/choice is liberating as then there is only one path forward. It is an affirmation – ie, you’ve chosen how to spend your time (no matter if it is earning money to support your family, playing with the kids, buying a house, or going hiking).
  • Don’t go with most comfortable option, think which grow or diminish you as a person.
  • If you want to feel like life is not going so fast as you get older, do more new things rather than follow routine – explore somewhere new, take a different route to work, take up a new hobby, etc.
  • “Attention is the beginning of devotion… you can’t truly love a partner or a child, dedicate yourself to a career or to a cause – or just savour the pleasure of a stroll in the park – except to the extent that you can hold your attention on the object of your devotion to being with.” — Mary Oliver
  • Notice you are already living in the moment anyway, like it or not. Trying self-consciously to “live in the moment” will fail.
  • Moments of bliss: enjoy a hobby where time passes without you noticing and you have no hope of achieving acclaim or profit. Freedom to pursue something you enjoy for no other reason.
  • Herzen: “Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up… but a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what only lives for a day… Life’s bounty is in its flow. Later is too late”.
  • Refuse to hold yourself to “an abstract and over-demanding standard of remarkableness.. drop back from godlike fantasies of cosmic significance into the experience of life as it concretely and finitely – and often enough, marvellously – really is.”
  • “No matter how much you plan or fret.. you can’t know that things will turn out all right” – there’s no real certainty so stop trying to manufature it.
  • A plan is “an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply”. Wonder what will happen next, rather than demand it to be as you want it to be.
  • You coming into existence at all, and most of your life is a highly unlikely series of events of which you had no control. So relax 🙂
  • You can put things in place to increase the chances of a happy outcome.. but there is no certainty in anything, or that things will turn out as you predicted.
  • When the uncontrollable future arrives we’ll have what it takes – we’ve got this far!
  • So “I don’t mind what happens.”