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Why time management is ruining our lives

theguardian.com

11–20 of 212 posts

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#11
post #8
post #4

I manage my time by stopping reading after a few sections when I realize that the article does not contain information that will matter to me for real. It's actually quite simple. Only do things you really want to do and try to do it well. Be nice to others and be nice to yourself. Don't waste time reading stuff which is boring but... "stay hungry... stay foolish"

Why should one stay hungry? What about conquering one's insatiability, and becoming content?

Then you lose your drive to move forward. Then zen feeling of being content is not mush different from being dead.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#12
I suspect that the notion of managing one's inbox creates a sort of kruger-dunning effect with the inbox owner in terms of perceived productivity.

I've given up active or structured management of my inbox : I read a few times during the work day, try to keep up, but don't get worried about missing 40% of things that come through.

I'm at-ease with the notion that important communications have a way of finding me (email, slack, skype, sms, phone, twitter ...)

On the flip side of the coin I have a fairly unstructured way of finding the weird and surprising and personal by management-by-walking-around, going to the occasional meetup, the dog park, hosting parties at my house, scanning HN comments and reddit.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should one stay hungry? What about conquering one's insatiability, and becoming content?

Then you lose your drive to move forward. Then zen feeling of being content is not mush different from being dead.

Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#14
post #4

I manage my time by stopping reading after a few sections when I realize that the article does not contain information that will matter to me for real. It's actually quite simple. Only do things you really want to do and try to do it well. Be nice to others and be nice to yourself. Don't waste time reading stuff which is boring but... "stay hungry... stay foolish"

> Be nice to others and be nice to yourself.

> Don't waste time reading stuff which is boring but... "stay hungry... stay foolish"

this!

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#15

Tolstoy, 1885: - Most important time is now; - Most important people are the ones you're with; - Most important task is helping them. __ Lots of people focus way, way too much on a past the may have never been, or at the least, will never change - and a future that may never be, or will feel different when it finally arrives as reality.

Tolstoy was hardly the first to say something like that. The Buddha said roughly the same thing ~24 centuries earlier.

Sage advice no matter who it's from.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#16
My favorite quote from the article:

> One of the sneakier pitfalls of an efficiency-based attitude to time is that we start to feel pressured to use our leisure time “productively”, too – an attitude which implies that enjoying leisure for its own sake, which you might have assumed was the whole point of leisure, is somehow not quite enough.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you lose your drive to move forward. Then zen feeling of being content is not mush different from being dead.

Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want.

Delusion is asserting that you've found some objective measure of happiness that can be generalized to everyone.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#18

Tolstoy, 1885: - Most important time is now; - Most important people are the ones you're with; - Most important task is helping them. __ Lots of people focus way, way too much on a past the may have never been, or at the least, will never change - and a future that may never be, or will feel different when it finally arrives as reality.

    > - Most important time is now;
I've been thinking about this occasionally -- it never quite sat right with me.

Then, recently on a podcast (I think it was Marc Maron, can't remember the guest) they were talking about this, but suggested instead of living in the now, one should ONLY live in both the past and the future -- "those who suffer from dementia and similar diseases live in-the-now and its terrible".

In a certain sense the past and future are all we have to interact about as now can be pretty illusive. So, with that in mind, the question becomes how to make it constructive and interesting.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#19
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should one stay hungry? What about conquering one's insatiability, and becoming content?

Then you lose your drive to move forward. Then zen feeling of being content is not mush different from being dead.

A pronounced theme in the article was disregarding this superficial drive to nowhere and instead focusing on philosophising on your own existence.

I doubt many of us know what it's like to be dead but to think its Zen is actually a nice thought.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#20
post #15

Tolstoy, 1885: - Most important time is now; - Most important people are the ones you're with; - Most important task is helping them. __ Lots of people focus way, way too much on a past the may have never been, or at the least, will never change - and a future that may never be, or will feel different when it finally arrives as reality.

Tolstoy was hardly the first to say something like that. The Buddha said roughly the same thing ~24 centuries earlier. Sage advice no matter who it's from.

Curious, what specific source are you referencing?

I've restated Tolstoy's words from his short story, "The Three Questions."

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