Attention is your most valuable resource - repurpose

Attention is the most valuable resource you have, one could argue. Attention is what you decide to do with your limited willpower reservoir. There is abundance in the world of attention, and your attention is drained by every activity in which you decide to partake. There is a constant tension between the finitude of existence and the infinity of potential things to do. Time management means coming to terms with that tension, and contemptibly choosing what not to do.

According to Oliver Burkeman, there are four key struggles with time management:

Busyness

Efficiency is not the answer to getting more things done and eradicating your psychological discomfort when facing the gap between what you deem important and what you are actually allocating time to. Efficiency is a trap. When you become more efficient, you increase your level of busyness on unimportant stuff. If you become more efficient at emails, you increase your time spent on emails because now conversations flow almost instantaneously and you get more emails to answer.

The joy of missing out

Missing out is what makes life worth living in the first place. By not doing something, you are choosing to do something else. Possibilities are endless, and your life is finite. Missing out is what makes your life worth living because it lets you accept imperfection. Imperfection is life. When making decisions, you will never have all the information you need, so you are called to satisfice and adjust along the way. That’s the joy of missing out: being happy with the imperfect now instead of craving a utopian perfect future.

Decision making

Making decisions is a commitment to imperfect actions in actuality, as opposed to fantasizing about your perfect future without taking any action in the present. Developing a habit of making decisions, even if we will never have all the information needed, is a component of a great life. Decisions bear consequences. Hence they bear responsibility. That’s part of a well-lived life.

Limiting work in progress

Multitasking feels more psychologically comforting than focusing on one single thing. That is one reason why we may multitask. Multitasking is used as a way to escape the pain of being finite, as Oliver Burkeman asserts. This concept reminds me of the difference between strategy and planning (Martin, 2022): strategy is full of assumptions and high risk; planning is linear and lower risk.

Watch the “time management for mortals” youtube video here.