Irina Bălan's Key Ideas from Four Thousand Weeks
by Oliver Burkeman

Fix a hard upper limit to the things you allow yourself to work on at any given time.

Working on everything is simply not an option.

You need to start saying no to things you do want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life.

Make a top 25 of the things you most want in life. Focus on the top 5 and completely ignore the 20. They distract you from what matters most.

Procrastination has to do not with how much we'll be able to do in the time available, but rather that we won't have enough talent to produce work of sufficient quality.

It prevents us from making the work that matters most to us.

It's a strategy of emotional avoidance

At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been.

Some Zen Buddhists hold that the entirety of human suffering can be boiled down to this effort to resist paying full attention to the way things are going, because we wish they were going differently, or because we wish we felt more in control of the process. 

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.

You don't get to dictate the course of events.

And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality's constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.

Hopefully, when the future arrives, we'll have what it takes to weather it.

If you're willing to endure the discomfort of not knowing, a solution will always present itself.

Rather than race towards a solution, let reality unfold at its own speed.

We find ourselves living in the future , locating the 'real' value of our life in some time that we haven't yet reached, and never will.

Develop a taste for having problems

(problems are the very substance of life)

Embrace radical incrementalism

(tolerate the fact that you won't produce much on a daily basis, but produce more over the longterm)

(be willing to stop when your daily time is up - help strengthen the muscle of patience that will allow you to return to your work again and again)

Originality lies at the far side of unoriginality

(stay in the trial-and-error phase of copying others, learn new skills and accumulate experience)

(the willingness to stop and be where you are, make the most of whatever part of the journey)

You won't put a dent in the universe.

It's a relief to be reminded of your insignificance.

The things you are already doing are more meaningful than the things you're supposed to be doing.

... of being in control

... that with more work you could meet other people's limitless demands

... that painful experiences aren't coming your way

... that this isn't really it.

The average human life is terrifyingly short and this is cause for relief. Let go of the quest to become optimised. Just roll up your sleeves and start work on what's possible.

1.A "fixed volume" approach to productivity (predetermined time boundaries for work + two to do lists (one closed and one open, keep max. 10 items on your closed one, add things from the open one only after completing tasks in the closed one)

2.Focus on one big project at a time (postpone everything that you can, but one thing; the satisfaction from completing one big project will make the anxiety seem worth wile)

3.Decide in advance what to fail at (strategic underachievement, conscious form of imbalance, underperform in some things on purpose, come back to them later)

4.Focus on what you've already completed (keep a 'done' list, the motivating power of small wins, fight the productivity debt and the wish to reach a zero balance by evening)

5.Stop caring for too many things (social media, news, logic of attention economy)

6.Embrace boring technology (single function)

7.Seek out novelty in the mundane (pay attention to everyday things)

8.Curiosity in relationships (your goals isn't to achieve something, but figure out who the other human is)

9.Instant generosity (if you feel like giving a praise or a gift, act on impulse and do it)

10.Practise doing nothing

"I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot sit quietly in their own chamber."

Blaise Pascal