Ten tools for embracing your finitude
- Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity. It’s better to begin from the assumption that tough choices are inevitable and to focus on making them consciously and well.
- Focus on one big project at a time and see it to completion before moving on to what’s next.
- Decide in advance what to fail at. You’ll inevitably end up underachieving at something, simply because your time and energy are finite.
- Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just on what’s left to complete.
- Consciously pick your battles in charity, activism, and politics.
- Embrace boring and single-purpose technology; choose devices with only one purpose, such as the Kindle e-reader.
- Seek out novelty in the mundane. Pay more attention to every moment, however mundane.
- When presented with a challenging or boring moment, try deliberately adopting an attitude of curiosity.
- Whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind—to give money, check in on a friend, send an email praising someone’s work—act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later.
- Practice being ok with doing nothing.
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