2022-11-30

• I’m listening to a good book about time management. It’s called Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals The book comes from my friend Rob. I’ll share one thing that’s cool about my setup with Rob before talking more about the book. Rob and I are in the same “Amazon family” so we share all our audiobooks with each other. So this one just showed up at the top of my library one day and I didn’t have to buy it myself! I’d been meaning to check it out and finally found the time this week (so to speak). And it’s pretty good! These days, I’m a little self conscious about picking up “yet another productivity book.” I’m coming to realize that a focus on “productivity” is often a cover for refusing to seriously engage with the idea that there are things in life that would be fun/cool/meaningful to do that I will not do. Fortunately, this is exactly what this book talks about. And it does a good job. Some idea highlights
  • There’s a story in the book about Warren Buffett. I think it’s a somewhat well-known story, but I had forgotten some important details. A rando once asked Buffett for advice: “hey Warren, how do I become a successful person like you?” Buffett paused, looked down pensively, stroked his beard, took 3 deep breaths, and then said: “write down the top 25 most important things you want to accomplish in your life. Order them from most important to least important. Look at the top 5 things. Those are the things that should receive all of your attention. Now look at the remaining 20 things. Those are the things you need to not only set aside, but you need to actively build walls to keep them from distracting you. Those 20 things are important enough to look attractive as things to focus on, but they aren’t at the top of the list.” I enjoy these anecdotes, even if they are apocryphal. I had heard this one before but had forgotten the part where you need to not only set aside the lesser important things but you need to actively defend against them due to their seductiveness.
    
• Uh oh! I’m out of time for more writing! I liked the stuff about constraints being the thing that makes life’s choices meaningful in the first place! Doing everything would remove a lot of the significance of the things we choose to do with the limited time we have! Exclamation points due to urgency!

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