Treat Your To-Do List Like a River, and Other Mindset Shifts for Making Better Use of Your Time

Note: This is a rebroadcast.

When people think about living more fully and making better use of their time, they typically think of finding some new organizational system they can structure their lives with.

Oliver Burkeman says that what you really need instead are perspective shifts — small, sustainable changes in how you view and approach your day-to-day life. He provides those mindset shifts in his new book, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. And we talk about some of them today on the show, including why you should view life’s tasks and problems like a river instead of a bucket, stop feeling guilt over your “productivity debt,” make peace with your decisions by embracing an unconventional reading of the poem “The Road Not Taken,” aim to do your habits “dailyish,” be more welcoming of interruptions, and practice “scruffy hospitality.”

Resources Related to the Podcast

Oliver‘s previous appearance on the AoM podcast: Episode #748 — Time Management for MortalsAoM Article: Autofocus — The Productivity System That Treats Your To-Do List Like a RiverAoM Podcast #956: Feeling Depressed and Discombobulated? Social Acceleration May Be to BlameSunday Firesides: To-Dos, the Rent We Pay For LivingAoM Podcast #962: The Case for Minding Your Own BusinessAoM Podcast #821: Routines Are OverratedAoM Article: Routines Not Working For You? Try a Daily ChecklistSunday Firesides: Life Is for LivingResonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World by Hartmut Rosa“The Road Not Taken” by Robert FrostThe Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong by David Orr“The Road Less Traveled” — great, short podcast on the alternate interpretation of Frost’s poem

Connect With Oliver Burkeman

Oliver‘s website

:00 Introduction

0:23 Welcome & Book Overview

1:45 Continuation of Four Thousand Weeks

3:40 Why Productivity Makes Us Feel Dead Inside

9:04 The Efficiency Trap

11:09 Productivity Debt

14:56 Treat Your Reading List Like a River

18:58 Your To-Do List Is a Menu, Not a Bucket

23:47 Accepting You'll Always Have Problems

27:43 The Pressure to Solve the World's Problems

34:05 Making Decisions & "The Road Not Taken"

37:32 Daily-ish Habits, Interruptions & Scruffy Hospitality

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