2023 will forever be remembered (by no one at all) as The Year I Read Oliver Burkeman.
Below are three links to three short-ish articles by the aforementioned Olly B, all warning us against the ironclad belief that we are immortal, a common belief that lures us into dangerous waters of endless distraction.
I am aware of the contradiction: more content to remind us to reserve our time for what’s important.
So while you could open all these links in new tabs to join the serried ranks of recipes for Mexican fire ant soufflé, podcasts on crypto meta AI parody gameshows and videos about the perils of PVC double glazing that, gasping for attention, will all simultaneously autoplay on double speed in a dystopic Honey Smacks symphony of post-capitalist shock and awe, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that approach.
Instead, gently ponder my compression of the articles into sentence-length maxims that might transform your life for the wondrous better. (And the links are there for those who love to flirt with deep water.)
- Ringfence 3-4 hours of focussed ‘deep’ work per day (AND NO MORE)
- You can only ever be doing one thing at a time, so your new to do list is only ever one task long: do that one task, then cross it out and add another single task to do
- The internet / news / library is a river to be dipped into, not a bucket to be emptied