As told by Hannah B.

If you cannot find happiness in the present moment, it’s unlikely that you ever will, no matter how many tasks you check off your ‘To Do’ list.

I was quite impressed with ‘The Antidote’ by Oliver Burkeman a while back, but this past weekend’s reading of ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ was even more fascinating!
Regardless of life’s challenges, spend your time on things that hold intrinsic value for you, rather than chasing distant outcomes that promise happiness. This is your reminder to look for the most meaningful parts of THIS life!

For those who’d rather skip the philosophy and get to the practical suggestions at the back of the book, here they are:

1. Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity by keeping two to-do lists, one open-ended/infinite and one limited to a fixed number of entries, ten at most. (I do this. I use six.) You can’t add a new task to the fixed list until one is completed. A complementary strategy is to establish predetermined time boundaries for your daily work.
2. Serialize. Focus on one big project at a time or, at most, one work project and one nonwork project.
3. Decide in advance what to fail at. Strategic underachievement is okay on a cyclical basis, like if you decide to do the bare minimum at work for the next month in order to focus on a temporary crisis. This replaces the constant pressure to find “balance” with a conscious, managed imbalance that may be more sustainable.
4. Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just what is left to complete. Keep a “to-done list”.
5. Consolidate your caring. Consciously pick your battles in charity, activism and politics. Lots of things may matter but, to make a difference, you must focus your finite capacity for care.
6. Embrace boring, single-purpose technology (like e-ink readers for reading) to help resist distraction. Also switch your phone from color to grayscale to reduce distraction and attention-grabbiness.
7. Seek out novelty in the mundane. Pay more attention to every moment, rather than constantly seeking out novelty and adventure, to make life richer and form more memories without existential overwhelm.
8. Be a “researcher” in relationships. Stay curious. “Curiosity is a stance well-suited to the inherent unpredictability of life with others, because it can be satisfied by their behaving in ways you like or dislike”… true enough!
9. Cultivate instantaneous generosity. If a generous impulse arises in your mind, act on it right away instead of waiting to try to make it perfect. (This one is from meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein.)
10. Practice doing nothing. Meditate. Try to resist the pressure to constantly do things.