5 Posts found for Author: Oliver Burkeman

Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem. Letting go of all the things you haven’t done, but imagine you could do, lets you focus more intensely on the things you are doing.

Authors: James Surowiecki, Oliver Burkeman | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management

[Oliver Burkeman recommends] abandoning the delusion that time is something you can manage successfully. Trying to live as efficiently as possible, Burkeman argues, is both futile and self-defeating. There is always more to do, always another small task to complete, and, paradoxically, the better we get at completing tasks, the faster new ones arise. Obsessing over time management therefore means spending your time trying, and … [ Read more ]

Authors: James Surowiecki, Oliver Burkeman | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management

The solution to imposter syndrome is to see that you are one. […] The lesson to be drawn isn’t that we’re doomed to chaos. It’s that you – unconfident, self-conscious, all-too-aware-of-your-flaws – potentially have as much to contribute to your field, or the world, as anyone else.

Humanity is divided into two: on the one hand, those who are improvising their way through life, patching solutions … [ Read more ]

Author: Oliver Burkeman | Source: The Guardian | Subjects: Career, Personal Improvement

The capacity to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower. It’s shocking to realise how readily we set aside even our greatest ambitions in life, merely to avoid easily tolerable levels of unpleasantness.

Author: Oliver Burkeman | Source: The Guardian | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” We’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly gets bogged down in our narrow preferences for security and control. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response. You tend to just know whether, say, leaving or remaining … [ Read more ]

Author: Oliver Burkeman | Source: The Guardian | Subjects: Happiness, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior