Oliver Burkeman
Writer on time, productivity and limitation; wrote Four Thousand Weeks and Meditations for Mortals, and the newsletter The Imperfectionist.
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Where they publish
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 13 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Distraction is not something done to you: you turn to it willingly, to escape the discomfort of the thing you actually care about.
you don’t get dragged away against your will. You surrender willingly.
The truth about distraction by 18 Aug 2021
Blocking apps and personal rules do not cure distraction, because they close the escape route without touching what is being escaped.
This is why most anti-distraction hacks – web-blocking apps, noise-canceling headphones, personal rules – never seem to work very well.
The truth about distraction by 18 Aug 2021
Work that matters requires tolerating discomfort and boredom rather than escaping into distraction.
Consider the possibility that mild discomfort – butterflies in the stomach, a sense of difficulty, a moment of boredom – might simply be the price of doing things you care about.
The truth about distraction by 18 Aug 2021
Show 10 more
Life change never comes from one transforming plan; it comes from small adjustments to the life you already have.
This, in my experience, is the only way personal change ever really happens: by first seeing that it's always a matter of rebuilding the ship mid-ocean, making adjustments to a life you can't ever take back to port or trade for another.
There's no such thing as a fresh start by 16 Aug 2021
A life with a perfect record is not merely unlikely but already impossible, because the years you have spent cannot be undone.
the perfectionist's fantasy of reaching her deathbed with a perfect record of accomplishments under her belt isn't just extremely unlikely, but doomed from the start
There's no such thing as a fresh start by 16 Aug 2021
You are never really multitasking: at any moment you can only be doing one thing, and the strain comes from pretending otherwise.
What's true of both the crisis situation and the daily situation is that at any given moment, you can only ever actually be doing one thing.
List one task, do it, cross it out by 16 Aug 2021
The only thing a productivity system can do for you is help you choose slightly better what to do right now.
In the end, the only point of any personal productivity system, goal-setting technique or "life planning" exercise is to help you make a slightly better decision about what to do, right now
List one task, do it, cross it out by 16 Aug 2021
People cannot thrive while their primary psychological identification is with the news cycle rather than with their own lives.
The trouble is that human beings can't really function, let alone thrive, when their primary psychological identification is with things like "the news cycle" or "history" or "the course of world events."
The news is not your life by 16 Aug 2021
The answer to living inside the news is not to stop reading it but to move your emotional investment back into the part of the world you can actually affect.
But it is an argument for reducing your emotional investment in the world of the news, and reinvesting in your own.
The news is not your life by 16 Aug 2021
There is no phase of life in which the problems are finally solved, and waiting to reach one is the mistake.
That’s why you should give up on trying to reach a phase of life that’s problem-free.
How to stop trying to escape reality by 15 Aug 2021
Nobody can get on top of everything, because you are part of the everything you are trying to get on top of.
The reason you’ll never get on top of everything is because you’re inextricably enmeshed in the "everything" you’ve been struggling to get on top of.
How to stop trying to escape reality by 15 Aug 2021
Nobody can consistently do more than about three or four hours a day of work that demands serious mental focus.
you almost certainly can't consistently do the kind of work that demands serious mental focus for more than about three or four hours a day
The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done by 29 Jul 2021
The valuable skill is stopping and recovering while the work is still unfinished, not the capacity to push yourself harder.
The truly valuable skill here isn't the capacity to push yourself harder, but to stop and recuperate despite the discomfort of knowing that work remains unfinished, emails unanswered, other people's demands unfulfilled.
The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done by 29 Jul 2021
Beliefs others hold too
Work that matters requires tolerating discomfort and boredom rather than escaping into distraction. 2 hold this
Consider the possibility that mild discomfort – butterflies in the stomach, a sense of difficulty, a moment of boredom – might simply be the price of doing things you care about.
The truth about distraction by 18 Aug 2021
Life change never comes from one transforming plan; it comes from small adjustments to the life you already have. 2 hold this
This, in my experience, is the only way personal change ever really happens: by first seeing that it's always a matter of rebuilding the ship mid-ocean, making adjustments to a life you can't ever take back to port or trade for another.
There's no such thing as a fresh start by 16 Aug 2021
What is a korrent?
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Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
About the English under a post
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