Having read quite a few self-improvement books over the years, this one didn't teach me a fully new concept I haven't heard before.
But having said that, it has encapsulated several concepts I've liked from before reading this, and maybe given them a different name.
In a nutshell, it's about how we need to embrace the fact that we have finite lives, and we won't be able to do everything we want.
Fully embracing this will help us ease some of the anxiety of the daily grind.
- Everything has an opportunity cost
- Paradox of choice is real
- Leisure is important
- Be easy on yourself
Reading notes
- Hofstadter's Law - a task will always take longer than expected, even after counting in the Hofstadter's law
- Rest is presented in a way that it needs to have an economical justification - "Rested worker is a productive worker"
- Aristotle argued that true leisure (self-reflection and philosophical contemplation) was amongst the highest of virtues because it was worth choosing for it's own sake
- It feels that you need to spend all of your free time on things that might bring rewards in the future
- Telic / atelic activities (comes from telos: ultimate aim)
- We should do more activities that are atelic (sexy name for hobbies)
- Pursuing a telic life in search for future fullfilment, we're constantly skipping on the present
- Good thing about hobbies is that you can be mediocre, there is no pressure to excel as you do it for itself and not for future benefit (guitar, d&d)
- 3 principles of patience:
- embrace that life is a series of problems that need solving
- radical incrementalism
- "stay on the bus" - don't change course as soon as it feels you are doing unoriginal stuff