These time management books usually have the implicit premise "it's good to get your discount rate arbitrarily low". I've always had doubts that an arbitrarily low discount rate really is utility optimising, so it's refreshing to see go against that even in a way that's kinda weird or not logical.
> These time management books usually have the implicit premise "it's good to get your discount rate arbitrarily low".
You know, that's a pretty good point that didn't even occur to me while reading it.
And admittedly, I haven't read a lot of books of this genre, probably only 3 or 4, but I've more or less never felt this. But if you're on the Burkeman side of the neuroticism spectrum, maybe it's a constant worry that you're not doing enough for future-you.
I've always thought of "time management" as basically an instrumental thing - if you want to get complex things done, you need time management.
Hate doing that? Don't do complex stuff then, plenty of jobs where you can just show up and be told what to do. There's also plenty of people that basically do essentially nothing to provision for the future. In fact, it's probably the majority of people (at least in the US). They still seem to pop out kids and live into their seventies and whatever, so if you really want to live like that, there's nothing stopping you.
I like this way of framing it. As someone who probably has a too-low baseline discount rate (I probably save / put off pleasure too much), that's a good summary of why I've often bounced off of the time management genre as a whole.
I sometimes point in Burkeman's general direction, and could even follow him for a step or two along his journey, but not much further. We sacrifice too much on the alter of convenience, telling ourselves we will invest the time saved into writing the great American novel, only to sit a little longer on the couch watching Netflix. Beyond a certain point needed to recharge our batteries, too much slack dulls our desire to actually do anything fulfilling, as opposed to merely filling empty hours. Better to scrub dishes and toilets until it sparks a desire to LIVE, rather than simply fluffing the seat cushion on the glide into the boneyard.
One of my New Year's resolutions was to cut out all video during the weekdays, a bad habit picked up during Covid. I'm not only spending more time on what truly interests me, I'm finding time to knock off small things I could never rouse myself to starting. And during the weekend... I'm less interested in video.
So, yeah, two cheers for Burkeman putting his finger on what ails plenty of us these days.
These time management books usually have the implicit premise "it's good to get your discount rate arbitrarily low". I've always had doubts that an arbitrarily low discount rate really is utility optimising, so it's refreshing to see go against that even in a way that's kinda weird or not logical.
> These time management books usually have the implicit premise "it's good to get your discount rate arbitrarily low".
You know, that's a pretty good point that didn't even occur to me while reading it.
And admittedly, I haven't read a lot of books of this genre, probably only 3 or 4, but I've more or less never felt this. But if you're on the Burkeman side of the neuroticism spectrum, maybe it's a constant worry that you're not doing enough for future-you.
I've always thought of "time management" as basically an instrumental thing - if you want to get complex things done, you need time management.
Hate doing that? Don't do complex stuff then, plenty of jobs where you can just show up and be told what to do. There's also plenty of people that basically do essentially nothing to provision for the future. In fact, it's probably the majority of people (at least in the US). They still seem to pop out kids and live into their seventies and whatever, so if you really want to live like that, there's nothing stopping you.
I like this way of framing it. As someone who probably has a too-low baseline discount rate (I probably save / put off pleasure too much), that's a good summary of why I've often bounced off of the time management genre as a whole.
I sometimes point in Burkeman's general direction, and could even follow him for a step or two along his journey, but not much further. We sacrifice too much on the alter of convenience, telling ourselves we will invest the time saved into writing the great American novel, only to sit a little longer on the couch watching Netflix. Beyond a certain point needed to recharge our batteries, too much slack dulls our desire to actually do anything fulfilling, as opposed to merely filling empty hours. Better to scrub dishes and toilets until it sparks a desire to LIVE, rather than simply fluffing the seat cushion on the glide into the boneyard.
One of my New Year's resolutions was to cut out all video during the weekdays, a bad habit picked up during Covid. I'm not only spending more time on what truly interests me, I'm finding time to knock off small things I could never rouse myself to starting. And during the weekend... I'm less interested in video.
So, yeah, two cheers for Burkeman putting his finger on what ails plenty of us these days.