How the Quest for Productivity Fails Us

*My new flagship course on Time Anxiety is now open for registration. The course will be a 5-week, interactive online experience for a limited first cohort. — For many years, I was really into productivity. I read every book, tried every method, joined bandwagons and fell off them. It’s not as though it was all ineffective. Some of it worked very...

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Today Is a Good Day to Start Over

Two years ago I wrote a post called Start Your Resolutions on January 6th. This date is now associated with other events—not my fault!—but the greater point holds. You don’t need a specific day to start a resolution or new habit. You can also start over any time. In fact, you can start over with starting over if you need. It’s that second part that...

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Free Video Series for New “Time Anxiety” Course

This morning I announced an upcoming course about Time Anxiety. I shared the news with my private newsletter, and hundreds of people joined the waiting list right away. Watch this video to learn more:   As I say in the video, time anxiety is the fear of running out of time. I believe that millions of people experience this struggle...

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Would You Trade Places With Someone Else?

I previously asked “What are some things you’ve done that few other people have?” as well as “Would you live this life again?” Consider this a companion post. On their own or as a set, each of them offers potential to help you feel good about yourself by reducing your sense of envy or comparison to others. — We all know we’re not supposed to compare...

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What They Tell You and What Is Real

From the time you’re born until the time you die, all kinds of people will have all sorts of ideas for you. If you aren’t careful, their ideas will take up a dominant place in your mind, crowding out any of your own independent ideas. For example, other people tend to have ideas about: How you should live How you should spend your time What kind...

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Time Anxiety Is the Most Pressing Problem of Our Age ⌛️

Time is running out, and you should be doing something about it … but you don’t know what. That’s what this post is about: something called time anxiety. I’ve been dealing with it for years, and maybe you have, too—even if you’ve never heard the name. I believe that time anxiety is the most pressing problem of the modern world....

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Annual Review 2021: Forward Motion Once More

I finished an Annual Review! A full and proper one, for the first time in a while. Over the past three years I’ve mostly been living vicariously through other people’s reviews, having completed only an abbreviated version of my own. I’m glad the process I created so many years ago has been helpful—but it’s also great to get back to my own review. In...

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Planning Ahead for a Big New Year

Have we really come to the end of another year? It seems that way! What a crazy twelve months it’s been. In this post I’ll share a bit about my upcoming Annual Review, as well as a few highlights of the year. In fact, let’s start with the highlights! My 2021, In Brief What I Didn’t Do I had my second year in a row of very limited travel, mostly...

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Learning How to Learn

Long ago, I described myself as a “lifelong learner.” I never liked school much, but I liked learning. When I think about the most intense periods of personal growth in my life, they were always times where I was actively learning something. Somewhere along the way, however, I fell off the learning wagon. I just stopped learning! Or at least, I stopped...

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Would You Live Your Same Life Over Again?

Among other things, the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was known for an outrageous mustache that frightened away potential soulmates. He also said a lot of outrageous things, which caused him to be shunned by much of society at the time. Before publishing Thus Spoke Zarathustra, his best known work in which he proclaimed “God is dead,”...

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