Treat Your To-Do List Like a River, and Other Mindset Shifts for Making Better Use of Your Time

The Art of Manliness

When people think about living more fully and making better use of their time, they typically think of finding some new organizational system they can structure their lives with.

Oliver Burkeman says that what you really need instead are perspective shifts — small, sustainable changes in how you view and approach your day-to-day life. He provides those mindset shifts in his new book, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. And we talk about some of them today on the show, including why you should view life's tasks and problems like a river instead of a bucket, stop feeling guilt over your "productivity debt," make peace with your decisions by embracing an unconventional reading of the poem "The Road Not Taken," aim to do your habits "dailyish," be more welcoming of interruptions, and practice "scruffy hospitality."

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Oliver's previous appearance on the AoM podcast: Episode #748 — Time Management for Mortals
• AoM Article: Autofocus — The Productivity System That Treats Your To-Do List Like a River
• AoM Podcast #956: Feeling Depressed and Discombobulated? Social Acceleration May Be to Blame
• Sunday Firesides: To-Dos, the Rent We Pay For Living
• AoM Podcast #962: The Case for Minding Your Own Business
• AoM Podcast #821: Routines Are Overrated
• AoM Article: Routines Not Working For You? Try a Daily Checklist
• Sunday Firesides: Life Is for Living
• Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World by Hartmut Rosa
• "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
• The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong by David Orr
• "The Road Less Traveled" — great, short podcast on the alternate interpretation of Frost's poem

Connect With Oliver Burkeman

• Oliver's website