'I have no time' — 3 books that can help in 3 stages

Acceptance. Culling. Pacing. These shifts let us find hours to tackle what we love in our limited number of days. Plus: a bonus pick about 'stuff.'

Warmup

A week and a half ago, I flew to California for dinner with a group of executives who are members of The Wall Street Journal’s new Leadership Institute, where I now work.

Business topics you’d imagine came up. But when we spoke one-on-one, inevitably our conversation turned to time.

Specifically, how we all make time through long work days, hectic travel schedules, family commitments, chores, etc. to focus on something else we deeply care about — be it exercise or a passion like photography.

What surprised, and inspired me, was how many of them had actually succeeded in carving out space for their “non-negotiable” — an activity fueling their emotional and physical wellbeing.

Strategies echoed ones I used when first trying to incorporate training for obstacle course racing into an already-full (or seemingly so) life. (See Chapter 9 — “Don’t Let Your Crop Die” of Not Too Late.)

Today I’m sharing three books that were particularly impactful in helping me think about time reconciliation in stages.

We’ll keep it to three because, well … time. I’d also love to hear your suggestions.

Music Snack

We’re building a N2L member “Not Too Late” music playlist.

This is audio fuel in the “Let’s get it done” spirit. (Read kick-off post.)

You can listen:

• On Spotify.

• On Apple Music.

Note: You may need to create a Spotify or Apple Music account if you don’t have one already.

Today’s N2L Member Pick Spotlight

“Praise the Lord” by Breland.

This comes from Eileen Walker who writes: “I’m not a church goer or country music fan but this song makes me smile and tap to the beat and crank it up every time. Just fun.”

I’d love your 1-2 song suggestions either by email or in the comments below. I’ll add them to the playlist and highlight your pick in a future newsletter.

Post

Acceptance. Culling. Pacing.

These are the three stages I think about for learning to introduce and maintain in your life something you love — something that isn’t necessarily tied to earning a living or taking care of people you love. (Sometimes there’s overlap among it all, and that’s amazing. But sometimes there’s not, and that’s OK, too.)

In a Pew Research survey, 60% of U.S. adults said they at least sometimes felt too busy to enjoy life.

These books helped me frame those stages and find time where I thought there was none.

Stage 1. Acceptance

Book: “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman

Early on, the author describes sitting on a park bench near his home in Brooklyn one winter morning in 2014, feeling even more anxious than usual about the volume of undone tasks. He realizes that despite his best attempts at time management, “none of this was ever going to work.”

This image of Burkeman on the bench has stuck with me for years.

There’s something freeing about his conclusion that no amount of apps, notebook planners, time-blocking or prioritization techniques will ever stop the frustration of trying to feel total control over all of the tasks and obligations flooding modern day life.

Instead, Burkeman’s core message is one of confronting the stark reality of our finite time on earth — about 4,000 weeks on average if you live to around 80 — and attempting to get the right things done versus everything. The book is part philosophy and part action-oriented.

3 passages I highlighted:

• “Arguably, time management is all life is. Yet the modern discipline known as time management — like its hipper cousin, productivity — is a depressingly narrow-minded affair, focused on how to crank through as many tasks as possible, or on devising the perfect morning routine, or on cooking all your dinners for the week in one big batch on Sunday.”

• “You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results.”

• “When you finally face the truth that you can’t dictate how fast things go, you stop trying to outrun your anxiety, and your anxiety is transformed.”

Stage 2. Culling

Book: “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeown

When I got down to the brass tacks of trying to focus on getting the “right things” done in my 4,000 weeks, this book by McKeown was instrumental.

His core premise is that many things we think are important are actually nonessential. By spending so much energy on many nonessential things, we never get very far in the few things that truly matter. The book’s frameworks is highly-tactical on how to cull what is essential and say no to what is not by creating a buffer.

3 passages I highlighted:

• “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”

• “…Eliminating the nonessentials isn’t just about mental discipline. It’s about the emotional discipline necessary to say no to social pressure.”

• “If we could be truly excellent at only one thing, what would it be?”

Stage 3. Pacing

Book: “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout” by Cal Newport

For me, Newport’s message is a companion guide that operationalizes and advances Burkeman’s 4,000 weeks philosophy.

The author upends the general workplace mindset of do more, faster with a counterintuitive approach: Do fewer things, working at a natural pace while obsessing over quality. Newport introduces concrete anecdotes and addresses strategies for people working at a variety of levels and types of careers.

I’ll confess, this is a really hard one to execute. But it’s a particularly compelling goal for those in the “knowledge worker” space where defining what you do on a given day sometimes feels like it’s about cramming as many meetings as possible into square calendar boxes.

3 passages I highlighted:

• “Concrete productivity metrics of the type that shaped the industrial sector will never properly fit in the more amorphous knowledge work setting.”

• “…We don’t need science to convince us of something that we’ve all experienced directly: our brains work better when we’re not rushing.”

• “…Humans are wildly optimistic when we estimate how much time is needed to complete cognitive efforts.”

Bonus Pick: Stuff — and the Problem With It

Book: “Want Not” by Jonathan Miles

I read this ambitious, profound and at times, funny, novel by Miles in 2013 when it first came out and later got to know the author bit through mutual friends.

“Want Not” cuts to the core of the human condition of constantly craving more for fulfillment. There are many tentacles to “more” in this context but the burdens of our accumulation of physical stuff is a theme and metaphor running throughout the novel.

Obviously our time gets eaten up by the accumulation of more — more things to do but also more stuff to rifle through, organize and maintain.

Ever since I read “Want Not,” I’ve been paring back the physical things in my world to clear my mind to focus on what is essential. (So much so, that I no longer possess a copy of Miles’ book. I hope he’ll understand.)

Cooldown

I’m re-reading certain chapters in these books now. Kind of like a refresher course.

Because starting a new job, which I did two weeks ago, is the same as adding anything new to your life. You’ve got to make it fit into the overall puzzle of life.

In my last N2L newsletter, I wrote about my plan to make commuting less hellish on the body so that I can continue to focus on what I love. Thank you to the N2L member who sent me a tourniquet and “stop the bleed” medic kit in case there’s an accident in transit. I love this community.

To stay the course — well, that’s all about time.

Thanks for reading. As always, find something you love. Dig in. Stick with it when things get hard and you feel like you don’t have time.

Wendy