People used to write pamphlets. That was a thing. When the Thomas Paine ‘Common Sense’, it came out as a pamphlet. It seems like everything now a days has to be a full fledged book, while honestly most things should really be fucking pamphlets. We honestly do not have all that much to say. While I didn’t dislike this book, as I read it kept on thinking to myself ‘sure, but the points this person is making could easily fit on a fucking pamphlet’. Hell, the main points of the book could have been put to the back of a postcard. (Edit: Holy shit. A few days after I wrote this, I found this)
I hadn’t read a ‘self-help’ book in some time. Frankly, I was pretty happy not having done so, as my consensus has always been that these books are really, really bad, and I have been pretty disappointed with all of them.
But hope springs eternal, and I liked the title on this one. Enough so to give it a read.
Was this book much of the same? Well, yes kinda. Or maybe not. This isn’t exactly a self help book. You aren’t going to make your goals. What you should really do is be realistic and give them up.
Alright, I was being needlessly cruel in the sentence above. But the book does aim for all of us to maintain more realistic expectations regarding what exactly we can and cannot get done in our lifetime. We strive for too much, and as the book points out, time is a lot more limited than we give it credit for.
This book is about accepting our mortality. That isn’t easy for anyone to do. Once you accept your mortality, then you can start making choices based on your limited time. It sounds simple, and everyone says that it is simple, but really it isn’t.
So the question now remains, ‘Did I like the book?’ Sure. ‘But was the book effective?’ Eh. The answer is an unenthusiastic “yea, I guess.” I am reasonably sure I have said this before somewhere in my many ramblings, but I simply refuse to do less. I am wanting to Carpe as much Diem out of my time alive as possible. Already, I feel like I have lost too much to poor decision making. Thus I don’t want to do less. But in truth, I don’t see it as that much of an option. I kind of said the same thing back when I read Essentialism, what feels like a life time ago. These aren’t simple choice. Time is fleeting, and I don’t actually have much control over the time I have. My shitty job that overworks me has a lot more control over my time. Contrary to what this book suggests we do, I can’t just tell my work that I stop working at 5:30. When the emergency comes up at work, I have to take the call. Were it not for the cost of living, I would be doing many other things.
I hate to use the Marxist rhetoric, but there is a bourgeois mentality to even suggesting that some of us could.
Which is why I am going to continue to read books of this nature. I want to do more. I want to manage to squeeze extra hours from my day. I am hoping, however ridiculous, to be able to hack the matrix of productivity and find a way to do everything I ever wanted to.
Doing less is just not an option.
Failures in Polymathy 