Things Learned From…
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman
“The limitations we’re trying to avoid when we engage in [a] self-defeating sort of procrastination frequently don’t have anything to do with how much we’ll be able to get done in the time available;
usually, it’s a matter of worrying that we won’t have the talent to produce work of sufficient quality, or that others won’t respond to it as we’d like them to, or that in some other way things won’t turn out as we want.”
“The philosopher Costica Bradatan illustrates the point by means of a fable about an architect from Shiraz in Persia who designed the world’s most beautiful mosque: a breathtaking structure, dazzlingly original yet classically well proportioned, awe-inspiring in its grandeur yet wholly unpretentious.
All those who saw the architectural plans wanted to buy them, or steal them; famous builders begged him to let them take on the job.
But the architect locked himself in his study and stared at the plans for three days and nights—then burned them all.
He might have been a genius, but he was also a perfectionist: the mosque of his imagination was perfect, and it agonized him to contemplate the compromises that would be involved in making it real.”
“Stepping into the world of finitude, by actually building the mosque, would mean confronting all that he couldn’t do.
Better to cherish an ideal fantasy than to resign himself to reality, with all its limitations and unpredictability.”
“Bradatan argues that when we find ourselves procrastinating on something important to us, we’re usually in some version of this same mindset.
We fail to see, or refuse to accept, that any attempt to bring our ideas into concrete reality must inevitably fall short of our dreams, no matter how brilliantly we succeed in carrying things off—because reality, unlike fantasy, is a realm in which we don’t have limitless control, and can’t possibly hope to meet our perfectionist standards.
Something—our limited talents, our limited time, our limited control over events, and over the actions of other people—will always render our creation less than perfect.
Dispiriting as this might sound at first, it contains a liberating message: if you’re procrastinating on something because you’re worried you won’t do a good enough job, you can relax—because judged by the flawless standards of your imagination, you definitely won’t do a good enough job.
So you might as well make a start.”
Thanks for reading! Hope you have a terrific day.