Up: [[Experiencing Time]] Created: 2022-05-30 Updated: 2026-02-10 > [!Orbit] Annie Dillard > How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. > [!Orbit] William James > Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an incomplete task. > [!Orbit] Tama Kieves > Being overwhelmed does not come from too much to do. It comes from lack of clarity. When you’re clear, you know you don’t need to do everything. You just have to do the right thing. > [!Orbit] Albert Einstein > The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. > [!Orbit] Lin Yutang > Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials. > [!Orbit] Kerry Gleason > This constant, unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy. > [!Orbit] Thomas Merton > To commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of modern times. > [!Orbit] David Allen in *Ready for Anything* > ….the freer we are in our heads, the more creative output we can experience and deliver. (p.242) > [!Orbit] Vilfredo Pareto in *The Pareto Principle* > 20% of any process will yield 80% of the results. > [!Orbit] Alvin Toffler > You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things so that all the small things go in the right direction. > [!Orbit] [[Oliver Burkeman]] in *Four Thousand Weeks* > The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things. > [!Orbit] [[Oliver Burkeman]] in *Four Thousand Weeks* > A plan can only ever be a present-moment statement of intent… The future… is under no obligation to comply. > [!Orbit] Charles Dickens > … the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day. > [!Orbit] Francine Jay > My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do. > [!Orbit] William Blake > I must create a System, or be enslav’d by another Man’s. > [!Orbit] Sarah Manguso in *Ongoingness: The end of a diary* > I tried to record each moment, but time isn’t made of moments; it contains moments. There is more to it than moments. (p. 5) > [!Orbit] Albert Einstein > The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. > [!Orbit] [[Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer]] > like a sentry > at the gate of forever, > this moment > [!Orbit] Maira Kalman > I look for the moments between the moments. I want to show you what else I see and then weave that into the story. The digression is much more important than the topic. > [!Orbit] Francis Bacon > Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority. First part means when enough time passes, truth will emerge. Truth isn’t really understood in the moment, understood with urgency. It emerges with the passage of time. Second part - People stamp the moment, say this is what happened and this what it means. Authority doesn’t last forever. They don’t live forever, are not in power forever. > [!Orbit] [[C. G. Jung]] in *Memories, Dreams, Reflections* > We must face the fact that our world with its time, space, and causality, relates to another order of things lying behind or beneath it, in which neither “here and there” nor “earlier and later” are of importance. (p. 336) > [!Orbit] Mark Twain said… > The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.