📫 Promises & Sacrifices – Weekend Words #077

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In Thursday’s email, Andrew made the case that silence is a productivity tool.

“Focus isn’t about ignoring people. It’s about protecting the work that actually matters.”

A Slightly Smarter reader said the “message is counter cultural but accurate and needed to be said.”

To triple down on the message, here are 3 books that share a similar sentiment:

“What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance?

What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?”

^{— Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (2014)}

“A better strategy for shifting other’s expectations about your work is to consistently deliver what you promise instead of consistently explaining how you’re working.”

^{— Cal Newport, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload (2021)}

“Convenience culture seduces us into imagining that we might find room for everything important by eliminating only life’s tedious tasks. But it’s a lie.

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

^{— Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021)}

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