“Meanwhile, the long message from an old friend now living in [[New Delhi]] and research for the major article I’d been planning for months **would get ignored, because I told myself that such tasks needed my full focus**, which meant waiting until I had a good chunk of free time and fewer small-but-urgent tasks tugging at my attention. **And so, instead, like the dutiful and efficient worker I was, I’d put my energy into clearing the decks, cranking through the smaller stuff to get it out of the way—only to discover that doing so took the whole day, that the decks filled up again overnight anyway, and that the moment for responding to the New Delhi email or for researching the milestone article never arrived**. One can waste years this way, systematically postponing precisely the things one cares about the most.” --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[ever-present-now]], [[infinite-scroll]], [[priorities]], [[self-control]], [[discipline]], [[eisenhower-matrix]], [[patience]] **Source** -- [[202410130434 - B - Four Thousand Weeks]]