Do You Have a Fear of Missing Out?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I think the modern obsession with personal productivity can often be another way of avoiding responsibility for our choices, right? You get to dodge the responsibilities of finitude by convincing yourself that in some sense you're not finite. And you can probably see how the internet makes all this a lot worse because it promises to help us make better use of our time but also exposes us to vastly more potential uses for our time. So if you're somebody who is plagued by this fear of missing out, it can be surprisingly powerful just to understand that in fact missing out is inevitable. It's baked into the human condition that we will miss out on almost everything so that fearing missing out makes no real sense. But

Sam Harris presents an unconventional perspective on time management from Oliver Burkeman. Rather than focusing on rote efficiency or productivity, Burkeman calls on us to embrace our finitude and surrender to the rhythms of life, so that we may “end our struggle with time”—and live with “more accomplishment, more success, and more time spent on what matters most.”

If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.