Introduction As children and young adults, most of us take life for granted, seeing the future as an endless runway upon which we will have the opportunity to experience all the world’s offerings. As we grow older and begin to notice wrinkles form first in the faces of our loved ones and then in our own faces, we are forced to confront the reality that the runway was not endless, but in fact, that we can see the end of it. Even worse, we seem to speeding up, moving much faster than we remember going when we were kids. This, of course, is not a unique problem for our current generation. As far back as Ancient Greece, philosophers believed that the brevity of life was the singular defining issue of human existence. It almost seems a cruel paradox that we were given the ability to imagine such vivid and complicated futures, but so little time to realize them. Indeed, when we realize that eighty years is equivalent to only four thousand weeks, it can seem that time management is all life is. Following from this revelation is the stark realization of the absurdity of always living for the future instead of completely mentally occupying our present. The modern culture of toxic productivity Unfortunately, this realization becomes even more profound and disheartening when we realize the capitalist societies we live in idealize “hustle culture”, productivity, and generating value for the (future) economy. When you think about it, this view of the world sees almost anything that doesn’t generate some sort of value for the future, whether monetary or skill-based, as mere idleness. Certain prominent figures have popularized trends such as sleeping for four hours a night, stating that “you can sleep when you’re dead”, essentially ingraining in our minds that our ability to be busy should be a prestigious trait to be envied. Contrary to popular perception, however, is that most of the winners in this cutthroat culture do not find a relief from this pressure to work as they climb upwards. In a cruel twist of fate, the only thing they stumble upon is more pressure to maintain the income and status that they have worked so hard to achieve. This is something that Oliver Burkeman calls “The Efficiency Trap”, in which time feels like a conveyor belt, bringing new tasks as fast as we can complete them, and where becoming more productive simply speeds up the conveyor belt. It’s not really our fault. From the moment we can walk and talk, society is constantly pushing us toward our next milestone. We move from completing our first quiz, our first final exam, and our first year at school. From then on we finish grade school, apply to university, and eventually have to find a job. As we scratch out all these milestones off of the checklist that is our life, it’s only natural for us to continue searching for the next big thing to complete. It wasn’t always this way. Before the Industrial Revolution and the need for synchronized timetables to run factories, “time was just the medium in which life unfolded”. Without having to worry about being fired for clocking in late or about earning overtime pay, people could just do the work that was required when it was required, and spend the rest of their time living in the moment. We label this lifestyle “task orientation”, because life emerges organically from the specific tasks. However, with the separation of work hours and free hours, every bit of our “free time” now feels like something that must be “spent wisely”, before we have to clock into work again. This mindset is inherently future-focused, inducing the “Sunday Scaries” and forcing us to worry about all the meetings we’ll have next Monday. You might be asking yourself what the problem with always thinking about the future is. I hear you saying: "Without thinking about the future, we would never aspire to pursue careers or start families." You’d be right. Even so, the issue with future-forward thinking is not so straightforward, and striking a balance between looking forward and living in the present is vital. Why should we (mostly) live in the present? Given the limited nature of our attention, focusing on the future at any moment will, by definition, reduce the amount of attention we can give to our present situation. Although this may not sound too consequential, we need to realize that the entire experience of life is the sum of our attention. Living mentally in the future involves constantly waiting for when we’ll finally have time to do what actually matters. But although planning is necessary, the only thing that matters in the grand scheme of your life is right now, because that is all your life is. What follows from this is that we should try to entrench ourselves into each moment because life is solely composed of all of our current moments. As Burkeman puts it, “[...] the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.” When we fully embrace the present moment, we’re able to experience something Burkeman calls “deep time”: a feeling of timelessness coupled with a heightened vividness of reality. Perhaps you’ve experienced this for short periods of time when you got lost in the music at a concert, engrossed in a captivating book, or enjoyed a night out with friends. Beyond a richer experience of life, embracing the present can also have positive effects on how we view and combat anxiety about our future. Worrying about our future is characterized by the routine of attempting and failing to feel secure about the future. However, perhaps we can take solace in the realization that no matter how far ahead we plan, the “frontier of our uncertainty” will just keep getting pushed further back. As such, maybe the more reasonable course of action is to stop fretting as much and to face things head on as the future melds into the present. It’s easy to list the benefits of living in the present, but putting the mentality into practice is a whole different story. How do we convince ourselves to live in the present when the looming future is begging to be noticed? How to live in the present The single overarching key to giving in to the idea of living in the present is to, as Burkeman puts it, confront your finitude. What this means is to realize and acknowledge the limited time that we have on this Earth and the equally limited number of accomplishments we will realistically be able to achieve. When you think about it, a future-focused mindset is goal-oriented, and relies on the assumption that you’ll have plenty of time in the future to reach your goals. The problem that many people face, however, is that as they get older, the time they have remaining shrinks, yet they find themselves stuck in this mindset. The fact of the matter is that regardless of how many all-nighters you pull or coffees you chug, you (most likely) won’t be able to accomplish all the things that you want to accomplish in life. Although at first this may sound extremely depressing, a simple reframing can make this revelation liberating. If we won’t have the time to do everything we want anyway, why not just enjoy every bit of time that we do have? Thinking more realistically, you probably won’t even be able to experience most of the things that you hope to experience. So in the end, what’s the difference between completing 0.001% and 0.002% of life’s experiences? (don’t actually answer that). This reframing of our time on Earth from one of scarcity to one of gratitude can be extremely powerful. Once you are no longer weighed down by the idealistic definition of a “life well spent”, many more activities begin to qualify as meaningful ways to spend your time. Not only can we bring more meaning to our daily lives, but we can approach many problems that we face today, including anxiety, procrastination, and choice paralysis, from this root idea of confronting our finitude. Choice paralysis Choice paralysis is normally caused by the presence of too many options, as well as the fear that making one choice will lead you to miss out on a potentially better choice (more commonly known as FOMO, or the fear of missing out). By acknowledging that we won’t ever come close to doing everything and that we are bound to miss out on most things in our lifetime, we can focus on what we truly care about the most, while tolerating the discomfort of missing out on the things we consciously skipped. To approach our choices this way is to impart more value and intention into the choices that we do make, because it’s precisely the fact that other options were available to us that makes the option that we chose meaningful. That we won’t be able to do most things in the world doesn’t provide us an excuse to do absolutely nothing. It simply gives us the freedom and peace of mind to not feel the need to overstuff our lives with too many passions and goals, ultimately leading us to not diving deeply into any of them. Anxiety A worry about future events typically causes general anxiety. While it’d be ridiculous to assume that what I mention here will cause you magically to stop being anxious, I hope I can provide some perspective on the entire idea of anxiety in the frame of our finitude. Just as the sum of our attention defines the story of our life, the sum of the problems that we face in our lives defines all the downs and allows us to feel all the highs. Because of this, the gamut of problems we encounter in life are not “an impediment to a meaningful existence, but the very substance of one.” Once we realize this, we can accept the inevitability of discomfort, and turn our attention to facing it head-on instead of trying to avoid it. Of course, it’s important to mention that we must still respond to bad things to the best of our abilities, and not “accept suffering or injustice as inevitable.” Burkeman tells us we will find out that the search for smoothness in our lives is misguided, as the roughness of life makes it worth living. Procrastination The desire to avoid confronting our finitude can also help in explaining why so many of us have trouble with procrastination. Although we probably don’t want to admit it, being distracted by social media or anything else on our phones is not entirely a case of us being unable to resist the allure of the content we expect to find. In fairness, it is common knowledge that social media companies rely on our distraction to earn their profits, but this doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t still find something else to be distracted by if we didn’t have access to the Internet. Think back on those days in class before phones (assuming you’re old enough) when you would doodle in the margins of your notebook, or stare out the window daydreaming about the future. Even the tendency for us to want to stay up as late as we can is so we can feel like we’re squeezing the most out of our limited allotment of days. Part of the reason it is so easy for social media companies to distract us is because subconsciously, a part of us wants to be distracted. We’re worried that whatever we’re working on won’t meet the standards that we have conjured in our heads. Because life is finite, we want to make anything that we do count and put our best foot forward, and this pressure can have the opposite effect of immobilizing us. However, by realizing that our abilities as humans are also finite and that we will never reach the immaculate expectations that our thoughts place on us, it becomes easier to accept that we should surrender this craving for perfection and just push forward instead. How do we become better at living in the present? The key to immersing in the moment and undoing the habits that have been ingrained in us throughout our childhood and teenage years is to pursue idleness intentionally. That is, to engage in “atelic activities”: activities whose value are not derived from their telos, or aim. It is important to make the distinction that many activities we take part in as “leisure activities” today have hidden motivations. In the modern world of work-focused productivity, even our free time has shifted in purpose. It is now seen as time to be used to improve ourselves, in order to either become better workers or people. Burkeman tells us to watch out for this subtle trap. Join that meditation class, not in the hopes of eventually achieving perfect Zen, but for a bit of inner peace, five minutes at a time. Start dancing, not to eventually perform in front of a crowd or even to impress your friends, but for the simple joy of moving your body in sync with music. By intentionally spending some of our time idling and not focused on the future or even self-improvement, we teach ourselves that idleness is okay, and we may even begin to spot things in life that we simply glossed over in the past. We may find novelty in the mundane and plunge more deeply into the lives that we have already been blessed to live in the first place.