This is The Guardian.

Today, how to stop procrastinating and get stuff done this year?

Well, first of all, just recognise that, like, New Year's resolutions don't work, right?

Just sort of admit defeat in a grand, ostentatious way right at the start.

This is Oliver Berkman, author, Sage, a man who on more than one occasion has been called A Killjoy.

But perhaps realist is more accurate, because Oliver wants to make you feel better about your life.

The choices you've made, the resolutions you've broken.

You were never going to do some new thing perfectly every day or every week for the

whole of the rest of your life. That's just not how reality works. And then in the rubble of those

dreams, you can in a completely different and very, very sort of beautiful way, say, well,

okay, what's one thing I could do for 20 minutes today that would

make my experience of life richer and more meaningful? And even if you never do it one more time

after that, you've just used 20 minutes of your finite time on the planet in a good way. And that

is the point. Not all these projections about how amazing you're going to be eight, ten months from now. It's what you could actually do just today.

In his book, Meditations for Mortals, Oliver sets out, day by day, over the course of a month, some simple philosophies for life.

The kinds of unpretentious, manageable little

tips that could help you finally send that daunting email, or have that difficult conversation

with a friend, or start to clear out the spare room. Just make a start, that is it, and realize that

you can't control everything that happens next. He says it's like getting in a kayak. You decide to face your

fear. You wrangle the wetsuit on and then just let yourself go. I think a lot of what we do

when it comes to using our time is instead to sort of deny that reality and to feel as if we are

a captain of a big super yacht, you know, up on the third deck,

...