Too many goals and too little time? How to focus your attention

Life Kit

NPR

Health & Fitness, Self-improvement, Kids & Family, Education, Business

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Time is precious and we never seem to have enough of it. We have to work, feed ourselves, clean our homes, take care of kids or family members, catch up with friends, sleep ... and on top of that, there are endless hobbies or pursuits we'd want to do if only we had more hours in the week. Is it any wonder we feel like we're constantly scrambling? This episode, how to carve out time for that passion project. Life Kit experts share tips on how we can be intentional about our attention.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	There's no place like the garden, and this season, Garden Variety wants to help you flourish.
0:05.9	Each week, the Heartland's top horticulturists, insect experts, foresters, and others
0:10.8	drop by with fresh tips about everything you want to grow or grow better.
0:15.5	Dig in to Garden Variety from Iowa Public Radio, part of the NPR Network.
0:20.7	You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.
0:25.5	Hey, everybody, it's Mariel.
0:28.0	Lately, I've been loving the idea of becoming a Renaissance woman.
0:31.7	You know, a jill of all trades.
0:33.8	The gal who can do it all.
0:35.9	Because I have a lot of interests.
0:39.8	I like to read fantasy and adventure novels.
0:46.3	Play around with fashion and colorful makeup. I have many spiritual pursuits. I just took a woodworking class,
0:52.7	went roller skating and loved it. I enjoy rock climbing in yoga. And music. I'm planning to learn the drums. and I also have a ukulele sitting in my closet,
0:55.4	waiting for me to pick it up. I'd love to get back into tap dancing. Oh, they're sewing, too.
1:01.1	Got a sewing machine for Christmas, and I just turned it on this week. Okay, I can see how my plate
1:07.5	might be a little too full.
1:14.1	Truth is, we can only spread our attention so thin.
1:22.0	When you get to the end of your life, the sum total of all the things you paid attention to will have been your life.
1:31.3	If there are some friendships there that you never actually paid any attention to, well, you didn't really have those friendships, right? I mean, if there was an interest that you had that you never actually spent any attention pursuing, well, you didn't really have that interest. So it really matters what we're
1:36.3	paying attention to because it just is, it just adds up to a life. This is Oliver Berkman. He's
1:41.7	the author of 4,000 weeks, time management for mortals. The book is about how to manage the limited time we have on Earth, which if you live to 80, comes out to about 4,000 weeks.
1:52.5	And even if you're incredibly lucky in terms of your lifespan, it's still going to be a very hard limit. And this has lots of ramifications for how we think about using our
	...

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