Dear CEO...

---

Dear CEO

I know you’re working tirelessly toward that moment in the future when you’ll have it all figured out. You’re convinced that, just around the corner, there will be a time when you’ve cleared your to-do list, met every obligation, and achieved all your goals.

But here’s the thing—stop.

Consider this a message from your future (retired) self: there will never come a time when everything is done. The demands won’t stop, and you’ll never reach that mythical moment when you’ve mastered everything on your list. The faster you go, the faster the list will grow. And if you think that some new technological breakthrough will give you the magical power to control time or catch up on everything—well, spoiler alert—it won’t. It turns out that every new development designed to “help” us manage our time better just ended up making the problem worse: it just expanded the size of the everything.

You’ll never conquer time or circumstances because your time on earth—about 4000 weeks —is incredibly finite, and your control over it is nearly non-existent. You try to outrun this uncomfortable truth by obsessively planning, thinking that if you just organise everything more efficiently, you can avoid the inevitable anxiety that comes with it. But it turns out that time isn’t a resource you can control, like money. Time is what you experience in each fleeting moment.

So with the reality in mind…some tips:

1. Choice

Every choice you make means you’re letting go of something else. Once you stop thinking you can do everything, it becomes easier to make better decisions. Remember: part of living fully is choosing what you’re willing to neglect. The key is to embrace that some things will simply have to fall by the wayside.

2. Focus

Since you’ll inevitably miss out on most of what the world offers, focus on fully enjoying the small slice of life you can experience. Distraction is the enemy of true choice. When you’re distracted, you’re not really choosing at all—you’re just reacting.

3. Problems

As for problems: life is full of them. Stop hoping they’ll go away one day. They won’t. But that’s not a curse; it’s the essence of what makes life meaningful. Embrace the problems—they’re part of the story.

4. Patience

Patience isn’t about being passive. It’s about a “muscular state of alert presence,” where you resist the urge to rush through life, to finish projects too quickly, or to demand instant results.

And here’s the best news: this perspective brings freedom in ways you can’t even imagine. Accepting that problems, distractions, and time constraints are part of life is liberating. Instead of seeing them as barriers to happiness, you’ll start to see them as part of the fabric of a rich, meaningful existence.

If all of this still sounds like a tough pill to swallow, consider Oliver Burkeman’s “Cosmic Insignificance Theory”:  what you do with your life doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

And you know what? That’s actually a relief.

Recognising how small you are in the vastness of time can feel like putting down a heavy burden you didn’t even realise you were carrying. The pressure to use your time perfectly comes from unrealistic expectations. When you let go of those, you can start valuing what you’re doing now, not what you hope to do one day.

Good luck.

P.S. And if it isn't obvious, these lessons apply as much to your personal life as to your professional life!   Try to remember that…

P.P.S.  Read Oliver Burkeman’s, 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals where all this is delivered and supported with incredible research, wisdom and wit.

---

Share

---

Comments (0)

Leave A Comment

Name:
Comment: Characters left: 1000