Life is hard. Too hard. I listened to an NPR article this morning about a Harvard professor teaching a course about how to enjoy life more.
The truth is that life doesn't need to be nearly as hard as we make it. People muse on the topic of technology giving us less time rather than more. I've been reading a number sources about ways to get more done. Lifehacker, 43 Folders and the whole GTD system have led me to realise that there are a lot of things in our lives that we don't have to do but we still feel burdoned by their existence.
I've decided to create a list of things that, if we didn't do them, our lives wouldn't really be worse off:
You Don't Have To:
- Reply to every email;
- Answer the phone;
- Read stupid joke emails;
- Read everything in your RSS reader;
- Pretend to like your work colleagues;
- Go outside just because it's a nice day (there will be others);
- Look at all the new photos on your friends' Flickr accounts;
- Sacrifice your happiness for the sake of others.
Please feel free to add things to this list (but you don't have to).