Consider – just to begin with – the familiar modern predicament of feeling overwhelmed by an extremely long to-do list. You think the problem is that you have far too many things to do, and insufficient time in which to do them, so that your only hope is to manage your time with amazing efficiency, summon extraordinary reserves of energy, block out all distractions, and somehow power through to the end. In fact, your situation is worse than you think – because the truth is that the incoming supply of things that feel as though they genuinely need doing isn’t merely large, but to all intents
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