More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
July 10 - July 11, 2025
We are overworked and overstressed, constantly dissatisfied, and reaching for a bar that keeps rising higher and higher. We are members of the cult of efficiency, and we’re killing ourselves with productivity.
We are lonely, sick, and suicidal. Every year a new survey emerges showing more people are isolated and depressed than the year before.
We judge our days based on how efficient they are, not how fulfilling.
What is the cult of efficiency? It’s a group whose members believe fervently in the virtue of constant activity, in finding the most efficient way to accomplish just about anything and everything. They are busy all the time and they take it on faith that all their effort is saving time and making their lives better.
The key to well-being is shared humanity, even though we are pushing further and further toward separation.
705 million vacation days in 2017, and more than 200 million of those were lost forever because they couldn’t be carried over to the next year. That means Americans donated $62 billion to their employers in one year.
believe our constant pushing is now impeding our progress.
The idea is not that everything should be slower, but that not everything needs to be fast.
if you don’t consciously choose a slower path, you will likely default to the pedal-to-the-metal speeds of modern life.
Slavery was barbaric for a number of reasons, including its characterization of some human beings as worthy of no more respect or care than a horse or cow.
when he nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the church doors of Wittenburg, Germany. His ideas eventually changed the lives of nearly every person in the developed world.
Remember that sloth (a reluctance to work) is one of the seven deadly sins. Catholic
“Beliefs in the American Dream permeate our parenting decisions, educational practices, and political agendas, and yet, according to data we present in this manuscript, Americans are largely inaccurate when asked to describe actual trends in social class mobility in society.”
The likelihood that you’ll become a billionaire is about the same as the chance that you’ll be struck by lightning.
“Is it a healthy myth that inspires us to aim high? Or is it more like a mass delusion keeping us from confronting the fact that poor Americans tend to remain poor Americans, regardless of how hard they work?”
“Our society measures personal worth in terms of productivity, efficiency, and the maximization of our potential,” the Calvin College philosophy professor Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung writes. “So we’d better get busy or we’ll be good for nothing.”
The United States has more private wealth than any other nation in the world, for example, but the fourth highest gap between rich and poor of any country studied by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The American Institute of Stress says more than half of all doctor visits are prompted by stress-related illness.
We bring our work home with us now, answering emails at nine p.m. and picking up the phone when we’re out to dinner. That’s why I don’t have time for story tapes and dance classes anymore.
They may feel they never truly punch out of work. When you ask how many hours they are working, it’s possible they only report those hours spent in the office.
The United States is the only nation in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) that doesn’t require employers to give paid vacation time to staff.
if you spend your vacation time truly separated from work stress, research shows you’re more likely to return to work refreshed and ultimately perform better on the job.
It’s not cool to have time to spare now. “When
