How To Give Yourself Permission Not to Finish

Nobody cares if you don’t finish that book.

Why? Because it doesn’t matter.

Nobody really spends much time thinking about you and what you’re doing.

Your partner, maybe. Your Mom, probably. But that’s about it.

So, if you’re worried people are going to judge you for not being up on the latest thing? Don’t be.

Nobody cares.

What about the pressure you put on yourself to finish? That’s a big one. That’s something I’ve always struggled with.

But then I learned that there is no prize for finishing a book I don’t enjoy.

The reanimated corpse of Ed McMahon is not going to show up at my house with an oversized novelty check and tell me I won a million dollars because I finished “Range” by David Epstein.

(I didn’t. Epstein said what he needed to say in the first few chapters. The rest of the book was just fluff. So I moved on to a different one.)

You know what happens when you finish a TV show, movie, or book that you didn’t like, but felt obligated to watch for some reason? Nothing.

Ok. One thing happens. You wasted your time. And every second of time you waste is a second you will not get back.

So stop wasting your time.

And if that’s not enough reason? Consider this: According to Nicholas A. Christakis, author of “Apollo’s Arrow”, COVID has shortened the life expectancy of everyone on earth by a couple of years.

It’s easy to forget we’re living in a pandemic. One with long-term ramifications on the way we are going to live the rest of our lives.

But that’s the world we live in now.

Time was always in short supply, but now there’s less of it.

So use the time you have left wisely.

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