There’s ONLY 4000 weeks!?
The email covers the realization of life's brevity, the impact of a book called "Four Thousand Weeks," embracing discipline, and updates on the sender's projects and interests.
So, apparently there are only 4000 weeks in your lifetime—if you live to age 80. That’s nuts. Life is short. Too short. Too short to try a different restaurant in New York each day and eat at them all before you die. Too short to read all the books in the world. And too short to do all the things we want to do.
I recently finished listening to a book called Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman (Audio books are amazing btw). I felt the need to be more disciplined when working, and this book fast-tracked me on this topic, and gave me a bunch more to think about. It feels like it brought on something akin to an early midlife crisis. The principles in this book are affecting me more and more each day.
During the past 4 weeks, besides becoming more disciplined, I’ve also become far more patient. And grounded. And present. I feel that how we spend our time is essential to what it means to be human. And I think I’ve finally cured myself of believing I can do everything I want to do. Which is a relief.
I’m saying NO a lot more. I’m only working on 3 projects at a time. I’m reading a lot of fiction. I’m eating better. I’m sleeping better. I’m not frantically busy with something all the time. Maybe this sounds normal to you, but for me it’s very different.
And it’s not like something clicked overnight. I still have over 150 tabs open across my devices. I still have hundreds of emails coming in that I won’t ever open. But it feels like I have the tools and the mindset to deal with things like this now—not to get through them, but to simply be honest and acknowledge that I’ll never be able to get through them, never be able to read it all. What I’m doing, therefore, is simply unsubscribing in this case—to stuff I find really interesting. It’s like pruning on an epic level. I’m cutting off branches so that a few may thrive. It’s hard. But it’s me being honest about how much time I have and what’s really important.
I‘ve seen the principles of this book play out while I was working on my Procreate Animation class. Which was awarded a Skillshare Staff Pick and has over 450 students enrolled in it so far. This made me incredibly happy. Because I took a year and a half to complete the class, from the time I began working on it until I hit that publish button. In comparison, the first version of the class took about a month to create.
So what am I working on? What am I stopping? And what else can I tell you?
I’m pausing working on my generative art series called Genny. There are over 400 pieces now, with 19 algorithms. I’m pausing so I can dedicate my time to Limina and my NFT class (read on).
I’m concluding my Reverie collection at 25 pieces. I finished the collection with a special animated piece. You can see all the pieces on Bēhance.
I’ve begun writing the curriculum for an NFT class for artists. I remembered that I really like writing. I’ve been hanging out and writing at a local café, where the coffee isn’t the best. But because of it I discovered caramel-latés!
When I get back from a week’s holiday in London, I’m going to begin working on a collection called Limina. This is a big collection I’ve been wanting to create for some time. I’ve put it off. I’ve procrastinated. I’ve had many false starts. I plan use a mixture of code, doodles, and drawing to create pieces centred around The Realm of Dreams. I feel totally ready for it now. It’s going to take a long time.
Check out my Procreate Animation class if you haven’t already. Especially if you want to learn how to animate with Procreate. Also, did you hear that Procreate has scheduled a big fancy event (almost like an Apple Event) in London this September? I can’t wait to see what they reveal.
This site/NFT marketplace called Zeroone is live! You can create and collect NFTs for free. There is a catch of course—you can only collect if you create. It’s new and a bit buggy at times, but things are getting fixed quickly. It’s a lot of fun. I’ll be releasing a few pieces here, for free, from time to time.
❤️ Big loves
Rich from TapTapKaboom