the willingness to make small, incremental adjustments, to tolerate imperfection and bumpy progress, and not to throw in the towel in frustration the… - Oliver Burkeman

Most successful people,' as the entrepreneur and investor Andrew Wilkinson has observed, 'are just a walking anxiety disorder, harnessed for productivity.

We feel pressured to do something extraordinary with our lives, or to an extraordinary standard of merit, or in a way that's applauded by an extraordinary number of people – even though it's true by definition that only a few people can ever be extraordinary in any given domain. (If we could all stand out from the crowd, there'd be no crowd from which to stand out.) Why shouldn't an anonymous career spent quietly helping a few people get to qualify as a meaningful way to spend one's time? Why shouldn't an absorbing conversation, an act of kindness, or an exhilarating hike get to count? Why adopt a definition that rules such things out?

Rendering yourself more efficient — either by implementing various productivity techniques or by driving yourself harder — won't generally result in the feeling of having 'enough time,' because, all else being equal, the demands will increase to offset any benefits. Far from getting things done, you'll be creating new things to do.