Arthur Schopenhauer, the great philisophical pessimist on time:

"Of every event in our life it is only for a moment that we can say that it is; after that we must say for ever that it was. Every evening makes us poorer by a day. ...Our existence is based solely on the ever-fleeting present. Essentially, therefore, it has to take the form of continual motion without there ever being any possibility of our finding the rest after which we are always striving. It is the same as a man running downhill, who falls if he tries to stop, and it is only by his continuing to run on that he keeps on his legs; it is like a pole balanced on one's finger-tips, or like a planet that would fall into its sun as soon as it stopped hurrying onwards. Hence unrest is the type of existence."

The ever fleeing present... life as a treadmill set on full tilt. What's the prescription for this? Despite being a quintescentially German philosopher (a direct philosophical descendent of Kant) Schopenhauer eventually looked to the East for his answers and found them in the more ancient teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism. It's no surprise that many of the productivity gurus of our own time such as Zen Habits' Leo Babauta have always had an attraction to Buddhism. And even GTD stalwarts like Merlin Mann can find that they want off Schopenhauer's treadmill.

I personally take a more Western approach to this problem. I think a good answer to this problem can be found in the existentialism of the 20th century. I look forward to blogging more about this possibility.