Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

by Oliver Burkeman

Overview

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal

The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.

Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374159122
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	08/10/2021
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	3,842
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Oliver Burkeman is the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. He wrote a long-running weekly column on psychology for The Guardian, "This Column Will Change Your Life," and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Psychologies, and New Philosopher. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introduction: In the Long Run, We're All Dead 3

Part I Choosing to Choose

1 The Limit-Embracing Life 17

2 The Efficiency Trap 37

3 Facing Finitude 57

4 Becoming a Better Procrastinator 71

5 The Watermelon Problem 89

6 The Intimate Interrupter 101

Part II Beyond Control

7 We Never Really Have Time 113

8 You Are Here 125

9 Rediscovering Rest 141

10 The Impatience Spiral 161

11 Staying on the Bus 173

12 The Loneliness of the Digital Nomad 185

13 Cosmic Insignificance Therapy 203

14 The Human Disease 215

Afterword: Beyond Hope 229

Appendix: Ten Tools for Embracing Your Finitude 235

Notes 247

Acknowledgments 261

Index 265

Editorial Reviews

03/15/2021

In this insightful work, Burkemen (The Antidote), former psychology columnist for The Guardian, looks at how most people’s efforts to improve their lives using time efficiently just make things harder. A 4,000-week lifespan, Burkemen laments, is not enough time to get everything done: if one can accept the fact that “time management as we know it has failed miserably,” one can then enjoy what can be accomplished in the time one has. Burkeman ruefully illustrates this by describing his own efforts to efficiently read emails, with the result being simply more emails. He began to question why he worried so much about efficiency, which meant just jamming more into each day. His answer: “We do so because it helps us maintain the feeling of being in omnipotent control of our lives.” Burkemen’s light philosophical musings point the way to less stressful living, such as his contemplation of “being present” in each moment as a way to control time. He also suggests embracing and setting limits, prioritizing one’s most valued activities, and accepting “the truth about your finite time” by limiting one’s obligations. Burkemen’s thoughtful, reassuring analysis will be a welcome balm to readers feeling overwhelmed by the (perhaps unrealistic) demands of life. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"In addition to whatever help it might offer, Four Thousand Weeks is also just good company; it addresses large, even existential, issues with a sense of humor and an even-keeled perspective. I found that reading it—Burkeman might balk at this particular way of describing it—was a good use of my time." —John Williams, The New York Times

"Provocative and appealing . . . Well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal

"Burkeman is the self-help writer for people like me who find self-help books oversold on magical transformations . . . Four Thousand Weeks is full of such sage and sane advice, delivered with dry wit and a benevolent tone." —Joe Moran, The Guardian (UK)

“Four Thousand Weeks will challenge and amuse you. And it may even spur you on to change your life.” —Robbie Smith, Evening Standard (UK)

"[Four Thousand Weeks] is perfectly pitched somewhere between practical self-help book and philosophical quest . . . As with all the best quests, its many pleasures don't require a fast-forward button, but happen along the way." —Tim Adams, The Observer (UK)

"Subtle, provocative, and multi-layered . . . Four Thousand Weeks offers many wise pointers to a happier, less stress-filled life, with none of the usual smug banalities of the self-help genre." —Craig Brown, The Daily Mail (UK)

"This book is wonderful. Instead of offering new tips on how to cram more into your day, it questions why we feel the need to . . . My favorite kind of book is this one—a book that doesn't offer magic solutions to life because there aren't any. Instead, it examines the human struggle with intelligence, wisdom, humor, and humility . . . Reading this book was time well spent." —Marianne Power, The Times (UK)

"I have long loved Oliver Burkeman's wise and witty journalism that both interrogates and elevates the 'self-help' realm—revealing its possibilities for absurdity while honoring the deeper human impulses that it meets. Four Thousand Weeks is a splendid offering in that spirit. This book is at once sobering and refreshing on all that is truly at stake in what we blithely refer to as 'time management.' It invites nothing less than a new relationship with time—and with life itself." —Krista Tippett, host of On Being

"A wonderfully honest book, Four Thousand Weeks is a much-needed reality check on our culture's crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life." —Mark Manson, bestselling author of Everything is F*cked and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

“This is the most important book ever written about time management. Oliver Burkeman offers a searing indictment of productivity hacking and profound insights on how to make the best use of our scarcest, most precious resource. His writing will challenge you to rethink many of your beliefs about getting things done—and you’ll be wiser because of it.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife

“Four Thousand Weeks is a book to read and re-read, to absorb and reflect on. Compassionate, funny and wise, it has not left my mind since I read it. The modern world teaches us to pretend to be immortal—this book is a dip in the cold, clear waters of reality, returning us refreshed and alive.” —Naomi Alderman, author of The Power

“We all know our time is limited. What we don’t know—but what Oliver Burkeman is here to teach us—is that our control over that time is also limited. This profound (and often hilarious) book will prompt you to rethink your worship of efficiency, reject the cult of busyness, and reconfigure your life around what truly matters.” —Daniel H. Pink, author of When, Drive, and To Sell is Human

“Oliver Burkeman provides an important and insightful reassessment of productivity. The drive to get more done can become an excuse to avoid figuring out what we actually want to accomplish. Only by confronting this latter question can we unlock a calmer, more meaningful, more resilient approach to organizing our time.” —Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of A World Without Email and Deep Work

"Insightful . . . Burkeman’s thoughtful, reassuring analysis will be a welcome balm to readers feeling overwhelmed by the (perhaps unrealistic) demands of life." —Publishers Weekly

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