Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

"Some people won’t see this as a philosophy book , but it is. It’s a book about what we do with our limited time on Earth, how we decide to prioritise and proportion our time. To that extent it’s a book of ethics in the face of inevitable death. Even if you or I live to 90, as he points out at the beginning of the book, that will only be 4,700 weeks of existence. I have to admit that when I read the title I checked the calculation because 4,000 weeks sounded far too few for a life. That’s frighteningly short. And, obviously, most people who read the book will have far fewer than 4,000 weeks left. It’s a combination of sometimes witty, sometimes terrifying exploration of the human condition, and at the same time an antidote to those time management books that tell you how you can maximise your productivity, taking on more and more tasks and completing them efficiently. As he says, you’ll inevitably end up underachieving on some things because your time and energy are finite (something that authors of those breathless self-help books don’t always acknowledge). He has the style of writing which draws you in and feels very personal and likeable, and he includes elements of autobiography too. He’s got a degree of distance, a degree of irony, but he’s immersed himself in the world of self-help and philosophy. It holds up a mirror to what we sacrifice, because we feel that work is the most important thing. Yes, he’s somebody who’s been absolutely caught up in all those schemes for making your life more efficient, ticking off achievements. It’s like a former alcoholic writing about drinking. He’s been there. He definitely doesn’t see busyness as a virtue, and even thinks it a good idea that we practise doing nothing. That’s an ingredient of a good life for him. There’s a great section of the book called ‘Cosmic Insignificance Therapy’ where he spells out why he believes ultimately most people won’t put a dent in the universe, and how we can turn that to our advantage. If my life is insignificant in the grand scheme of things—and ultimately all lives are—I don’t need to beat myself up for failing to achieve something that only a few dozen people in the history of humanity have ever achieved. Once I realise that I can enjoy a modestly meaningful life through a wide range of activities, I can also perhaps come to realise that the anxieties that take up so much of our energy are, if we zoom out a bit, irrelevant. That’s the idea anyway. Burkeman is very good at giving us permission to be satisfied with doing worthwhile things on a small scale, and failing to achieve things too, without being obsessed with productivity. That in a sense is the human condition. As with all philosophy books, you don’t have to agree with the author for this to be worth reading. This is a book that invites you to think, and possibly disagree with the author. In the process you’ll probably get clearer about what you believe matters and where you find meaning in life."

"I love this book so much. He’s an amazing writer. He was the productivity guru for The Guardian, so every single week he would try out a different productivity hack. He was obviously someone who was quite obsessed with productivity—but realised that ‘inbox zero,’ smashing deadlines, so that you can produce more and more is a trap. This book is all about his realisation that it’s all a bit of a scam: there is no finish line, no trophy for doing the to-do list every day. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The title of the book is roughly the span of a human life. It’s meant to be quite arresting and shocking; it’s not that many weeks if you really think about it. The book is about life being finite, and how a lot of our daily stresses are quite pointless. He’s trying to remind us that we’re obsessed with something that just doesn’t need to be obsessed over. I’ve really noticed that, across the board, a lot of business authors, or traditional self help coaches, are turning so much more philosophical. And I think talking about spirituality seemed a bit ‘out there’ a few years ago, but it’s going to become incredibly mainstream in the next few years. It’s already getting there."