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Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals Hardcover – August 10, 2021
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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.
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
- Publication dateAugust 10, 2021
- Dimensions5.8 x 1 x 8.6 inches
- ISBN-100374159122
- ISBN-13978-0374159122
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From the Publisher
Praise for Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
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Editorial Reviews
Review
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
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux (August 10, 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0374159122
- ISBN-13 : 978-0374159122
- Item Weight : 14.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.8 x 1 x 8.6 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #852 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9 in Personal Time Management
- #23 in Philosophy (Books)
- #39 in Happiness Self-Help
- Customer Reviews:
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He uses universal truths on time based on insights from history, philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers; current and ancient Oliver offers an alternative way to look at time management. It’s heavily researched and referenced, with 13 notes pages and 8 pages of index.
He does this via many stories, history, and examples in dense sentences. It can be funny, engaging, and at times tedious.
The gist is “Finitude.” We have limited time. Four Thousand weeks if you live to be 80 years old. His premise is that to become empowered; you must accept the limitations and lack of control over your life. . You accomplish more of what matters and is meaningful to you. The book ends with ten tools to help you embrace your Finitude. The rest of the book is a journey to prove it, entertain you, and inspire you.
This is his journey and justification for his life. Much of it I can relate to. I, too, was a productivity junkie and taught project management. I found some places where I disagreed or didn’t have the challenges he had to overcome or differently. I was mentally arguing with him as I was reading. He comes across as a bit of an intellectual snob to me. He doesn’t seem to like “self-help,” yet this is what the book is about. He uses romance novelist Danielle Steele as an unhealthy example of time management and Rod Stewart as a good example. There are long winding sentences. There were a few words I had to look up the meaning.
I used this book for a book group, and there is something for everyone in this book.
As a believer in the Gospel of Jesus, and as one who hopes in a better tomorrow as a result, I see ways that my view of time and the way I spend it—and especially the way I feel about its passing and all the things I realize I will never get to do—run against that hope and against being truly grateful for the person God intends me to be (i.e., my finiteness). Such refusal at some level to accept and live within my limits can rob us of much joy and peace.
I especially appreciate the thoughts on productivity and on procrastination. These have been especially helpful and even liberating for me.
Having written what I mentioned above, this book is not written from a Christian perspective, though it does resonate with the book of Ecclesiastes, which looks at life from a perspective of life without God in the picture. Those looking for such will find it echoed here. But to get the whole picture and the verdict thereof, I recommend the latter.
I thank Mr. Burkeman for writing this book, and for sharing his insights with us. It bears my re-reading it again, with enjoyment.
Instead, I was very surprised to find that the very idea of "using the time we have" is something to be argued *against*. The author says -- over and over -- that there is no point in trying to control time, and any attempt to do so is a willful blindness to the fact that our lives are finite. Instead, he argues, we should live in the moment, embracing our cosmic insignificance (there is a whole chapter on this!) because nothing we do will matter in the end anyway.
It's definitely true that we cannot control time, and that would be a fine way to unwind the arguments in the book, except the author takes "controlling time" and takes it to mean any kind of plans a person might make to put their lives in order. The author misses the point that plenty of people try to put their lives in order, to decide in advance through careful thinking just exactly what matters most to them and then planning out what projects they take on and what tasks they will focus on in certain times of the day, precisely *because* their lives are finite and they don't want to waste them. Instead, those people would be branded by this book as delusional, holding a hyperinflated view of their own significance, and foolish.
It's clear that the author has run afoul of toxic productivity gurus who preach unrealistic life hacks to people while promising control over time. But this book is an overcorrection, applying straw men arguments and reheated Epicurean philosophy in a repetitive way that unfortunately makes it very hard to hear a useful message.
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A self proclaimed productivity geek, Burkeman has come to a lot of the same conclusions that have started to bug me over the last few years. Time is finite. No matter how efficient we get we'll never do everything we feel we're supposed to do. The answer he says is to acknowledge our limitations and be honest with ourselves that the life we're living right now is what we have.
By stopping struggling against the limits of time we can enjoy what we're doing right now, and really invest and commit to it. Instead of believing we're capable of engaging with every opportunity the modern world presents to us, we have to make hard choices about what we really want to do. What if you weren't trying to get somewhere? What if you accepted that you're already as here as you're ever going to be, what would you do then? He highlights the peril the instrumentalisation of time, always doing something for what might happen in the future. Taking a picture of fireworks so you can enjoy it later instead of enjoying the moment.
It's not necessarily an easy thing to do. Because the theme that runs through the book is that you genuinely can't do everything you want to do, and not doing some things means giving up on some of your dreams. But it is liberating to realise that actually, it doesn't matter in the end, you can let go and really focus on what you're doing. It means trading in a flawless fantasy where you do everything perfectly for the messy reality where you do a handful of things in ways you might fail at. It means giving up certainty to some extent, since committing to something means taking a path without knowing exactly where you're going. But the alternative is to go nowhere.
It's a level headed read that takes in a wide range of influences from philosophy and other writers, to great effect as the wisdom of the book is much deeper than you would expect from what is technically a tome about time management. I've highlighted all the way through and I'll definitely be returning to it to absorb it more fully.
There aren't really any tricks or frameworks to subscribe to. A while ago I read books on techniques on how to make better choices, how I could weigh up each option and make the "right" choice. It's more like a guide to confronting reality, accepting that you will fail and you will make the wrong choices sometimes. But that's ok, and it's a lot less stressful than trying to maintain the impossible standard of always choosing right, always filling your time in the right way.
Burkeman outlines his thesis at the very start, writing:
“The real problem isn’t our limited time. The real problem – or so I hope to convince you – is that we’ve unwittingly inherited, and feel pressured to live by, a troublesome set of ideas about how to use our limited time, all of which are pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.”
There is little to disagree with in Four Thousand Weeks. Most of the advice is useful and evidenced based as Burkeman guides his readers through a labyrinth of self-help, organisational and productivity tips, some of which are very good and worth taking on board. Others, put to the test, fall to the wayside.
His own ideas, which amount to using one’s time well by focusing mainly on a few key projects, only adding new projects when initial key ones are completed, is a fairly loose way of putting it, for there is more detail and nuance in Burkeman’s approach.
For example, when referring to Stephen Covey’s parable of the rocks in the jar, he writes: “The critical question isn’t how to differentiate between activities that matter and those that don’t, but what to do when far too many things feel at least somewhat important, and therefore arguably qualify as big rocks.”
In addition, Burkeman writes particularly well. There is the occasional flourish into the long, abstract sentence; though this is the exception rather than the rule. For most part, ideas were expressed clearly throughout the book and generally easy to comprehend. And there are some great stories along the way, such as the one about Franz Kafka being torn between his work and love for Felice Bauer.
The book is also full of quotable passages. Here are three, though I could have picked many more.
“Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster.”
“The technologies we use to try to ‘get on top of everything’ always fail us, in the end, because they increase the size of the ’everything’ of which we’re trying to get on top.”
“One can waste years this way, systematically postponing precisely the things one cares about the most.”
All in all, I would recommend Four Thousand Weeks for it has much to offer, whether you agree with Burkeman’s ideas or not.
I hope you find my review helpful.
In regards of the content, the book is really quite philosophical and is valuable for getting you to stand back and look at your life, your attention and quality of life. Despite the continual torrent of sentences, it is a worthwhile read.
















