Four Thousand Weeks

This book ought to be required reading for every high school student. I didn’t read it in high school. But I’m grateful I found and read it a short few years ago. Why? Because I’m never going to win the rat race. The harder I try, the worse off I’ll become because “the rats” keep getting bigger and faster.

While it's a truism to say that time is the most precious resource, until recently, I didn’t act that way. I know that each of us has limited time, energy, and resources. So, getting more comfortable with the fact that my… show more.

I've often wondered why people brag about being so busy--as if having more work is a badge of honor of some sort. And the constant hustle to 'get all the work done' seems pretty absurd; there will always be more work. This book destroys the notion that you will ever accomplish all your goals. In fact, you'll only accomplish a very small fraction of them. Realizing this gives you the freedom to let things go, whether it's work, travel, creative outlets, etc. Once you realize that most of your to do list will go undone, you can relax and accept… show more.

Oliver Burkman saved me from myself. I had a sneaky suspicion that although I claimed to have weaned myself off the addiction of constant optimization, I wasn't absolutely clean, but reading his book was the best rehab I could imagine.

Oliver is incredibly smart and incredibly creative. I've enjoyed his columns for years, but now he has honed his writing style so brilliantly that I couldn't help but be riveted by what can often be quite a boring subject—time and how we use it.

We are our time, and our fixation with it is often unhealthy. Reading this gave me… show more.

The timing could not have been better: I read this book in a hammock while doing fieldwork in the Brazilian Amazon, where I was supposed to study how Indigenous peoples imagine the future and envisage the role of technology in their future lives.

It took several days on a slow boat to arrive at the research location, and meanwhile, I read a book that shocked me from the title onwards: each of us has, on average, 4000 weeks to spend in this life. What do we want to spend these weeks on? According to the author, we often want to… show more.

As a rather Type A person who can get a bit preoccupied with schedules and to-do lists, this book was a much-needed reality check for me. I love the almost nihilistic approach to productivity here: this book is quite literally about how we are all going to die, yet we spend so much of our waking life trying to be as productive as possible.

This book forced me to interrogate how much unnecessary time I spend on work (the income-driven kind as well as the household chore kind) and got me thinking seriously about the reason for work in the… show more.

If there is a “silver lining” to burnout, it’s that sometimes it can inspire growth and change. Four Thousand Weeks inspired me to do some soul-searching on what I care most about in my life, and to rethink how I spend my time.

I always thought I struggled to manage time because I wasn’t efficient and focused enough - until I realized that wasn’t the problem! The problem was that I had too much on my plate, and I wasn’t making hard decisions about what needed to go, in order to have room for the more important things. Burkeman’s wise… show more.

In an unpretentious and funny tone, Burkeman communicates a wealth of profound insights about how humans might want to consider using their time on this earth.

I particularly appreciated the suggestion that we all try to slow down a little after the shock of COVID-19 to decide what we care about and to put our energy towards our higher purposes. Helped motivate me to buckle down and dedicate more time to writing about history in the most accessible way I can pull off!

Why is there never time to do everything I have to do? Why can I never get everything done at work? Why is everyone always demanding I do more and more? If you feel like this, you MUST read this book. 

Oliver puts it very bluntly – you only have four thousand weeks on Earth, then you die. This assumes an average life expectancy of 80 – workout what faction of that you have left and multiply by 4000, and that is how many weeks you have left – not many. 

This book helps you stop trying to do everything… show more.

Similar to the stoic Seneca, this book reminds us of the shortness of life. On average, we only live for 4000 weeks or 28000 days. Burkeman makes us aware that any decision we make closes off the possibility of countless other choices.

It is not about getting more things done in less time but about choosing the right things to do. At the very end of the book, he provides a list of 10 tools to deal with limited time that I found extremely helpful.

The subtitle of Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals caught my eye. I wanted more ideas about time management and assumed that’s what I’d find here. I didn’t think about the word “mortal”—a big mistake! Be prepared for the perspectives this book puts on your “finitude,” i.e., the finiteness of your life. “Time management is all life is.”

The title of Burkeman’s book refers to the 80 years (rounded) that, on average, we are granted to live our lives. As I write this, I am somewhere in my 4,270th week or so. So, this concept has more meaning when… show more.