Four Thousand Weeks
Time Management for Mortals
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4.3 • 310 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
excellent observation on our relation to time.
Very good book on our dilemma with time. Read this in one week and it has me rethinking how I look at time and time management(a misnomer) and approaching my day accepting the present and determining a few essentials.
Gratitude
Thank you
Patronizing and Political
One of the biggest literary let downs, in a long time.
The author has an interesting premise, but spends the book subtly promoting their own political view.
You will lose count of how many times an un-critical, unquestioning view of pandemic, is brought up. (For reasons that are never clear).
There are non-subtle jabs at those with different political views as the author holds - which provide no value or benefit to the reader.
Really, one of those patronizing books you want to love, with a cool premise.
That the author chooses to weave in his political views, is really sad for a subject (life and your time on this planet), that has no reason to be politicized at all.
A real intellectually lazy execution of an interesting preimse.
What a waste of time reading it.