Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Ratings219
Average rating4.2
Short, sweet, and right to the point. For a chronic procrastinator like me (who also happens to be a mortal), I devoured this one in a day. Poses a lot of cool questions that makes you rethink how you're spending your time, life, and more, and man oh man did I need those questions!
I enjoyed this book. It takes a contrarian view to productivity. Think of this book that comes after you've read everything on motivation, productivity and mastery and you're still frustrated by all the things you expect of yourself and fail. Well, this books makes you face your mortality. It addressed the underlying reason for your discomfort: your limited time, your finite-ness. Till you embrace you can't do everything, you'll always feel inadequate. This books helps to reframe the human experience. Once you embrace your limitations... you are set free from angst.
"...it's useful to begin this last stage of our journey with a blunt but unexpectedly liberating truth: what you do with your life doesn't matter all that much—and when it comes to how you're using your finite time, the universe absolutely could not care less."
spoiler alert: this book isnt about time management hacks. the fact that oliver burkeman included “time management” in the title is such a click-bait move. but i still think its a good read though. 4.5/5.
Listened to the audio and found it more entertaining than I expected.
Not a how-to, but a philosophical book about how we try and quantify time, something that is intangible. Was very helpful at a time when I needed to hear it.
My rating, relative to the much higher average rating is a reflection of the obvious insight that an overall rating is the average of all of the subjective measures of how helpful individual readers found the book. This book was obviously appreciated by people different than me. I suspect most of these people were reading it as they had recently become disillusioned by productivity as a measure and were looking for another metric to measure their life by. The author is in the same boat, so for people who people who realised this long ago he is way behind you. This book tells you mostly what not to do but is short on suggesting what you might use instead. Disappointed
If you're seeking the usual time management tactics, this book might not be your cup of tea.
However, if you're intrigued by delving into the intricacies of our connection with time, its profound influence on our existence, psychology, and the possibility of reshaping that connection for a richer life experience, then this book could be just what you're looking for.
What captivates me most is Burkeman's adept blend of philosophical insights with nods to other authors, spiritual figures, and diverse sources.
It's not just about managing time; it's about understanding our relationship with it on a deeper level, and Burkeman navigates this exploration with finesse.
This got tremendously overhyped for me as a book that may actually address the root of time management issues under our social and economic system, but instead it read a lot like "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***," if that book were written by a snooty guy who was afraid of profanity.
A rarely good book. I left some time after reading it before reviewing it. And I still believe it one of the best books I've read.
It was strange to be as there are many contradictive ideas. Sometimes too repetitive, but not to the extend to overshadow the good parts.
I wish I read books like this in school. I would've perceived it differently, for sure, but it would've been a great philosophical foundation to life.
Life is short, and you cannot achieve everything that comes to your mind. The solution isn't to optimise or prioritize. It's to accept it.
Less of a productivity/self-help book and more of an author's musings on how there is no such thing as peak productivity, and as much as you want to try for it and reach that feeling of fulfilment, you're just gonna try for the rest of your life and never really reach there (lol).
Fascinating and definitely changed my perspective on how I spend my time. Highly recommend
Self help and productivity type books are usually a hit or miss for me but I generally enjoyed this one and found useful ways to reframe thinking around using time. I liked the combination of philosophy and ways of thinking about time and mortality, anecdotal contributions, and concrete suggestions and action items – it was a great balance that offered value across multiple axes. Considering purchasing a copy for periodic rereads and so I can annotate. It's almost worth it alone for the references to other texts to be adapted as a reading list!
Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
Hope is a curse. It's putting your faith in something outside yourself, beyond the current moment. It's that future state where your inbox is empty, your tasks well and tightly under control and your time, at last, your own to fully direct towards what gives you joy.
For the productivity minded among us, we live in a perpetual state of hope, inhabiting an imagined future where our lives are well and truly ordered and organized. We need to give up hope and simply do the work. The Germans have a word for it, Eigenzeit, the time integral to a process itself. If a thing's worth doing, it takes as long as it takes.
Aside from the Appendix at the end of the book that includes a list of 10 tools for “embracing your finitude” - tacked on as if to meet some self-help, productivity book criteria, this is more an entertaining philosophical treatise than time management system.
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Becoming more efficient only brings about more work. Your immediate email responses in the hopes of reaching inbox zero only invite further emails. Your FOMO is forgetting that your entire life consists of things you are choosing to neglect. The real measure of any time management technique, according to Burkeman, is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.
So embrace the limits of your life. Choose to fail at things. Limit technology in favour of savouring the mundane and get good at doing nothing.
Nothing extra-ordinary in terms of content, but special when you think of the book as a compilation of useful frameworks to think about time.
Alas, I stumbled upon Four Thousand Weeks at such a point in my life where I've already been a productivity addict for so long that it's impossible for me to make a fresh start. The central theme of the book - that you won't ever get to do all the things you've set out to do so you should consciously choose and be happy about your choice - is such an aphoristic statement that no matter how you spin it, it always feels bland.
Having said that, the self-help ocean that this book is a part of, is filled with heaps of garbage books, so stumbling upon this one is like finding a needle in a haystack. Few ways of thinking about time and choices that I found interesting:
Don't think of these things as life hacks - don't treat life as a faulty contraption in need of modification.
A spin on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out): missing out is what makes our choices meaningful in the first place, every decision to use a portion of a time on anything represents saying no to every other thing that you could've done but you didn't.
The anti-skill of staying with the anxiety of never having time to do everything.
Picking one item from the menu represents an affirmation rather than a defeat. The fact that you could've chosen a different and perhaps equally valuable way to spend this afternoon bestows meaning on the choice you did make.
A hobbyist is a subversive: they insist that some things are worth doing for themselves alone, despite offering no payoffs in terms of productivity or profit.
I went in thinking this would be kind of similar to other time management books with some pragmatic choices given the title. Something not so rigid, but still practical advice on how to manage your time well.
This is a philosophy book in this disguise. I think I can summarize the overall theme in this way “No matter what you do you will never get all the things, even all the important things, done in your lifetime. This is a gift, not a curse because of a few reasons that are to be expounded on. This gift could drive you into a nihilistic fugue or maybe it will just lead to a stoic embrace of the now.”
Actually the author did not seem to consider that understanding that nothing we do matters could lead to nihilism. That is just my viewpoint I guess.
Productivity junkie rediscovers nihilism. Not a bad book. Not a great one either.
This is a mindfulness book disguised as a book about productivity; it will completely shift how you think about every time management tip you’ve ever read, because it’s fundamentally about a mindset shift. If you’re an entrepreneur constantly running on the hamster wheel of someday work-life balance, you need to drop everything and read this.
I have a massive TBR list, so I’m not sure that I’ve ever wanted to turn around and start reading the same book again, but it’s absolutely how I feel about this one. I read fast, but this is the kind of book that asks you to sit with it and digest what the ideas mean for your own life. This is going to be my top pick of 2023.
An okay overview on existentialism and whatnot. Feels overstretched at times.
A one of a kind book, this doesn't contain some cheap time hacks and productivity tips. This book is a psychological realistic outline for our limited time on this earth. Yes, probably 4000 weeks only, or even less.
It made me think a lot and question myself. It removed the clutter and the demand of these modern world. It simply gave me permission to not control every second of my day and stop trying to master my time because that's not possible. It gave me permission to sit and do nothing. You don't have to be the next Einstein or Elon musk. Just enjoy your life.
Just live every moment because it won't come back, you have to believe that you are finite and that your influence on this universe is near zero, enjoy the years you are given to live. I believe we are here just to improve ourselves and to show gratitude for God.
The time you are going to save is going to get used to another thing. Human beings are finite. They don't like doing challenging stuff that question their knowledge and current skills. So they simply avoid it. Saving email replies time won't help, bcz you are going to scroll on yt after or you will get distracted with more emails.
Be patient. Let things take its time. Don't try to control the pace of this world. Because the fatser you want the pace to go, the fater you will need to go. Enjoy the process of living.
And remember that you are a human being, you having much control over your time comes with a price, it makes it uneasier to sit with your kids, take a walk with a friend, stargaze etc. You are not anymore synced with your fellow humans, and that should remind you of the soviet union 5 days week experiment.
You need to live 60 times only to experience the whole human evolution.
If you want to control your time, deattach from it.