Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals is a non-fiction book written by Oliver Burkeman and published in 2022.
The book challenges conventional approaches to productivity and time management and instead focuses on embracing the finiteness of time and making the most of the time we have.
The book has received positive reviews for its practical advice and thought-provoking ideas.
It’s impossible to master time
The culture’s ideal of individualistic mastery over time is unrealistic and leads to stress, emptiness, and frustration. Attempting to achieve total control over time and attention is impossible and denies the truth about human limitations.
Focusing on using time well creates an obsession with a future point that never arrives, making each day feel like a task to get through.
Time feels like an unstoppable conveyor belt, bringing us new tasks as fast as we can dispatch the old ones; and becoming ‘more productive’ just seems to cause the belt to speed up.
Overcoming Time Blindness
- Keeping a time diary: One way to become more aware of how you are using your time is to keep a time diary. This can help you to see where you are spending your time and where you might be able to make changes.
- Setting deadlines: Another way to overcome time-blindness is to set deadlines for yourself. This will help you to focus on the task at hand and to avoid procrastination.
- Taking breaks: It is also important to take breaks when you are working on a task. This will help you to avoid burnout and to stay focused.
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,
Social media anxiety
When people make enough money to meet their needs, they just find new things to need and new lifestyles to aspire to. Social media now amplifies this problem. Influencers promote their luxury lifestyles. Exotic holidays and fast cars
Suddenly, a local walk and bicycle are no longer good enough. To achieve this ideal lifestyle, you must work harder to become successful. The problem. Success always seems just out of reach. You commit to working harder. to get more done. to use your time better. You download the latest productivity tool from the app store to help you.
Say No!
The problem is not our limited time, but rather the troublesome set of time management ideals we feel pressured to live by.
Prioritizing future benefits over current enjoyments backfires, leading to a life spent worrying and unable to experience “deep time.” Instead, focus on the few things that matter most to you right now and invest yourself fully in them. Say no to everything else.
Live in the moment
Stop focusing on productivity and achieving future goals. Instead, live in the moment and be present. The finest experiences are meaningless if your mind is elsewhere. Stop rushing to complete tasks and treating life as a series of transactions.
Say no to unnecessary things and focus on what truly matters: family, friends, and nature. Be fully present in every moment and take a breath when you find yourself distracted. Those few seconds of presence are what truly matter.
Don’t let Time master you
We’ve inherited, and feel pressured to live by, a troublesome set of ideas about how to use our limited time. We assume this will help optimize our short time on earth. Instead, the opposite happens. These time-management ideals are pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.
The trouble with attempting to master your time, it turns out, is that time ends up mastering you.
When you’re faced with too many demands, it’s easy to assume that the only answer must be to make better use of time by becoming more efficient, driving yourself harder, or working for longer—as if you were a machine. Say no to these demands, and you will be viewed as difficult and uncooperative.
Be here now
The belief that success lies in the future and that mastering time is key has become ingrained in us. But it ultimately backfires by making us focus on future benefits over present enjoyment, leading to a life lived in the future and making it hard to experience deep time.
We live in a constant state of trying to get tasks out of the way, mentally waiting for what really matters, and treating everything we do as valuable only insofar as it leads to something else.
This mindset turns us into ideal citizens within the economic machine, working longer hours to buy more consumer goods and striving for an elusive work-life balance that no one has ever achieved.
Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up, But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what only lives for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. Life’s bounty is in its flow. Later is too late.
Things speed up and so do we!
Consider all the technology intended to help us gain the upper hand over time: by any sane logic, in a world with dishwashers, microwaves, and jet engines, time ought to feel more expansive and abundant, thanks to all the hours freed up. But this is nobody’s actual experience.
Instead, life accelerates, and everyone grows more impatient. It’s somehow vastly more aggravating to wait two minutes for the microwave than two hours for the oven—or ten seconds for a slow-loading web page versus three days to receive the same information by post.
Living for future benefits
We’re trained to prioritize future benefits over present enjoyment, and that even affects how we exercise. Many people view running as meaningful only if it leads to a future accomplishment.
We often believe that we’ll feel in control and find true meaning once we achieve some future goal, but this mindset keeps us from fully experiencing the present. Instead, we should embrace curiosity and wonder about what might happen next, rather than worrying about a specific outcome.
Missing out is not something you can avoid. Everyone is always missing out!
FOMO is typically viewed negatively, but missing out is actually necessary for meaningful choices. We often avoid acknowledging the difficult choices we must make, opting instead to try and do more, which only compounds the problem.
Technology exacerbates the issue, exposing us to even more options while promising to help us manage our time. The truth is, we must choose and sacrifice some things, leading to inevitable feelings of loss. Procrastinating in this way can cause years of missed opportunities.
The clock does not stop, of course, but we do not hear it ticking.
