Book - Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Instead of offering a laundry list of time management hacks, Burkeman provides a gut check and reminds you of life's brevity. He challenges a culture driven by a fantasy of always more and starts with the reminder that we can never have it all. Instead of telling you how to get more done, he forces the more important question: what do I really want to do: with the next hour, with each day, and ultimately with my life?
With this book, Burkeman brings a piece that is often missing, rough-handled, or mistreated in time management conversations: the crucial task of choosing what can get done and what will not get done. He does this by emphasizing a reality that is so easily ignored, which is that we are finite.
The title drives at this point. If you ask most people how many weeks an adult life has, their guesses wildly vary. I recently asked a friend this and his estimate was 80,000. But no. The answer is much, much less. The typical 80 year old has 4,000 weeks to spend. Reading this as a 44-year old with average longevity in my family tree, I'm aware that I've likely less than 1,500 weeks left. With that awareness, the book challenges you to reflect on what things on your list matter the most and which you need to consciously let go of.
But this isn't a carpe diem book masquerading as time management self-help. He lays out the case for rest, for a new way to think about problems in life, and for nurturing relationships. Despite the ominous angle this book takes in exploring mortality, it ultimately is a book about hope and one that I really enjoyed reading as a new year begins.
"Convenience culture seduces us into imagining that we might find room for everything important by eliminating only life's tedious tasks. But it's a lie. You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results." (p. 55)
