Four Thousand Weeks
Books | Self-Help / Self-Management / Time Management
4.5
(123)
Oliver Burkeman
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street JournalThe 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.
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Author
Oliver Burkeman
Pages
288
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published Date
2021-08-10
ISBN
0374715246 9780374715243
Community ReviewsSee all
"A must read to gain a new perspective on time on earth!"
Salim Hemdani
"On a short list of most important books read this year. All of us have about 4 thousand weeks to live, hopefully. You think of that a lot of differently every time you can’t wait for a weekend or can’t wait for a week to go by. There goes one of your weeks. And in the grand scheme, you won’t be remembered for it. This book helps show how to best think of and spend that time. Our relationship to time has become very unhealthy and our world of infinite options only makes it worse. The silver lining is, letting go, accepting that you won’t accomplish everything you want to, is healthy. This book along with The Comfort Crisis are must reads of 2021."
Sheldon Rapoza
"This book made me spiral in the best possible way. It felt very different from the usual time management kind of read, and really pushes the point home that time is a limited resource, and we won’t have time to do all the things on our various checklists. This book truly made me evaluate how I feel about time management and prioritizing task lists."
Olivia Huie
"Great book to adjust your preservative of time and life itself."
Lara Baker
"Why you shouldn't obsess with time management."
Mylene Reiners
"The premise of course is that you basically have 4,000 weeks in a lifetime. The surprise is that the author uses this amount of time in the perspective of overall history to emphasize just how little this will matter in the grand scheme of things.<br/><br/>While the main idea being that you shouldn't place too much importance on the tasks that other people have on your to-do lists when the outcomes aren't really that meaningful - what was appealing is that you should instead focus on what will bring you and your North Star goals the most meaning and happiness. After all as a famous band once belted out, 'We're here for a good time, not a long time...."<br/><br/>Definitely worth a read, and I'll be rereading it again once it has some time to sit with me - Here is hoping that the second reading will be able to pull out some bigger nuggets to share with you."
J W
James S Wilson
"This book is misleading. If you're off-put by the fact this is a book about time management, it's not.<br/><br/>It's a book on how to accept your mortality and live your best life, sprinkled with realistic advice on how to manage your time within his framework (there's really only 20 pages about time management in the whole book). It is much more philosophical than I thought it would be.<br/><br/>Our relationship with time in today's age is so messed up. If you're looking to unscrew it, I'd highly recommend the book. <br/><br/>I've tried to write about so many of the problems I've experienced and are covered in the book, and it felt always outside of my grasp. Burkeman really hits them all on the head. <br/><br/>When you boil down his advice, he's not telling us something we haven't heard at one point to another. However his perspective and take on why these problems actually matter are truly unique and original that is counter to almost all standard self-help advice. This is the first time I think a self help author has seriously explored the implications of their advice in the fullest instead of blindly recommending.<br/><br/>For those with an open mind, this may be a life altering read. 10/10"
Kalin Kochnev
"The fresh take of this book on how we should manage our time is really life-changing. There is no celebration or accomplishment in using every second of your life to achieve something or to make use of it; time is also to be just enjoyed and just to let it pass you by. Time is a funny thing and there is no better philosophical take on it I've seen besides this book."
Ranjan Lamichhane
