Four Thousand Weeks

A good antidote to both "grind culture" and "enjoy every moment to the fullest" mindsets. Rather than opposites, these outlooks are almost the same. Put pressure on yourself to achieve specific outcomes at all times. Turns out this is not the recipe to happiness.

This is essential reading for any person who is a productivity geek or is into the whole productivity "discipline" in general. It isn't, as the subtitle suggests, about time management.

Really this is a philosphy book about how we spend time, how we think about time, and what "time" really is.

Throughout the book Burkeman has nuggets of how to implement the philosphy discussed - these are crystallised into 10 tips that can be found in the appendix.

That said you won't get the benefit of these tips if you haven't read the whole book first. It's a journey, a deeply enjoyable one and one I want to revisit throughout my life. I'm going to buy this book so I can do that.

Stellar read.

It ain't gonna help you do your daily work but it'll provide a bit of perspective when you feel like you're feeling anxious or just burnt out. It's a rare treat.

It ain't gonna help you do your daily work but it'll provide a bit of perspective when you feel like you're feeling anxious or just burnt out. It's a rare treat.

As 'books' these days, he tries to blame nearly everything related to depression and one's search for meaning for today's way of leaving.
He tells us to know we are going to die soon, get rid of the aspirations as we won't achieve the majority of them and do less for ourselves exclusively as there won't be anyone to judge that we failed.
In his opinion, this enlightenment, such a great resignation and such a terrible settlement for less is going to make us happy.

He is trying to cover everything without going to deep.
He basically touches every bit of our modern day lives without looking under the hood hence the book seem to be very shallow and lacks the 'juice'.

Last thing, Oliver.
There is this one thing you failed to mentioned in the book, something I almost consider a crime.
Consciously you failed to mention the regret at the end of it all, when people living small, who actually didn't live at all, realize they have wasted their whole lives focusing on 2-3 things and how much stuff they didn't care about.
This settling for less, return to the Middle Ages (even if only in one's imagination) costs us everything in the end.
In order to land in the comfort zone and 'forgive yourself' for being lazy, stupid and not managing it all, you are damned to end your life with regrets I wish I could avoid having.
I realize he is too young to understand it well to write about it but well, just don't buy the brochure, ok?

It won't do any good.
Strive, hunt, try new things, experience, taste, touch.
Don't settle for less.

Oliver, you will make others suffer a lot.

I read this as the description really spoke to my todo-list overwhelm and feeling that everything needed to be done.

This book reminds you of the obvious - we're all finite, todo lists are always infinite. You were never going to get everything done anyway, so stop worrying about it. Instead, prioritise ruthlessly, choose things that you're willing to let go or fail at, and value the "now" over the unreachable future that you think will exist when you finish your todo list.

Overall, the book does what it sets out to achieve fairly well. Unfortunately it has a narrowly neurotypical view and doesn't really give space for those of us who struggle to let things go and often fall into absolutist thinking about their todo list. It also makes assumptions that everyone wants similiar things in a few places, especially when it talks about relationships - we don't all want a life time monogamous relationship with children and a white picket fence. IMHO a book like this should just avoid talk of relationships if it's going to spend too few pages on them to do them justice.

For me, this books has provided a much needed alternative perspective on things and there are some suggestions which I will take away and try to implement.

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.

The Power of Now for productivity gurus.

Great points very well made but still, you know, maybe I'm the one who actually can do it all....

Down-to-earth productivity discussion, made me think about my limited existence and ponder what's really essential in our lives. There's a lot about acceptance and being patient. The overall message is to take it slow and enjoy the ride. Good reflections.

This was surprisingly good. It isn't about what the title makes it to be. I feel like the book could be summed up in a few lines or pages, but I can't think of a way to write a summary which will have any impact at all, or not sound like generic wise sounding advice. So, at least in that way, the summary of the book will be like a zen koan. You need to have thought about it, meditated on it, and then finally reached an understanding of its true meaning (at least that's how I assume koans work).

The author talks about things that everyone must already have had thoughts about, but he has a clarity of thought that makes it feel like an enjoyable and deep conversation. The book is also surprisingly radical; it does not really promote 'time management tips / tricks / techniques' that will make you more productive at finishing tasks at your job, for example; not directly, anyways.

As a philosophical read about our perception of time and how we spend it, this is a very good book. As a practical read for embracing and living with the book's stoic worldview, where time is fleeting and we will do very few things in our life, little guidance is provided. There's good philosophical discussion about time and how we use it. There's good advice on how to prioritize what's important to us. But I guess my main irk was that so many of these passages are drenched in nihilism. I genuinely couldn't tell if the author thought that our more "meaningful" lives amounted to anything worthwhile, or if he felt that life was completely devoid of any meaning. So I recommend this, but be in the right headspace for it.

Burkeman skips the block scheduling and singletasking to remind us that we're all dead soon and should settle on a few things to focus on what's important. He's already been through a history of over-optimization and hyper-productivity, and has come to the apparent realization that none of it matters. Our need to feel more and more productive leaves us living in an existential and anxious state. The more we're able to confront our finitude (and uselessness?), "the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes". I liked his different ways of putting time in perspective, like how the Renaissance was six (centenarian) lifetimes ago. Some related topics covered were procrastination, prioritization, and patience.

I absolutely loved this book. So many messages I felt made sense to me, and helped me shift perspective. I'm enjoying & coping better at work, and just appreciating life a little more just as it is. A wonderful read.