4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Title:4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Author: Oliver Burkeman, a British journalist who offers surprising insights on life in his widely published books and articles.

What is it? A book. This one is here to remind you that life is short - and to make the most of it, you might need to completely rethink how you perceive time.

Who should read it? Anyone who feels like they aren’t getting the most out of their time. Whether you are struggling with productivity, trying to find a more solid work/life balance, or trying to prioritize what is actually important, this book may be for you. It offers new perspectives on time, time spent, and time wasted, and it gives unexpected advice on how to actually get what you want out of the time you have.

Two minute skinny: As the opening sentence of the book will tell you - if you live to be 80 years old, that amounts to 4,000 weeks. If you make it to 100 years old, you are lucky to have 5,200 weeks. That is about as many as most of us are going to get. Period.

As humans, what do we do with this information? We try as hard as we possibly can to forget that this is the case. We spend our whole lives trying to forget that life is fleeting. We distract ourselves and convince ourselves that our time is infinite. Burkeman says, it’s time to stop all that nonsense and face the facts. Life is short. Time is of the essence, and chances are you won’t get to do the vast majority of things you want to do. So get up and get over it. And then decide: What am I going to spend my time doing?

Perhaps one of the most thought-provoking insights of the book comes from a story Burkeman recalls that the billionaire Warren Buffet once told his pilot, in regards to his secret to success. Buffett apparently told the pilot to make a list of the twenty most important things in his life, the top twenty things that he wanted to spend his time on. Buffet told the pilot to take those twenty things and put them in order of most important to least. Upon completing this task, Buffett told the pilot to look at the bottom fifteen things on the list, and to run away from those things as fast as he possibly could and never spend time on any of those things ever again. Buffet explained that those are the things that will steal your time and energy from giving your all to the top five things in your life. You simply can’t do it all, so focus on what is most important to you, and leave the temptations of lesser important things in your rearview mirror. Burkeman digs in deep in several places, outlining how human perception of time has changed since the industrial revolution, and offers many philosophical insights on our understanding of time itself. It’s thought provoking and thoughtful, challenging and enlightening. It is a good investment of…time.

Rating? Worth the Investment? We give this book a 9/10. There are potentially infinite self-help books that offer insights on how to maximize your time, and this one offers a different perspective. Instead of giving advice about how to maximize your time, this offers up the idea that time can’t be maximized, it can’t be altered. So spend your time in a way that maximizes yourself and what you value. It’s a refreshing and much needed perspective, worth taking into consideration.

Listen, I don’t have time for a whole book… What's second best? This article offers a more in-depth overview than our review, but it isn’t as much of an investment as the entire book. Check out the article here.

And in case you wanted to go deeper: This is not Burkeman’s first book, and you can certainly check out his other writing.

And if you want to have Oliver Burkeman and his thought-provoking insights in your inbox, you can sign up for his twice monthly newsletter to read his musings on the modern world.

Blogpost by Hallie Moberg Brauer