How Your Death Can Help Your Time Management
A Review of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Oliver Burkeman made me laugh out loud in this witty and wry exploration of how we can change our relationship to time for more freedom and satisfaction. Ever since taking a freshman writing seminar at Cornell, where I wrote about my (not so healthy) relationship to time, this topic has been a curiosity for me.
This book lays out a new philosophy for relating to time, rather than actually how to "manage" time. Burkeman eschews his previous efforts as a self-proclaimed productivity geek, in short because, in the paradigm of “getting more done,” there's no winning.
Drawing on Jungian depth psychology and a bit of Buddhism, Burkeman's main point for us is to embrace our "finitude." Doing so will bring into sharp focus that life is now, not later when our to-do list is completely crossed off. (Spoiler alert - your to-do list will never be completely crossed off!)
The book meandered through the expected hurdles we encounter when trying to focus on the present to make the most of the fact that this is it, here and now. Here are just some of my favorite takeaways, and related thought provoking questions to consider:
Denial: underlying how we spend most of our time is often a denial of our “finitude,” adopting a “one day / someday” attitude about the things we proclaim to matter to us. Accepting our inherent limitations – our human capabilities and capacity – allows us to move forward, paradoxically with more freedom.
Can you adopt a limit-embracing life and find the freedom inherent to those limits, including the ultimate limit of the length of our time here on Earth?
Distractions: we allow ourselves to get distracted from what matters most, also as a way to escape holding our feet to the fire (which is a derivative of facing our finitude, Burkeman argues).
Can you enable more agency over your common distractions, while also creating space to allow for times when your focus can be softer and your attention more fleeting?
Rest: our culture doesn't really embrace rest, but we can take it upon ourselves, and we should.
Can you truly rest at times when society takes collective pauses, and when you can feel that you, as a human, just need it?
Near the end of the book, Burkeman had me thinking that my main takeaway would be something like, "this is it -- make it count." But, refreshingly, he liberated me from the "make it count" part in his chapter titled "Cosmic Insignificance Therapy." He points out that it really won't matter that much in as little as a couple generations, given that it's almost guaranteed that you're not Leonardo daVinci or Mozart or Einstein. Rather than that depress you, if you allow it, it will actually liberate you more, and should offer helpful perspective when you’re mired in minutiae.
After reading this book, I feel lighter and more free. If you've tried numerous time management tools and hacks, but only gotten more frustrated and impatient, this book just may be for you.
I'll leave you with an idea Burkeman brought to my attention: if your life is made up of roughly 4,000 weeks, you don't have time, but rather, your life is this time. If your life is time, then you are time.
