a book

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Name: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Rating: 5 (12 reviews)
Author: Oliver Burkeman
ISBN: 9780374159122

Oliver Burkeman · 2021 · 224 pages

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal

The 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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recommended by 12 people

sourced from public statements

Ryan Holiday
“As I’ve said before, I carry this memento mori coin in my pocket to remind me: You can leave life at any minute. Let that determine what you do and say and think. (I also have a piece of a tombstone on my bathroom counter). Oliver Burkeman’s new book illustrates the same point well–we have roughly four thousand weeks on this planet. How will we spend them? How should we think about them? And don’t be deceived by medical advancements. As I said in my monuments talk, I got to know a guy who lived to be 112. That’s still ‘only’ like 5,800 weeks.”↗
Matt Mullenweg
“@SamTalksTech @momentumdash @mikelittlezed1 @WordPress I've read that book too! Really enjoyed it.”↗
Paul Bloom
“Just finished "Four Thousand Weeks" by @oliverburkeman. Loved it--it's wise and funny, with deep insights into how to think about time, work, and relationships. Perfect book to get you thinking about the new year.”↗
Austin Kleon
“Quite possibly the most popular book of the whole club. People loved this one, and for good reason. Oliver is able to pull off the magic trick of writing self-help books that are, at their core, deeply suspicious of their own genre.”↗
Derren Brown
“I adored this book 4000 Weeks from @oliverburkeman…”↗
Joe Kunkle
“Not hyperbole to say this is a life-changing book @oliverburkeman”↗
Brad Frost
“One of the most important books I've recently read is 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals: Thanks for surfacing it, @addyosmani! #smashingconf”↗
Tim Ferriss
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