Reviewing Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks and revealing the futility of time management

I’m staring down a to-do list twenty tasks deep. What if I can’t get it all done? What if it sucks? What if everyone gets mad at me?

I take a deep breath and remind myself of three simple truths.

“Nobody cares. Nothing matters. We’re all just dust on a space rock.”

Then I get to work.

A book that reshaped how I see the world and helped me find comfort in the futility of time management is Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. This self-help book strives to teach the advantages of approaching time not as a resource we have but as an experience we get.

It might be the only time management self-help book that reminds readers to face the facts.

• Life is finite.
• No one is owed time.
• You won’t finish everything.
• Nobody really cares what you get done.
• Things only matter if you think they matter.

Embracing life’s limits will help “manage” your time on earth. In this post, I distill some of the lessons that resonated with me, hoping you can apply them to whatever you need to get done and finally do it!

A Life in Four Thousand Weeks

First, a sobering truth. If you’re lucky, life is about four thousand weeks long.

The book’s title refers to the average human lifespan in weeks. Four thousand weeks equals about 77 years or 28,105 days. It sounds short, but it’s actually the longest thing you’ll ever experience.

In fact, humans have existed for hardly any time at all. Burkeman explains how the entire recorded human history is only about 6000 years or 312,000 weeks. While the earth and the universe have existed for much longer, humans are brand new in comparison.

Do you want to spend your 4000 weeks notching off a never-ending to-do list? Probably not.

Getting things done doesn’t mean you have fewer things to do; the opposite is usually true. The more you get done, the more you get assigned. Every time you finish a task, you prompt more tasks. Burkeman calls this “Sisyphus’ Inbox.”

Replying to emails can feel like pushing a boulder up a hill for eternity. You reply to every email in your inbox today. Then tomorrow it’s full again. Quickly replying to emails sets the expectation that you are always quick to reply.

What if you just don’t? What if you do what you must and forget the rest?

All Time is Free Time

If time is limited, what’s the best way to spend it? Perhaps it’s best not to spend it at all and instead experience it.

Mass agriculture and industrial production provide living essentials for billions of people. To keep these things running, society became increasingly complex, so clocks and standardized time were developed to keep everyone working on the same schedule. As such, we think of time as a resource, something we spend.

When we say we “spend” time, it implies that time has a physical quality, like money. Except it doesn’t. No one owns time. You could go to work, watch TV, or, unfortunately, get hit by a bus.

Avoid the urge to think of time as a resource. Burkeman explains,

“Once time is a resource to be used, you start to feel pressure, whether from external forces or from yourself, to use it well, and to berate yourself when you feel you’ve wasted it.” (18)

The saying goes, “Time waits for no man,” but perhaps it’s more accurate to say time isn’t owed to anybody. It might seem like your boss owns your time, but the unsettling truth is that time is not guaranteed.

In a way, this implies YOLO: You Only Live Once. But rather than an excuse to act recklessly, think of time’s finitude as an imperative to act deliberately. Knowing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it is the way to manage your time and your fear of the inevitable.

Instead of YOLO, what we really need is…

NOMO: The Necessity of Missing Out

When you dedicate yourself to finishing something, you are also dedicated to not doing something else.

Instead of feeling FOMO (fear of missing out), embrace NOMO (necessity of missing out). Burkeman explains it this way,

“Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem.” (35)

Sometimes, it seems like there’s not enough time because we choose to focus on too many things. Adding things to a to-do list gives the illusion of productivity, just as starting projects gives the illusion that they’ll eventually finish. It’s like that Onion headline.

Instead, we all must prioritize getting done what is really important. Burkeman articulates Three Principles of Prioritization:

1. Pay Yourself First — Make it a point to spend part of each day finishing the most important thing to you. If it’s being a good parent, spend time with your kid! If it’s losing weight, work out! If it’s writing a novel, write your pages!
2. Limit Your Work in Progress — Focus on the tasks at hand. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the fantasy of doing lots of stuff. Instead, choose a maximum of three projects to work on simultaneously. Once you finish the three,
3. Resist the Allure of Middling Priorities — Once you know what you want to achieve, ignore everything else. Maybe you can’t have a clean kitchen and a finished novel. If the novel’s more important to you, remember that nobody really cares about the dirty kitchen!

The urge to consume extends toward leisure time, too. Ever notice how some vacations leave you more exhausted than going to work? Knowing that you will only be somewhere briefly prompts regret and longing.

But what if it didn’t? What if you prioritize relaxing, having fun, and experiencing something new? It’s much easier said than done, but we’ll always remind ourselves to live in the moment.

Pain, Distractions, and the Future

And yet, doing stuff is hard! We still (hopefully) have 4000 weeks to do stuff. So a lack of time isn’t the only thing preventing us from accomplishing our goals.

Other psychological blocks prevent us from getting things done. Burkeman names these in hopes that identifying them can help us overcome them.

Pain — Doing good work hurts. It brings shame and inadequacy, “What if everyone hates this!” We must accept that nothing is perfect, and striving for perfection is a path to guaranteed pain. If you can accept that you won’t be perfect and embrace that you might suck, that can actually get you over the hump.

Distractions — A tiny computer in my pocket constantly calls me to watch a funny cat video. This is a great excuse for not getting things done. It’s social media’s fault! I’m not to blame! And yet, eventually, I must take ownership of my actions. I’m choosing to look at the funny cat videos because doing difficult things is uncomfortable. It hurts to be bad at things. If I can accept this and remember I’m in control of my actions, I can get more done.

The Future — Ultimately, the pain of inadequacy and the urge for distractions could be seen as fear of the future. What if I get it all done and still have more to do? What if I get everything done, and it sucks?

The pain of failure, the distractions of pleasure, and the anxiety that haunts the future prevent us from achieving our true purpose in life. But what if they stopped? Or, what if we could control how we react to these things? Could this get us closer to achieving our dreams?

Time Trades

If I can convince you of anything in this post, I hope it’s this: spend three minutes and twenty-six seconds listening to “Time Trades” by Jeffrey Lewis.

I really like this song. A lyric that resonates with me,

“You have no choice you have to pay time’s price

But you can use the price to buy you something nice”

This song asks us to embrace our finite lives! We must accept that we won’t get everything done or do everything cool. And that’s fine. If we’re gentle to ourselves and struggle through the difficulties, perhaps we can do something amazing. We can trade time for what’s most important.

How will you spend your 4000 weeks?