Oliver Burkeman is a thoughtful person who writes well. His 2021 book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals is a set of variations on themes he played in The Antidote (2012), and has many of the same problems. Aside from poetic quotes by classic thinkers, there are few glimmers amidst the prose. Zen-like twists are fun: embrace your insignificance, give up the illusion of control, be a better procrastinator, etc. Live mindfully within a human lifespan, the "Four Thousand Weeks" of the title.
Further details, alas, are sketchy. Best, perhaps, are hints in the summary sections near the end of the book. Burkeman's "Five Questions" in the final chapter, for instance:
- Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what's called for is a little discomfort?
- Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?
- In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be?
- In which areas of life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you're doing?
- How would you spend your days differently if you didn't care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?
The Appendix "Ten Tools for Embracing Your Finitude" tries to be more specific, but sadly stumbles into platitudes, practical impossibilities, or trivialities:
- Adopt a "fixed volume" approach to productivity. ("... tough choices are inevitable ... focus on making them consciously and well ...")
- Serialize, serialize, serialize. ("... focus on one big project at a time (or at most, one work project and one nonwork project) and see it to completion before moving on to what's next. ...")
- Decide in advance what to fail at. ("... strategic underachievement — that is, nominating in advance whole areas of life in which you won't expect excellence of yourself ...")
- Focus on what you've already completed, not just on what's left to complete. ("... keep a "done list," which starts empty first thing in the morning, and which you then gradually fill with whatever you accomplish through the day ...")
- Consolidate your caring. (spurn social media and "... consciously pick your battles in charity, activism, and politics ...")
- Embrace boring and single-purpose technology. (minimize distractions from your tools)
- Seek out novelty in the mundane. ("... pay more attention to every moment, however mundane ... find novelty not by doing radically different things but by plunging more deeply into the life you already have ...")
- Be a "researcher" in relationships. ("... try deliberately adopting an attitude of curiosity, in which your goal isn't to achieve any particular outcome ...")
- Cultivate instantaneous generosity. ("... whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind—to give money, check in on a friend, send an email praising someone's work—act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later ...")
- Practice doing nothing. ("... resist the urge to manipulate your experience or the people and things in the world around you ... let things be as they are ...")
OK ... and then?
(cf The Antidote (2013-06-28), Stand in the Shed (2055-01-04), Celebrate Healthy Habits (2025-01-07), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-23