Four Thousand Weeks: Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

Four Thousand Weeks is a good book with lots of ideas for wanting to get oneself organised and focused on relevant, big things, rather than the small, less significant things in life that can get in the way and bog down more important projects. As I read the book, I felt that much of what Burkeman advocates chimes very much with my own ideas about productivity. Burkeman outlines his thesis at the very start, writing: “The real problem isn’t our limited time. The real problem – or so I hope to convince you – is that we’ve unwittingly inherited, and feel pressured to live by, a troublesome set of ideas about how to use our limited time, all of which are pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.” There is little to disagree with in Four Thousand Weeks. Most of the advice is useful and evidenced based as Burkeman guides his readers through a labyrinth of self-help, organisational and productivity tips, some of which are very good and worth taking on board. Others, put to the test, fall to the wayside. His own ideas, which amount to using one’s time well by focusing mainly on a few key projects, only adding new projects when initial key ones are completed, is a fairly loose way of putting it, for there is more detail and nuance in Burkeman’s approach. For example, when referring to Stephen Covey’s parable of the rocks in the jar, he writes: “The critical question isn’t how to differentiate between activities that matter and those that don’t, but what to do when far too many things feel at least somewhat important, and therefore arguably qualify as big rocks.” In addition, Burkeman writes particularly well. There is the occasional flourish into the long, abstract sentence; though this is the exception rather than the rule. For most part, ideas were expressed clearly throughout the book and generally easy to comprehend. And there are some great stories along the way, such as the one about Franz Kafka being torn between his work and love for Felice Bauer. The book is also full of quotable passages. Here are three, though I could have picked many more. “Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster.” “The technologies we use to try to ‘get on top of everything’ always fail us, in the end, because they increase the size of the ’everything’ of which we’re trying to get on top.” “One can waste years this way, systematically postponing precisely the things one cares about the most.” All in all, I would recommend Four Thousand Weeks for it has much to offer, whether you agree with Burkeman’s ideas or not. I hope you find my review helpful.

Language is a bit hard and takes some time to understand, but overall manifest the idea well. You can't get and do everything, therefore you must choose consciously where you want to put your effort and time. What I like about the mist is different philosophers' viewpoint toward time and why using time as a currency is not wise as well. Sometimes patient is what we need to settle down impact on our lives. Wisdom

The ideas in this book are floating around in the ether at the moment. It's the antidote to the productivity, work smart, squeeze every moment philosophy that's been around for 20 or 30 years. There's books about rest, 4 day week initiatives and a growing realisation that trying to be more productive is only making us more stressed. So I think it's fair to say that Burkeman won't be the only person to write this book, but I do think he will have written the best and most thoughtful iteration of it. A self proclaimed productivity geek, Burkeman has come to a lot of the same conclusions that have started to bug me over the last few years. Time is finite. No matter how efficient we get we'll never do everything we feel we're supposed to do. The answer he says is to acknowledge our limitations and be honest with ourselves that the life we're living right now is what we have. By stopping struggling against the limits of time we can enjoy what we're doing right now, and really invest and commit to it. Instead of believing we're capable of engaging with every opportunity the modern world presents to us, we have to make hard choices about what we really want to do. What if you weren't trying to get somewhere? What if you accepted that you're already as here as you're ever going to be, what would you do then? He highlights the peril the instrumentalisation of time, always doing something for what might happen in the future. Taking a picture of fireworks so you can enjoy it later instead of enjoying the moment. It's not necessarily an easy thing to do. Because the theme that runs through the book is that you genuinely can't do everything you want to do, and not doing some things means giving up on some of your dreams. But it is liberating to realise that actually, it doesn't matter in the end, you can let go and really focus on what you're doing. It means trading in a flawless fantasy where you do everything perfectly for the messy reality where you do a handful of things in ways you might fail at. It means giving up certainty to some extent, since committing to something means taking a path without knowing exactly where you're going. But the alternative is to go nowhere. It's a level headed read that takes in a wide range of influences from philosophy and other writers, to great effect as the wisdom of the book is much deeper than you would expect from what is technically a tome about time management. I've highlighted all the way through and I'll definitely be returning to it to absorb it more fully. There aren't really any tricks or frameworks to subscribe to. A while ago I read books on techniques on how to make better choices, how I could weigh up each option and make the "right" choice. It's more like a guide to confronting reality, accepting that you will fail and you will make the wrong choices sometimes. But that's ok, and it's a lot less stressful than trying to maintain the impossible standard of always choosing right, always filling your time in the right way.

I’m one of the lucky people who got to have the brush with death that leads to a deep awakening of the awareness of one’s mortality. For anyone who hasn’t had that, I can’t imagine a better attempt to get the message across than this one by Oliver Burkeman. We (in the west) live increasingly like we expect to live forever and that our greatest worth is in the job we do. We have commodified the raising of our children so they have become just another indicator of our productivity. We have truly lost touch with what quality looks and feels like in an individual life. Hope only ensures we stay on the fast train to destruction. Doing away with hope is our only chance of getting off the train, focusing on what truly matters and doing less harm in the process. This is an easy read, brilliantly argued and optimistic - if we can all just hear the message….

Started off great. Very inspirational and in-depth. Illiciting great emotions to make major life changes.. the excitement is there! As i read the book the rambling began, and I think I just got bored...

I bought this book thinking it would teach me how to manage my time, but instead, it triggered an identity crisis. The book is simply AWESOME. It will invite you to reflect on your relationship with time and productivity, with great analysis and provocations - for me, it's more of a philosophical book than a time management book. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is tired of producing so much or wants to take a step back and analyze the life they have been building.

This is an insightful and invaluable conversation about time--not so much managing it as embracing this precious and finite resource. Oliver Burkeman explores why (and how) to let go of "productivity" and instead explore the relationships and activities that mean the most to us. While hard choices await, so does freedom and peace of mind. The book is written in small, readable chunks. I love it.

Worth reading

If you live by your to-do lists and are in a constant anxious state to get more of it done, you need to read this book. It's not preachy or "self-helpy" at all, it just tells you how it is: you have about 4000 weeks on this planet. Are you going to spend it as a slave to a perfect future that will never exist, or are you going to start living right now?

This is a must have for people who struggle with busyness and are trying to find a way to become productive… not because it gives you the tools for it, but because it challenges them. I love productivity (in a similar way as the author), I even wrote a book about it and host workshops to help teams to become more productive. And this book just helped me to put productivity in perspective: how to “see” what matters in life instead of falling victim of the auto pilot of this world. If time is money, this is the best investment book you’ll find.