For Oliver Burkeman, time cannot be mastered but it can be used productively.
The author is Oliver Burkeman, well known for writing the ‘This column will change your life’ series for The Guardian (which, incidentally, describes this book as “perfectly pitched somewhere between practical self-help book and philosophical quest”.
The 4,000 weeks refers to the total number of weeks we each get if we live to 80. The time we have is, to quote Burkeman, “absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short”.
Yes, if you’re interested in concepts of time and time management – and looking to use your time better, while also improving your wellbeing.
Essentially, Burkeman warns that our attempts to master our time, and to be productive every minute of the day, make us stressed and miserable. Instead, we need to come to terms with our ‘finitude’ (that nagging sense that we might be wasting what little time we have) and use distraction and procrastination to our advantage.
‘The hustle’ has become an aspirational lifestyle, argues Burkeman. Being rich doesn’t tend to relax us, it actually makes us more likely to fill our time with methods to get richer quicker.
But the truth is, we will never conquer time and there is great value in realising this and focusing on the tasks that matter, not those that can be ticked off in convenient 15-minute windows.
Burkeman calls the futile attempt to master our time “the paradox of limitation”.
No, people didn’t always view time the way we do today; the urge to squeeze every last drop out of every waking hour is a modern phenomenon.
A shift in perspective occurred during the Industrial Revolution with the birth of the factory system and hourly waged labour, when ‘time became money’. Before then, people approached work as individual tasks, which worked fine in an agricultural society.
Our change in attitude is also partly down to religion. When our belief in the afterlife was stronger, we didn’t feel the need to pack everything into our mortal existence.
Burkeman says that instead of optimising our schedules we should leave room for unstructured time and leisure activities – taking opportunities to slow down, rather than adding more and more into our days.
When we’re working, we should accept that we’re inevitably going to get distracted (even when we are trying to achieve something interesting and meaningful) and find a balance between procrastination and productivity; this involves learning how to prioritise effectively and making time for planned procrastination between tasks.
Counterintuitively, this willl actually make us more productive, he pledges.
…we can take up hobbies, yes. Burkeman is evangelical about pursuing hobbies for hobbies’ sake.
We shouldn’t just stick to the things we’re good at or feel we could monetise (not being very good at something is good for us, he believes) but should embrace doing things for pure relaxation.
Right then:
Enjoy things for their own sake, not because they will help you become more productive.
Don’t avoid doing things because you are trying to be perfect at them. You won’t be perfect at them. “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good,” as the saying goes.
But give some things up. Giving things up will free you to be better at the things you need time to be good at.
Multitasking doesn’t work very well. Try to focus on one project at a time.
Carefully pick the things you care about. You don’t have the capacity to care about everything, though the world wants you to.
To combat digital distractions, make your technology as boring as you can possibly make it. You know you don’t need all those apps.
“Sorry, I was letting my mind wander. And then I’m off to play squash.”
“Time is money!”