Four Thousand Weeks
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 eff...
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.
Oliver Burkeman (born 1975) is a British journalist (principally for the newspaper - The Guardian) and writer.
Early life and education
Educated at Huntington School, York, he graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1994.
Career
Between 2006 and 2020 Burkeman wrote a popular weekly column on psychology, This Column Will Change Your Life. He has reported from London, Washi...
Oliver Burkeman (born 1975) is a British journalist (principally for the newspaper - The Guardian) and writer.
Early life and education
Educated at Huntington School, York, he graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1994.
Career
Between 2006 and 2020 Burkeman wrote a popular weekly column on psychology, This Column Will Change Your Life. He has reported from London, Washington and New York. He has his own blog. His published books are listed below.
Works
HELP!: How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done, 2011 (London: Canongate Books), ISBN 978-0-85786-025-5
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, 2012 (London: Faber & Faber), ISBN 9780865479418
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, 2021 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), ISBN 9780374159122
Recognition
Burkeman was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2006. He won the Foreign Press Association's Young Journalist of the Year award. In 2015 he won the FPA's Science Story of the Year for a piece on the mystery of consciousness.