Time is our biggest worry: there is too little of it. The award-winning, renowned Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman offers a lively, entertaining philosophical guide to time and time management, setting aside superficial efficiency solutions in favor of reckoning with and finding joy in the finitude of human life 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 struggle 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 obsession with “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life, 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.
Language
English
Published on
13/07/2021
Pages
224
Format
hardcover
ISBN
9780374159122
Other Editions
More books like “Four Thousand Weeks”
If you enjoyed reading “Four Thousand Weeks” by Oliver Burkeman, you may also like some of the following books.
![Book cover of Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving](https://s3.amazonaws.com/librarian.ai.covers/sm/9781984824738.jpg)
Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving
by Celeste Headlee
![Book cover of Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives](https://s3.amazonaws.com/librarian.ai.covers/sm/9781524744182.jpg)
Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives
by Daniel J. Levitin
![Book cover of Start.: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average, and Do Work That Matters](https://s3.amazonaws.com/librarian.ai.covers/sm/9781937077594.jpg)
Start.: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average, and Do Work That Matters
by Jon Acuff
![Book cover of Anxiety Culture Why Modern Life Makes It Hard To Be Happy](https://s3.amazonaws.com/librarian.ai.covers/sm/9781847375247.jpg)
Anxiety Culture Why Modern Life Makes It Hard To Be Happy
by Michael Foley