Four Thousand Weeks

Time Management for Mortals

By: Oliver Burkeman

Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman

Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

2021 Financial Times Books of the Year

An Instant New York Times Best Seller

This program is read by the author.

Time is our biggest worry: There is too little of it. The acclaimed Guardian writer 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 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 listeners 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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

©2021 Oliver Burkeman (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

fresh, much needed perspective

great book, so spot on. if you are someone who feels like you get more and more behind the more that you do, listen to this.

Total perspective shift!

This is the book I didn't realize I needed. The anti-productivity time management book. Fantastic.

Stop living for the future

We have heard about living in the present moment, but this book gives us insight into why we don’t and offers practical, witty and even sobering reasons as to why we should. Simply put, we are rarely satisfied and modern technologies and so-called efficiencies have made us impatient and less satisfied. The optimal future person that we are constantly working towards being is stealing our joy and our time on this planet. Being an underachiever by society’s standards is not a flaw, it’s inevitable. Accept that, set your own standards and cadence, and feel the weight on your shoulders ease up. Side note: After hearing the part about how most of us are too impatient to read because we can’t make reading happen faster, I felt a guilty about getting the audible copy and putting it on 1.3X to make it move a little faster.

Did I just get personally attacked?

Wow. A bit shocked by this book. Almost felt like it was pointing me out of a crowd and asking me to repent. Sweet Jesus, that was incredibly relatable.

Great Book on Productivity, Happiness, and Life

A coherent look at how to use your limited time to be productive and happy without driving yourself crazy.

must listen to. An eye opener. loved it.

A really good book. Must listen to . An eye opener. Excellent book.

When time management meets Zen

This is one of the best books I've ever listened to listen to on Zen tzen that's not about Zen, lol. The office does a great job of bringing into awareness what actually matters. I do not think that this will be what people expect but I do think it is what people need.. Well done!

Really interesting & helpful

I enjoyed this book. There were lots of revelations and one liners that I felt were helpful and will be easy to remember & apply in my life. It’s a thoughtful book on how to approach time. The present moment is the only real moment, the only thing we truly have. ❤️

Excellent. Useful.

This is a well-read, thoughtful, book that gets to the fundamentals. It’s startling at times, and energizing.

Excellent

Life changing information everyone should listen to. Gives you new perspective on life and what you do