Four Thousand Weeks

Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

By: Oliver Burkeman

Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman

Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The instant Sunday Times best seller.

A Financial Times, Guardian and Observer Book of the Year.

One of the Daily Telegraph's 75 Best Books of 2021.

What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get round to what counts?

We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about 4,000 weeks.

Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of the challenge. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' it introduces listeners to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny.

Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your 4,000 weeks count.

©2021 Oliver Burkeman (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in.... Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living." (Emma Gannon)

"A much-needed reality check on our culture's crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life." (Mark Manson, best-selling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck)

"Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and useful, actually genuinely useful." (Marian Keyes)

Incredible!!

A truly important message. Oliver Burkeman has explained something that should be common knowledge, then expanded on it, and has done so in such an eye-opening way. This is a topic that normally gets grazed over from time to time, while 4000 Weeks in an opportunity to get fully immersed in that which needs far more attention in our society today. This is over 5 hours of "Ah ha" moments. I've already bought it for three people, and I'll be listening to and reading it many more times I'm sure. Hands down the most helpful book I've come across.

Insightful

Very good and insightful. Well told and a book one talks about afterwards. Life is short and full of fallacies.

Excellent modern philosophy of your time

Very well read by the author. Accept things as they are and do what is most important next, which could be to do nothing.

Completely different approach to productivity

I like the “less is more” philosophy, the value of slowing down and accepting our finite time on this planet.

wonderful and very useful book

It is a very well made audiobook overall. I really enjoyed the naration and the fact that the lessons in this book were obviously lived and deeply felt by its author.
I would recommend it to anyone struggling with time management, self blame and feelings of unworthiness, anxiety and depression.
I learned a lot from it and it has given me a whole new perspective on life, helping me to start living fully and authentically every aspect of life, from the pleasant to the less pleasant ones.
I' ve even subscribed to Oliver's newsletter, which is filled with nuggets of wisdom and guidance, as is his book. You should definitely check out his website if you like the book. :)

great book

love books that remind me of the fleetingness of life. Paradoxically the recommendations are then to slow down and enjoy it. written by a "former productivity geek" I can relate.

Life changing and profound

this book is not a self help book. it's a life guide. thoroughly enjoyed it, and will often go back to it.

Quite profound and life-changing

From the title, one could assume that this is a book hammering the message that you only have limited time, and therefore need to make the most of it by cramming as much into those four thousand weeks as possible. It's the opposite of that, and it's much more than that.

It's rather a psychology and philosophy book than it is a book about being productive - although being more productive was the initial goal of the author and a subject that he has extensive knowledge about. It's the book you need to read if you were in fact looking for yet another book on becoming more productive.

Probably the biggest insight for me was the realization that keeping busy with too many things is just a way of avoiding the discomfort of choosing. And inevitably, we have to choose because there are infinitely more options and things we want to do than what is possible. It will always be like this no matter how much we accomplish. By keeping options open and cramming our calendars/to-do lists, we distract and fool ourselves into thinking we can do it all. When in truth we should be owning up to the hard choices that come with not being able to do it all - and accepting the consequences of this. It's discomforting, but embracing it makes it less so. Doing more and working harder is not necessarily the right or brave thing to do - often choosing and accepting your limitations is the hard and meaningful thing you're avoiding by keeping "busy" as the easy way out.

I rarely think this of books, but this is one that I could picture myself listening to again in the future. It deals with a slightly counter-intuitive philosophy of life that takes time to fully process. I would likely get more out of it with a second listen. I haven't yet decided if I agree with all of it, but that doesn't matter, because the important thing is that it kickstarts essential thought processes. It also has some concrete "techniques" if you will, but not the kind you should quickly skim through to "optimize" your productivity. The reasoning behind it all is the real takeaway, and that you have to read the full chapters to grasp.

Thank you for writing the book. Not sure if you (Oliver) will ever read this review, because, as you know, it's not possible to read it all, so I don't mind if you make the brave choice to pass on this *wink *wink

Sublime!

Maybe the best audiobook I have ever listened to! Absolutely wonderful and I recommend this book to anyone.

Even though time is limited, I'd read this again

I loved this book! Not only was the authors performance super entertaining but the book is filled with such knowledge and wisdom! I mean, it is too accurate and it truly helps put things into perspective. I'll definitely be reading this book again and implementing many of the things I learned from it forever. What a pleasure.