If you have the great fortune of living to be 80, you will have roughly 4,000 weeks on this Earth. To be exact, on your 80th birthday, you’ll have lived through 4,108 weeks (79 whole years x 52 weeks per year). While it sounds like a lot, it’s a shockingly small amount of time. That statistic lays the foundation for this week’s Book of the Week- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book provides a breath of fresh air on the subject of “time management,” and has nothing to do with typical techniques, like to do lists, timeboxing calendars, and the productivity hacks that we frequently hear about. Instead, it has everything to do with how we think about time, starting with one of the fundamental problems of time: we have the mental capacity to make increasingly ambitious plans about how we use our time, yet practically no time at all to put them into action.
The book lays out many truths about the concept of time worth noting. For one, time is indisputably a finite resource; there is only so much time and so many ways we can spend it. Each decision you make is saying yes to one life and no to countless others. As we try to become more “efficient” to create more time, we sometimes suffer from the Efficiency Trap- our efficiency only frees up more room to allow us to fit more in and add more to our plates. The goalposts continue to shift as we become more efficient, thus creating less time freedom rather than more. Another fact is that humans crave reassurance and certainty. Unfortunately, the future can never provide the level of assurance that we need; plans are merely present-moment statements of intent, but the future has no duty or obligation to comply with even the best plans. Lastly, Oliver writes about Parkinson’s Law, which states that tasks expand to fill the time available for its completion. If you allow two hours to get something done, you will map your work to take the full two hours; similarly, if you plan the same task to take 8 hours, it will expand to take the full 8 hours.
It’s important to recognize that we simply do not have the time to do all of the things that we want to. Embracing rather than fighting time’s finitude is a crucial step. We can try to do everything under the sun, but we simply won’t have time. Believing that we can “get everything done” will only cause vicious cycles of anxiety and likely manifest itself negatively in other areas of life. Be mindful of the efficiency trap; efficiency is only so good as the time freedom and liberation it truly creates, not for more tasks, but for further enjoyment of life. Given the fact that the future provides no guarantees for the assurance and security that we are looking for, we can stop begging for it. That is a battle that will surely never be won; instead, we can focus on accepting our present life at face value as it is true and actual reality.
This book forced me to reflect on my view of time, below are a few questions to consider:
Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort?
Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?
In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be?
In which areas of life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you’re doing?
How would you spend your days differently if you didn’t care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?
We can thin slice time a million different ways. At the end of the day, in the most respectful way possible, what you do with your life doesn’t matter all that much. As stated in the Cosmic Insignificance Theory, the universe is indifferent. No matter how much we make our problems and decisions the center of the universe, the cosmos will carry on regardless, calm and uninterrupted. That doesn’t mean we should throw in the towel and that our lives are not important, they are. It’s meant to alleviate the pressure to live a perfect life and allows us to focus on what really matters: loving people and making as positive of an impact as possible in the limited time we have.
Mental Diet
Book of the Week: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
The book that inspired this reflection. Highly recommend.
Quote of the Week:
"Live every day as if it were going to be your last; for one day you’re sure to be right.” - Harry Morant
I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing. As always, I welcome any thoughts, comments, or feedback. If you found this Weekly Spark beneficial or thought-provoking, please share with a friend and encourage them to sign up, or send me their email and I will gladly add them to the recipient list. Lastly, if I can help you in any way, whether it’s with my knowledge, connections, or resources, please reach out. Let’s stay positive and make it a great week for everyone around us!
Nathan