Book Review: 4,000 Weeks - Oliver Burkeman

I think I highlighted something in every chapter of this book. If you live an average lifespan, you'll probably be alive for around 4,000 weeks. I've used up over half of mine. Fuck.

This book is a slightly curious mix of the practical and the philosophical. It makes a compelling case that, insignificant as we are, we should try to enjoy our allotted time. That doesn't necessarily translate to "make the most of it" or "have the biggest impact possible" - but more like "live in a way that brings you joy".

Here are a few of the (many) pieces I underlined.

The CEO of Netflix once claimed that their main competitor was sleep. In a similar way, we're at war with all the distractions which keep us from fully living in the moment.

We should feel like we're freer than any past people, but…

by any sane logic, in a world with dishwashers, microwaves and jet engines, time ought to feel more expansive and abundant, thanks to all the hours freed up. But this is nobody’s actual experience.

We fill our lives with distractions. I think Mitchell and Webb described it best:

Or, as the book puts it:

We sense that there are important and fulfilling ways we could be spending our time, even if we can’t say exactly what they are – yet we systematically spend our days doing other things instead.

The book makes a compelling case that most time-management systems fail utterly. Like diets, they start with a burst on enthusiasm which proves to be unsustainable. How can we use that to our advantage? By surrendering to its inevitability, mostly.

The book is big on surrendering.

You begin to grasp that when there’s too much to do, and there always will be, the only route to psychological freedom is to let go of the limit-denying fantasy of getting it all done and instead to focus on doing a few things that count.

The book is insistent on making sure you understand the limits of our lives:

Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved ‘work–life balance’

Once we admit that our goals are unobtainable, it becomes at lot easier to have fun trying to achieve them.

Bits of the book are so generic that they sort of become a bit like "cold-reading" - I found myself nodding along with some universal truths:

the more compulsively you plan for the future, the more anxious you feel about any remaining uncertainties, of which there will always be plenty.

Of course, it isn't just uncertainties - the world is a hedonic treadmill where the only reward is diminished returns.

It’s an attempt to devour the experiences the world has to offer, to feel like you’ve truly lived – but the world has an effectively infinite number of experiences to offer, so getting a handful of them under your belt brings you no closer to a sense of having feasted on life’s possibilities. Instead, you find yourself pitched straight back into the efficiency trap. The more wonderful experiences you succeed in having, the more additional wonderful experiences you start to feel you could have, or ought to have, on top of all those you’ve already had, with the result that the feeling of existential overwhelm gets worse.

Again, we go back to freeing ourselves from the tyranny of (often self-imposed) expectations.

Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem. Instead, you get to focus on fully enjoying the tiny slice of experiences you actually do have time for

Ultimately, it is about making a conscious choice to do something - rather than the default surrendering to whatever advertisers want you to do.

It’s that the distracted person isn’t really choosing at all. Their attention has been commandeered by forces that don’t have their highest interests at heart.

The book veers between self-help and philosophy - with a smattering of (whisper it) religion thrown in.

The struggle for certainty is an intrinsically hopeless one – which means you have permission to stop engaging in it. The future just isn’t the sort of thing you get to order around like that

We are cursed with both the weight of history and the knowledge we are part of it. How do we find fulfilment amongst the certainty of our miniscule role?

The book Die With Zero talks about spending money from your bank account in order to build up experiences in your memory bank. When you're 95 and sat in a rocking chair, you want to have something to look back on. This book, I think, does not agree:

Even an undertaking as seemingly hedonistic as a year spent backpacking around the globe could fall victim to the same problem, if your purpose isn’t to explore the world but – a subtle distinction, this – to add to your mental storeroom of experiences, in the hope that you’ll feel, later on, that you’d used your life well.

I get that. Experiencing life through a camera lens (even though you'll never look at the photos) or wondering how you'll retell this story (to people who won't care) isn't the same as enjoying the moment for what it is. But, again, the curse of history. We know that we'll be looking back on this moment.

The call isn't quite for instant gratification, but it does note:

Results aren’t everything. Indeed, they’d better not be, because results always come later – and later is always too late.

We have to enjoy doing what we're doing now. We can't rely on how we'll feel in the future. Of course, there is some delight in mastery - but we have to make sure the game is worth the candle.

There are some decent practical tips. I especially liked this approach to cultivating a taste for solving problems:

Behind our urge to race through every obstacle or challenge, in an effort to get it ‘dealt with’, there’s usually the unspoken fantasy that you might one day finally reach the state of having no problems whatsoever. As a result, most of us treat the problems we encounter as doubly problematic: first because of whatever specific problem we’re facing; and second because we seem to believe, if only subconsciously, that we shouldn’t have problems at all.

Perhaps that's why I enjoy coding? An endless series of puzzles to solve!

One thing that I hadn't quite twigged is that time is a network.

But having all the time in the world isn’t much use if you’re forced to experience it all on your own.

Time's value is, like Metcalfe's Law, proportionate to those around us who also have time. If you work nights and your friends work days - your free time is diminished in value. How do we liberate more people from work? I need to read The Right To Be Lazy!

There are some provocative and helpful questions at the end.

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?

All I could think of was this:

Rachel McCarthy James

@rmccarthyjames

all of my plans for the future involve me waking up tomorrow with a sudden sense of discipline and adherence to routine that i have never displayed even once in my life

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I didn't agree with all of it, of course. There's some anti-tech nonsense about how fast-food apps mean we don't chat with the people working in our local restaurants, and how the friends in our pocket don't quite count.

Similarly, there's no real distinction between which distractions are worthwhile. Why is a half-hearted friendship with an AFK friend better than a parasocial relationship with a tuber?

The death of religion gets more than a passing mention. Were people happier when they thought they were going to heaven? Maybe. But I'd rather live in fear than ignorance.

I found the stuff about parenting a bit naff and sad. I admit, I'm not the target audience for that though!

But, to end on a high, I loved the call to do things now.

the only donations that count are the ones you actually get round to making.

It is very temping to think it is the thought that counts. It isn't. It is action.

Ultimately, it is a freeing book. I have to make the most of now. I can't live purely for the future. I need to regain control of my life. I must surrender to some inevitability. I hope I can learn this book's lessons.