Antonia Bernardin

My 41st read of the year was Four Thousand Weeks – Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. This was recommended by one of my favourite book tubers: Lexi aka Newlynova and as someone who struggles with both time-management and burnout, I thought this would be a good book for me to try. I’ve never really been able to read non-fiction but I’ve recently discovered that I am able to listen to it!

A summary attempt

This book was sneaky because it poses as a time management book but quickly dives into basically saying if you’re here, you’re probably a lot like me (the author, who is also the narrator) and therefore, time management is not the issue. It asks the question of why you feel like the need to find more time, where does that pressure come from? Is it really that you can’t manage your time well, or is that you are doing too many things? It discusses whether this syndrome is a consequence of modern life and where the author thinks the pressure comes from, going through the history that lead to our modern working culture.

The books goes on to walk through the concept of ‘finitude’ – that there is a finite amount of time you have on this earth (four thousand weeks) and that there is a finite amount of time in a day. This is the first thing you have to accept. There is not enough time, there will never be enough time. Instead of spending every waking moment thinking of what you could be doing, or should be doing, you should attempt to be more present in what your are doing, instead of resenting some imagined future where you got everything done. It also went on to talk about letting go of the concept of ‘getting ahead’, and letting go of this imagined future you who has gotten everything done, because there will always be more things to do, such is the nature of life. Essentially, letting yourself off the hook from the constant pressure, will ease this feeling of needing to get better at time management.

The book then talks about choosing to be more present in the moment, instead of regretting all the things you could be doing. If something like, talking to a friend, bathing your toddler, a piece of cleaning, takes longer than the imagined schedule you set for it, don’t spend those moments fretting. This is how you’ve chosen to spend that particular precious moment on this earth, so commit to it fully, instead of constantly worrying about the next thing on the list. Even if the thing you are doing is something as mundane as doing the dishes, trying to be fully present and not resenting the task, will make it feel less onerous and you’ll feel less anxious or less FOMO for the other things you could, or should be doing.

My thoughts

So, initially, I didn’t feel like this book was very good because the above was parsed from six hours of lurid quotes from philosophers, writers and many other sources. Had this been a physical book, I would not have finished it. I only got through it because I had it on 1.5 speed as an audio.

However, I think the core message of the book was something I needed to hear. I think it’s a message most of us embroiled in this whole ‘hustle culture’ needs to hear. As someone with potentially an undiagnosed neurospicy brain, I live by to do lists and calendars, plus a whole shit load of shame from the points in my life where I have been called disorganised, chaotic or lazy, because it took me a long long time to learn how to manage my time in a way that worked for my brain. Nowadays, time management isn’t my issue, it’s literally just that I have too many things to do, to fit in around full time work.

So the core concept of this book has stuck with me, I just wish maybe the author had stuffed it with a few less quotes from the world of academia and philosophers. I know he was trying to show that by quoting people as far back as ancient Greece that the concept of not having enough time is part of the human condition, so therefore, stop beating yourself up but I think it makes it too dense and a bit superiority complex-ish.