Key lessons from the book 'Four Thousand Weeks' by Oliver Burkeman
"To make time for what matters, you need to give things up."
Letter 06
This book is called a time management book, but instead, I call this ‘understanding the basic meaning of time’. From the introduction, the author points out a different perspective on time.
Actually, the subtitle for the mentioned book has two subtitles (if you look for the book online) which are both highly relative -
time and how to use it.
time management for mortals.
Oliver Burkeman is a phenomenal writer and shares his learnings and experience through his moment of time in the universe, which turns out as a blessing and learning for a fellow like us in this age of time where everybody is rushing to finish up their own long to-do list which gets automatically or manually generated the early hour in the morning or anytime so.
Opening the introduction of the book with the end of time management - that we never going to finish with everything we wanted to achieve because our time is very finite and we have limited control over our time.
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 key lessons are -
Stop clearing the deck. - the more you try to fit in, you end up with more to-dos in your bucket. Also, the more you fit in, the more time you’ll find yourself doing less meaningful tasks. Simply put, unless you separate the important tasks from the unimportant tasks, it is pretty much easy for every task to hammer on your finite time.
To make time for what matters, you need to give things up, - you have to choose a few things up, sacrifice many and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results.
Embrace mediocrity in certain areas of life. - accept that you can’t be an expert in every area of life.
Limit your work-in-progress. - Don’t keep way too open projects for you to gain completion on different projects. The more you engage the more likely you finish up late.
you don't really have time. [you own moments] - ‘we are the sum of all the moments of our lives, all that is ours is in them: we cannot escape it or conceal it.’ writes Thomas Wolfe.
Learn patience - staying on the bus.
Do the next and most necessary things. - on how to live life fully present.
enjoy finitude. - before you ask about what do you with this time, you’re already thrown into time.
"If you try to find time for your most valued activities by first dealing with all the other important demands on your time, in the hope that there will be some leftover at the end, you'll be disappointed."
Before winding up, Oliver gave us further ten more evident techniques to consider for our time management which are equally helpful -
1. Adopt a ‘fixed volume’ approach to productivity
In order to get everything done (to mark everything off your to-do lists), you get busier. Establish predetermined time boundaries for your work hours before you began to dive into your work schedule. Decide in advance how much time you’ll dedicate to the work. You will be more aware of the time constraints you set earlier and more motivated to use them wisely.
2. Serialise, Serialise, serialise.
Focus on one big project at a time. (or one work project and another non-work project at a time). Complete it before moving toward other projects. Keeping as many projects open as possible seems good and productive but you get to make no advancement in anyone or little progress that way because as you get stuck on one project, you simply choose to jump over to another.
3. Decide in advance what to fail at.
If you’re jumping from task to task, it’s evident that you might fail at some tasks simply because your energy and time are finite. Selecting the area of the parts of life where you are hoping to gain no excellence of yourself - is that you focus that time and energy on the important and crucial tasks. You will not get hurt/emotions of bad feelings when you fail at the thing which you presumably planned to fail all along.
4. Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just on what’s left to complete.
Keep a ‘done list’ that starts empty every morning, which then you gradually fill with whatever you accomplish throughout the day.
5. Consolidate your caring.
Don’t spend your time caring about the wrong things, which social media are experts in.
6. Embrace boring and single-purpose technology.
Choose devices with a single purpose only. “Practice distraction management way ahead of time management.” - Steven Kotler.
7. Seek out novelty in the mundane.
“Pay more attention to every moment, however mundane.” Draw your attention more fully to what you’re doing in the present.
8. Be a ‘researcher’ in relationships.
Adopting an attitude of curiosity. “Not knowing what’s coming next - which is the situation you’re always in, with regards to the future - presents an ideal opportunity to choose curiosity (wondering what might happen next) over worry (hoping that a certain thing will happen next, and fearing it might not) whenever you can.”
9. Cultivate instantaneous generosity.
If you want to check in on a friend, send an email praising someone’s work - act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later.
10. Practice doing nothing.
Training yourself to ‘do nothing’ means training yourself to resist the urge to manipulate your experience or the people and things in the world around you - to let things be as they are.
This book will force readers to think about time with a very different objective from the one they used to.
There are several more golden nuggets, some of which I have published in the form of atomic essays.
And, the short atomic essay on the key lessons from this book is here.
Thanks a lot for reading my book review.
Aftermath
I shared this review with its author Oliver Burkeman. He happily replied after a few days.
