Oliver Burkeman is the author of the new book, 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, which Adam Grant calls “the most important book ever written about time management.” In it, Oliver argues that using your life (4,000 weeks = about 80 years) most meaningfully requires abandoning the illusion that we can—or should try to—get everything done. He suggests that the attempt to do so just leaves us miserable and isolated. One of the keys to productivity, he posits, is deciding what to ignore.
Further, Oliver reckons that when you put your existence into the context of the enormity of the universe, you realize that many of our “plans” are just distractions from the knowledge that we will all eventually be dead and won’t be remembered for terribly long. So why shouldn’t we just spend our days taking hikes and cooking for our children? Hey, that’s not a bad question.
I am a big fan of Oliver’s deeply-informed, highly-thoughtful, and quite funny writing. On his first Crazy Money appearance, we discussed his book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, in which he lays out an equally counter-intuitive (well, counter-narrative anyway) idea that being happy starts with lowering your expectations. He argues that this leaves us with a reasonable expectation of where we actually derive meaning in our lives.
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