Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Human lifespans are ridiculously, offensively short on average. If you live to reach eighty, you will have forty-one weeks left.

No one has to be reminded that time is of the essence. We're consumed by our growing to-do lists, cluttered inboxes, work-life balance, and the never-ending fight against distractions. We're also inundated with tips on how to be more effective and productive, as well as "life hacks" to get the most out of every day. However, these strategies often make matters worse. The most significant aspects of life still seem to be just around the corner, despite the growing feeling of nervous urgency. Nevertheless, we seldom ever draw the link between our everyday battles with time and the gravest time management conundrum—the question of how to employ our four thousand weeks to the fullest.

Oliver Burkeman offers a fun, witty, useful, and ultimately deep guide to time and time management by drawing on the ideas of both historical and modern philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual leaders. Rejecting the pointless modern obsession with "getting everything done," Four Thousand Weeks offers readers strategies for building a meaningful life by embracing finitude. It demonstrates that many of the counterproductive assumptions we've developed about time are actually decisions that we, as a society and as individuals, have made, and that we could act differently.