Book Notes: Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman

Oliver Burkeman wrote about productivity for a major newspaper for years. He read every book in the genre. He tried every system. By the end, he came to a quiet conclusion: the systems don't work, because the problem they are trying to solve cannot be solved.

Four Thousand Weeks is what he wrote next. The title is the average human lifespan in weeks. About 80 years. About four thousand Sundays.

The central instruction

You will not get to everything. There is no system that lets you. The fantasy that with a better calendar app, a better routine, a better focus practice, you will eventually catch up — that fantasy is the problem, not the solution.

Once you accept that you cannot do everything, the question changes. It stops being how do I do more? and becomes what do I want this finite life to be filled with?

This is, despite the productivity-book packaging, an old philosophical question. Burkeman handles it well. He does not dress it up. He does not promise you will have a "best year ever". He just makes the case, plainly, that you have a small number of days, and that this is in fact the precondition for any meaning.

What I keep coming back to

Burkeman's argument that every yes is a no sticks with me. Every commitment you make is also a commitment you cannot make to something else. We pretend, when saying yes, that we are not making the no — but we are. Always.

This means the question of what to commit to is the question of what to refuse. And most of us refuse poorly. We refuse the things we should keep, because they are quiet and don't ask, and we accept the things we should refuse, because they are loud and do.

After reading this book, I started saying no more often. I am happier. The work I keep is better.

What he gets wrong

Burkeman is sharper at diagnosis than at prescription. The middle of the book — the "what to do about it" section — is thinner than the first part. He doesn't have a system, which is part of the point, but it leaves some readers wanting more concrete guidance than he provides.

If you come to the book wanting a fix, you'll be disappointed. If you come wanting permission to stop trying to fix yourself, you'll find it.

A line worth keeping

The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short.

It is. And that fact, properly faced, changes most decisions. Most of us avoid facing it. Burkeman gets you to face it gently, over the course of a short book, and then the rest of your life arranges itself slightly differently.

A short read. One of the most useful "productivity" books that is in fact an argument against productivity. Worth a Sunday.