Time Management for Mortals

Time is not something we can have, control, sort, or save for later. We are part of it.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Please feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button so more people will read it. Thank you!

This conversation happens often in any social setting:

A: How are you doing?

B: “Doing well. Just stay busy.”

A: “Busy is good.”

Do you ever feel like you're constantly playing catch-up with time? It's a sentiment that's all too familiar in our fast-paced world. We're often left wondering why there's never enough time to do all the things we want to do. Many time-management books promise new tips or ways to make us more efficient and better organized so we can do more with our time.

Yet, hundreds of titles later, many of us still feel the same way, that we are on a spinning wheel, and the more we get done, there is more left to be done. It's a common experience that we all share. Therefore, I was skeptical when I picked up Oliver Burkeman’s book, “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.” Really, what’s new he could offer that hundreds of other experts haven’t covered already?

The first third of Burkeman's book is a wake-up call, to say the least. We all know that life is short, but Burkeman's perspective drives this point home in a way that's both scary and almost depressing. He calculates that if you live to 80 years old, you will have lived 4,000 weeks. In his words, a lifespan of 4,000 weeks is “absurdly, terrifyingly, and insanely short.” Even if you are lucky enough to make it to 90, you’ll have only lived 4,700 weeks. This realization of our extremely short life-span has produced many anxieties.