Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

All my life I’ve struggled with time guilt - whatever I was doing I felt guilty that I should be doing something else. When my children were little I felt I should be doing chores when I was with them & vice versus. I’ve corrected that over the years and know what is important to me & spend more time on the things I love. But still felt pressured to do more with my life - always striving for something in the future - this book addresses all that & I had more than 1 “ oh my god” moments when it seemed like it was reading my mind. It is uncanny! Here’s the thing - you CANT do everything & achieve everything. I still have plans but this book has taken a weight off my mind & given me permission to enjoy the moment I’m in & life I’m living now!! Highly recommend - I read it cover to cover in 1 day!!

I have read hundreds of books in or around the subjects of time management, self-help and mental health, mainly due to an consistent underlying feeling that somehow I wasn't meeting up to the standards set by myself and society.If procrastination was an Olympic Sport, there is no doubt I would have been good enough to make British Team (assuming I got around to entering the application). It wasn't even good procrastination, I was actually pretty good at getting the stuff that didn't matter done, work tasks, emails, paying bills, housework, but forever put off the things that might have made a genuine difference to my quality of life, the new camera sitting in a cupboard for 2 years before mustering the courage to use it.The message and advice in this book is so powerful and feels completely natural that I found myself saying 'of course' again, and again. The anxiety gradually drained away as I read through the chapters, realising that not meeting the standards set in other productivity books wasn't because I was at fault. Most of us have been in a busyness trap since birth, often setting ourselves unachievable goals, and even when we meet some of those goals, not really savouring it, but moving straight on to the next one.This book lays bare that trap. and sets out how we can break it and finally get down to doing the things that deliver a satisfying, rewarding and peaceful existence during the marvellous gift of the little time we have.I've chosen to apportion some of my time to writing this review, because if even just one person gets as much out of this masterpiece as I have, it will be time immensely well spent.

A brilliant book about how common methods of Time Management are a flawed concept and how we really should use the very small amount of time available to us.

Oliver Burkeman’s book opens our eyes to the truths that surround us - hidden in plain sight. We are finite beings. Our time is limited (we know it ends but we don’t know when). So we can’t do everything we might want or need to do. Tough choices are inevitable.The book is almost an exposition of Marcus Aurelius’s meditation, ‘Do only what is essential, and do the things that human reason alone demands, when it is needed. This brings the contentment of doing fewer things but doing them well… So on every occasion ask yourself, “Is this really necessary?”’ Yet, intriguingly, this is not quoted.The book has made me think anew about what matters to me. How I choose between the things I must do and want to do. And come to terms with letting go of the things that don’t make the cut.A book I will return to over and over as new insights resound with each reading.Thank you Oliver.

This is a book about happiness disguised as a time-management book. It is a long and rambling work but a pleasure to read. Our happiness, or conversely, our unhappiness hinge on how we deal with remorse and anxiety. One dwells on the past, and the other worries about the future. Getting rid of them does not mean that we do not reminisce fondly nor make no plans for the future. It is all a question of balance. All the advice in this book is sensible. Rational advice requires rational application, but remorse and anxiety are states of mind tied to our emotional self. Therein lies the problem, but most of us, once appraised of the acute problem, should be able to inculcate the habits that help us control the emotional states that hinders our enjoyment of the present. The advice and tips found in this book steer us to pay attention to the pleasure of enjoying the things we do on the basis of the joy in doing them, and not as a means to an end. We should run for the enjoyment of running and not because need have imposed a target of losing five kilogrammes of weight, or that we may become healthy through exercise. Properly understood, correctly practised, one will probably discover why we have not been happier in the past – but that will be in the past. Enjoy.