Oliver Burkeman. Four thousand weeks : time management for mortals. Allen Lane Canada. Toronto: 2021.

Now is all you ever get.

Fascinating exploration of meaning to apply when managing our time. Author includes an appendix summarizing "10 tools for embracing your finitude".

Book includes

  • 5 questions to ask about how you are currently spending your time
  • 10 tools for embracing your finitude
  • afterword on getting doing

Interview:

Interesting ideas shared:

  • Attention is life
  • We are time
  • Fika
  • Atelic and telic activities
  • Possibility shock
  • Cosmic insignificance therapy
  • Patience principles
  • Strategic underachievement
  • Open and closed to-do lists
  • Done list
  • Fixed-volume productivity and serializing [appear familiar?]
  • Novelty in the mundane
  • Let things be as they are

William James, quoted in book:

As each passing year converts... experience into automatic routing, the days and weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse