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Druid’s Book Club
Quick Take: A unique take on time management. Not your typical "get more done" book.
Longer Take:
I just finished reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. (In reality, I finished it several months ago, but ironically, I was too busy to write a review.) I expected another self-help book filled with tips and tricks to optimize my day. Instead, Burkeman offered a philosophical take on our limited time.
The basic premise is that we only have around 4,000 weeks to live. Burkeman argues that rather than trying to cram more into our already busy lives, we should accept our limitations and focus on what truly matters. This means making conscious choices about where we invest our time and energy—and being okay with not doing everything.
What I Liked:
· A challenge to conventional wisdom. Burkeman questions traditional time management advice, which often prioritizes productivity and efficiency. He suggests that constantly striving for productivity can actually lead to more anxiety and overwhelm.
· The emphasis on acceptance. The book encourages us to relinquish the desire for complete control and embrace life's uncertainties. It promotes dropping impossible standards and being kinder to ourselves.
· Practical strategies. While philosophical, the book isn’t just abstract. Burkeman provides concrete suggestions, such as "paying yourself first when it comes to time" and learning to say no to things that don’t align with your priorities.
What I Didn’t Like:
· The structure. At times, the book feels disorganized and repetitive. Burkeman jumps between ideas, making it difficult to track his main points.
· Philosophical tangents. While thought-provoking, some of Burkeman’s abstract discussions may not resonate with all readers.
Overall, Four Thousand Weeks is a worthwhile read for anyone feeling overwhelmed by the demands of modern life. It offers a fresh perspective on time management, urging us to embrace our limitations and focus on what truly matters. Just don’t expect a quick fix or a set of easy-to-follow instructions.
Some of My Favorite Quotes:
"Recently, as the gig economy has grown, busyness has been rebranded as 'hustle'—relentless work not as a burden to be endured but as an exhilarating lifestyle choice, worth boasting about on social media. In reality, though, it’s the same old problem, pushed to an extreme: the pressure to fit ever-increasing quantities of activity into a stubbornly non-increasing quantity of daily time."
"The problem isn’t exactly that these techniques and products don’t work. It’s that they do work—in the sense that you’ll get more done, race to more meetings, ferry your kids to more after-school activities, generate more profit for your employer—and yet, paradoxically, you only feel busier, more anxious, and somehow emptier as a result."
“…busyness becomes an emblem of prestige. Which is clearly completely absurd: for almost the whole of history, the entire point of being rich was not having to work so much.”
"Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved 'work-life balance,' whatever that might be, and you certainly won’t get there by copying the 'six things successful people do before 7:00 a.m.' The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control—when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let’s start by admitting defeat: none of this is ever going to happen."
“…there are hard choices to be made: which balls to let drop, which people to disappoint, which cherished ambitions to abandon, which roles to fail at. Maybe you can’t keep your current job while also seeing enough of your children; maybe making sufficient time in the week for your creative calling means you’ll never have an especially tidy home, or get quite as much exercise as you should, and so on. Instead, in an attempt to avoid these unpleasant truths, we deploy the strategy that dominates most conventional advice on how to deal with busyness: we tell ourselves we’ll just have to find a way to do more—to try to address our busyness, you could say, by making ourselves busier still.”
“…the only route to psychological freedom is to let go of the limit-denying fantasy of getting it all done and instead focus on doing a few things that count.”
Druid’s Top Entrepreneurship Lesson: Stop trying to do it all! Focus on what’s important, and don’t be afraid to say no. Your business (and your sanity) will thank you.
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