I came across this book at exactly the right moment in my life. If you’re also currently questioning the meaning of life, how we spend our time during it and how our society turned into one where it’s difficult to find contentment, “Four Thousand Weeks” might be the right read for you too. Regardless the subtitle, I wouldn’t consider this book to be giving advice on time management. It inspires to take a more philosophical approach to one’s surroundings and understand what really matters to us in the grand scheme of things on this planet. It permits to take the needed distanced view towards one’s existence, to concentrate on simply living life in a way that makes it enjoyable in our personal way. Recent events were also reflected upon and I really connected with the parts speaking about the time around the COVID-19 pandemic.

[…] [A]longside the devastation that it wrought, the virus changed us for the better, at least temporarily, and at least in certain respects: it helped us perceive more clearly what our pre-lockdown days had been lacking and the trade-offs we’d been making, willingly or otherwise – for example, by pursuing work lives that left no time for neighborliness. […] What happened is inexplicably incredible. It’s the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus, but The Great Pause…

p. 206-207

The only reason that I decided to go for the slightly reduced rating of 4 out of 5 ★, was that it took me a while to get into the book and to get used to its style. At times, it was difficult to stay concentrated and keep reading it, as such a huge variety of topics was approached. With time though, more and more of its parts resonated with me and I believe that for each individual reading it, different passages will stand out. The quotes that I highlighted ranged from how the current system of “modern day work” came into existence, how we transitioned into being more and more dependent on measured time, all the ways that our attention is constantly being torn in all kinds of different directions or how we need to let go of strong expectations towards plans (which especially gave me a tool for change, being a chronic “in advance planner”, often ending up feeling disappointed if something doesn’t work out).

We treat our plans as though they are a lasso, thrown from the present around the future, in order to bring it under our command. But all a plan is – all it could ever possibly be – is a present-moment statement of intent. It’s an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply.

p. 123

Another reason for having lowered the rating, was the fact that I didn’t agree with all the opinions expressed in the book. They did give food for thought but I found them to be too radical at times. Just as an example, the advice to simply settle for things, so that you’re not tormented by the vastness of all possible choices around you, sounded a bit too simplistic in my opinion. Especially, when talking about such permanent things like getting married, purchasing property or having children.

[…] [N]ot only should you settle; ideally, you should settle in a way that makes it harder to back out, such as moving in together, or getting married, or having a child. The great irony of all our efforts to avoid facing finitude – to carry on believing that it might be possible not to have to choose between mutually exclusive options – is that when people finally do choose, in a relatively irreversible way, they’re usually much happier as a result.

p. 86-87

All in all, “Four Thousand Weeks” managed to shine a light on certain ideas, to enable us to look at them in a different way. With things going faster and faster in our lives, making it clear that we would never arrive at a level of satisfaction but are simply becoming more impatient with tasks that are already taking very little time in comparison to the past. It dived deeper into the human psyche, breaking up the reasons behind why communal activities (like singing in a choir or having days off at the same time as other people) are making us happier. It reminded me a bit of Jenny Odell’s “How To Do Nothing“, especially when speaking about the ways that we spend our “free time”.

Defenders of modern capitalism enjoy pointing out that despite how things might feel, we actually have more leisure time than we did in previous decades – an average of about five hours per day for men, and only slightly less for women. But perhaps one reason we don’t experience life that way is that leisure no longer feels very leisurely. Instead, it too often feels like another item on the to-do list.

p. 143-144

On a final note, I found resonance in the way it was explained how reading is perceived by the majority of people nowadays. How sticking with a book that you’re not necessarily enjoying doesn’t have to be a loss of time but can be a practice of your patience, taking it as a learning experience for the future. I’d suggest you to give Burkeman’s book a try, as I feel like there’s a little something that each of us would be able to take along from it.

People complain that they no longer have “time to read,” but the reality, […] is rarely that they literally can’t locate an empty half hour in the course of the day. What they mean is that when they do find a morsel of time, and use it to try to read, they find they’re too impatient to give themselves over to the task. […] It’s not so much that we’re too busy, or too distractible, but that we’re unwilling to accept the truth that reading is the sort of activity that largely operates according to its own schedule. You can’t hurry it very much before the experience begins to lose its meaning; it refuses to consent, you might say, to our desire to exert control over how our time unfolds. In other words, and in common with far more aspects of reality than we’re comfortable acknowledging, reading something properly just takes the time it takes.

p. 165-166

Digging in to a challenging work project that can’t be hurried becomes not a trigger for stressful emotions but abracing act of choice; giving a difficult novel the time it demands becomes a source of relish. […] You breathe a sigh of relief, and as you dive into life as it really is, in clear-eyed awareness of your limitations, you begin to acquire what has become the least fashionable but perhaps most consequential of superpowers: patience.

p. 170-171

★★★★☆ (4/5)

_{Edition: ISBN 978-1-784-70400-1
Vintage, 2021}