Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It

What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get round to what counts?

We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks.

Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of the challenge. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' it introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations. And it shows how the unhelpful ways we've come to think about time aren't inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we've made, as individuals and as a society. Its many revelations will transform the reader's worldview.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny.

Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

'A much-needed reality check on our culture's crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life'
MARK MANSON, bestselling author of THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F*CK

'The most important book ever written about time management'
ADAM GRANT, bestselling author of THINK AGAIN

'A celebration of all that is most human... You'll emerge from his writing fortified by wonder'
DERREN BROWN, bestselling author of HAPPY

Review

About the Author

Oliver Burkeman is the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, and for many years wrote a popular weekly column on psychology for the Guardian, 'This Column Will Change Your Life'. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Psychologies and New Philosopher.

He has a devoted following for his writing on productivity, mortality, the power of limits, and building a meaningful life in an age of bewilderment.