Any Good Books, October 2022
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Oliver Burkeman (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2021)
If you would scorn yourself for reading a self-help book, you can perfectly well consider Four Thousand Weeks to be a work of philosophy. We'll be consulting Epictetus, after all, and Heidegger on the matter of optimizing ourselves, and our use of time. If, on the other hand, the thought of reading a philosophy book makes you a little twitchy, think of it as self-help. Oliver Burkeman has substantial credentials as an expert on time management tips and tricks. When Burke was writing a column about productivity, he had a forum for his personal obsession with systems and to-do lists; he knows what he's talking about here.
But his purpose here is to remind us of something else: the fix is in. We are not ever going to Get Everything Done, and what would we do if we did? "Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster." All the fancy notebooks and apps he loved served as a smokescreen against the knowledge that busyness, like an empty in-box, generates busyness. Unless you're doing something about it, the demands will increase to offset any benefits. "Far from getting things done, you'll be creating new things to do." If you suspect that this problem has gotten worse in our lifetimes, you're right. If you're connected enough to be reading this, the world unleashes a tide of possibility on your virtual doorstep every day, or potentially every minute; deciding what to pay attention to (or not) is a substantial job in its own right. How will you stay on top of everything, when 'everything' increases exponentially?
The answer is counter-intuitive, or countercultural, or perhaps both: "Once you truly understand that you're guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven't experienced stops feeling like a problem. Instead, you get to focus on fully enjoying the tiny slice of experiences you actually do have time for–and the freer you are to choose, in each moment, what counts the most."
After all, there was every chance (but one) that you would never have been born, to see four thousand weeks, or even a hundred. So while our lives are clearly finite, with respect to infinite time and space, they are magnificently vast compared to nothingness. Yet, choices must be made: we don't actually control the future, but we do get some choice about the present. So, says Burkeman, pay yourself first. "If you plan to spend some of your four thousand weeks doing what matters most to you, then at some point you're just going to have to start doing it."
Another principle of freedom through limitation: limit your work in progress. The ideal number of irons in the fire might be three, the short list of items you're going to finish (or mindfully abandon) before putting anything else in the queue. This brings the scope of your work better in line with the finitude of the day, as well as helping you focus on what part of a larger task is really the next right thing; and you can learn a lot from noticing which items never make it onto the list. It may be that you're never going to read Moby-Dick, or learn to knit.
We can influence the future with choices like that, but Burkeman is at pains to point out that we never fully control it. Good news, though: "The struggle for certainty is an intrinsically hopeless one–which means you have permission to stop engaging in it. The future just isn't the sort of thing you get to order around like that..." Being anxious about it is, therefore, a waste of time in the present, which is actually where we live. There's nowhere else.
Don't be anxious about that, either! To treat being in the moment as yet another goal is to miss the point. "[T]he attempt to be here now feels not so much relaxing as rather strenuous–and it turns out that trying to have the most intense possible present-moment experience is a surefire way to fail." Perhaps a better way to view it is that we should sometimes do things for their own sake. Going for a walk on a chilly day, hanging out with a friend, or noodling on the guitar can't win you any points in the scorekeeping of life, but they may be valuable for their own sake.
As a measure of value, you could do worse: seek out the things that are worth the time they take. Relish the sacrifices you make in the service of joy, fun, or companionship. You only get one life, but if you do it right, one is enough.
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