Four Thousand Weeks

Different from the usual time management self-help books out there and that’s perhaps why I picked this up. I feel there’s a lot less novelty remaining in this field and this felt like something fresh. This book is about coming to terms with the sobering fact that you’ll never have enough time, in fact, you never will time as something tangible. You’ve to let go of items on your to-do list and only work on a select few that you think are important, and that’s not an easy thing to do.

It’s also argued how some aspects of technology have made it difficult to “save time”. You strike off one email from your inbox and in comes two. It’s a never-ending list for all we know. Another interesting bit was the expansion of the proverbial bucket list to a bottomless one. We’re inundated with so many things to do, and experiences to be experienced, we constantly find ourselves adding things we come across on social media that we feel need to be done.

Lastly, why do we keep worrying about the future when we have so much to worry about today? Or worst case, life is so uncertain, that you might not have a future to worry about after all, a bit morbid but thoughtful nonetheless. So it’s no surprise how various spiritual traditions converge on the same teachings of focusing on the present rather than fretting about the future. This book is a good philosophical read on the topic, but I’d have loved for it to have more practicality. It’s difficult, at least for me, to implement philosophical ideas as they are intended and so I like when authors share anecdotes about the topic in question. It was a decent read nonetheless. Ending this with a quote I liked from the book:

“Are you all living such problem-free lives today that you take up the additional burden of constantly worrying about the future?”