Four Thousand Weeks

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." Kurt Vonnegut

This is a very personal response to Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks. I’ve mentioned Burkeman’s work in The Accomplice before. His article in the Guardian inspired one of the most widely read posts here - Stay On The Fucking Bus

I am mostly allergic to what could be classified as self help, or time management, or productivity - but Burkeman’s approach somehow appeals to me anyway - it’s both philosophical and pragmatic and, most important of all, he never over-reaches.

As an example, his newsletter is called, The Imperfectionist - how perfect is that? (Do subscribe!) One of the pieces I go back to again and again, The Three or Four Hours Rule for Getting Creative Work Done - is just so useful for those of us with chronic health conditions, as it reminds us we can still get stuff achieved.

We maybe have to be a bit more ruthless than most when it comes to the stuff we decide to neglect!

Which brings us to his latest book -

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.

Surprisingly (at least for those of us who are hopeless with numbers), that’s an approximation of how much time we might have to manage, if we’re lucky.

"It’s the very last thing, isn’t it, we feel grateful for: having happened. You know, you needn’t have happened. You needn’t have happened. But you did happen."

– Douglas Harding

So, somehow Burkeman has won me over to his particular version of self help, which draws on philosophy, psychology and spirituality.

I like that he writes from his personal experience as a recovering perfectionist and productivity geek. I particularly like that he starts from a perspective of being compassionate to ourselves. And we all need that.

Some years ago, when I was busy with Open University Creative Writing Courses, as well as being Director of Everything No One Else Wants to Do in a small software company, I attempted to follow the advice of one of the gurus of Time Management.

I read Getting Things Done, by David Allen. (Not as much fun as my dad’s favourite Dave Allen, I must say.)

I did the work. I implemented his system - it took me weeks. I kept it up for around six months. But I couldn’t stick to it, and my inbox was soon overwhelmed. Some of it did stick, I think - I learned to deal with the important stuff quickly. But I also worked out that new time management and productivity systems are a form of procrastination - even though they masquerade as being useful.

In his book, Burkeman talks about how he achieved Allen’s Inbox Zero - only to find it resulted in him being inundated with ever more emails.

It becomes a treadmill.

The major insight in Four Thousand Weeks is that we can never, ever hope to get everything done that we want to do. And that even if we did, do we really want to spend our precious weeks on routine admin and keeping our Inbox empty?

"Life, I knew, was supposed to be more joyful than this, more real, more meaningful, and the world was supposed to be more beautiful.14 We were not supposed to hate Mondays and live for the weekends and holidays. We were not supposed to have to raise our hands to be allowed to pee. We were not supposed to be kept indoors on a beautiful day, day after day.”

Charles Eisentein

So the fundamental problem is not getting everything done. It’s getting the right things done.

Burkeman is realistic about this. He knows and understands the relentless external pressures of daily life, and earning our living in an insecure world.

But he also addressed the newer pressures, fostered by social media. The endless pressure of the bucket list. All the experiences that we would love to be able to fit into our limited lifespan. How that fear of missing out can become another existential pressure.

"The same goes for existential overwhelm: what’s required is the will to resist the urge to consume more and more experiences, since that strategy can only lead to the feeling of having even more experiences left to consume. 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."

Oliver Burkeman

Oddly, this reminded of some wisdom from my witchy days - discovered when reading the occultist Aleister Crowley. He made very much the same point, although expressed in more magickal terms - I can’t find the quotation now but I recall he was talking about taking the mystical path, inspired by the cabalistic Tree of Life. At some point on the journey to becoming your higher self, he said, you will discover that the choices you make, the things that matter most to you, will necessarily entail making a sacrifice of the things which matter less.

My personal response

I really found this book extraordinarily helpful. As a person who has lived with chronic illness, and especially fatigue, for more than half my life, I have been somewhat prone to envying healthy people, who seem to have so much more time and energy than I ever do.

There’s a meme which occasionally does the rounds on chronic illness Facebook about how a healthy person often has something like ten hours a day of useful time, but someone with a chronic illness might have four, or less.

It’s less than four for me at the moment - and I’m including showering, cooking, the occasional walk, as well as writing. I am recovered sufficiently to be able to count reading as a form of rest, thankfully.

But reading Four Thousand Weeks made me realise that in some ways, I have been able to spend more of my life doing things that really matter to me, because I haven’t been able to work in a proper job, and travel, and all those other things.

I would have preferred the choice - of course I would! But maybe the choices would not have been any better. I have - on the whole - been able to make the most of all the things I have been able to do - mostly studying, reading, writing.

And there have been times when I’ve been well enough. We went to stay near the Stiperstones and the Long Mynd, for instance, when I was researching my second novel. And I am incredibly grateful that I was well enough to see Kate Bush in 2014, at the Hammersmith Apollo. I’m sure most people who were lucky enough to get tickets for Before The Dawn loved the experience, but for me it was extra special.

Ten Tools

In the appendix of the book, Burkeman details ten tools, for those of us who are still addicted to the practical aspects of this philosophical approach to making the most of our limited time.

I must revisit at some point, but for now I’ll just discuss the ones I’ve been using ever since I read the book.

First -

Instead of having a To-Do list, I have been keeping a Have-Done list.

Again, this is probably something which would be useful to everyone, but is especially useful for those of us who deal with chronic illness.

It’s very easy, when you have to spend so much time resting, pacing, managing your energy, to think that there are vast swathes of time when you (I) have actually achieved nothing.

I now know that’s just not the case. Some days the list may be meagre, when maybe I have only managed a shower, a walk, and to cook a good meal. Other days, it turns out I’ve done much more. I started a Substack! I wrote a blog post I was pleased with. I edited the manuscript of a novel and the writer told me I’d understood her novel, and helped her make it more itself.

Second, Instant Generosity

Burkeman suggests that whenever we have a generous impulse - to donate to a charity, to check in on a friend, to praise someone’s work - we should act on that impulse straight away - this is an idea practised by the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein.

He suggests that when we don’t it’s usually because we think we are too busy with urgent stuff, not because we don’t want to, or because we think it might be a mistake.

The (selfish) bonus is that it will make us feel happier.

In conclusion

There’s so much more in Four Thousand Weeks, and I definitely recommend it.

I have really found it has been a productive way for me to use some of my time. Maybe it might work for you too.

Of course, it does provide much in the way of temptation too. I want to explore and find out more about the various philosophers and teachers Burkeman references.

There aren’t many books that inspire me to re-reading these days - but this is certainly one of them.

Ann

If you would like some editorial help with your novel draft. please do get in touch and we can have a chat. Check out my Facebook Page, at The Accomplice and message me there for more details, or get in touch through my substack email.

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Bonus Links

Burkeman doesn’t write a weekly column for the Guardian any more, but past columns can be found here

His most recent - How to live for today