Four Thousand Weeks
I’m starting to read “Four Thousand Weeks” from Oliver Burkeman. I initially listened to much of the audio book, then bought a copy (link above to Amazon – no affiliate link).
Have not finished yet, but the core message of the book seems to be
- We all have a finite amount of time
- The possibilities for how to spend our time are effectively limitless
- Every choice impacts what choices are available in the future
- Embrace these truths vs fighting them
There’s certainly more to it than this, and again, I’m not finished, but these are the main ideas that have stuck with me so far.
Burkeman starts to dig a bit in to philosophy of Martin Heidegger and his notions of ‘being’. Started to get a bit complicated in audio format (part of the reason I bought the book). While I have a background in philosophy, Heidegger was never someone I dug in to before, but may need to now. Apparently he’s not the easiest to read/parse/digest, so… I may have to look for a basic intro piece first 🙂
The idea of “limit your works in progress” has also stuck with me a bit since reading it. Practically, I can never have more than a few projects going at the same time, so it’s not so much explicitly forcing myself to limit, but… accepting the limit. Perhaps other people do struggle with this more than I do (having 15 active projects going on at the same time?). I have a lot of things at the back of my mind, but I rarely have more than 3 or 4 active projects – there’s just not enough hours in aweek to handle that anyway. Maybe 20 years ago I took on more concurrent projects/activities? I can’t quite remember! :). The author references the ‘personal kanban‘ idea (link to book) as well, which is probably an endorsement (will need to revisit that section again).
I may add more to this post as I work through the book.