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    Summary of Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman: Time Management for Mortals
    Summary of Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman: Time Management for Mortals
    Summary of Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman: Time Management for Mortals
    Ebook57 pages1 hour

    Summary of Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman: Time Management for Mortals

    By Justin Reese

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    About this ebook

    DISCLAIMER

    This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

    Summary of Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman: Time Management for Mortals

     

    IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET:

    • Chapter astute outline of the main contents.
    • Fast & simple understanding of the content analysis.
    • Exceptionally summarized content that you may skip in the original book

    The average human lifespan is short, with just over four thousand weeks. People often focus on productivity and efficiency, but these techniques can worsen the anxiety and hinder meaningful life. Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks offers a practical and profound guide to time and time management, rejecting the modern fixation on "getting everything done." Burkeman argues that many unhelpful ways we think about time are choices we've made as individuals and society, and that we could do things differently.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherjUSTIN REESE
    Release dateJun 12, 2023
    ISBN9798223763031
    Summary of Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman: Time Management for Mortals

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      I assume this is AI generated - sentences are repeated 2 or even 3 times and the exact same paragraph formulations are repeated over and over... can't have been written by a human. This kind of thing should be removed in my opinion.

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    Book preview

    Summary of Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman - Justin Reese

    Introduction

    In the Long Run, We’re All Dead

    The average human lifespan is absurdly short, with the first modern humans appearing 200,000 years ago and scientists estimating that life will persist for 1.5 billion years or more. Jeanne Calment, the oldest person on record, was thought to be 122 when she died in 1997, making her the oldest person on record. Biologists predict that lifespans within striking distance of Calment's could soon become commonplace, yet even she got only about 6,400 weeks. Philosophers have taken the brevity of life as the defining problem of human existence, as we have been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically no time to put them into action. Time management should be everyone's chief concern.

    This book is an attempt to help redress the balance between time management and productivity. It argues that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing should be to experience more of the wonder of the world. It also takes into account the shortness of life and the need to engage productively with our fellow citizens, current events, and the environment.

    Life on the Conveyor Belt

    The most important details in this text are that busyness is the same old problem, pushed to an extreme: the pressure to fit ever-increasing quantities of activity into a nonincreasing quantity of daily time. Additionally, many other complaints are essentially complaints about our limited time, such as the battle against online distraction and the feeling that our attention spans have shriveled to such a degree that even those who were bookworms as children now struggle to make it through a paragraph without experiencing the urge to reach for our phones. Even some of the worst aspects of our era can be explained by the same underlying facts concerning life's brevity. Social media companies are incentivized to grab as much of our time and attention as they can, leading to people feeling that their days are racing by and dragging on interminably. This has caused people to feel like they are stuck in an anxious limbo of social media scrolling and desultory Zoom calls and insomnia, in which it feels impossible to make meaningful plans or even to clearly picture life beyond the end of next week.

    Recent events have brought matters to a head, with many people reporting feeling that time is disintegrating completely, giving rise to the disorienting impression that their days are racing by and dragging on interminably. The most important details in this text are that many people are struggling to manage their limited time, and that these techniques and products do work, but they only seem to make things worse. Edward T. Hall once noted that time feels like an unstoppable conveyor belt, and becoming more productive just seems to cause the belt to speed up or break down. This is the maddening truth about time, which most advice on managing it misses. It is like an obstreperous toddler, and the more you struggle to control it, the further it slips from your control.

    Technology is intended to help us gain the upper hand over time, but this is not the case. People become more impatient with technology, and attempts to become more productive at work are often self-defeating. An example of this is when a person successfully implemented Inbox Zero, but found that they got much more email. David Allen's Getting Things Done suggests that there will always be too much to do, but the author failed to appreciate this and instead set about attempting to get an impossible amount done. John Maynard Keynes predicted that within a century, no one would have to work more than fifteen hours a week.

    However, this prediction was wrong, as people instead find new things to need and new lifestyles to aspire to. This leads to people working harder and making more money for those at the top of the tree, leading to greater insecurity for those lower down.

    On Getting the Wrong Things Done

    Charles Eisenstein reflects on the feeling of wrongness in our use of time, which is exacerbated by our attempts to become more productive. Eisenstein recalls feeling this basic wrongness in our use of time as a child, when life was supposed to be more joyful, real, and meaningful. This feeling of wrongness is exacerbated by our attempts to become more productive, which push the genuinely important stuff further over the horizon. Eisenstein suggests that we should focus on what really matters and not worry about what we don't measure up. Marilynne Robinson's Four

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