Burkeman, Oliver. _Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals_, 2021. [https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=5509D606-3EBD-442D-905B-FC293BC3C530](https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=5509D606-3EBD-442D-905B-FC293BC3C530). # Progressive Summary The main premise of the book is that all our time management techniques are premised on a wrong assumption: that it's possible to avoid hard choices by squeezing more into a finite life. It is a rousing attack on "instrumentalism" and the capitalism which is driven by it - the idea that everything we do has to be for some future profit. It's a "degrowth" argument from a different angle. It tries to induce a "second-order change", one that isn't about incremental improvement, but about an entirely new perspective. # Key Points When clocks were invented, time was separated out into an abstract resource. From that point on, we have been obsessed with getting the most out of it. In contrast, pre-moderns had "task orientation". Time was simply how long things took to get done. Efficiency trap - the more efficient we become at something, the more we (and others) will demand from our time, eroding any benefits from the efficiency gains (similar to [[The Jevons Paradox sets limits on gains from efficiency]]) - The remedy is to sit with the discomfort of inefficiency and let things pile up, while focusing on the most important things Existential overwhelm - the world supplies us with an almost limitless number of experiences to consume. Wealthy and poor alike suffer from this. - Instead of chasing the impossible, we need to fully embrace the joy of missing out. We use distraction to escape the uncomfortable awareness of our finitude. Even when we are working on our most meaningful projects, we don't like to confront the reality that things will never turn out the way we imagine them to. Has quite a number of references to Heidegger. The idea that we "are time". We are thrown into our present, with all the flaws and predicaments which are inherited from its past. We have so little control over this past, so why do we try so hard to control the future? We collude with capitalism in turning time into an instrumental resource. Capitalism is nothing more than a giant machine which instrumentalizes everything for future profit. We do this out of a psychological need to feel in control. Hobbies are the ultimate revolutionary act - because they are not about being good at something. We do them because they are enjoyable. Reading is an example of an activity that simply must take the time it takes. You can't read well by rushing. That's why so many people find it difficult to read these days. They feel anxious at the loss of control over the unfolding of time. Shinzen Young describes his experience taking cold baths in a monastery as a form of "biofeedback" that trained him to stay present in the moment. The more he tried to distract himself from the painful experience, the more painful it became. It was only when he finally confronted it that he was able to tolerate it. ## Patience Patience is considered a superpower, the antidote to time-anxiety. Philosopher Robert Grudin describes it as "tangible, almost edible". The Harvard art professor Jennifer Roberts makes students choose a painting to sit in front of for 3 hours without distraction as her first assignment. There are 3 ways to improve patience: - *Develop a taste for having problems* (this reminds me of [[The Practice of Lojong]]). Problems are what make life meaningful. - *Embrace radical incrementalism* - do work in small daily increments. Stepping away from it is exercising the muscle of patience, because it's confronting the reality that the work may never be completed the way you imagine it. Psychologist Robert Boice studied fellow academics and found that the ones who did the most writing were the ones who made it a smaller part of their routine. (This is why I love the digital garden approach) - *Originality lies on the far side of unoriginality* - we have to go through paths that seem similar to others before we find a new niche for ourselves. Photographer Arno Minkkinen illustrates this with the Helsinki bus station, where two dozen platforms have different bus lines running from them. They all start out with the same journey before they diverge. If you want to get somewhere new, you have to stay on the bus. ## Ch4: Becoming a Better Procrastinator Stephen Covey's book, First Things First, popularised the lesson of trying to fit rocks of different sizes into the jar. He got it wrong, however. The lesson should have made all the rocks big-sized, showing that it's impossible to fit it all in. The good procrastinor accepts the fact that they can't get everything done, and then focuses on the things they CAN get done. The bad procrastinator paralyzes themselves by using procrastination as emotional avoidance, a way of not feeling the distress of their own finitude. 3 principles: - *Pay yourself first*, by setting aside time to work on your most important project, either daily or in your weekly schedule. - *Limit work in progress*, and focus on one thing at a time. (Personal Kanban approach.) - *Resist the allure of middling priorities*. - One piece of advice (apocryphally attributed to Bill Gates) is to make a list of the 25 most important things to you, rank them in order of priority, and focus on the first 5. The other 20 are to be actively resisted. It's the things that are mildly seductive that are the most threatening to our top 5. We are in danger, not from being distracted by things we don't care about, but by the things we do care about, but which aren't part of our core vision. ## Ch12:The Loneliness of the Digital Nomad We tend to treat money as a typical good - the more you have of it, the better (like money). We have an approach that might be called "individual time sovereignty". But it's also a "network good" - its value is partly determined by how other people's time can be co-ordinated with it. Swedish researcher Terry Hartig found that there was less anti-depressant use when the whole of Sweden was on vacation. Other research shows that people who are unemployed feel happier on the weekends, when their friends are also off work. Time is more pleasurable when we can share it with others. Hartig suggests that we need a certain amount of "social regulation of time", where we are forced to entrain our rhythms, such as sabbaths and the French tradition of grandes vacances. Historian William McNeill wrote a monography called *Keeping Together in Time* in which he describes the importance of synchronized movement and singing. Roman generals were the first to realize that soliders who marched in synchrony could travel longer distances without getting tired. (Makes me think of my idea of *communitas*.) Is Hannah Arendt the first person who pointed out that modern oppression relies on the atomisation of individuals?: > "Totalitarian movements are mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals." > – *The Origins of Totalitarianism* ## Ch13: Cosmic Insignificance Therapy Bryan Magee liked to use this thought experiment: Imagine that we had an unbroken chain of centenarians leading back into the past. Ancient Egypt would be a mere 35 lifetimes ago. Jesus was 20 lifetimes ago. The Renaissance was 7 lifetimes ago. 5 lifetimes ago, Henry VIII sat on the throne. He observed that the number of lifetimes it requires to span the whole of civilization - sixty - was "the number of friends I squeeze into my living room when I have a drinks party." # Resonances [[Reference Notes/The Joy of Missing Out]] Martin Helglund's This Life Noema's Tyranny of Time article [[Reference Notes/How to Do Nothing]] - Jenny O'Dell gives great support to the anti-capitalism revolution of doing nothing. Richard Linklater's Boyhood matches the words of Thomas Wolfe quoted here: "We are the sum of all the moments of our lives. All that is ours is in them: we cannot escape it or conceal it." [[Reference Notes/Highlights/Books/Emergent Strategy]] - reading this was a great way to let go of the need for control, and to relax into the provisional. # Oppositions # Questions / Comments # Quotes ![[Reference Notes/Highlights/Books/Four Thousand Weeks#Highlights]]