Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Oliver Burkeman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 288 pages, 2021

If Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals could be cheekily put in a single sentence, it might read: You’re going to die, start wasting time. As Burkeman sees it, the pressure to get more done—a pressure present both in our professional and our personal lives—should be shunned in favor of living within the bounds of our human limitations. Burkeman’s contention is that these limitations actually enrich our lives. It turns out that relentless optimization is a recipe for burnout, while appreciating that not every action has to be productive is a posture considerably more conducive to life satisfaction.