Four Thousand Weeks Time Management for Mortals

Berkman's big idea, which he described in his bestseller a couple years back, 4,000 Weeks,

four thousand weeks is a book about recognizing there is no optimization that will work you will never get on top of it

there's a beautiful book that I read we should have the author on if he'll join us it was a book called 4,000 weeks and it's a book that the average human has about 4,000 weeks on this planet how do you want to spend those weeks and when you understand the limited nature of those weeks you also understand that you're always going to be missing something because you're doing something else instead of having FOMO rather enjoy this thing that you're actually experiencing

Three words, 4,000 weeks. If you are lucky, that's your average lifespan.

I laughed because my first thought was, this is a book for my assistant, Abby.

So it's not as morbid as it sounds, the 4,000 Weeks. You're not trying to bum us out or depress us.

It is really startling. It is a little bit scary. And I plead guilty to wanting to startle people.

It's really relaxing because I think in the long, hopefully I can unpack this a bit. But if you really think about what it means to be as finite as we are, one thing that you can see is that huge amounts of the way we try to do everything and get our arms around everything and not miss out on any experience and answer every email, we can just give that up because it's just not going to happen.

And I don't know if I in my last book I sort of tried to write about this, but I don't know if there's been any research done on it, but it seems to me like it ought to be obvious that a certain kind of impatience with waiting in lines or road rage or all sorts of you know anger on social media when people don't just accept your position on things or your presentation of yourself or something must be worse as a result of the fact that five minutes later you can find out the weather four thousand miles away in a second on your smartphone right that's sort of like look I'm a god over here, so why don't I get to be a god over here as well.

I think that the higher you get up, what you're selecting for are the pathologies and compulsions and drives that have caused someone to get there.

In my last book "4 000 Weeks" I went through this moment early on when I thought like I don't feel like I have enough good long stories to tell...

The book did fantastically well, and for the people that didn't listen to our first one, they should go and get it after they've signed up to "The Imperfectionist".

This is originally from the book 10,000 weeks by Oliver bergman

Like you have this 4,000 weeks that you've got on this planet and of them, however many hundred has spent, like really just not enjoying your time feeling bad about yourself.

the last book, 4,000 Weeks, did a lot better than I was expecting.

I think Oliver's approach in 4,000 weeks is the best one that I found.

your new book, 4,000 weeks time and how to use it, which I found incredibly important.

4,000 weeks, the title refers to the approximate length of average lifespan in the West.

The first book I bought besides some spiritual contemplations on grief was the book 4,000 Weeks.

He was a productivity writer, I think for The Guardian or one of the UK newspapers and he was the one saying, task box, box things up, do this, the Pomodoro method. He did all that and then at some point he said, shit, we only have 4,000 weeks if we're lucky and the more productive you are, the more bullshit you have to do and this productivity thing is such and this is where I loved his work. The productivity piece is such armor around protecting vulnerability and the fact that our time is finite and we really have best case scenario, 4,000 weeks.

Oliver Berkman in 4,000 weeks, which first of all he asked like a thousand people how many weeks the average human life has and they're all like 100,000 weeks.

Yeah, I would have 200,000 weeks. The average human life is 4,000 weeks.

We all get a million weeks.

But he talks about this a lot about how like that's a lie and it's very similar to diet culture to think, well, if I only had this one strategy, it would get done.

Or this is my moral failing that I'm failing to manage all of this. And if I just keep gathering strategies and keep gathering resources or put that extra hour in or put the whatever that I'm going to make sense of all of this and be successful.

Oliver Berkman is the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Former guest Adam Grant has called it, "The most important book ever written about time management."

Tell me about the title 4,000 weeks.

That is very, very roughly the average human lifespan of the average lifespan in the West. . . It's just really a way of driving home my starting point in this book which is it's finite. It's really finite.

I like that Oliver Burkeman book, 4,000 weeks. Like you have 4,000 weeks to live.

i'm reading a book right now it's called um like you're 4 000 weeks like the average life span is 4 000 weeks and you know i'm 22 uh how old are you in 43 43 right 20 21 years apart.

So no wonder it comes as a relief to be reminded of your insignificance. It's the feeling of realizing that you'd been holding yourself all this time to standards you couldn't reasonably be expected to meet.

And this realization isn't merely calming but liberating because once you're no longer burdened by such an unrealistic definition of a life well spent, you're free to consider the possibility that many more things than you'd previously imagined might qualify as meaningful ways to use your finite time.

You're free too to consider the possibility that many of the things you're already doing with it are more meaningful than you'd supposed and that until now you'd subconsciously been devaluing them on the grounds that they weren't significant enough.

From this new perspective it becomes possible to see that preparing nutritious meals for your children might matter as much as anything could ever matter even if you won't be winning any cooking awards or that your novels worth writing if it moves or entertains a handful of your contemporaries even though you know you're no Tolstoy or that virtually any career might be a worthwhile way to spend a working life if it makes things slightly better for those it serves.

I feel like time management is a very... is almost a misleading title for this book that you've written. Because it really is about great existential questions of meaning.

4,000 Weeks Time and How to Use It

4,000 Weeks Time Management for Mortals

I really like the time management for mortals phrase, I got to confess, just because it brings together that very sort of quotidian and worldly and in a way sort of shallow seeming, I suppose, idea right alongside mortality. The serious fact of mortality.

So to consider the possibility that many more things than you'd previously imagined might qualify as meaningful ways to use your finite time. You're free to to consider the possibility that many of the things you're already doing with it are more meaningful than you'd supposed. And then until now, you'd subconsciously been devaluing them on the grounds that they weren't significant enough. From this new perspective, it becomes possible to see that preparing nutritious meals for your children might matter as much as anything could ever matter. Even if you won't be winning any cooking awards or that your novels worth writing, if it moves or entertains a handful of your contemporaries, even though you know you're no Tolstoy. Or that virtually any career might be a worthwhile way to spend a working life if it makes things slightly better for those it serves.

It's funny in my podcast interview with Oliver Berkman in his new book, 4000 Hours, he quoted something that he said is a real British expression, but I had actually heard a couple days earlier in Ted Lasso, the idea that it's the hope that kills you.

in my podcast interview with Oliver Berkman in his new book 4,000 hours he quoted something that he said is a real British expression but I had actually heard of a couple days earlier in Ted Lasso the idea that it's the hope that kills you

in my podcast interview with Oliver Berkman in his new book 4000 hours. He quoted something that he said is a real British expression but I had actually heard of a couple days earlier in Ted Lasso the idea that it's the hope that kills you.

4000 Weeks is the approximate length of an 80-year lifespan expressed in weeks.

It's not that life is short, it's that we waste a lot of it.

the hope that kills you

Burning the Days

the one thing all fools have in common is that they're always getting ready to live