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4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

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`Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals`⁠
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Book Summary, October 2023, Susan Alban

Susan Voiceover

This was a profound read for me on many levels, but namely, accepting and managing our own concept of mortality and finitude.

Life is not about “fitting it all in” or being maximally efficient; it is rather about accepting that we’ll never fit it all in. That is a fact. So instead, to live a life worth living, we need to be really clear with ourselves on what really matters during the short window we get to be alive. What does it mean to live only for future fulfillment, versus accepting the imperfections of our day-to-day lives today?

Take aways

Modern sense of time

Agrarian societies didn't have a concept of time, wasting time, fitting it in, having "too much" on their plate

They moved through the days and weeks and years according to rhythms like seasons and seasons of life.

Time was a modern invention from factory work, which required coordination of various schedules and resources working together

Nihilism

Even if you are wildly effective at time management, when you look at the universe of things you could possibly do with your time or possible bucket list items you could add to yours...

You will get only a speck of things done in your life

Even if you are 2x more productive than the average person, you will only get a speck of things done

Humans have been alive a very very small amount of time relative to the world

If you strung together centenarians whose lives overlapped, we've really only had society for 60 people; Henry VIII was alive only 5 lives ago

Therefore, nothing we do really matters in the grand scheme of things once you extend time.

We shouldn't be so obsessed with realizing the fruits of our labors while we're alive

It's okay to work on something critical (building a cathedral, solving climate change) where you won't see the impact during your life.

Even if you're ACTUALLY Steve Jobs, you won't have that big of an impact on the world in the grand scheme of things.

Accepting limits and finitude

Time is finite - FINITUDE

Being in the moment forces us to confront our mortality

Being BORED forces us to confront our mortality

If we actually try to sit down and do something, we might not be good at it; we might not be successful --> we are confronting our own limitations

Going on social media (or online shopping ahem) enables us to suspend trying and being in the moment in favor of distraction. It's a form of denying reality.

Procrastination: Starting something means you're going to have to accept your own limitations of time and skill; what you're attempting might not (most certainly will not) be perfect

Too Many Priorities

"Big rocks" approach is a fallacy --> there are usually way too many rocks (ie, big priorities) to fit in a jar.

Ways to carve out time and truly prioritize

"Pay yourself first" --> similar to savings advice, do the same thing with time

Work in serial not in parallel. Have a long backlog to do list if you must. But your active to do list should only have 3 things on it at a time and don't add something new until you've removed something.

Warren Buffett : make a list of your top 25 goals for life. Then work only on the top 5 because those will be life defining. The other 20 should be actively avoided because they are alluring and distracting but not meaningful enough to occupy your life.

Attention

Is attention a resource or is attention actually life? There are so many things -- family, jobs, sensory input, etc. for us to pay attention to and we can only pay attention to a very infinitesimally small -- so life IS where you put your attention.

To have a meaningful experience you must be able to focus on it; otherwise are you even having the experience? Can you have an experience you don't experience?

"Attention is the beginning of devotion" - Mary Oliver

Did you really experience a Michelin Star meal that you did not experience? It could just be a cup 'o noodles if you don't pay attention to it.

Inverse: distraction and care are incompatible with each other.

You can't truly love a person, a child, or a career without paying attention to it.

Uncertainty and future

It's okay to work to achieve some future goal. But there are no guarantees

Your spouse might leave you, you might not achieve what you want, you might leave 3 hours early for a flight and still miss it.

And you won't know for certain that "it turned out okay" until the situation has already passed.

So maybe best not to focus so much on it.

Your present state was somewhat random and looking backward you can't always have guessed that you'd end up where you are, so why do we insist on wanting future guarantees?

When you're obsessed with the future, you view your day as something to "get through" such that you can arrive at a future perfect time. Which you never will.

"When I finally.... then I can relax and the life I was always meant to be living can happen"

The present is a TOOL for getting to the future. So you'll never get to enjoy the present moment.

Leisure

Movement from agrarian to industrial society and the more distinct separation of work and leisure meant that people were always doing something for the future. Versus just having leisure to have it. And be in it.

Idleness aversion: As long as you spend all your leisure time striving, you can stay future focused and not worry about mortality. Days aren’t progressing to a future state of perfection

Accepting idleness - how can there be play in an era where nothing has meaning unless it leads to something else?

Accept that it may be uncomfortable. And that if it is, that’s a good thing.

Maybe you don't need a goal

Telic versus Atelic activities

Ed Batista article here for reference:

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Things with an endpoint may be less satisfying than things without an endpoint

Things with an endpoint are frustrating when you WANT them; then you get them and they didn't provide as much satisfaction as you were expecting so they're also not great after you get them.

Hobbies are a great example of atelic activities

They can be lower stakes if they aren't tied to your identity - e.g., Rod Stewart apparently loves model trains but acknowledges that he needs help with the wiring.

Life is just a string of little problems (or maybe mini-goals) stitched together.

There will never be a time when you don’t have a problem or an unachieved goal.

As such, maybe it’s not so good to be constantly measuring success by whether or not you’ve achieved a particular goal

Patience and addiction to moving forward

Cultivate patience: Cultivating patience can help a lot

You can't rush a baby eating or a movie finishing

The Harvard art history example --> sit in front of a piece of art for 3 hours --> an example of a project that literally CANNOT be rushed

You can't rush "getting through a conversation or argument with your husband"

Accept that and don't TRY SO HARD to push things through

Addiction to speed and efficiency can be like alcoholism --> it's numbing more difficult emotions that you may not want to deal with

However, while an alcoholic may result in concerned friends & family, an efficiency/productivity addict is often celebrated

Accept that you cannot quiet your anxieties by working faster

Patience - accepting that things just take the time they take

It's difficult to endure the comfort of not knowing. And just letting reality unfold.

Forcing solutions is easier because then we can claim to be "dealing with the situation"

And we may imagine that we will reach a state of having no problems. But we won't

Doing hard, special or unique things may require patience

Hacking at something, figuring out the solution to a difficult problem, dwelling in the problem versus forcing a solution.

Working incrementally can help here.

For long term projects (e.g., writing a book), it's much better to do a little each day and take weekends off.

It's even important to stop after a certain amount of time, even in cases where you feel energy to go further. NOT stopping is its own form of impatience.

Sometimes to have meaningful or unique experiences, you have to "stay on the bus" for longer until "its route diverges from all the main city buses that are on the identical route within the city limits"; staying on board longer means it will ultimately diverge, versus getting impatient and getting off and on again.

For example, to understand and live the richness of being in a community for a long time, or being married for many decades, you have to first be patient enough to be in the "well trodden" path at the beginning of a new undertaking.

Time together for the win

Recreating together versus time autonomy

Swedish academic study - looked at antidepressant usage based on vacation taken

Unsurprisingly, when someone is on vacation they use fewer antidepressants

INSIGHT from the research was: antidepressant usage went way down when MORE of Swedish society was COLLECTIVELY on vacation together --> people are happier when they are recreating TOGETHER.

Compare/contrast to notion of the digital nomad who has supreme "individualistic time autonomy" --> they control where and when they work and their vacation may or may not be coordinated with others.

Swedish concept of “fika” - everyone in an office regardless of their status, takes a 30 minute coffee/cake break in the afternoon at a prescribed time. Regardless of status, rank, age, people mix and mingle and talk about work and life.

Important connection and relationship building BUT requires people to give up a bit of their individual time autonomy for the whole

Insight is likely to GIVE UP some time autonomy to be able to be with others.

Examples are regularly scheduled volunteering with others; religious services; chorus/art clubs or classes, etc.

What is time anyway?

Do we own time or ARE WE TIME

We are just the series of moments in our lives in which we show up

Time is not something to have, waste, spend or master.

The secret to a life of happiness (?!)

Do the next right thing

Philosopher said --> if it isn't obvious to you what you should be doing next, you have too much money. Just do the obvious next right thing and your life will be good.

There's no better way to live your life than to just do the next right thing (AA slogan)

Quote from Carl Jung-

Approximate preamble: There is no prescription for living life; if that is what you seek join the Catholic church.

“If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious. Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how you ought to live. And then you know, too, that you cannot know it, but quietly do the next and most necessary thing.”

Giving up hope

Hope = giving up on your own efforts to control things or to meet others ever expanding expectations

Stop hoping and start working yourself

Embrace your limits and then go try to do a couple things well

Give up hope of being in control

Give up the overriding hope that this life you are living isn’t really all that there is.

Accept that it is what it is and this is life.

10 rules

Adopt fixed capacity approach (fewer big rocks). Keep two to do lists- one open (parking lot) and one closed (10 max; can’t add a new one until you fix an old one)

Predetermined time boundaries. Decide in advance how much time you’ll put into work- start and end times

Try to focus on one big project at a time (maybe one at work and one at home). Postpone everything else. Accept the anxiety of having other things on hold.

Decide in advance what to fail at. Accept whole areas of life where you don’t expect excellence.

Focus on what you’ve already completed. Not just what’s left.

Consolidate your caring. We’re exposed to so many problems. Figure out which ones you care about.

Embrace boring technologies. Modern tech makes us feel unconstrained.

Seek out novelty in the mundane. Time speeds up as we age—> may be that speed increases as life becomes routinized and as we absorb less knowledge. You can cram your life with novelty but that may be impractical. An alternative is to pay attention to every moment. Plunge deeply into the life you already have. Meditation helps. Unplanned walks. Hobby. Playing with a child.

Be a researcher in relationships. Goal is to figure out who the human being is who we’re with. With no particular goal.

Ask on impulse to be generous- make a donation, pay a compliment, send an email. Don’t wait to do it better or optimize.

Practice doing nothing. When we get bored we often try to do dumb things. Resist the urge to try to control your environment. Set a timer and stop trying to do anything. Let things be as they are. Shinzen Yung. Accept how reality feels here and now. Make better choices with your brief allotment of life.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals