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![Four Thousand Weeks: The smash-hit Sunday Times bestseller that will change your life by [Oliver Burkeman]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51RZveXXoeL._SY346_.jpg)
Four Thousand Weeks: The smash-hit Sunday Times bestseller that will change your life Kindle Edition
Oliver Burkeman (Author) See search results for this author |
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**The instant Sunday Times bestseller**
What if you tried to stop doing everything, so you could finally get round to what counts?
Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations.
Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny.
Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.
'Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in... Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living' Emma Gannon
'Every sentence is riven with gold' Chris Evans
'Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and useful' Marian Keyes
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage Digital
- Publication date26 Aug. 2021
- File size4149 KB
Product description
From the Back Cover
Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny. --This text refers to the paperback edition.
Review
Perfectly pitched somewhere between practical self-help book and philosophical quest ... as with all the best quests, its many pleasures don't require a fast-forward button, but happen along the way -- Tim Adams ― Observer
Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in. Enjoy your life. Breathe out. Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living ― Emma Gannon, author of The Multi-Hyphen Method
A wonderfully honest book, Four Thousand Weeks is a much-needed reality check on our culture's crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life -- Mark Manson, bestselling author of Everything is F*cked and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
His book will challenge and amuse you. And it may even spur you on to change your life. At the very least reading it would be a good use of one of your four thousand weeks -- Robbie Smith ― Evening Standard --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
Oliver Burkeman is the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, and for many years wrote a popular weekly column on psychology for the Guardian, 'This Column Will Change Your Life'. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Psychologies and New Philosopher.
He has a devoted following for his writing on productivity, mortality, the power of limits, and building a meaningful life in an age of bewilderment.
oliverburkeman.com
Review
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In addition to whatever help it might offer, Four Thousand Weeks is also just good company; it addresses large, even existential, issues with a sense of humor and an even-keeled perspective. I found that reading it--Burkeman might balk at this particular way of describing it--was a good use of my time. --John Williams, The New York Times
Provocative and appealing . . . The discipline of time management has historically been concerned with maximizing productivity and efficiency, but Mr. Burkeman imbues it with existential weight . . . Mr. Burkeman is funny and engaging, and Four Thousand Weeks is an enjoyable, insightful, and occasionally profound book, one well worth your extremely limited time. --Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal
Burkeman is the self-help writer for people like me who find self-help books oversold on magical transformations . . . Four Thousand Weeks is full of such sage and sane advice, delivered with dry wit and a benevolent tone. --Joe Moran, The Guardian (UK)
"Four Thousand Weeks will challenge and amuse you. And it may even spur you on to change your life." --Robbie Smith, Evening Standard (UK)
[Four Thousand Weeks] is perfectly pitched somewhere between practical self-help book and philosophical quest . . . As with all the best quests, its many pleasures don't require a fast-forward button, but happen along the way. --Tim Adams, The Observer (UK)
Subtle, provocative, and multi-layered . . . Four Thousand Weeks offers many wise pointers to a happier, less stress-filled life, with none of the usual smug banalities of the self-help genre. --Craig Brown, The Daily Mail (UK)
This book is wonderful. Instead of offering new tips on how to cram more into your day, it questions why we feel the need to . . . My favorite kind of book is this one--a book that doesn't offer magic solutions to life because there aren't any. Instead, it examines the human struggle with intelligence, wisdom, humor, and humility . . . Reading this book was time well spent. --Marianne Power, The Times (UK)
I have long loved Oliver Burkeman's wise and witty journalism that both interrogates and elevates the 'self-help' realm--revealing its possibilities for absurdity while honoring the deeper human impulses that it meets. Four Thousand Weeks is a splendid offering in that spirit. This book is at once sobering and refreshing on all that is truly at stake in what we blithely refer to as 'time management.' It invites nothing less than a new relationship with time--and with life itself. --Krista Tippett, host of On Being
A wonderfully honest book, Four Thousand Weeks is a much-needed reality check on our culture's crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life. --Mark Manson, bestselling author of Everything is F*cked and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
"This is the most important book ever written about time management. Oliver Burkeman offers a searing indictment of productivity hacking and profound insights on how to make the best use of our scarcest, most precious resource. His writing will challenge you to rethink many of your beliefs about getting things done--and you'll be wiser because of it." --Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife
"Four Thousand Weeks is a book to read and re-read, to absorb and reflect on. Compassionate, funny and wise, it has not left my mind since I read it. The modern world teaches us to pretend to be immortal--this book is a dip in the cold, clear waters of reality, returning us refreshed and alive." --Naomi Alderman, author of The Power
"We all know our time is limited. What we don't know--but what Oliver Burkeman is here to teach us--is that our control over that time is also limited. This profound (and often hilarious) book will prompt you to rethink your worship of efficiency, reject the cult of busyness, and reconfigure your life around what truly matters." --Daniel H. Pink, author of When, Drive, and To Sell is Human
"Oliver Burkeman provides an important and insightful reassessment of productivity. The drive to get more done can become an excuse to avoid figuring out what we actually want to accomplish. Only by confronting this latter question can we unlock a calmer, more meaningful, more resilient approach to organizing our time." --Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of A World Without Email and Deep Work
Insightful . . . Burkeman's thoughtful, reassuring analysis will be a welcome balm to readers feeling overwhelmed by the (perhaps unrealistic) demands of life. --Publishers Weekly
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.Product details
- ASIN : B07X3DH41F
- Publisher : Vintage Digital (26 Aug. 2021)
- Language : English
- File size : 4149 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 288 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0374159122
- Best Sellers Rank: 809 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer reviews:
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A self proclaimed productivity geek, Burkeman has come to a lot of the same conclusions that have started to bug me over the last few years. Time is finite. No matter how efficient we get we'll never do everything we feel we're supposed to do. The answer he says is to acknowledge our limitations and be honest with ourselves that the life we're living right now is what we have.
By stopping struggling against the limits of time we can enjoy what we're doing right now, and really invest and commit to it. Instead of believing we're capable of engaging with every opportunity the modern world presents to us, we have to make hard choices about what we really want to do. What if you weren't trying to get somewhere? What if you accepted that you're already as here as you're ever going to be, what would you do then? He highlights the peril the instrumentalisation of time, always doing something for what might happen in the future. Taking a picture of fireworks so you can enjoy it later instead of enjoying the moment.
It's not necessarily an easy thing to do. Because the theme that runs through the book is that you genuinely can't do everything you want to do, and not doing some things means giving up on some of your dreams. But it is liberating to realise that actually, it doesn't matter in the end, you can let go and really focus on what you're doing. It means trading in a flawless fantasy where you do everything perfectly for the messy reality where you do a handful of things in ways you might fail at. It means giving up certainty to some extent, since committing to something means taking a path without knowing exactly where you're going. But the alternative is to go nowhere.
It's a level headed read that takes in a wide range of influences from philosophy and other writers, to great effect as the wisdom of the book is much deeper than you would expect from what is technically a tome about time management. I've highlighted all the way through and I'll definitely be returning to it to absorb it more fully.
There aren't really any tricks or frameworks to subscribe to. A while ago I read books on techniques on how to make better choices, how I could weigh up each option and make the "right" choice. It's more like a guide to confronting reality, accepting that you will fail and you will make the wrong choices sometimes. But that's ok, and it's a lot less stressful than trying to maintain the impossible standard of always choosing right, always filling your time in the right way.
In regards of the content, the book is really quite philosophical and is valuable for getting you to stand back and look at your life, your attention and quality of life. Despite the continual torrent of sentences, it is a worthwhile read.
The book presents ideas that, while not necessarily new, he has made infinitely more accessible and relevant by restating them, with wit and self-deprecating humour, to fit the context of today's life and technology. It's not an understatement to say the book has been transformative for me.
Deep wisdom masquerading as a book about time management.

By P. Rosser on 30 August 2021
