Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Assuming that a person lives to be 80, the average human lifespan is 4,000 weeks, a timeframe that Oliver Burkeman describes as “terrifyingly, insultingly short” (3). Philosophers dating back to ancient Greece have been preoccupied with the brevity of human life and the fact that none of us will be granted the time to complete all our plans.

While many Americans’ bookshelves are bedecked with self-help books about productivity and time management, in Burkeman’s view, these titles tend to focus on the more superficial aspects of timesaving, such as morning routines and batch-cooking on Sundays. Few of these productivity gurus account for the shortness of human existence and stop to question what life is all about in light of this troubling question. This is where Burkeman seeks to be different.

Burkeman considers that while modernity is filled with timesaving devices such as dishwashers, meal-replacements and productivity apps that are meant to ease the burden on manual tasks, those of us in the modern world do not enjoy more time than our ancestors. Instead, life has speeded up and we face the same problem of trying to fit increasing amounts of activity into the same limited timeframe. We also encounter the

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