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4000 Weeks - Time Management For Mortals (Click Here For Amazon) |
I am NOT a reviewer guy. The fact that I’m doing this should be some
indication of how important I think the concepts in this book are.
I’m
just wrapping up reading this book, and will shortly start on my second pass
through it to more fully appreciate some of the nuance.
I expected
another “60 Minute Manager” / “Getting Things Done” / “Master Your Time” kind
of time-management rah-rah book in which the author tells you how to get on
top of your to-do list with some new calendaring, or list-making or scheduling
or journaling or double-entry dotted-matrix or computer program or
yadda-yadda-yadda.
I thoroughly despise those kinds of books (and
I’ve been to them all since clear back in the “Management By Objectives”
heyday in the decade around 1980). But, as with much of my life these days, I
was chasing rabbits down deep holes researching something else entirely when I
ran into it.
And I find I’m pleasantly surprised. The author
was/is in fact a time management geek (as he phrases it) who has spent an
appreciable amount of his high-pressure high-end life trying to get on top of
his time and Preaching The Faith to others. His main discoveries?
- A normal human lifespan is only about 4000 weeks (thus the title),
and that short time (more or less) is all there is and IT isn’t guaranteed.
All you really have is this moment. You can’t save it, waste it, spend it, or
hoard it for later by doing more now. It just is. A 24-hour day stubbornly
persists in only being 24 hours long even if you have 30 hours of to-dos to
pack into it and 60 hours of to-dos left over from last week that you just HAVE to get around to sooner or later.
- Trying to master time or the tasks that fill it is
simply and demonstrably impossible, and any attempt to do so with a view
toward some future of “finally” being on top of it all enough to take some of
your life for yourself is 100% doomed to failure.
- You are not going
to “make a dent on the universe” (as Steve Jobs said he hoped to do and
ultimately failed, as will we all). The universe simply does not give a
flying fuck about you, so stop holding yourself to those standards of
“accomplishment” or “making your mark” and just live your life right now
instead of working toward some magical fulfillment in the future.
- The problem is not how short our lives are, nor how inconsequential to the universe, but is that we don’t recognize and revel in the fact that such a low-probability event as our conscious existence is happening in the first place. Whatever is going on in any given moment, good, bad, or indifferent, fades to utter insignificance when compared to the astonishing, near-zero probability fact that you actually exist in that moment at all. In strict point of fact, it’s all you really have[Footnote], and it’s more than sufficient, an astounding miracle in and of itself.
There’s
a lot more, of course, but as time management books go, it isn’t much of one.
It’s life philosophy and cuts straight to the core of the nature of time
better than any other “time gurus” I’ve ever read.
It’s very
Stoic/Buddhist “live in the moment, time is not a commodity - you ARE time”
familiar and is frankly straightforward about the fact that you CAN’T have it
all. Anyone saying you can is deluded or conning you.
In fact, sometimes your life is just going to suck and you will NEVER be on top of even IMPORTANT to-dos in your life, never mind a zero-mail inbox. You are simply going to have to decide which truly important things are the MOST important to you personally to make you as content as you can be with your life right now, (not in the future, not for the accolades of your parents or mentors or the world at large or your boss or anyone else) and ruthlessly cut away the rest.
(Fun Fact: "DECIDE" has the same Latin roots as "Homicide" and "Suicide". It means to "Cut Away", to remove from your life all the left-over paths you don't take and wherever you dreamed they might have gone into the future.)Not because of selfishness, mind you — but because not only is it literally impossible to have it all, you’re letting the deluded attempt to do so suck away your irreplaceable life in the present AND simultaneously never actually completing anything of substance.
Anyhow, my rating:
- Big Thumbs Up
- Boffo
- Recommend
- Five Stars
- Whatever Group Of Emojis Means “Fuck Yeah!” To You
- Would Read Again
Footnote, "...it's all you really have..."
This also seems to be a central thesis of Martin Heidegger, who was a German existentialist philosopher and professor who wrote in a style that could be charitably classified as "impenetrable". I can't pretend to have made more than a bare scratch in the surface of it.
Probably unrelated, he was also a card-carrying Nazi from at least 1934 till 1945 when the Party had him drafted into digging tank-traps on the Rhine as part of the Volkssturm. He also had a torrid affair during most of that time with a Jewish girl beginning when she was one of his 17-year-old students. He was 34 at the time, and the whole thing caused her endless problems after the war with other Jews who didn’t like Nazis nor people who were shagging Nazis.
However, general assholocity and scholastic impenetrability aside, he did develop, if not invent, the philosophical concept of Dasein, sometimes seen as "Da-sein" (German, literal translation: "Being There").
So far as I can tell, he believed humans didn't just exist in time, but are defined by it. Time, in his view, is not something you "have", it is actually you, or at least arguably the biggest part of you. You don't "have" (as in "possess") a past, any more than you possess a future. You are simply now, with the rest being constructs of your experience in this moment. From Heidegger's point of view we literally ARE a limited amount of time, which in fact completely defines us.
[Back To Text]
Bad time management, lack of presence, constant distraction, an ever-lengthening list of things that must get done before I can be content ... Yup. That's my life in summary.
ReplyDeleteMy erstwhile deeply-spiritual companion basically echoes your summary, but in more metaphysical terms.
I can't finish books like that. I can barely get a third of the way through. The same was true for a book said companion read which completely changed her perspective on and appreciation of me. It was about having a committed relationship with someone who is Asperger's. I tried to read it and my eyes were opened up too but even that I couldn't get more than a third of the way through.
All of that said, sounds like a thumbsupper to me too.
Heh -- don't know the word "thumbsupper" but contextually I presume you mean it's self-comforting but ultimately zero-nutrition method for feeling like we're in control.
DeleteNo argument from me or the author.
The fact is that there are only 24 hours in a day, and you're only going to get 24 hours worth of stuff done, and that includes your stuff as well as the rest of the world's stuff, whether you pay any attention to this book or not. The only thing the book does is explain that you're going to have to pick out what 24 hours worth of stuff you're going to do and cold-drop the rest. Not just "hold it for later" or deluding yourself that you'll "get back to it" when you're "caught up", but understand that you'll NEVER do it.
The main point is to recognize that this is the only control you're ever going to have and to get on with making a decision as to what you want to spend the very limited resource of your one-and-only life on. If you don't, circumstance and the world will be happy to make the decision for you. And it will STILL only be 24 hours worth, most likely getting some useless minuscule fraction of 25 things done instead of dropping 20 and actually doing the remaining 5 well. The subtitle, I guess, would be "You CAN'T Have It All".
If you meant that there are probably a lot of aphorisms -- yup, there are, at least partially because your average human these days can't pay attention longer than it takes to read a bumper sticker. But on the upside, the aphorisms are mostly focused around the fairly unintuitive concept that working harder, longer, smarter, and more efficiently isn't going to give you an extra minute for your actual life. You're still only getting 4000 weeks, and all you've done is open up a place for some other of the endless to-dos you couldn't get around to before in the 24 hours to rush in.
The thumbsupper is real -- but the self-comfort is that you can stop the neverending 120-hour-week pretense that it's all equally important, or even important at all, make your decisions, walk away from the rest, and actually have as much of your own life as you can.
The universe won't notice. Trust me.
So much of this resonates. I'm intrigued.
ReplyDeleteWell, as Don points out (above) it can get pretty deep in the philosophical weeds and, as I said, it ain't much of a time management book, except for its central point: The entire history of the entire human race, from beginning to presumed end, even in the extremely unlikely event that it hangs around for millions of more years, is going to be nothing but one teeny point lost on a vast timeline that stretches as far as you can imagine in either direction. And your entire life is nothing but a vanishingly small point inside that point.
DeleteIt's something of a relief to realize that it literally means nothing to the universe on that scale whether you spend your time covered up in to-do lists and inboxes that you'll NEVER get on top of, or spend it doing the 3-5 things that you've decided are important today and simply flushing the rest.
He's not advocating getting into sandals and robes and just roaming the earth or any kind of hedonistic lifestyle. He's just saying to take your to-do list, sort it in order of importance TO YOU, and do the top 3-5 or so with your full attention. If by some fluke you finish one of those, you can move another up, unless it's more important TO YOU right that moment to just prop your feet up and have a cup of coffee. But until that happens, those other tasks DO NOT EXIST, and should take zero of your time thinking about them or trying to fit them into your already-full day, or "just getting a bit of them done" if you find a spare minute.
This means there's a helluva lot of stuff in your life that will never be done, dozens of meetings not taken, hundreds of calls not returned, thousands of emails not responded to, which will make not the slightest whit of difference to the world or, more specifically, your life. But you must understand -- you CANNOT HAVE IT ALL. Your only job is to figure out what very few things are MOST important to YOU today and to get on with doing them -- and be prepared to abandon the rest forever.
You are NOT going to be able to do all the stuff that's important in your life. Figure out what's MOST important for your life right now (not working for some point in the future when you're "finally caught up") and ruthlessly cut away any attempt or thought toward when or how to fit in all the other "IMPORTANT" stuff around them. You're going to have to get comfortable with the idea that the other stuff just isn't going to happen.
There's always another beach in Belize you're never going to see, another sunrise on the Russian steppes that you won't be there for, another in the endless goals we try to pretend are going to happen ("See The World Someday!") and waste our lives working toward. So stop burying yourself under 100-hour weeks and 30-hour days trying to earn it. Focus on what is MOST important to you, today, right now. That's where the bulk of your time should be going. And trust me, the universe won't notice one way or the other.
One of the coping strategies for any number of really crappy jobs I've had in my life was to focus on the fact that no matter what I did or did not do, five o'clock would roll around when it's supposed to, and nothing I could do would speed it up. That actually helped me, much like when on a long road trip, I think in terms not of miles left to go, but an awareness that at least according to Google maps, I will arrive at the motel or destination at a certain time--and all I had to do was sit in the car and drive until that time came. The important idea being I was and am not in control of this. We don't control time. Just relax.
ReplyDeleteWhich is really just one way of looking at it, I guess.
As I get older, I've taken the idea and applied it to my life. Assuming I continue to look both ways before crossing the street, (and even if I don't) my life span will end when it ends. A hundred years from now, all new people, as the saying goes, and it doesn't matter if I wouldn't like their music or their method of governing themselves. It helps to put these things in perspective.