I Learned More By NOT Finishing: A Review of 4,000 Weeks
The productivity industry has gotten out of hand.
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I finally finished another book, so that means It's time for another edition of From The Shelves. Welcome back.
In my last newsletter, I wrote about ways I wanted to grow as a person. One of those ways was to become more of an essentialist and less of a generalist, meaning that I only focus on doing the things that are essential to what I’ve been called by God to do. We might could say that if essentialism is a philosophy of life, we still need the skill of time management to live the philosophy. This is something I’ve always struggled with, so I’m always looking for tips on how I can improve. Enter 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, a book that’s been on my reading list for a long time but only made its way to my hands by way of a major impulse buy last time I was in Barnes and Noble. Point 1 for good product placement.
4,000 Weeks was written by Oliver Burkeman and first published In August of 2021.
“Productivity” is a major niche industry and it’s gotten way out of hand, particularly on YouTube. Just take a look at a few of these thumbnails from the biggest productivity creators out there.
It’s very similar to all the “gurus” that can teach you to "10x your income by writing online for an hour a day on X" (Twitter), or something. I know, don’t hate the player, hate the game. These dudes have made tons of money off this grift. But they’re making money off content about content or they’re only being productive by telling you how to be productive and that’s pretty much it. That’s all they have to give. But enough of my soapbox about the Creator Economy and the Conservative Media Industry…
4,000 Weeks seems to be an effort to combat some of this. Because he labels himself as a recovering productivity geek, I give props to Burkeman for critiquing all this in the form of a traditional book. But while I picked up a lesson or two, my take on the book is that it’s just more of the same stuff. I’ll share a few thoughts below.
“Our troubled relationship with time arises largely from this same effort to avoid the constraints of reality.”
It’s funny how God works, isn’t it? My biggest takeaway from the last book I reviewed was the importance of constraint, and here’s that theme again. Even bigger than the constraint required to live a conservative life is the constraint of time itself.
I literally can’t do it all. Neither can you.
In fact, the harsh truth is that I probably won’t be able to do half of all I’ve ever wanted to do because of time, but Burkeman’s point is that that’s okay. Contrary to what you may have been lead to believe thanks to the Industrial Revolution and how our economy treats each person as nothing but a unit of profit and productivity, we are not machines. It took me a few years to figure that out in my ministry, which is especially hard to accept due to its content driven nature. We can’t do everything, and that’s okay. But we can, and we must, do the things that matter.
I really resonated with this thought:
“[I thought] if I could only find the right time management system, build the right habits, and apply sufficient self-discipline, I might actually be able to win the struggle with time, once and for all.”
I used to think this too, until I discovered that the right time management system is called a calendar and that if you just build the habit of scheduling your time (this is what the gurus call “time blocking”), and then do what you planned, you’ll eventually start getting the right things done. But it’s hard to make money telling people that the hottest productivity tip is to use the free calendar on your phone. :)
So, how have I applied these lessons? I’m applying them at work by figuring out what’s essential and what’s not, sure. But the most immediate application came in the form of not finishing this book. As I’m learning to be the case with most books, especially those of this genre, this really could have been a blog post. Maybe a series of blog posts. The main point is found in the first chapter, and the rest Is quite a bit of fluff around the Idea that you can't do It all.
My pastor once said one of his fears is that he’ll never be able to read all that he wants to read. You know what? Same. That’s why I said to myself: “Self, this is a good lesson. I will apply it by stopping 3/4 of the way through and go read something better.”
And yet, I found that lesson important enough to write about, so I’m sharing it with you. I hope you found it helpful.
You can’t do it all, but you can do the right things. So go find the right things to do and then do them.