Oliver Burkeman’s 4,000 Weeks: 3 Takeaways
“The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control—when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let’s start by admitting defeat: none of this is ever going to happen.”
― Oliver Burkeman
In his thought-provoking book, 4,000 Weeks, author Oliver Burkeman invites readers on a journey of self-reflection, urging us to confront a fundamental truth we often tend to evade—the brevity of life. With a candid perspective that intertwines existential insights and practical wisdom, Burkeman provides a variety of compelling takeaways that encourage us to embrace the impermanence of existence rather than shy away from it.
At the heart of his message lies the poignant reminder that we are all destined to face mortality, and the key to leading a meaningful life lies in acknowledging this undeniable reality.
While narrowing down my notes to three takeaways was tough, I was comforted by the fact that I will be reading this at least a few more times before my time is up. It’s evergreen content that can provide valuable wisdom at any age.
3 Takeaways from 4,000 Weeks
1. Three Principles of Patience
Burkeman distills patience into three basic principles:
Develop a taste for having problems. “Yet the state of having no problems is obviously never going to arrive. And more to the point, you wouldn’t want it to, because a life devoid of all problems would contain nothing worth doing and would therefore be meaningless.” (A theme that parallels The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.)
Embrace radical incrementalism. Habits have power in consistency, not in the volume of the task itself. If you're on the brink of breaking the habit, shrink the scope.
Originality lies on the far side of unoriginality. Burkeman argues that a goal of meaningfulness and true accomplishments requires a great deal of patience. You must trek through the mud of the first stage of trial and error, learning new skills, and redundancy in building experience. This isn't a universally enjoyed trait but the journey leads to great things while leaving plenty stuck in the mud.
2. Settling and the Joy of Missing Out
You can look at life in two ways: we only have 4,000 weeks on this earth or we get to spend 4,000 weeks on this earth.
Since our lives are relegated to this time, we just can't do everything we might want to. We see our friends on awesome vacations and we get a sense of FOMO and then we hit this brief pit of despair. Burkenman juxtaposes the fear of missing out with the joy of missing out. He defines the joy of missout out as "the thrilling recognition that you wouldn't even want to be able to do everything since if you didn't have to decide what to miss out on your choices couldn't truly mean anything." Instead of relishing in the spot you're not in, you relish in the spot you are in.
Since we know life is a series of trade-offs, embrace them. I can't go on that beautiful vacation because I am earning money, playing with my kids, watching a sunset, or writing a blog post. These, he writes, are "how you've chosen to spend a portion of time that you never had any right to expect." Yes, this is a form of settling but settling's connotation is often only considered in the negative connotation. If you decide to setting then you are naturally committed to the act of settling for something of your choice--a baby, a hose, a significant other, a job. You bit the bullet, the anxiety melts away, and you "travel forward into the consequences of your choice."
3. Five Questions for Better Time Management
Use these five questions to help you decide if you're living in a way that makes your 4,0000 weeks count.
Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort?
Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?
In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be?
In which areas of life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you’re doing?
How would you spend your life differently if you didn’t care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?
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