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Four Thousand Weeks

Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

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Four Thousand Weeks

By: Oliver Burkeman
Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

The instant Sunday Times best seller.

A Financial Times, Guardian and Observer Book of the Year.

One of the Daily Telegraph's 75 Best Books of 2021.

What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get round to what counts?

We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about 4,000 weeks.

Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of the challenge. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' it introduces listeners 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 4,000 weeks count.

©2021 Oliver Burkeman (P)2021 Penguin Audio History & Philosophy Personal Development Philosophy Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Science Social Psychology & Interactions Time Management Inspiring Feel-Good

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Critic reviews

"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)

"A much-needed reality check on our culture's crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life." (Mark Manson, best-selling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck)

"Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and useful, actually genuinely useful." (Marian Keyes)
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I enjoyed this short little book. Burkeman makes a lot of good points and turns a few common conceptions of time and productivity on their heads. Just like the stoics, he argues that it is because of our finite time that our days are meaningful at all. Definitely give it a listen!

4000 weeks

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This book is an exposition on the problem of time as considered by philosophers, mystics, scientists through the ages. However, it also a commentary on modernity, how it perceives time, and how this time impact on the way we perceive and live our lives. It does offer specific and concrete prescriptions to the problem of time. I am not in a position to comment on these yet as I have not implemented them, but they do sound relatively straightforward and promising in terms of possibility of success. The broader points of this book, about how ultimately the shortness of life (ie limited time) is the central problem of this life, and how we will never do most of the things we dream to do, have already been very helpful for me to be more present with my kids and be more relaxed in these busy and stressful holiday times.

A wise, interesting and modern take on time

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Listened to this in two days, am now re-listening and am about to buy the hard copy so I can make notes. I immediately started recommending it to everyone who I think needs it, which I rarely do. Never before has a book so radically changed the way I think about life: Burkeman advocates fully acknowledging the finitude (my new favourite word) of life, embracing both your limitations and the fact that you'll never reach that imaginary place in the future where everything is ticked off the life list, and using these insights to just relax and allow yourself to enjoy the present (without any preachy mindfulness) doing just a few things that are actually important to you. Life is short, and you have to make choices: we shouldn't need to be told this, but we CAN'T have it all (where would you keep it?), and trying to chase a never-ending list of life goals is a recipe for unhappiness and endless striving. As he so refreshingly remind us, the universe *really* doesn't care how we spend our time on earth.

I feel utterly liberated having read this and can't recommend it enough. Burkeman's writing is intelligent, eloquent, funny and completely devoid of padding: his references to attitudes towards time through history are fascinating. I'm already working my way through his other books.

Life changing

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I thought this book would be about time management. And it kind of is. But it turned out to be more philosophy and mindfulness.

I always valued time over money, which I thought was a good thing. But having read this book, I now look at valuing time so much as missing the point about how to view time and how we try to turn it into something we master and control.

In today’s fast moving, social media works we can feel we always ought to be using every second of our time seeking improvement or development. We hope that if we get that next job or buy that new town saving gadget, we will finally get to the point where we are in control of our problems.

But we will never get there. There will always be the next thing to develop or the next problem. My takeaway is if we surrender to time and realise we will never have control, we will enjoy our time a lot more and get meaning from the things that really matter.

Embrace the truth about your limited time, whether it be 4000 weeks, more or less. You don’t have control. Its not all going to be “all right”. But that’s alright. Let’s just get on with it.

More than a book on time management

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This book really helped me think about what's important and has given me a fresh perspective for approaching life going forward. Brilliant and very relevant truths especially in the world we live in today.

Adds a fresh perspective

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Thoroughly enjoyed the author reading me this book. I chortled often .
And clipped as many.
Thanks OB
NV

Chortled often

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I’ve read tons of time management and productivity books, each of them saying something similar to one another. This was a good angle and a good reminder to actually do less, and to ensure what you do is more meaningful instead of being productive for productivity’s sake.

Very good!

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So much to think about in this dissection of modern life, providing a new way of looking at the post vivid world. I'll be reading it again, probably several times, to get the most out of it. Highly recommended.

A life changing book

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I would recommend everyone to listen to or read this book.

I've never engaged in time-management strategies and productivity techniques and I wouldn't like reading about such things. Luckily this book is not about that. It's written from the point of view of someone who's tried many productivity techniques and came to a greater realization and it is this greater realization which he thoroughly explains in this book. Therefore, this book is a must-read for everyone.

Great book with many carefully dissected ideas that encouraged the reader to rethink their ideas of time. Oliver Burkeman makes many (disturbing) observations and his line of reasoning can be followed quite easily. In a world of increasingly busier and ambitious people, this book helped me to understand our struggle with time and it gave me some ideas on how to enjoy transience.

His voice and pronounciation is clear and his intonation is on point. Overall, very well-performed.

Great book with interesting ideas

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I devoured this book and will be going back to it regularly. It’s an eye opening read with useful and practical tips too. On top of that, the author is a great narrator so it’s a really enjoyable listen. Thoroughly recommend!

Thought provoking and practical

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