Four Thousand Weeks

New York Times Bestseller

“The most important book ever written about time management” (Adam Grant), which “invites nothing less than a new relationship with time—and with life itself” (Krista Tippett).

There’s a good reason why everyone has been talking about Oliver Burkeman’s New York Times bestseller, Four Thousand Weeks. Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. Whether we’re starting our own business, or trying to write a novel during our lunch break, or staring down a pile of deadlines as we’re planning a vacation, we’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless struggle against distraction. We’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and yet the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks, the average length of a human life.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we can do things differently.

About the Author

Oliver Burkeman is the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking and an award-winning feature writer for The Guardian, where he wrote a long-running weekly column on psychology, “This Column Will Change Your Life.” His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Psychologies, and New Philosopher. He lives in New York City.