Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman is one of the life manuals I need other than the bible. It is a book that addresses my anxiety and what I would call my hedonistic nature. As an Enneagram Type 7, I have a constant need to feel that I am using my time well.
When I was working, there was an incessant need to keep on going and I did not mind doing the most work and going the extra mile. Before switching to being a stay-at-home mum, I started to feel like I couldn’t take the same amount of workload while suffering from mum-guilt. Eventually, I made the decision to bid farewell to what we would now consider “work” and focus on family life. You may think that I stop having the anxiety that I used to encounter on a daily basis but no, I still do. I want to be doing things with my toddler son all the time – providing outdoor experiences, sensory play at home and following certain bedtime routines. At the same time, I want to remain fit, know what is happening around the world, continue to maintain and grow my social circles and learn and participate in meaningful activities. There is of course nothing inherently wrong, but I am frequently exhausted and fall sick. Whenever I am unwell, I take a lot of time to reflect and read. I am always confronted with the question of “what matters most?” This has been a vicious cycle of sorts, but I get more clarity overtime.
What I have learnt from the book is that I will always have an endless to-do and bucket list. In order not to fall into this trap, I have to acknowledge that there will always be things that I want to do, things that I want to experience and places I want to see. Our lives on earth are finite and it is impossible to take in everything that the world has to offer. The most important thing that I have learnt is that I need to know what and when is enough. This idea is congruent to another book that I am currently reading titled, “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel.
The other major takeaway is the author’s point of view on a lifestyle that offers too much flexibility. Taking it to the extreme, the example he gave was of Mark Manson back when he was still a nomad. He said, “Last year, I saw the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China and Machu Picchu in the span of three months… But I did all this alone.” The following pages spoke about how research data showed that there is a connection between synchronisation and life satisfaction. In summary, it means the more you fall in with the rhythm of community (think weekend and Sabbath) the happier you are likely to be. With that, I wondered about the average life satisfaction of persons with shift work.
In conclusion the author made suggestions on how to embrace your finitude. My favourite is “focus on what you’ve already completed, not just on what’s left to complete. Keep a done list.” I found it to be helpful as I structure how I would like to spend my remaining days on this planet.
If you’re keen to find out more but lazy to read the book, I have extracted some of my learnings below:
The Limit-Embracing Life
Once time is a resource to be used, you start to feel pressure… to use it well, and to berate yourself when you feel you’ve wasted it. (Pg 24)
… it's easy to assume that the only answer must be to make better use of time, by becoming more efficient, driving yourself harder, or working for longer – as if you were a machine in the Industrial Revolution (Pg 24 - 25)
… it becomes a lot more intuitive to project your thoughts about your life into an imagined future, leaving you anxiously wondering if things will unfold as you want them to. (Pg 25)
… your sense of self-worth gets completely bound up with how you're using time. (Pg 25)
… [time] turns into something you feel you need to dominate or control. (Pg 25)
We fill our minds with busyness and distraction to numb ourselves emotionally. (Pg 30)
The Efficiency Trap
So the retiree ticking exotic destinations off a bucket list and the hedonist stuffing her weekends full of fun are arguably just as the exhausted social worker or corporate lawyer. It’s true that the things by which they’re being overwhelmed are nominally more enjoyable; it’s certainly nicer to have a long list of Greek islands left to visit than a long list of homeless families left to find housing for … But it remains the case that their fulfillment still seems to depend on their managing to do more than they can do. This helps to explain why stuffing your life with pleasurable activities so often proves less satisfying than you’d expect. (Pg 46)
…your interactions with the woman who runs the nearby Chinese takeaway might feel insignificant, but they help make yours the kind of area where people still talk to one another, where tech-induced loneliness doesn't yet reign supreme. (Pg 52)
As for Apple Pay, I like a little friction when I buy something, since it marginally increases the chance that I’ll resist a pointless purchase. (Pg 52)
Convenience culture seduces us into imagining that we might find room for everything important by eliminating only life’s tedious tasks. But it's a lie. You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results. (Pg 55)
The Limit-Embracing Life
… the more you believe you might succeed in ‘fitting everything in’, the more commitments you naturally take on, and the less you feel the need to ask whether each new commitment is truly worth a portion of your time - and so your days inevitably fill with more activities you don't especially value. (Pg 31)
… the more compulsively you plan for the future, the more anxious you feel about any remaining uncertainties, of which will always be plenty. (Pg 31)
The Pitfalls of Convenience
… your interactions with the woman who runs the nearby Chinese takeaway might feel insignificant, but they help make yours the kind of area where people still talk to one another, where tech-induced loneliness doesn't yet reign supreme. (Pg 52)
As for Apple Pay, I like a little friction when I buy something, since it marginally increases the chance that I’ll resist a pointless purchase. (Pg 52)
Facing Finitude
What's really morbid, … is what most of us do, most of the time, instead of confronting our finitude, which is to indulge in avoidance and denial… (Pg 61)
Rather than taking ownership of our lives, we seek out distractions, or lose ourselves in busyness and the daily grind, so as to try to forget our real predicament. (Pg 61)
The Impatience Spiral
People complain that they no longer have ‘time to read’ but the reality, as the novelist Tim Parks has pointed out, is rarely that they literally can't locate an empty half-hour in the course of the day. What they mean is that when they do find a morsel of time, and use it to try to read, they find they're too impatient to give themselves over to the task. (Pg 165)
… reading is the sort of activity that largely operates according to its own schedule. You can't hurry it very much before the experience begins to lose its meaning… (Pg 165)
The Loneliness of the Digital Nomad
‘A person with a flexible schedule and average resources will be happier than a rich person who has everything except a flexible schedule’ - author, Oliver Burkeman does not fully agree because not everyone has a flexible schedule like the said persons and though you may be able to enjoy your lifestyle, you may be doing it alone. (Pg 188)
10 Tools for Embracing Your Finitude (Pg 235 - 245)
Adopt a ‘fixed volume’ approach to productivity
- keep 2 to-do lists, 1 ‘open’ and 1 ‘closed’.
- predetermined time boundaries for your daily work.
Seralise
focus on 1 big project at a time (tolerate the anxiety of only moving on when you have completed the existing project)
Decide in advance what to fail at
strategic underachievement (choose what you want to temporarily lapse at - you can’t be performing the best at work and at home at the same time)
4. Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just on what’s left to complete.
keep a ‘done list’
5. Consolidate your caring
consciously pick your battles in charity, activism and politics (decide what you want to lobby for in your “spare” time
6. Embrace boring and single-purpose technology
switching the screen from colour to greyscale (not doing! I love colours)
7. Seek out novelty in the mundane
Pay more attention to every moment, however mundane
8. Be a ‘researcher’ in relationships
Deliberately adopting an attitude of curiosity
9. Cultivate instantaneous generosity
Whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind act on it if you feel it’s the right thing to do
10. Practise doing nothing
‘Do Nothing’ meditation
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