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 bestseller

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 four thousand 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 readers 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 four thousand weeks count.

'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, bestselling author of THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F*CK

'Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and USEFUL, actually genuinely useful' MARIAN KEYES

© Oliver Burkeman 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Personal Development

Philosophy

Psychology

Psychology & Mental Health

Science

Social Psychology & Interactions

Society

Stress Management

Time Management

Inspiring

Feel-Good

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Critic reviews

This book is wonderful. Instead of offering new tips on how to cram more into your day, it questions why we feel the need to ... My favourite kind of book is this one ... it examines the human struggle with intelligence, wisdom, humour and humility. (Marianne Power)

Perfectly pitched somewhere between practical self-help book and philosophical quest ... as with all the best quests, its many pleasures don't require a fast-forward button, but happen along the way (Tim Adams)

Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in. Enjoy your life. Breathe out. Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living

A wonderfully honest book, Four Thousand Weeks is a much-needed reality check on our culture's crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life (Mark Manson, bestselling author of Everything is F*cked and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck)

His book will challenge and amuse you. And it may even spur you on to change your life. At the very least reading it would be a good use of one of your four thousand weeks (Robbie Smith)

I loved this book - it's a celebration of all that is most human: a deep dive into the value and potency of our finitude. Where we might buckle under pressure and uncertainty, Oliver quietly restores our centre of gravity within. You'll emerge from his writing fortified by wonder (Derren Brown)

A beautiful, uplifting read. Reading Oliver Burkeman, I feel my shoulders relax and my mouth curl into a smile of admiration. Witty, modest and refreshingly sane (Robert Webb, author of How Not to Be a Boy)

Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and USEFUL, actually genuinely useful (Marian Keyes)

Oliver Burkeman provides an important and insightful reassessment of productivity. The drive to get more done can become an excuse to avoid figuring out what we actually want to accomplish. Only by confronting this latter question can we unlock a calmer, more meaningful, more resilient approach to organizing our time (Cal Newport, bestselling author of A World Without Email and Deep Work)

We all know our time is limited. What we don't know - but what Oliver Burkeman is here to teach us - is that our control over that time is also limited. This profound (and often hilarious) book will prompt you to rethink your worship of efficiency, reject the cult of busyness, and reconfigure your life around what truly matters (Daniel H. Pink, author of When, Drive, and To Sell is Human)

Most relevant

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.