Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Burkeman argues that managing our time does not only concern what to do, but what to leave out. Given our limited amount of time, procrastination is inevitable; however, the trick is to procrastinate on the things that allow you to devote time to what matters most.

Where the philosophers were reluctant to dispense practical advice, contemporary productivity gurus have sought to fill in the gap. Burkeman draws attention to Stephen Covey’s 1994 book, First Things First, which teaches that as long as people get the most important tasks done first, they will inevitably have time for more trivial things. Burkeman considers this a lie, simply because there are too many important things to do. The real problem of time-management is deciding between them.

Burkeman cites some more helpful strategies, including Jessica Abel’s strategy to simply seize time at the beginning of the day for a project that means the most to you, even if that means neglecting other important tasks. Then, he argues that we should limit taking on multiple projects, which often means that we stall progress in all of them and never finish anything. Instead, we should hold ourselves to finishing the most important project before picking up something else. In doing so, we will appreciate that our work capacity is finite.

While good procrastinators accept that they will never accomplish everything and make discerning choices about what to take on and what to ignore, bad procrastinators are paralyzed by the thought of giving up anything at all, because that would mean confronting their limitations. This type of procrastination shows up in the professional sphere as well as in dating, as people fear the foreclosure of alternative possibilities. The French philosopher Henri Bergson argues in Time and Free Will (1889) that we put off making decisions because we like to imagine an expansive future where all the possibilities we cherish will be possible.

While the notion of settling has a bad reputation in our dream-obsessed culture, Burkeman argues that we will end up in this state regardless of whether we make decisions or seek to keep our options open. In the dating sphere, the person who refuses to settle for a partner who fulfils only half of their wishes, will default into another form of settling where they must accept that they will spend another period alone, striving for the perfect partner. Burkeman views that the commitment-phobic dreamer who moves from one romantic partner to another is afraid of confronting finitude because being in a relationship means coming to terms with an individual’s limitations and forsaking the fantasy partner for a real person.

Ironically, though people agonize over important life decisions, once they do choose one way over another, they experience relief and enjoy engaging in their commitment rather than pining over alternative paths. This is because “when you can no longer turn back, anxiety falls away, because now there’s only one direction to travel: forward into the consequences of your choice” (88). 

Another problem that surfaces in the sphere of time-management is that of distraction. Distraction can be defined as spending our limited time and attention on pursuits we never intended to engage with as opposed to our passions. The advent of the Internet and social media have brought distraction to the foreground, although our capacity to fritter away our attention has disturbed philosophers as far back as ancient Greece. The reason for this is that “what you pay attention to will define, for you, what reality is” (91).

While in ancient times there was the notion that the distracted person could choose their distraction, e.g., sunbathing instead of creating important work, with today’s attention economy, one’s focus is marshalled by companies that make a profit by seizing our attention for longer periods of time. It is common knowledge that our phones and apps track our every move, predicting and supplying the kind of content that will keep us most engaged. Superficially, the solution would seem to be amassing tools to minimize online distraction, such as web-blocking apps and meditating to improve focus. However, this involves denying another uncomfortable fact about human limitation, which is that complete mastery over one’s attention is impossible. This is a positive from an evolutionary standpoint, as the completely focused person would be so fixed on their important thoughts that they would neglect the signs that a bus was about to run them over, or that their baby was distressed. They would also miss beautiful sunsets and the potential to make eye-contact with attractive strangers.

While such kinds of involuntary attention are crucial to our survival, the quality and meaning of our lives depends on our ability to be able to exert influence over our voluntary attention and minimize distraction there. Burkeman argues that the consequences of online distraction are not limited to a precious hour frittered away on a site that adds no meaning to our lives. They are more insidious, given technology’s ability to predict the content that makes us most reactive: For example, take the views of a person on the other side of the political spectrum. Given that “the attention economy is designed to prioritize whatever’s most compelling – instead of whatever’s most true, or most useful – it systematically distorts the picture of the world we carry in our heads at all times” (96). Thus, by feeding us the stories that fire us up, the attention economy influences how we relate to our triggers, such as those with opposing political views, in our daily lives and interactions. Our increased exposure to inflaming content might cause us to distance ourselves from family members with different politics, thereby filing us further into the silos that make up today’s divided media and political culture. Frequent contact with platforms such as Twitter might make us feel as though we should be continually braced for conflict and as a result make our days stressful and less fulfilling. It can be tricky to emerge from this state, as our attention, the very resource that we need to notice that we have been taken over, has already been commandeered by other forces.

Although Silicon Valley, with its employment of thousands of people to keep a single person hooked on social media, is due its share of blame for the current attention predicament, we need to be honest with ourselves and examine why we give into distraction so willingly. We need to face the uncomfortable truth that we are compelled to spend our lives on things other than what matters to us most.

Burkeman argues that distraction is a way of fleeing our discomfort with the present moment as it is. While Silicon Valley’s techniques have been painted as the vanquishers of our attention, “our role on the battlefield is often that of collaborators with the enemy” (104). This is because we already have an internal part of ourselves that drags us away from meaningful tasks towards ones that promise to be easier. Paradoxically, when we are employed in a meaningful task that will add real value to our lives, we experience a feeling of boredom so unpleasant that we will do almost anything to have it go away. Part of this discomfort, Burkeman argues, is facing our limitations within the parameters of the important task. For example, we might lack the time or the talent to accomplish it as well as we wished, and how it will ultimately turn out is uncertain. While boredom is often misinterpreted as a lack of interest in the task at hand, it is actually the harsh confrontation with our lack of control over our life and work in the present moment. In contrast, distraction gives the illusion of infinity, especially on the Internet, which instantly provides access to limitless portals and provides a relief from the constraints of focus on the present.

Burkeman acknowledges that there is no secret to eradicating our urge to being distracted. However, the most effective method is to allow ourselves to feel the discomfort of boredom and “to turn more of your attention to the reality of your situation than to rain against it” (108). When we accept that we do not get to determine the outcome of events, we can often relax into our constraints.