My biggest takeaway from Four Thousand Weeks

I’m in the middle of reading a book that has totally shifted my perspective on the concept of time management.

Disclaimer: I’m still reading it. But it’s already had such an impact on me that I am breaking all of my rules: I’m going to tell you about some of my takeaways before I’ve even finished it!?

The book is called Four Thousand Weeks, and it offers a new way to think about your time and how you make decisions around what to do with it.

I’ve had the book on my shelf for quite some time now. Not too long ago, I was texting back and forth with one of my aunts, and she mentioned that she had listened to a podcast where Brené Brown referenced how much she loved the book. After I read her text, I happened to look up at my bookshelf, and what do you know?! Out of the hundreds of books in my office, Four Thousand Weeks was the first title I noticed. I felt like it was a sign that it was time to read it.

The title had always intrigued me; I wondered why it was called Four Thousand Weeks. A few pages in, I learned that it’s because that’s roughly how many weeks a person lives if they live to the average life expectancy. The author shares that he asked many people the same question: “How many weeks do you think you have in your life?” Their answers were always far beyond four thousand. We have less time than we think we do.

The book starts out by going way back in history before the concept of “time” ever existed. For example, before there were clocks, people couldn’t describe in minutes or hours how long something would take. The passing of time probably didn’t register with them as much because they weren’t constantly reminded of it by literal ticking clocks. They were likely not very stressed about managing their time back then.

Today, we are so much better coordinated, productive, and efficient than humans were all those years ago. But as much as the concept of time has helped us, it also really stresses us out. Many of us—myself included—have become obsessed with getting better at managing our time and squeezing in everything that we want to do in our one precious life. We are constantly aware of time passing and all that we haven’t yet done. I thought it was interesting that we get stressed out about something we made up. Do you ever think about that?

My biggest takeaway from the book so far is that the way to free up your time isn't to become more efficient.

In fact, that is a trap.

It made me think about my own life: I have spent years learning how to be more efficient and effective with my time. I have now become so efficient that I am able to fit so much into my days. And that’s the thing: The more efficient we become, the busier we get because of how much more we can fit onto our plates. Instead of freeing up time, we just become more efficient at this so that we can have more time for that, and so on and so forth.

When I read that, I had this hard moment of truth with myself. I realized that by nature, I am not a very structured person, but because of my obsession with making my time count, I have become very structured. I timeblock my calendar, I make a list of my priorities each day, I delegate, I outsource. And while these things are great and have helped me tremendously, I crave unstructured time. I crave the days that aren’t planned out by the minute. I crave the days where I can tell a friend that I will meet them for dinner without having to look at my calendar and schedule it.

Do you ever have these thoughts??

The answer, the author says, is not to become even more structured and efficient. It’s actually the opposite.

Read more on my blog!