Why you should throw out your to-do list.

The Next Big Idea Daily newsletter (SUBSCRIBE) is written by me, Michael Kovnat , and gathers insights from today’s leading non-fiction authors. It’s a companion to our Next Big Idea Daily podcast, available on Apple or Spotify .

How long do you have on the planet?

Let's say you get lucky and live to be 80. That's a little more than four thousand weeks. Your most productive years -- say from your mid-twenties through your mid-sixties? That's about two thousand weeks. At 40 hours a week, you've got maybe 80,000 working hours, minus some vacation time.

It's hard to say whether that's a lot of time, or a little. I don't know what you're trying to accomplish. But I do know that in the thick of planning our days and weeks, few of us really take time to step back and think about the shape of our lives as a whole.

We should.

In 2021, when Oliver Burkeman released his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals he clearly struck a nerve. It became an instant New York Times bestseller and attracted raves from reviewers including our curator Adam Grant, who called it "the most important book ever written about time management." Burkeman offered a biting critique of our culture's celebration of busy-ness and productivity, and pointed out that given our limited time -- and nearly infinite list of potential tasks -- a new approach might be called for.

The book was so resonant that we wanted to revisit it on this week's Next Big Idea Daily podcast.

Hear Oliver Burkeman suggest a better way to plan your days:

We heard a lot of other big ideas on the show this week, including:

• What you can learn about listening from life in the ER, from emergency physician Jay Baruch .
• How consciousness may have evolved, from neuropsychologist Nicholas Humphrey.
• How to dismantle gender bias in the workplace, from chief marketing officer Angelique Bellmer Krembs .
• What it looks like to put friendship at the center of your life, from NPR's Rhaina Cohen .

Was this the best way we might have spent this week, one of our dwindling set of four thousand? I think it was. And I hope you do too.

By the way, if you're interested in having these and thousands of other big ideas right in your pocket, download the Next Big Idea app .