(00:00): Right. So the average
human in a developed country lives to be around 80 years old, which is roughly 4,000 weeks. Now,
this poster shows every single week of an average life as one square on this. And then the black
ones are the weeks that we have already lived. Now, YouTube very conveniently tells me how old
you are likely to be on average if you watch my channel. If you're in the 6% of my audience
that's 13 to 17 years old, this is about how many weeks you've used up. If you're in the 39%,
that's 18 to 24, you are about here. And if you are in the 34%
that is 25 to 35, you are here. And if you're in the 1.1% that's over 65, then you are around here.
Now, if you're anything like me, this illustration hopefully makes you think, damn, I want to
make the best use of this time, especially because the full 4,000 weeks is definitely
not guaranteed. And this is exactly what Oliver Burkeman analyses in his book, 4,000 Weeks:
Time and How to Use It. The struggle that we all have with this feeling of really limited time.
Now, this book has a pretty interesting philosophical approach to productivity
and time management, which is why it is the book that we are discussing in today's
episode of Book Club, the ongoing series where we distil and discuss highlights
from some of my popular, most favourite books. So almost everything about our relationship with
time comes from every day being exactly quantified down to the second by clocks. This mechanical time
makes us act a bit obsessively, counting minutes and hours, comparing everything that we've done
to the amount of time that it took to do, and rewarding or punishing ourselves based on what
we did with that time. And the more we chop our day up into these perfectly measurable blocks,
the more time starts to feel like this conveyor belt of jars and boxes that we
need to fill up efficiently and productively so that we allegedly make the most of our life.
Now, if you're like me, you've probably got a pretty secure existence with enough food
and shelter, and most of your problems are probably time related problems,
the feeling that you are not optimally filling these jars as they've rolled past.
Now, here are three big examples of time problems that we all face. First, there is online
distraction. Now, being distracted by photos and memes and sometimes pointless stuff on Instagram
feels really bad because it's time that we could have spent on something more meaningful. Secondly,
if we feel like we're not particularly fulfilled in our lives, we also feel that's a time problem
because it feels like the time that we have to fulfil our hopes and dreams and aspirations is
all draining away in the background. And the final example is decision paralysis. We get paralysed
when it comes to big decisions. For example, who to marry, or what to study at university, or what
work to do, because we know that choosing one option often closes the door on a bunch of other
options that we'll never have the time to revisit. Now, none of this would be a problem if we had an
endless supply of mornings to scroll through cat videos on Instagram, or if we could spend
decades trying out every career path, but we don't have unlimited time. The conveyor belt is always
moving, and this fear about whether or not we are optimally loading the conveyor belt of stuff
is why millions of people buy time management books like this one and watch productivity nerds
like me giving advice here on YouTube. And what most time management gurus say that, in theory, it
is in fact possible to fit everything in provided you have the perfect time management system,
but when I read 4,000 Weeks and I spoke to Oliver on my deep dive podcast, he had big problems with
this whole line of thinking. (02:44):
Well, the most stereotypical book is going to imply that you can get everything done that is
important to you, whether it's ambitions and goals, or obligations and demands, all of it,
provided that you render yourself sufficiently optimised and efficient so that you can sort
of pack in more and more and more into the same amount of time. That you won't need to make tough
choices with what you do about your time, and that you can achieve a control over your day
that is basically absolute. And I kind of want to say, no, you don't even have time for all the
things that matter. (03:18):
And that's the truth here in what we discovered in our rock experiment, that we genuinely don't have
time for all of the important things that matter to us. But most of us find this hard to accept,
and we tell ourselves that we can cram everything in probably at some point in the future.
The philosopher Henri Bergson summed up like this, "The future appeals more to us than the present
moment because it appears to us in a multitude of pleasant forms all at the same time." Basically,
it's easier to stay in a fantasy world, believing that all of our dreams could
hypothetically come true in the future, than it is to make hard decisions about which goals
to invest in and which ones to ignore, given that we actually can't get everything done.
This was my rationale when I decided to go for medicine as a university degree rather
than computer science. I had all these tech and entrepreneurial aspirations,
but I didn't want to close the door on those. And I also liked the idea of being a doctor,
and I didn't want to close the door on that. So I thought, oh, if I do medicine, it keeps my options
open. I'll be able to do all of the things, which is a decision that did end up working,
but it really feeds into this whole narrative that we have as a society that we should be
doing lots and lots of things with our time. Now, let's take a closer look at exactly how
we go into denial about what we can actually get done given that we have limited time. And
we use two main coping mechanisms to keep ourselves living in the present moment,
clearing the decks and submitting to distraction. Let's talk about clearing the decks first. Now,
this is when we put off big tasks that are important to us, like getting ripped,
or learning a language, or writing a book. And we instead try to clear the decks
of all of these small but urgent tasks that we just need to get out of the way first,
because we think the big stuff needs our full focus. But the thing is that those annoying little
tasks never actually go away. The more mindless work that we get through, the more mindless work
ends up back on our desk, and months can go by with us answering thousands and thousands of
emails and bashing through these little work tasks but making no real progress on our big,
scary goals, because, quote, "the time isn't quite right." This is basically procrastination. It's
this huge scale version of telling ourselves that we will get to work, but only once we've
cleaned our desk. We do it so that we don't have to face up to the fact that, A, we don't have
time to do all of the things that actually matter, and, B, that we might fail at or be
disappointed in those things that we choose to do. And, to be honest, sometimes work actually is that
distraction from what really matters. Like when we're worried about not getting everything done,
our second big coping mechanism is submitting to distraction. Now, people discuss online
distraction quite a lot, and, yes, algorithms and stuff are pretty good at getting you hooked
on things like YouTube and Instagram and Twitter. But the truth is that most of us
are actually willing accomplices in our own distraction. And in the moment, we are very,
very happy to be distracted even if we know we're going to feel bad about it later. And this is how
Oliver puts it in 4,000 Weeks. He writes that "Distractions are not the ultimate cause of our
distraction. Although well engineered, they're ultimately just the place we go to seek relief
from the discomfort of facing our limitations." Distractions don't have to just be click bait.
Like with clearing the decks, your whole job can be a distraction. Or anything else,
like maybe a relationship, or life obligations that you sort of half enjoy but you don't really
see as truly meaningful. And in those cases, what we're running from is the discomfort of
what really matters. And we're afraid of those big goals that we might not have the time for, or the
ones that we might actually fail to achieve. So what is the solution, according to Oliver?
Well, he reckons that when we embrace our limits, we stop endless procrastination,
and we really start living in the real world. And it all comes down to this thing,
embracing your limits. And, conveniently, he recommends three main steps for this.
The first step to embracing our limits is to accept defeat. Basically,
we should embrace the fact that we can't get everything done, and that there's absolutely
no cure for this. And this is really the big insight that can set us free. Once we realise
that we're actually setting the bar way too high, and that we are expecting to get everything done,
and it's actually not possible to do that, we can let then all of our Superman ambitions and
all that stuff crash to the ground, and then we can actually start doing the things that matter.
Right. So the second way we can embrace our limits is by rediscovering wonder. I feel like most of
us have this low level annoyance that our life is so short compared to infinity. It's like we
feel weirdly entitled to live forever. At least, that's how we act. But instead of trying to cram
absolutely everything into our 4,000 weeks, and resenting the fact that we don't live longer,
or resenting the fact that we don't have so much time, it makes more sense to reset and
compare the time that we do have to the more likely scenario of just not existing at all.
Now, Oliver's got a story of this chap whose friend, David, suddenly died unexpectedly.
That man was used to getting annoyed when he was stuck in traffic, or queuing in the supermarket.
But after his friend sadly, tragically passed away, instead, he found himself wondering
what would David have given to be caught in this traffic jam? And then feeling weirdly calm.
He'd shifted his focus from what he was actually doing, and started appreciating the fact that he
actually got to do anything in the first place. Now, Oliver says that once we rediscover this
kind of wonder about life, we start to see just existing itself as this incredible coincidence
that we get to enjoy instead of it being this tiny amount of time that never feels like it's enough.
And then the third way of embracing our limits is to find meaning in finitude. Arguably,
things get their meaning from the fact that we have limited time here on Earth. And if we did
apparently have an infinite life, then there wouldn't be any reason to do anything. We could
just always just do it later, and nothing would really matter at the end of the day. University,
for example, probably wouldn't feel special if you knew that you could stay for an extra 50 years,
and we probably wouldn't care as much about events like Christmas or birthdays
or families or whatever if we knew that we could always just do that a little bit later.
So once we've shifted our perspective a bit and embraced our limits, we can move on to the six
practical steps for being more intentional with our time. The first action point is to practise
doing nothing. This is something I'm very bad at. The idea is that we should sit down, set a timer,
and literally just practise doing nothing. And whenever you find yourself thinking, and focusing
on your breathing, and all these other techniques, the you try and stop and return to a feeling of
neutrality. This means we want to resist the urge to manipulate our experience, or the people around
us, and practise just kind of letting things be. Oliver says that if you can't bear doing nothing
for more than a few minutes, you are likely to make very poor choices with your time, and rush
into commitments just to feel busy. I think this is something that I definitely struggle with and
I'm definitely going to try and work on this year. Now point two is to rediscover rest. Basically,
we should stop treating leisure time as if it's a means to an end, like it's just a way
to relax before work, or a way to recharge our batteries for work. And we should even try and
stop seeing our leisure time as time that we can cram in loads of side hustles and stuff. Ideally,
we want to try and enjoy our downtime as an end in itself. We want to do stuff that we enjoy that
has no clear end goal or future purpose some of the time. Maybe going for a slow walk or even
playing video games, but as genuine hobbies, not just as a distraction from reality. And this is
why I'm getting back into playing PlayStation 5, and why I've downloaded Elden Ring, because
I'm trying to be more intentional about enjoying a sort of leisure that doesn't really have a future,
I don't know, economic payoff, which is the thing that I personally struggle with sometimes.
This is a bit like mindfulness, to be honest. Letting ourselves feel fulfilled in the moment
instead of constantly putting off just being content. One thing you can do maybe is choose
a hobby that doesn't have that much social status attached to it, like playing video games,
or building model railways, or whatever it is that people do. Or even doing something that we enjoy.
Like for me, it's playing the guitar or playing piano, even though I'm not very good at it,
and even though there's no way in hell I'm ever going to be world class at the thing. Because then
you kind of know that you're strictly doing it for your own enjoyment rather than as extrinsically
motivated to do it as a means to an end. Now, the third action step that you can
do is pay yourself first. Most of us try to fit in our own stuff at the end of the day
once all of our other work and family and other commitments are out of the way. But as we know,
there are way too many important things that are always going to end up draining our time.
And we need to learn to pay ourselves first with our own time. Now, a simple way of doing this is
to do our most important activity, the thing that we're doing for ourselves rather than for
our work, doing that as the first thing in the morning. Like working on writing our book, or
going to the gym, or having quality family time. This is why I've just introduced a new rule in the
business that every employee, every person in our 20 man team has to spend the first hour of every
single day working on their own personal project. And we as a business pay them to spend that first
hour of their working day on a personal project, something that advances their own personal goals.
Because you actually probably don't want to give the best hour of your day to your employer,
even if you really enjoy your work, and I hope everyone here does. Fingers crossed. But you
probably want to give that best hour to your own personal projects. And if you're interested,
we are actually hiring a bunch of people for the team. Link down below to our jobs page
if you happen to be based in London. So, yeah, as Oliver says, we need to
remember that we do need to make tough decisions about spending our time instead of indefinitely
putting our life on hold in the hope that at some point in the future time will be free up. Now,
overall, this is a productivity book it's in the productivity/self-help genre. And actually
a lot of the ideas in this book really resonated with me and vibe with a lot of the stuff that I
have talked about in some of my online classes about productivity, which you can find over at
Skillshare, who are very kindly sponsoring this video. If you haven't heard by now, you must
have heard by now, Skillshare is an incredible platform with thousands and thousands of classes
from all sorts of things from like productivity to YouTube, to video editing, to cooking,
to graphic design, to interior design. All sorts of really cool stuff you can learn on Skillshare.
And if you sign up to Skillshare, you can actually access all of the 12, I think, online classes that
I have on Skillshare. Three of them are themed around productivity and how to get more done
while it being sustainable, and being fun, and not being too burnt out. So you might like to
check those out. I also have a whole class about YouTube before beginners if you are interested
in what it takes to make videos just like this one. This class will take you through the entire
process of starting a channel from scratch, and making your first video, and all that kind of
stuff. And loads of people have found that really helpful as a way of getting started with YouTube.
If any of that sounds up your street, or you want to check out more of my stuff on Skillshare,
or all of their other stuff on Skillshare, then head over to the link in the video description,
and the first 1000 people to hit that link will get a free one month trial of Skillshare. And then
during that month, you can access all of these classes to your heart's content. So click the
link in the video description, and thank you so much, Skillshare, for being an incredible sponsor;
being an incredible platform; COVID, continuing to support this channel; and, D, being the
biggest platform that I host loads and loads and loads of my own online courses on. So thank you,
Skillshare, for sponsoring this video. Now, the fourth action step is pretty
closely linked to paying ourselves first, and that is deciding when to fail. Oliver says that
we need to realise that we are going to fail about some things that genuinely matter to us,
and we should do this intentionally and fully accept the consequences. Firstly,
we should identify all of the stuff that we have to do, like paying our bills, and paying our
taxes, and our mortgages, and all that stuff. Picking up the kids from school, cooking food,
all that kind of stuff. The stuff that we have to do. And we separate that out from the rest
of the stuff. And we know that no matter what, this stuff needs to, absolutely has to get done.
Secondly, we want to accept that all of the other niggly little urgent tasks,
like cleaning the house, or doing the laundry, or answering emails, replying to people on WhatsApp,
all of that stuff will always be there. And we want to decide where we want to just do the bare
minimum. Maybe you can do what I do and decide that you're going to forget about cooking, and
just get takeaway every night, and occasionally try to cook when you have the time. Or you can,
again, do what I do and just accept that I'm really, really bad at replying to emails and
WhatsApp messages, and this is a failure that I'm happy to accept because it means that I don't live
my whole life in constant anxiety that I've got these 18 people that I need to reply to WhatsApp.
Thirdly, we can realise that there are an infinite number of things that we actually
could care about. Charities, people, hobbies, causes, work. Sometimes you will just have to
say no to cool stuff because it's going to distract you from your highest priorities.
And once you realise that actually a lot of the tasks on your plate are pretty optional, then
you might just feel a massive sense of release and relief that you don't have all this weight of all
these rocks and stuff on your shoulders. So moral of the story is that if you are feeling stressed,
find something to fail at intentionally. The next point, we're nearly done,
is to limit our work in progress. We need to stop trying to get everything done at once
and instead limit our work in progress. And the best way of doing this is operating a two column
open and closed to do list. At least that's what Oliver talks about in the
book. And I've actually started experimenting with this, and it actually works really well.
So the open list is for all of our possible tasks and to-dos, projects. We want to write
down absolutely everything, and it's going to be ridiculously long. But then what we do is that
we feed our most important tasks into the closed list where, crucially, we're only allowed to have
a maximum of 10 things on that closed list. And the main thing is that we want to try and focus
on what is the actually important stuff in our life, knowing that all the rest is just
going to be there somewhere on the open list. And then, crucially, we are only allowed to
move something up into the closed list when we have gotten rid of something or we've completed
something from the list itself. So the list is only ever allowed to have a certain number of
items. Oliver suggests 10 items, which works kind of nicely. And really the point of this two prong
system is that we can accept that when it comes to stuff on the open list, we might just not do it,
or we might fail at it, and that is totally point. The whole point is about prioritising.
And then the final action point that Oliver recommends is serialise, serialise, serialise.
Even once you've got your closed list, try to serialise your work by focusing on one big project
at a time until you complete it, or choosing one work project and one personal project. It doesn't
really matter. The whole idea of this is that if we actually are choosing the thing that's highest
priority and just focusing on that, we don't need to do 18 things at once because only one of those
is going to be really the highest priority thing. So if we just focus on that one thing,
and do it one at a time rather than having all these projects in parallel, then, hopefully, our
life will become a lot less stressed out overall. So those were six of the interesting action points
from this book, 4,000 Weeks. But the overall message of the book, which I think is really
important and really nice, is that it's okay to really embrace our limits. And once we realise
that we actually cannot do everything, then, hopefully, we can start living a calmer,
slightly more intentional life, and focusing on the handful of things that genuinely,
truly make us happy and make us fulfilled. If you like this episode of Book Club, then,
hey, you should check out the book, but also you should totally listen to my full, two-hour
long interview with the author, Oliver Burkeman, on my deep dive podcast. That'll be linked right
over here. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.