57 pages • 1 hour read
Oliver BurkemanFour Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Index of Terms
Abstract Time
The abstract view of time, whereby time is an entity that is measured independently of tasks, has been prevalent in Western society since the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century. The metric of hours, minutes, and seconds measures the length of a day but is also independent of it, as an eight-hour workday or a school day, for example, is maintained regardless of the position of the sun.
The abstract view of time serves the interests of capitalism, as it creates productivity targets that are independent of workers’ capacities, thereby spurring them to compete in ever increasing their output. While the anxiety about productivity was originally instilled by factory bosses who wanted to get the most out of their workers, increasingly, workers themselves internalized this mindset as they sought to squeeze out as much as possible from their day. Oliver Burkeman shows that the modern fixation with schedules stems from this anxiety, as people set their limited capacities against the expectations of what they should complete in an abstract measure of time.
Finitude
Finitude is the opposite of infinity and can be defined as the state of things— principally life and time—coming to an end. Burkeman adopts Heidegger’s theory of finitude as the definitive aspect of human life in his approach to time management. Embracing the fact that we have limited time on the planet means that we must acknowledge that we will have to split hairs and choose between our most cherished dreams, as we have neither the time nor the capacity to make them all come true. While Burkeman acknowledges that this may sound morbid in a culture fixated on infinity and positivity, accepting finitude offers us the opportunity to be more alive, as we can delve deeply into special projects and gain satisfaction from them, even as we forego other opportunities.
Instrumentalization of Time
According to Burkeman, the instrumentalization of time means treating it “instrumentally, as a means to an end” (125). This means disregarding the present moment and focusing on future satisfaction. We cannot avoid using time instrumentally—it is present in most daily acts, such as boiling a kettle for the sake of enjoying a hot drink later. However, the trouble lies when you “focus exclusively on where you’re headed, at the expense of focusing on where you are – with the result that you find yourself living mentally in the future, locating the ‘real’ value of your life at some time that you haven’t yet reached, and never will” (125). The reason why you will never reach this anticipated future is that the future is out of your control and will inevitably vary from your plans for it. Also, in this life of limitation, you will never realize most of your future plans.
Burkeman shows that the instrumentalization of time afflicts the culture as a whole, not just individuals. Both the Protestant work ethic and the American Dream are prominent shapers of American society, as people insist on working hard now to reach the ideal retirement or the accomplishment of home ownership. America is thus a society in danger of missing out on the present completely, as people toil towards a future that may never come. Modern technology has made this worse, as people visit attractions to take photographs of them on their smart phones and post them to social media outlets, thereby missing out on the moment.
Radical Incrementalism
Radical incrementalism is the practice of sustainable goal setting. Psychology researcher Robert Boice has shown that if we break a big project into manageable daily tasks, we are far more likely to stick at it and be more productive long term. Instead, if we try to hurry completion, we will run up against the obstacle of our “limited control over the speed of the creative process” (181) and so seek distractions to escape it and procrastinate.
Importantly, once we complete our allotted daily time for spending on a project, we must force ourselves to stop, even if we have more energy for it. This is essential for training patience, the quality that will allow us to return to the project until it is successfully completed. Burkeman’s consideration of radical incrementalism is part of his argument that the worthwhile projects are the ones that feel tough in the moment and stretch us towards growth rather than comfort. Radical incrementalism is thus a strategy that can help us tackle this feeling.
Task Orientation
Task orientation is a term that historians have fashioned to describe a time-management style where “the rhythms of life emerge organically from the tasks themselves, rather than being lined up against an abstract timeline” (20). This was a key feature of preindustrial, agrarian societies in which tasks such as milking cows or bringing in the harvest took as long as they needed to rather than being subjected to the clock. While task orientation might have served the requirements of a small farm, it would not have been the most efficient approach for the coordination of multiple workers in a factory with expected output targets. This task-oriented style of timekeeping thus ended with the Industrial Revolution.
An awareness of task orientation is important for Burkeman’s project, because it shows the reader that the abstract timekeeping method we take for granted is a relatively recent phenomenon and thereby a capitalist imposition rather than something that people innately crave. This can get us thinking more critically about how we perceive time and the alleged demands on it.
Voluntary and Involuntary Attention
Voluntary attention is a term coined by neuroscientists that describes our capacity to choose the subjects on which we focus. For example, this could be our ability to concentrate on a piece of writing while a notification is flashing up on our phone. As Burkeman writes, being able “to exert some influence over” our voluntary attention “can make the whole difference between a well-lived life and a hellish one” (93). He shows that while modern technological innovations such as social media are designed to capture our voluntary attention, we are co-conspirators in the takeover, as we would rather be distracted than face our limitations in performing difficult, important work. Our ability to embrace our limitations is key to getting voluntary attention to work for us and minimizing the temptation of distraction.
Involuntary attention is a term coined by neuroscientists to explain the kind of distraction that has evolved to help humanity survive. If we were not able to be distracted at all by phenomena outside our designated area of focus, we would miss crucial signals such as the sudden advance of a vehicle while we are trying to cross the road, or our baby’s cry. Being aware of the value of involuntary attention helps us reframe distraction as an essential mental process.
