Timestamps:
[0:00] – Intro
[1:49] – A Riff on the Book’s Cover
[4:25] – What Makes the Genre Unique for this Book
[5:30] – Intro to the Book’s Themes
[6:20] – Part 1: The Evolution of Clock Time
[8:24] – How Spiritual Books Frame “Clock Time”
[10:30] – The Mexican Fisherman Story
[11:48] – A Note on Timeless Time
[14:00] – The Failed Productivity Experiment in the Soviet Union
[15:08] – Part 2: Productivity Existentialism
[16:30] – The Upside in Accepting Our Finitude
[17:40] – A Culture of Convenience
[25:14] – 3 Important Phrases …
[26:38] – Assumptions of Competence
[28:07] – Part 3: Secular & Esoteric Solutions
[30:00] – The Bowl of Water Parable
[31:10] – “We are time …”
[33:05] – Nirvana vs. Your Productive Self
[34:33] – Philosophy Disguised as Self-Help?
[36:46] – A Question to Think On …
[38:06] – Outro
Full Transcription:
*I use a transcription software so please excuse any grammatical errors.
“Convenience makes things easy without regard to whether easiness is truly what’s most valuable in any given context, take those services on which I’ve relied to much in recent years, that let you design and then remotely mail a birthday card. So you never see or touch the physical item yourself better than nothing, perhaps.
But sender and recipient both know it’s a poor substitute for purchasing a card and a shop writing on it by hand, and then walking to a mailbox to mail it. Because contrary to the cliche, it really isn’t the thought that counts. But the effort, which is to say the inconvenience.”
Welcome to Think On These Books. Today’s book is 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, if this is your first time listening–which I know it is because this is the episode #1–expect to hear not a summary or spark notes version of the book, but an extension of the ideas presented. My goal in this show is, and always will be, to inspire you to read the book for yourself, to use this episode, to enrich the reading experience rather than.
and for the time being, as I’m doing, you know, philosophy, self-help, it’s not too difficult to avoid spoiling a book like that, but in the future there will be a few episodes of fiction. And just keep in mind, I’ll always kind of mention that there are spoilers. If you consider that a self-help book or a philosophy book can have spoilers.
And because of that, I mean, this is a pretty comprehensive episode. Know that whether or not you’ve read the book before this podcast will be usable to. You’ll be able to understand what I’m talking about. I’ll give context to every little blurb that I might mention from the book to start. I want to talk about the cover of this book, which is not something that’s always worth talking about, but I think this is the rare exception for myself, where the reason I got this book, the reason I bought it on Amazon was not cuz I heard a recommendation cuz that’s where most of my books come from is hearing recommendations on podcasts and interview.
but no, this, this was an impulse by, and really it was the, the cover that drew me to it. And so for the people who are audio only, you know, you can either quickly look up a picture of this cover or just listen to me, describe it. But really, I think just from the words alone, the subtitle time management for mortals, I think if I had to distill why I bought this book, that’s why the phrase four mortals that’s really.
What caught my attention in the first place. Of course, you know, the cover, the title, the subtitle, it all perfectly encapsulates the book, but I didn’t know that at the time, all I knew was that this was a book for mortals, not another self-help book for, for you, for your badass self, for, for revels, for, you know, wanting to be the top 1% for wanting to be millionaire.
You know, it was just for mortal. Now mortals makes me think of great gods of the Percy Jackson series. I read back in grade school of Roman emperors of Marcus Aras, and his book meditations. Essentially it took me back to an ancient time. And like I said, that does get foreshadowed. I mean, that is kind of mentioned throughout the book, but it’s really not the entirety of the book.
It’s not just a, you know, Ryan holiday- esque stoicism brought to the, the modern audience, but it is still something that drew me. And that’s further solidified this image of this is something about, you know, ancients of Greek and Roman philosophy to have was solidified by little image of a Greek Titan named Atlas, the corner of the cover, not holding up the world, but holding up a clock, but all that’s juxtaposed and brought back to modernity with a subtitle that’s highlighted and that iconic, bright yellow that you associate with studying for.
of being productive in the most generic sense of the word, highlighter yellow. I love that combination of, you know, all these ancient elements in the, the subtitle and that little icon with the highlighter yellow. And I bring all this up. The reason I’m spending a few minutes on the cover itself is because I wanna express an important opinion about the book before we actually talk about what’s inside, in my opinion.
This book is a philosophy book, disguised or masked as a self-help book. Again, I usually don’t give a crap about what genre a book is, but it’s really interesting that it is considered self-help and philosophy. And I’ll discuss why I think that matters a little bit later in the episode, but for now, just keep in mind that this book is designed for a reflection, not practical advice, step by step instructions to be, you know, more efficient with your time.
Like a lot of other time management books. And even if some of those tips and tidbits are sprinkled in to appease the genre, just know that I think this book is truly a philosophical book instead of going in the order that this book is presented in, instead of going chapter by chapter, I’m breaking this episode into three, maybe four parts.
If you can count if you count the conclusion, but breaking it by looking at all the anecdotes that really stood out to me and categorizing. And if I had to name those three kind of overarching themes of the anecdotes, there was one, the evolution of clock time, two productivity, existentialism, and three secular and scientific solutions.
And then that fourth one will be my concluding thoughts. I know I’m doing a lot of buildup before I actually start discussing the ideas. To give you an overarching idea of what this book is about. If I had to sum it up in a sentence or two, the intention of the book, I would say it’s something like to wake up.
“Okay. Hello? Can you hear me wake up? Chrissy, Chrissy, wake up. I don’t like this Chrissy wake up” and maybe his language is a little less colorful than that, but the sentiment is there. Wake. Productivity is a trap.
THEME ONE: The Evolution of Clock Time
And that brings us to theme category. Number one, the evolution of clock time at the start of this book, the author introduces you to the timelessness of the middle ages, or rather a lack of clock time and therefore a lack of time problems, a time problem being, having too much to do in too little time or too little to do in too much.
With all the obvious problems, a, a peasant may face in medieval England, there was not the problem of time. In fact, time was a non thing– unquantified; just as we don’t count every breath we take today, time was ineffable. There were no standardized hours is what the author points out. But just as a little side note, I think the author was a little bit simplistic on this point, because, you know, sun dials have been around since the time of ancient Egyptians.
But I think his point is that for all those measurement tools of the past, there was no dollars per hour mindset like what has been ingrained in us since really the rise of industrialism. But that thought provoking point that he makes right at the start of the book is that today with standardized 24 hour clocks being so ingrained in every culture, essentially we’ve forgotten that clock time is a conceptual invention.
Just like the concept of democracy, just like the concept of money. And when clock time is so deeply entrenched in how you see the world, we tend to think about time as something measurable, capable, and saveable. Instead of time being something fluid, as fluid as the air we breathe and move through with this conceptual idea of clock time, we begin to subconsciously view time and hours and days as blocks.
Blocks that you may think of as steadily moving across a conveyor belt. And that credit belongs to Edward Hall who came up with that metaphor. Now I’ve heard this idea before, almost exclusively in spiritual books. The idea being that clock time is sort of this manmade myth. The power of now mentions that untethered soul, some of Alan Watts’s books, but I think the author encapsulates the secular version of this.
That makes it more accessible to the practical American who doesn’t have time for the Woohoo fufu, spiritual hippie crap. the idea is the same though. Standardized clock time is new in the grand scheme of humanity. It’s not a given, it’s not a default it’s invented. And why is that important? I mean, what could a modern civilized human possibly learn from a peasant in the middle ages?
To put it simply, the peasant does not make his tasks fit into blocks of time. The idea would almost sound absurd to him. You want me to milk the cow? When the sun is there, then finish when the sun is there. He’d think you are lunatic. We, the modern folk use conceptual abstract time is our foundation. And then fill our schedule with tasks.
The clear absurdity is that in this method of filling our time, Is that if we do have that blank space in our schedule, then we tend to view it negatively or be virtually attempt to justify its purpose. “Oh, oh, oh, this, uh, this hour of me not doing anything. That’s my relaxation time. I, I, I, I, I just need 30 minutes of downtime, then I’ll be back to my good old, productive self.”
And yet from the modern perspective of things, the point of scheduling task. Of optimizing our schedule of being Uber productive is to drum roll police
have enough free time that famed, but feared thing, which holds the possibilities of everything we’ve ever wanted to do in our lives. And then some, of course, this is an illusion, of course, this is absurd, but it’s not always easy to see that. And to double down on that point, there’s a parable. Maybe you’ve heard before.
I’ll quickly summarize it as best as I can called the Mexican fisherman’s story. There’s a Mexican fisherman who spent his mornings fishing. He’d get home, cook the fish, and if he had a little extra, then he’d sell it on the market. He’d take naps in the afternoon. Then have a few surveys and play cards with his friends at night, one day, a businessman on vacation sees the fisherman’s operation and tells him he could help turn it into a multimillion dollar company with a brand that would be known across the world.
You can start by hiring a fleet of fisherman. He says, open a factory to can the fish find distributors partner up with a trucking company. Start talking to national grocery stores in, in 10, 15 years, tops. You’ll be able to sell the company and retires to rich man, the fisherman asks and what will I do then?
The businessman replies. Oh, I don’t. You could spend your mornings fishing. You could nap in the afternoons and at night you could drink beers and play cards with your friends, but as enlightening, as parable as can be the standardized clock serves at purpose many purposes. And for most of us, so does working to build something greater than yourself.
With the clock in its late predecessor, the Google calendar, we can make accurate plans with others, coordinate, travel on a massive scale and pay people more, fairly than simply eyeballing their effort. And yet we seem to be shifting towards wanting to live in the timeless time. Once again, books on the flow state are so common that you probably understand what I mean by flow state, without me explaining it.
And if you don’t, you can look up the author. Steven Kotler. Kotler spelled K O T L E R. Maybe it’s just my inner bubble of, you know, wanting to be a writer and, and do all this creative work, but I think, that as humanity evolves, the tendency is to want to do more non-linear creative work work that involves, you know, problem solving, critical thinking rather than merely putting things in an assembly.
And when I say non-linear, I mean, we want to do work where one minute of time does not equal one minute of pay. I think again, I know I’m projecting, maybe just only me. So I’ll, I’ll speak only for myself, but I, I want to be judged based on the outcome of my work rather than the effort I put in, because when we’re judged for the outcome, the potential upside, the potential return on investment can be expon.
And I apologize if that’s a little bit confusing, but just think that, you know, let’s say you are a filmmaker and you made a feature film. It took you, this obviously would not be true, but let’s say it took you a hundred hours instead of getting paid for a hundred hours. What if you were paid for all the ticket sales you produced, which has the potential to be much, much, much. Greater than your dollars per hour rate of a hundred hours.
Consider your own thoughts on what that means to you. I mean, is that something that you consider for yourself? Are you content, if you are working something that is paying hourly, is that what you want or do you want something that is outcome based?
Obviously it’s going to depend on a career by career basis, but just consider for yourself if that’s relevant to. Now the final thing I’ll say about the evolution of clock, time of scheduling things is that there is an extreme, if we go back in history, we can see how it has failed. There’s a really interesting, I wouldn’t call it an experiment, just a piece of history that I won’t go too deep into.
I think it’s worth reading, but when Stalin was in power, when the Soviet union was still the Soviet Union, They attempted to enforce a really, really strict schedule on all its citizens for productivity’s sake. And it completely backfired. Essentially the whole population was split into five categories and that category represented what day you took off work.
And, you know, your loved ones would probably not be in the same group as you, your children may not be in the same group as you. And if that were the case, then, you know, if you didn’t have your friends in that group, your one day off of. Four extremely hard days of labor would just be spent with no one, of course, that is the getting the maximum productivity out of everyone mindset, but it clearly doesn’t work.
There’s clearly a need for community, but again, worth reading that on your own.
THEME TWO: Productivity Existentialism
I wanna move into part two, at least how I’m categorizing it. And that part two is productivity existentialism. I bought a book with time management and the. Why? I mean, I already kind of went into why I was drawn to this cover, but, you know, I didn’t miss the fact that this is a time management book.
Clearly. There’s something, you know, in my own head that inspired me to buy something that I thought might maybe productive isn’t the right word. But I mean, I was looking for some advice, so idea, some technique that would lessen the burden of overwhelm of the time problem. I mentioned just a little bit.
The having too much to do in too little time. Now, I didn’t want to learn another spin on the Pomodoro technique based on some study that they did with 10 participants. I just wanted someone with some modest success to tell me that I’m wearing out the souls of my shoes on a fucking hamster wheel. I wanted someone to say exactly what this book described as the limit embracing life.
Which I’ll discuss in just a moment, even though I conceptually knew the concepts of memento, Mori, you know, remember death and the insignificance of the human lifespan and the unfolding of the cosmos. But I needed someone to say it blatantly without remorse or a, “But hey, here’s the upside in all this.”
Now of course, because this is a self-help book there is a little bit of, “Hey, but here’s the upside in all this.” And the upside in accepting the reality of our insignificance is encapsulated well by quote in the book that the author mentions from the Zen teacher, Charlotte Joco Beck, and it goes, “The human disease is often painful, but it’s only unbearable for as long as you’re under the impression that there might be a cure.”
Hmm. I mean, that is really as Zen as it gets, you know, stop holding your breath. You’re gonna pass out. Let go. I think is the ultimate message of this, of that quote. If you’re always holding out hope that, you know, there is some magic solution that there is, uh, greener grass on the other side, then you’re always going to be a little bit more miserable than the human condition actually is.
You’re always gonna be a little bit more cynical about the present because you’re holding out hope for this utopian future. And I think. The utopian future is a good segue into what I wanna talk about next, which the author presents this idea and I loved it and I just took it and wanted to run with it. And it’s that convenience ruins, inconvenient things, Silicon Valley’s culture of ultra convenience and exceptional user design as a trap, or maybe a trap.
Isn’t the right word, but we’re all suffering in the long. It was a trend that was really brought about by Steve jobs. And I don’t think he foresaw what this would do to the culture at large, because now instead of a life that is mildly to mediumly inconvenient for the most part, with moments of convenience, which we make hold luck or serendipity it’s flipped because of the technology in our pocket, when ultra convenience becomes the standard in software.
And, you know, there’s literally whole teams and millions of dollars being spent on the most minute, but convenient details of an app. Suddenly minor inconveniences piss us off in the real world. You know, waiting in line somehow becomes unbearable. When we have Door Dash and GrubHub at our fingertips, suddenly a trip to the grocery store seems unnecessary …when someone else can pick out the ripe avocado for us.
And real world conveniences –and that thing I just mentioned called luck begins to slip by unnoticed– it’s like being surrounded in a field of four leaf clovers. Suddenly it ceases to be a symbol of luck. Luck is rare in scarce by definition, and to create an online world where luck.
And by that I’m saying it’s when the right thing finds you and not the other way around. When luck is built into the design, we make ourselves fragile to non luck, not bad luck, but merely things not going as planned non luck you can think of as inconvenience. Now, the argument could be made that really in the long run, it’s better to have mostly good luck inconvenience with only moments of bad luck and inconvenience.
But I have to wonder what is the unintended consequence of going against the natural order of things? Because nature is not convenient. There is no user design in the real world. Well, that’s not true, but you know, natural things don’t have the human experience in mind. What might be the consequence of living in a world of ultra convenience and comfort that our psychology, our physiology, our biology was not designed to evolve for well, I figured I’d come up with a little bit of a list, which didn’t take me too long to think up.
First of all, we’re less appreciative of little moments and I’m excluding that forcing quality of gratitude journals or more selfish and individualistic. We’re less resilient to stress, more susceptible to anxiety and depression, which in this case, I’m correlating with a lack of stress, resilience, or less patient, less capable of delayed gratification, more likely to be caught in a rut, less strong will: As in we’re less willing to stand up for our beliefs.
We’re more overwhelmed by small stressors, less likely to work on difficult goals and more likely to aim for an unattainable state of perfection. And that’s just to name a few.
And if you were listening closely, you might have heard of paradox. It seems strange that ultra convenience will simultaneously make it less likely for us to work on difficult goals and more likely to aim for a state of perfection and the way I’m speaking about perfection.
Because, you know, in my head, perfection means that I’ve achieved my difficult goals, but I think this new form of perfection is depicted as living the easy and adventurous life. And that takes the form of all those travel pictures and videos. You see of people doing yoga on top of a mountain and looking so relaxed and refreshed and that peace with the world on name, whatever social media you want.
Now, clearly, you know, it makes no sense for some, I don’t even know who would go about doing this –the government to say, make these apps less convenient, make it harder to use. But theoretically, if we flip this Silicon valley, credo of convenience at all costs, and I’ll just say from an individual point of view, you yourself can make addictive things like technology, more inconvenient for yourself; there’s plenty of ways to do that. But, if it was done on a massive scale, those unintended consequences I just pointed out would be flipped. We would be more resilient to stress, more likely to stand up for what we believe in and not just be one of the echoes on social media. But I think the true ramification of an inconvenient life is that it forces us to slow down a metaphor for this would be running on a treadmill versus running on a treadmill and a waist- high water.
With the former, more convenient example, there’s always the pressure to increase the speed to up the ante until we trip and hurt ourselves. But with the ladder, there’s an inherent block on our acceleration. Every movement becomes more intentional. Plus the added benefit is that you will become much stronger in the long run now to really hammer home.
This point, that making life a little bit more inconvenient for yourself. Is worth it in the long run and even in the short run, because of all those basically unintended consequences flipping in your favor is that it’s not hard. This is not David Goggin’s level. Wake up at 4:00 AM, run a marathon before breakfast type of inconvenience. Exposing yourself to small inconveniences can be as simple as not doing certain things, not bringing your headphones to a place you know you need to wait in line for.
I really got away from what Burkeman was talking about when he mentioned Silicon Valley’s, you know, “convenience at all costs.” He kind of had a different take on it. He says, “Convenience makes things easy without regard to whether easiness is truly what’s most valuable in any given context, take those services on which I’ve lie, relied too much in recent years that let you design and then remotely mail a birthday card.
So you never see or touch the physical item yourself better than nothing, perhaps. But sender and recipient both know it’s a poor substitute for purchasing a card and a shop writing on it by hand, and then walking to a mailbox to mail it. Because contrary to the cliche, it really isn’t the thought that counts. But the effort, which is to say the inconvenience.”
Burkeman looks at it from the perspective of how too much convenience destroys communities and distances relationships. When I think of how convenience might destroy relationships or community I think of texting.
I think as a means of making plans to see a person in real life, that’s great. It’s a great tool, but for connecting to human beings, I don’t think anything is more hollow. The messages are kept brief sincere messages. Don’t have much emotional resonance and all the hundreds of micro details and facial expression, vocal tone, body posture. Can’t be express. Except, well now we’ve got emojis and special means of punctuating, but those are all primed to be misinterpreted.
And if you’ve ever typed L O L with a serious face that you know, that this form of communication doesn’t allow for true expression.
Now to finish off this section, there are three phrases which really, really stood out to me in the book. And I don’t know if, uh, the author came up with all of them himself, but I’ll mention them and riff on them for a few moments.
Existential overwhelm. When everything around you has so much meaning that there really is no meaning. And the author has a great little blurb about really explaining this, how it relates to technology. He says, “Facebook, for example, is an extremely efficient way to stay informed about events you might like to attend, but it’s also a guaranteed way to hear about more events you’d like to attend than anyone possibly could. Okay Cupid is an efficient way to find people to date, but also being constantly reminded about all the other potentially more alerting people you might be dating. Instead. Email is an unparalleled tool for responding rapidly to a large volume of messages. But then again, if it weren’t for email, you wouldn’t be receiving all those messages in the first place.”
Secular Modernity. In which the only philosophy the average person may follow today. Is whatever is applicable and practical now. And that, again goes back to what I mentioned before of needing to disguise this as a self-help book of needing to sprinkle in practicality to make it more readable.
The third phrase, which I think is the most interesting is this idea of:
Assumptions of Competence. Which, I mean, if you remember being a kid, I think every profession, including being a. We had these assumptions of competence. The author says that he originally thought journalists had that, you know, “Oh, everyone in a newsroom is a fantastic writer. They love this stuff.” And then he says he joined a newspaper and that all kind of went out the window. He could see the chaos of it. And then I think it’s funny. He says he transferred that assumption of competence to people in government.
You know, I think for myself, I had this for films and I think most artists of any medium have this trick is revealed and the magic is lost moment in the exact same way that a magician learning a new trick might. You know, of course they lose a little bit of the magic that, or sense of wonderment, but they get to create that sense of wonder for someone else.
All my friends who were also filmmakers I’m sure would relate to this, but you know, watching a movie now I can see when they’re dubbing the audio. I know the little tricks they do, even if you know, even a Hollywood film, of course, they’re doing it with a massive. But knowing that, you know, whatever sound effect is used, it’s probably not the actual sound effect that you’re seeing on screen to sum it up in the words of the esteemed rapper action Bronson, “I got older and I realized there was no heroes.” Maybe a little bit sad, but very true.
THEME THREE: Secular and Esoteric Solutions
Part three secular and esoteric solutions.
I think Beman the author has this incredible skill of turning very spiritual and esoteric ideas into something practical and secular. I don’t think that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but at this point in time, that’s the language that most modern folk speak. If an important idea, doesn’t have a footnote that expresses exactly how to use that idea in 60 seconds or less, then you suddenly lose the bulk of your audience who needs a book about accepting their own mortality.
Of letting go of their productivity, delusions and the major solution. I don’t know if that’s the perfect word that the author offers up is embrace fine. Two there’s a German term eigenzeit, which I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that right; but what it means is let things take the time it takes– proper time, I think is what I saw on some website.
The time inherent to a process itself. And that was the thing. I mentioned way at the beginning of this, the person in the, the middle ages, who would think it’s absurd to say milk the cow in an hour or less, it would say I’ll milk the cow until it no longer needs to be milked. And I think in this case, in the, the grand scheme, the modern scheme of this word really Burman boils it down to, you have to decide, you have to let go of certain things.
You can’t simultaneously want to be a neurosurgeon and an engineer and a filmmaker and a musician. You gotta pick one or two [things in life]. You have to embrace your finitude, except the limit embracing life only in finitude are we able to live fully.
Here’s a little parable to nail this point:
Imagine you have a bowl full of water. Can you fill it anymore? One person may say, of course not. It’s. But then a second person who’s trying to live life to the fullest may say, yeah, sure. Splash it on. That’s usually the, the productivity junkie who says, uh, there’s probably a millimeter left in that bowl. I could probably squeeze. And then when that water begins to spill over the edge, which it inevitably will, they feel like they’re losing something like they’re failing.
Like they couldn’t do what they thought they could, but then there’s a third person, the one who accepts their finitude. Who happily dumps their bowl of water and holds it out fresh for a new filling. Now, just as you can’t hold your breath forever, you can’t hold on to your life situation forever. There’s constantly going to be the need to dump your bowl of water to get fresh water.
Now, one little thing that I’ll mention kind of a tidbit of philosophy, which I thought was so interesting is that this one philosopher, Martin Heger, who– this was very clearly explicitly stated that he was a card carrying Nazi. So you need to either separate the philosophy from the philosopher or just, I guess, ignore this part.
But the philosophical argument that he made is that we are time. That consciousness is time. So instead of saying, or thinking that we have a limited amount of time, Heiddeger would say we are a limited amount of time. That we are not separate from the, the movement of time. I’m saying time too much.
And I think the subtle effect in this shift in thinking is that being in the now becomes sticky.
The second, we begin to project our thoughts into the future or the past, then that secondary thought that “we are time” snaps us into thinking that even thoughts of the future or past are inescapably part of the now it’s like trying to get unstuck from wet cement when you are cement yourself. But should we be scared of that pessimistic that we can’t save time?
Like we thought we, that we diluted ourselves, that we could. Really, I think the emotions and I think the author mentions this as well, but those emotions of being scared of, being pessimistic, of being cynical, come from the frame of still believing that there could be that saving for the future saving time and being able to get it all done.
It’s that holding out hope of an absurdly delusional idea. And when you let go. Of that, of thinking that, you know, there is gonna be this perfect amount of time that there really are gonna be 4,000 weeks, because really it’s unpredictable when you let go of all those future imaginings. Well, there is no need to be scare or pessimistic.
There is no thought about being fearful of any of that stuff, because we’re right here, we’re sticking to the now, but really one of the most interesting ideas. and I think this is more of a, a general summing up of a few different passages from the book. But one of the things that I’ve really got from this is the connection between religious salvation, Buddhist Nirvana slash ator and secular productivity.
Perfection. I really don’t have a dog in the fight of, oh, if you’re religious, you know, you’re wrong. Or if you’re atheist you’re wrong, but I… I just think it’s kind of funny that as secularization reaches this crescendo in the Western world, it’s the nose up atheist who are always quick to point out the absurdity in heaven and hell while missing their own variation of it.
The idealized self, the one who finishes each day, feeling fulfilled and boundlessly productive. It’s just the second version of a second coming of Christ. Even if this idealized self is never, expressedly sought out, its subconscious implication takes the form of feeling like you missed out on something today, or you didn’t do all that you could or whatever, it’s a constant or at least cyclical feeling of inferiority compared to someone that doesn’t exist.
Someone we’ve created in our mind in our imagination can always top our reality. I just think the author does a really good job at reaching that latter group of people, the ultra secular, the ultra athe. With anecdotes that are mostly stripped of their religious origins, but really, I mean, it all comes down to the cyclical nature of time.
THEME FOUR: Self Help or Philosophy?
My concluding thoughts.
I wanna come back to the original proposition I made at the beginning of this episode, that this book is philosophy disguised as self-help to make it more accessible and popular, because I think this will be a recurring theme in future books that I feature on this podcast. I think self-help is the language of pop culture, at least the positive side of pop culture, cuz there’s always going to be the, the celebrity gossip, the, the true crime, the kind of disturbing news, that would be more of the negative side of pop culture.
But if we’re on the positive side, our focus inevitably turns to practical advice, tidbits of usefulness that can be applied in 60 seconds or less. And almost all of it is recycled from someone else’s blog or reworded from someone else’s podcast. So it’s all an echo chamber of stupid f**king advice that you’ll try once before moving on to the next thing, this is inherently opposite of the book central message to be self-help.
But the way I see it, the author Oliver Burkeman needed to use the trick of practicality to deliver the important stuff to the people who wouldn’t have otherwise found the book. And maybe I’m one of those people. Probably would not have picked up a book that was purely just modern philosophy. The fact that there was just that hint of self-help was the thing that probably pushed me over the edge and added it to my cart.
I also could be reading into things too much, especially considering that the author’s background is as one of those bloggers who wrote the, I tried the Amador productivity technique and here are five things that happen, types of stories. So maybe the practicality aspect was automatic to. But what this book shows is that the writers and thinkers who I think they’re too good for cutey listicals can strike a balance between the SEO clickability that is so central to modern internet culture, and also deep thought inspired by ancient philosophers and profound realizations to finish off Burkeman offers five questions at the end of the book to reflect on I won’t spoil the first four, but the final one really stuck with me.
And it’s this, “How would you spend your days differently if you didn’t care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?”
At this point in history with social media, making everyone a micro celebrity, or at least giving the illusion of it, we in the us are more outcome oriented than ever. We judge our efforts by likes and comments and retweets and followers and all those other forms of digital currency that can’t really be redeemed for anything of real value.
It’s like those McDonald’s monopoly sweepstakes. There’s always the illusion of a big win right around the corner. But in the meantime, everyone wastes time and money and destroys their health in the process to answer the question implies that we ask another before answering it, what would you need to understand and believe in order to forego the carrot that’s always dangling three inches in front of our face?
Only when we see the absurdity of playing a popularity game, a status game with a billion other people, can we ask and answer the question of how we’ll spend our time irrelevant of the outcome? Let me say that again:
Only when we see the absurdity of playing the digital popularity game; when we see that as absurd, then we can really ask and answer that question of how we’ll spend our time irrelevant of popularity based outcome.
I hope you think deeply on that question. I hope you buy this book and find new takeaways and tell people and spread the message that yes, productivity is hard to escape trap, but a trapped nonetheless in one worth removing yourself from the book is 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.
And there will be a little affiliate link in the description, which it will just help support the show. I’ll get a little money, but you know, at no extra charge to you. My name is Sean Greene. And I thank you for taking the time to think on this book with me. Please leave a review if you enjoyed the episode and subscribe if you wanna hear more stuff like this.
Thanks.