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Life Is 4,000 Weeks. You’re Already Burning Through Them.

2022-05-18 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Oliver Burkeman · recording, 15:49 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book, His own numbers, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

In a Book Club episode on Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks, Ali argues that we will never have time for everything that matters, that clearing the decks and distraction are ways of denying it, and that embracing our limits leads to six practical steps: practise doing nothing, rediscover rest, pay yourself first, decide when to fail, limit work in progress with open and closed lists, and serialise.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — A life of about 4,000 weeks on a poster; this Book Club episode is on Four Thousand Weeks

  • ★★ Ali says the average person in a developed country lives to around 80, which is roughly 4,000 weeks. — 00:00:00
  • ★ YouTube's figures for Ali's audience: 6% are 13 to 17 years old, 39% are 18 to 24 and 34% are 25 to 35. — 00:00:00 · YouTube
  • ★★ Seeing a life laid out as about 4,000 weeks should make you want to make the best use of that time, Ali says, especially as the full 4,000 weeks is not guaranteed. — 00:00:29
  • ★ This Book Club episode is on Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks, which Ali says takes a philosophical approach to productivity and time management. — 00:00:29 · Book Club, time management

00:00:58 — Time problems: clock time, distraction, unfulfilment, decision paralysis; Oliver Burkeman on the time-management myth; choosing medicine to keep options open

  • ★★ The more we chop the day into measurable blocks, Ali says, the more time feels like a conveyor belt of jars we must fill efficiently to make the most of life. — 00:00:58 · time management
  • ★ Ali calls online distraction a time problem: scrolling photos and memes on Instagram feels bad because the time could have gone on something more meaningful. — 00:01:27 · Instagram
  • ★★ Ali calls decision paralysis a time problem: choosing whom to marry, what to study or what work to do closes the door on options we will never have time to revisit. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Most time-management gurus say you can fit everything in with the perfect system, Ali says; Oliver Burkeman, in his book and on Ali's Deep Dive podcast, had big problems with that thinking. — 00:02:26 · Deep Dive, time management

  • ★★★ Oliver Burkeman says the typical time-management book implies you can get everything important done if sufficiently optimised, but we genuinely do not have time for all the things that matter. — 00:02:55 · time management

    “you don't even have time for all the things that matter”

  • ★ Henri Bergson (quoted): Henri Bergson: the future appeals to us more than the present because it appears in a multitude of pleasant forms all at once. — 00:03:24

  • ★★ Ali says it is easier to live in a fantasy where all our dreams could come true some day than to decide which goals to invest in and which to ignore. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Ali chose medicine at university partly because he thought it kept his options open; the decision worked, but he says it feeds society's narrative that we should do lots of things with our time. — 00:03:53

00:04:12 — How we go into denial: clearing the decks and submitting to distraction

  • ★★ Clearing the decks, Ali explains, is putting off big important goals such as getting fit, learning a language or writing a book to first clear small urgent tasks, which never go away. — 00:04:22
  • ★★ Ali calls clearing the decks procrastination: we do it to avoid facing that we lack time for everything that matters and might fail at what we choose. — 00:04:52
  • ★★ Algorithms are good at hooking us on YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, Ali says, but most of us are willing accomplices in our own distraction. — 00:05:21 · YouTube, Instagram, Twitter
  • ★★ Oliver Burkeman (quoted): Oliver Burkeman writes in Four Thousand Weeks that distractions, however well engineered, are only where we go for relief from the discomfort of facing our limitations. — 00:05:21
  • ★★ Distractions need not be clickbait, Ali says: like clearing the decks, a whole job can be a distraction from what really matters. — 00:05:21
  • ★★★ Oliver Burkeman (quoted): Oliver Burkeman's solution is to embrace our limits: then we stop endless procrastination and start living in the real world. — 00:05:50

00:06:14 — Embracing your limits: accept defeat, rediscover wonder, find meaning in finitude

  • ★★★ The first of Oliver Burkeman's steps to embracing our limits, as Ali relays it, is to accept defeat: we cannot get everything done and there is no cure for it, an insight that can set us free. — 00:06:19
  • ★★ Instead of resenting how short life is, Ali says, it makes more sense to compare the time we have with the likelier scenario of not existing at all. — 00:06:49
  • ★ Oliver Burkeman (quoted): In a story from Four Thousand Weeks, a man whose friend David died suddenly stops being annoyed in traffic, wondering what David would have given to be stuck in it, and feels calm. — 00:06:49
  • ★★ The third way to embrace our limits, Ali relays from Four Thousand Weeks, is to find meaning in finitude: things arguably get their meaning from our limited time on earth. (hedged) — 00:07:18
  • ★★ Ali's first action step from Four Thousand Weeks is to practise doing nothing: sit down, set a timer and simply do nothing, letting things be. — 00:07:47

00:08:00 — Action steps one to three: practise doing nothing, rediscover rest, pay yourself first; the team's paid first hour for personal projects

  • ★★ Oliver Burkeman (quoted): Oliver Burkeman says that if you cannot bear doing nothing for more than a few minutes, you will make poor choices with your time and rush into commitments to feel busy. — 00:08:16
  • ★ Ali says he struggles to do nothing and will try to work on it this year (2022). — 00:08:16
  • ★★★ The book's second action step, Ali says, is to rediscover rest: stop treating leisure as recovery for work or as time for side hustles, and enjoy downtime as an end in itself. — 00:08:45
  • ★★ Ali is getting back into playing his PlayStation 5 and has downloaded Elden Ring, to enjoy leisure with no future payoff, which he says he sometimes struggles with. — 00:08:45
  • ★★ Ali suggests a hobby with little social status, such as video games or model railways, or one you are not good at, like his guitar and piano, so you know you do it for enjoyment. — 00:09:15
  • ★★★ The book's third action step, Ali says, is to pay yourself first with your time: do your most important personal activity, such as writing a book, the gym or family time, first thing in the morning. — 00:09:44
  • ★★★ Ali has just introduced a rule in his business: everyone in the 20-person team spends the first hour of every working day, paid, on a personal project of their own. — 00:10:13
  • ★★ Ali says you probably do not want to give the best hour of your day to your employer, even if you really enjoy your work. — 00:10:13
  • ★ Ali says many of the ideas in Four Thousand Weeks really resonated with him. — 00:10:42

00:10:55 — Skillshare sponsor read

  • ★★ Oliver Burkeman (quoted): Oliver Burkeman says we are going to fail at some things that genuinely matter to us, and should do so intentionally and fully accept the consequences. — 00:12:10
  • ★★ To decide when to fail, Ali says, first identify what you have to do, such as bills, taxes, mortgages, picking the kids up from school and cooking. — 00:12:10

00:12:19 — Action steps four to six: decide when to fail, limit work in progress with open and closed lists, serialise; the book's overall message

  • ★★★ Ali advises accepting that small urgent tasks such as cleaning, laundry, emails and WhatsApp replies will always be there, and deciding where to do just the bare minimum. — 00:12:39 · WhatsApp
  • ★★ Ali has decided to forget about cooking and get takeaway every night, cooking only occasionally when he has time. — 00:12:39
  • ★★ Ali accepts that he is really bad at replying to emails and WhatsApp messages, a failure he is happy to accept. — 00:12:39 · WhatsApp
  • ★★ Ali says that sometimes you have to say no to cool things because they would distract you from your highest priorities. — 00:13:08
  • ★★ If you are feeling stressed, Ali says, find something to fail at intentionally. — 00:13:38
  • ★★ To limit work in progress Ali has started experimenting with Oliver Burkeman's two-column open and closed to-do list, and says it works really well. — 00:13:38
  • ★★★ With open and closed lists, Ali explains, a task moves from the open list to the closed list only when one there is completed or dropped; Burkeman suggests a 10-item limit. — 00:14:07
  • ★★★ The last action step, which Ali relays from Oliver Burkeman, is to serialise: focus on one big project at a time until it is complete, or on one work project and one personal project. — 00:14:36

  • ★★★ Ali calls the overall message of Four Thousand Weeks really important: it is okay to embrace our limits, and once we accept we cannot do everything we can live a calmer, more intentional life. — 00:15:05

    “it's okay to really embrace our limits”

00:15:34 — Sign-off and pointer to the Deep Dive interview with Oliver Burkeman

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Mentioned

Central: clearing the decks · Four Thousand Weeks · Oliver Burkeman · open and closed lists · time management

Also: People: Henri Bergson

Projects: Book Club · Deep Dive

Organizations: Instagram · Twitter · YouTube

Concepts: pay yourself first

Products: Elden Ring · PlayStation 5 · WhatsApp

Also centred on Four Thousand Weeks: 15 Books To Read to Change Your Life · How I Manage My Time - The System That Changed My Life

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