Time Management for Mortals

 4/27/25

Time Management for Us Mortals

Steven J. Ceresnie, Ph.D.

Book Review: Burkeman, Oliver. (2021). Four Thousand Weeks. Time Management

for Mortals. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Over the years, I’ve searched for good books on time management. When I read that the

Wharton psychologist Adam Grant said this is the best book on time management ever written, it

appeared in my Kindle library in five seconds – excellent time management I may add.

Burkeman, a British journalist and author, wrote a weekly column for 12 years on

psychology in the Guardian Newspaper called “This Column Will Change Your Life.” Now

that’s a lot of advice on change.

The book is witty, practical, and thought-provoking. To ask for more is to be greedy. But

the irony of this best book on time management is that Burkeman agrees with the Biblical

passage in Proverbs 16: “Man Plans and God Laughs.” My kind of book.

Because you have a busy schedule, you’re working on finding the sweet spot of work-

home balance, and you no doubt have deadlines to keep, I will quote just a few passages from

Burkeman’s excellent book. Oh, and by the way, 4,000 weeks refers to a life-span of about 80

years. I glean some reassurance from the comedian who said, “I’m going to live forever, so far so

good.”

Humor is my feeble way of coping with the brief period of time we spend on earth. But,

as the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins reminds us, We are going to die, and that makes

us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.

When you think about the number of sperm chasing one egg, it’s clear how few humans make it

through this short ride through life.

Now for some quotes:

 What you pay attention to will define, for you, what reality is.

 The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to

have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to

experience more of the wonder.

 The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control – when the

flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer;

when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s

angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and then the fully organized

person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be

about. Let’s start by admitting defeat: none of this is ever going to happen.

 One can waste years this way, systematically postponing precisely the things one cares

about most.

 The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you

neglect the right things.

 In order to most fully inhabit the only life you ever get, you have to refrain from using

every spare hour for personal growth.

 In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you

think you ought to be?

 You can’t know that things will turn out all right. The struggle for certainty is an

intrinsically hopeless one – which means you have permission to stop engaging in it.

I am far past the usual age of retirement, working part-time reminding myself of what a

fellow told me when I asked him about his retirement. He said, “The problem with doing

nothing, is that you never know when you’re done.”

(To comment on this column, email Dr. Ceresnie at Sceresnie@gmail.com)