The clocks are changing this weekend which makes me think about time. But I think about time and maximising time and wasting time and making time and having enough time ALOT.
So does Oliver Burkeman who is an author and journalist whose work interests me. I have mentioned him and his book “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals”, before.
In fact when I mentioned the book previously, I admitted that I was being so time productive that I actually hadn’t read the book but instead listened to a podcast where the author was interviewed about the book whilst I was also vacuuming and cleaning my house.
Now I have read the book and it was worth reading…
Oliver Burkeman’s column for the Guardian newspaper was initially about better time management and being more productive. He admits to having tried multiple and varied productivity hacks over many years.
Some of these techniques work but what Oliver has discovered is that when we get more done, it means we do even more and then we feel even busier. “Our days are spent trying to ‘get through’ tasks in order to get them out ‘of the way'” but there are always new tasks getting added to the list. Oliver goes on to say “the day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control.”
Oliver humorously explains that being efficient isn’t necessarily the solution and actually has its own draw backs. “Acquire a reputation for doing your work at amazing speed, and you’ll be given more of it.” “Every time you reply to an email, there’s a good chance of provoking a reply…and so on and so on”.
He advises that one of the most effective time management techniques is “just facing the way things truly are”, and that is – it is impossible to get everything done.
This means we plan our days knowing that we won’t get everything done. We actively choose what we neglect and make peace with that reality.
The four thousand weeks in the title of the book refers to the average life span.
Oliver thinks that one of the reasons why we tend to spend time clearing the decks before we do the thing that we really want to do, is it gives us a sense of control over our own mortality or what Oliver calls “finitude”.
If we haven’t yet got to the thing that we really want to do, perhaps we feel there’s a long life stretched out in front of us with plenty of time to get to the thing we want to do.
However, if we feel like we have infinite time, none of the decisions we make have much meaning because we believe we have time to change our minds or do something different.
People who have faced life or death situations or those who survive accidents, illness or other tragic events often experience a renewed attitude to life, feeling grateful for every precious minute and being much more aware of human finitude.
Oliver urges that if we can feel even a portion of this attitude, we will focus on what is important to us.
“The exhilaration that sometimes arises when you grasp this truth about finitude has been called the “joy of missing out”, by way of a deliberate contrast with the idea of the “fear of missing out”. It is the thrilling recognition that you wouldn’t even really want to be able to do everything. In this state of mind, you can embrace the fact that you’re foregoing certain pleasures, or neglecting certain obligations, because whatever you’ve decided to do instead – is how you’ve chosen to spend a portion of time that you never had any right to expect.”
“The problem with trying to make time for everything that feels important—or just for enough of what feels important—is that you definitely never will. The reason isn’t that you haven’t yet discovered the right time management tricks or supplied sufficient effort, or that you need to start getting up earlier, or that you’re generally useless. It’s that the underlying assumption is unwarranted: there’s no reason to believe you’ll ever feel ‘on top of things,’ or make time for everything that matters, simply by getting more done.” Oliver Burkeman
“One can waste years this way, systematically postponing precisely the things one cares about the most.”
Oliver Burkeman
“The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.” Oliver Burkeman
Sinead Huskisson 