Four Thousand Weeks
Time Management for Mortals [Book Review]

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #560: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals [Book Review]

Jeff Sanders
How do you view time?

In my second book, "The Free Time Formula," I argue that all time is free time.

However, I just read a book that flipped my perspective on time management and really challenged me to rethink just about everything.

This is the 5am Miracle, episode number 560.

A book review of 4,000 weeks.

Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Berkman.

Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer, specialize in delivering high energy, interactive and action-oriented presentations and workshops focused on productivity, wellness, and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com/speaking.

Now in the episode this week, I'll break down just a few of the greatest lessons I learned from Oliver Berkman's instant classic, 4,000 weeks.

Let's get to it.

I want to jump right in this week.

We've got a lot to cover, so let's get to 4,000 weeks, Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Berkman.

And before we get to my actual review, I do want to pause and say, this book is worth it.

It is worth reading, but more importantly, it is worth the questions the book poses.

There are so many classic questions that are in here, so many necessary questions that we as people who value our time should ask and answer, or most importantly, just ask.

You don't need an answer right now, but we need to wrestle with these questions.

It's basically a philosophy book of time management to really dig into what are we doing here?

What's the point of all of this?

Why do we care so much about productivity and checklists and time?

What is all of this?

Actually a lot of this book, Oliver spends kind of berating people like me who literally teach this stuff for a living, which is pretty hysterical, but also very reflective.

And I really appreciated kind of the gut punch that I got throughout this book.

I did hear the audio book and I've gone back and I have the physical hardcover now because I really wanted to dig in a lot more.

This is a book that is worth dissecting.

It is worth reading with a pen and paper and a highlighter and to take notes and to pause and reflect.

It is deep at times.

It is challenging at times.

I don't love every bit of it, but there's a lot that I do.

So let's get to my first point.

And the first point that I want to make is that this book feels depressing.

The overall emotional response that I had to this book was sadness.

Honestly, I just, I didn't feel uplifted or engaged or feeling like I had power to go do more things.

The kinds of emotions that I want this podcast to have.

This book did not have that.

I think in so many ways is why the book was important for me to read because the challenges, the problems that he brought up are classic time management problems.

These are the kinds of things that we need to confront.

We need to confront the fact that we do not use our time wisely.

We need to confront the fact that we don't ask the right questions and we waste a lot of time and we are focused on all the wrong things.

And to hear someone call that out kind of sucks.

It just does.

I'm not saying he's wrong.

I'm not saying his questions are off base, but I am saying that my emotional response to hearing it was not hopeful or positive or action oriented or forward thinking.

It was really just kind of dark because he paints this bleak picture of life and time management and really our feeble attempts to control time itself.

That is really harped on a lot.

The book does get more optimistic as it continues near the end, but much of this book is academic.

It is pessimistic and it really just points out our flaws.

And so if that's not really a book that you want to read, I get it, but I am telling you it is almost necessary.

I have really raved about getting things done by David Allen for years on this show because that book is foundational for productivity.

It is foundational for the structures that most other people like me will teach.

The apps are going to download the to-dos and checklists and the systems you're going to dig into.

They're generally based in some way off of the financial principles that David Allen teaches.

And what Oliver Berkman is attempting to do or has done well here is to force us to confront the question behind the question, right?

The question behind the app, behind the system, behind the framework.

What's the point of the framework?

What's the point of the system?

What are we doing here?

And these questions don't always have great answers.

They don't have optimistic, hopeful answers.

Sometimes we get bad news in life sometimes and we have to confront those things and face our fears and do hard work.

And I think that sometimes when we acknowledge that we're going to die, that question right there of what am I going to do with the time I have left, you can approach that from a variety of perspectives, one of which could be very dark.

But the flip side of that is that it doesn't have to be.

He makes that point in the book, but sometimes it comes across, I don't know, not as lovely as I would prefer.

Okay, so that's the first point.

Second point that he makes that I think is really important is we have boundless options and having a lot of options is a very big problem.

So Oliver Berkman spends a decent amount of time, at least in the beginning of the book, talking about past societies and how these societies had very few options.

If you were a peasant, you really had very few choices for your entire life.

And that was just what life was.

But we today have nearly unlimited options.

We have the potential to do almost anything we could possibly imagine.

And because of that, we squander basically everything in life and then we feel emotionally bad because we didn't do all that we could, but all that we could is impossible.

All that we could do is literally never going to happen.

And so this idea that we feel this sense of sadness or feel this sense of loss because we didn't accomplish everything on our bucket list, that we didn't pursue every avenue, didn't turn over every stone.

Well, we're never going to.

It's a waste of time to even consider the idea that we could because it's just so ridiculous on its face.

And so part of the problem here is that we have boundless options and we feel bad because we don't pursue them.

But the other side of that coin is we have options.

We can do so much more than we are.

We hold ourselves back when really we could be spending our time doing all kinds of amazing things.

And this back and forth poll between I can do anything and can I do anything at all is just this real challenge of life.

Like what do you do with your next action?

What do you do tomorrow, next week, next month, next year?

How do you choose?

What's the filter that says, here's how I will decide how my life will unfold.

It's a big question.

And no, I don't have the answer and neither does Oliver, but the question is worth asking.

You need to ask it.

I need to ask it.

We all need to ask it.

What are we going to do considering the reality that we can do a lot and yet can we, is that actually possible?

I don't know.

I don't know, but I do know as an ambitious high achiever, which is a title I bestow upon myself.

Of course I want to do more.

Of course I want to push the envelope and make my life more valuable.

But how do you do that?

Knowing in reality that nothing I really want to do will ever truly happen.

And that sense that I could be taking it to the next level.

I could run a marathon or an ultra marathon.

I could go for a hike or climb Mount Everest.

What's the difference in the time I have here on earth?

What is the real difference?

And the longterm eternal answer is nothing.

We are tiny specks of nothingness.

He makes that point very clear that in this book that we and our time is just so not just finite, but literally almost pointless.

That's kind of the dark side of the equation, right?

The dark side of the philosophy of our existence.

I'm not a philosopher, but I will say on occasion, these concepts and questions do really cause me pause.

They cause me to step back and say, wait a minute, why am I so worked up over this problem?

It seems so small in hindsight when really my life could be so much grander than it is.

I could do so much more than I'm doing.

That to me is the hopeful part here.

That to me is the opportunity.

The what if questions, what if I pursued a bigger goal?

What if I challenged myself a little more?

What if I made a smarter choice today and tomorrow and the next day?

Imagine the compound effect over time of these small choices and then the impact I can have with the time that I don't know which time is left.

And because I don't know, that makes every moment that much more valuable.

Now should matter.

My next action should matter.

And having boundless options gives me the power of choice.

And that power then says, okay, it's in my control, in my locus of control, I can do something.

So let's go do something that's energizing.

That's exciting.

That to me is the hopeful boundless awesomeness of what life can be as opposed to that dark side that we're all going to die and we're screwed.

All right.

The third big idea that I extracted from this book is Oliver says that we feel compelled to squeeze everything in.

He talks a lot about the efficiency trap, which is our desire to get everything done faster so that we have more time for more things that we can also get done faster.

And there's no end to this cycle.

And I definitely agree with this point.

I love efficiency.

I love being able to get things done faster to free up my time to do more.

But where does that end?

We need boundaries.

This is a key thing that he does discuss, but I think from my perspective, not quite enough because I view that as the answer to all of this.

If you have boundaries, you are able to say, yes, I can pursue project X and I will do so in this square box.

It will fit right here in my life.

It will start here.

It will end here.

And the boundaries allow it to be so much more actionable and so much more possible for you to imagine how it could play out.

The boundary says it will start and it will end.

And then other things in life can also exist, which means your efficiency will be within the project.

It will be bound itself.

There's not going to be an endless cycle of just doing more because we have a stopping point.

There's a boundary that says, here it is.

The workday is over, right?

The week is over.

There's an end.

And then flexibility can exist outside of these blocks of time.

I love focus blocks of time.

And I love the idea that in that focus, I get to go deep into something, but then it's over.

It ends.

And so this efficiency trap doesn't really exist if, here's the if, if we allow ourselves the flexibility to breathe between these cycles.

Life is about crunch and release.

It is about rhythm.

It is about going into something deeply and then taking a big step back.

And the ability to do that over and over again, to crunch and dig in and take a big step back and then crunch and dig in and then a big step back.

That process right there gives you the rhythm of life that makes life feel like it's doing something and going somewhere and has value and prevents these types of efficiency traps that might actually get you caught up in this idea that there is no end.

It's just a cycle that goes on forever.

But if there's going to be a cycle, the one that I would prefer to choose on purpose is one where I can dig in deeply into things I care about.

And then upon the relaxing, reflective, just kind of pause the release, I get the chance to see everything in a bigger picture and then make better choices and then dig back in more intelligently.

And then all of a sudden the next experience has more value, more growth, more potential, more excitement and energy and enthusiasm.

And all these things I love are then more possible because I was reflective and made better choices.

So if you feel as though you're trying to squeeze everything in, that life is just nothing but an endless to-do list that you'll never get through, don't think about that.

That's not the point.

What that says is, yes, we can and should live long, beautiful lives and can always do more.

But in the moment, I'm not thinking about an endless to-do list.

I'm thinking about what I'm doing now.

This is the presence idea.

I'm being present and going deep in the thing that I care about.

I mean, this is a good example.

I am going deep into this podcast right now.

This is my focus.

This is my energy.

It's all pouring in this direction.

And because of that, there is more value to be extracted from the experience, both for you and for me, if we can allow ourselves to go deep into that thing, to crunch and release, crunch and release.

We're not trying to squeeze it all in.

We're not trying to do it all.

We're not trying to do things that are literally impossible.

What we're trying to do is to tap into that rhythmic cycle of life that exists for all of us.

It's there.

We just got to tap into it and really get the best we can from it.

Now the fourth major point that I extracted from this awesome book is that we must face our finitude.

And Oliver describes finitude as the obviousness that there are limits to everything, including how long we live.

In the book, he says that each day might be your last.

So you must face your own death because it is the only way for a finite human being to live fully, to relate to other people as full-fledged humans and to experience the world as it truly is.

From my perspective, a healthy sense of urgency is necessary to value your time.

You will die.

I will die.

The clock is ticking.

So making smarter choices immediately is the only way to move forward.

And his conversation around finitude is a very powerful one.

It's the question we all tend to ask, which is, what are we going to do with the time we have left?

Considering we don't know how long it's going to be, but we want this time to mean something.

This is the present moment.

This is the conversation around making smart choices all the time.

This is the question about life itself.

And yes, it's very easy to be passe about.

It's very easy to just kind of say, well, I've got decades to go.

I'll get to that later.

You won't.

Or if you do, it will feel like it's too late.

This is the problem.

We always feel like we missed the boat.

Like the ancient Chinese proverb, the best time for a tree to be planted was 20 years ago.

And the second best time is today.

We live in that second best time all the time.

We're always there.

The next best time is always now.

Always.

Now, not for everything.

We have to make choices, but the idea of finitude forces us to make decisions.

And this is where we get the most value.

Making choices forces us to say, here's what matters in my life.

Here's what doesn't.

Here's what I'm saying yes to.

And here's what I am actively rejecting.

To understand the power of a decision is to understand the power that you have for your life each and every day.

By choosing one thing, you are automatically saying no to literally everything else in the entire world in that moment.

That's a big decision, which means every decision is a big decision and finitude forces you to address that reality.

We're forced to confront these limits.

And then all of a sudden we realize my life has value right here and now because this is my life.

So shouldn't I be a little bit healthier, a little bit wealthier, a little bit nicer, a little bit more aggressive or ambitious or productive or calm or you fill in the gaps.

What do you want to be?

Who do you want to be?

Finitude forces you to address this.

And sometimes the answers are kind of painful.

Sometimes it is that smack in the face to realize man, I'm not doing this right.

But there is no right.

I made this comment recently on social media that I felt as though I was not living my life correctly.

I turned 40 years old recently and as part of my reflection, that was a feeling that I had that I wasn't doing this right.

And I was told point blank by a lot of people that that's just not real.

There's no such thing.

Doing it right does not exist.

And so your attempt to quote unquote do it right is just not going to land.

The better questions become what's a great next choice?

How do I tap into my best self?

How do I exude more love, more kindness, more generosity, more possibility, more of that hope that will actually bring about our best energy, enthusiasm, skill set, talent, interest.

That's what we're trying to tap into.

And honestly, confronting your own death is one of the best ways to do so.

So if that's what it takes for you to become your best self, then start there.

Acknowledge that reality and then retool how you want to live each and every day.

Now number five this week on our list from 4,000 weeks is that settling is inevitable and necessary for peace.

Now read a quote here from the book talking about settling where Oliver Berkman says, which brings me to one of the few pieces of dating advice I feel entirely confident in delivering, though in fact it's relevant in every other sphere of life too.

It concerns settling the ubiquitous modern fear that you might find yourself committing to a romantic partner who falls short of your ideal or who's unworthy of your excellent personality.

The career related version of this worry entails settling for a job that pays the bills rather than going all in on your passion.

The received wisdom articulated in a thousand magazine articles and inspirational Instagram memes is that it's always a crime to settle, but the received wisdom is wrong.

You should definitely settle.

He brings up two points here.

The first example from someone you might be dating or want to marry this long-term relationship and you feel this need to make this person perfect because if they're not, you might be settling for someone who's not the best.

Same for your job or your career.

You might settle on a career that pays the bills as opposed to pursuing one that brings out your best self.

This concept, this struggle, this inevitable struggle around settling I have dealt with my entire life.

I felt this very strong need from a very young age to quote unquote never settle and to apply that to almost every area of my life, which you can tell has then played out in personal growth and business ideas and health concepts and goals.

And just, I have been there, tried that and really pushed the envelope to never quote unquote settle.

But the reality is, is that settling is not only inevitable.

It happens all the time because we can't pursue perfection everywhere.

This is a lot of ways why 10 years ago I had panic attacks because I thought that I could be perfect in every area of my life.

And then when I was confronted with the reality that I could not be that guy all the time, it really sucked.

It sucked bad.

I, I, oh, it was hard.

It was depressing.

It was anxiety producing.

It is not fun to realize that you're not going to be this perfect vision you have of yourself in your head.

We never will.

But the good news is that's not the goal.

Nobody else expects that of you.

And for you to expect that of yourself is just going to make you crazy.

Settling is in fact a great thing because it allows you to acknowledge here are the parts of my life I'm not going to worry about.

Here are the parts of my life I'm okay with.

And I'm going to give my energy to the few things I really do care about because we really just do not have the ability to do it all.

We want to, we want to so, so bad.

I know that I do.

And I know that once I'm okay with settling, once I'm okay with the idea that some part of my life can just be what it is and it doesn't have to be more, it doesn't have to improve or grow over time.

It can stay exactly as it is today.

That frees me up.

That gives me boundless potential to then do the things I truly want to do.

So if you've been there like I have with perfectionism, with overly ambitious goals, with this desire to do it all, I'll give you the pass.

If nobody else will, I'll do it for you.

We can calm down about that.

We can just calm down, allow settling to be what it is, allow parts of our life to just be.

And we're going to be okay because of it.

This is a personal challenge for me.

If you can tell, this is an area I need a lot of work in even still.

But it's so important.

So valuable.

All right, lesson number six from 4,000 Weeks is to lean into whatever you're doing.

He talks a lot about boredom and distraction and these two concepts kind of playing together.

So one way he discusses boredom in the book is that boredom is an intense reaction to the deeply uncomfortable experience of confronting your limited control.

This is a big concept.

This idea that we don't have control of our lives, though we strive for it all the time.

And I talk about that on this podcast every week.

We want to have more control.

We desire more of it.

And boredom is this reaction to realizing I actually don't have all the control that I thought that I did.

And now I'm weirdly stuck in this mental space of feeling like I can't do something.

That's what boredom is.

You feel stuck or trapped and they need to figure out how to emotionally and mentally respond to that experience.

What is distraction?

Distraction is a technique to escape the discomfort of confronting your limitation, which in of itself means distraction and boredom play together.

You may experience boredom and then seek a distraction.

You realize you don't have all the control you need, so you try to find a mental way to escape from whatever's going on.

You look for a way to not have to confront that reality.

That's distraction.

That's procrastination.

That's our constant challenge and the world productivity to never do the thing we should be doing because we're always trying to find a way not to do it.

We're always trying to find a way to get out of whatever it is we've been trying to do, which seems ridiculous.

Yet that's what all of this is.

And when it comes down to it, fulfillment, if that's a goal that you may have, it comes from going deep.

It comes from allowing yourself to be in the moment you're in and being okay with that and not trying to escape that, not trying to make it more than it is, just allowing it to be.

This is a common thread you're hearing now, allowing life to be what it is and not trying to control it, not trying to force it, not trying to make it something that's never going to be or could be.

That's acceptance.

It's a whole different way of viewing life, especially if you're like me and you are a "control freak," you want to control things.

You're dying to control things.

And yet when we realize we can't, it kind of breaks those chains away, right?

It allows us that freedom to say, "I can just be in this space, be in this moment, allow it, life, to exist as it is."

And this desire of mine to try to escape the present moment, it misses the whole point.

It misses the whole point of acknowledging that this is your life right now.

And when you find the beauty in that, you realize there is beauty in even those moments where boredom shows up and distraction is the desired response.

This is a tall order.

The biggest challenge in our modern society where we are constantly bombarded with all these inputs and this ease of distraction with all the technology and tools we have, we don't experience boredom like we used to.

And that could be a major problem.

I'm not saying that actually is, but it definitely could be.

So you have to ask yourself that question for yourself.

What does this mean for you?

Where does boredom play a role in your life or distraction or your desire to control your time?

And how do these things interact in your usual life?

Which brings me to my final point from 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman, which is that time freedom is a myth and controlling our time is a waste of time altogether.

Much of what Berkman argues for is logically sound and counterintuitive.

So though I agree that trying to control our time is nonsense in many cases, the attempt to plan and organize our time is actually our only path forward.

If we're ever going to arrive at a destination that feels authentic to ourselves, we must try to make better choices both in the moment and in future moments.

This book is set up to be a liberation.

The execution sometimes is painful and impossible if you have to throw out all of your common conceptions around goal setting and time management and pursuing a life worth living.

But as with any advice, including my own, this is not the final word on this topic.

How you manage your time will always be up to you.

And it is worth reconsidering how your time is managed to ever reach a point where it feels like you've made it.

And I'll be the first to argue there is no finish line here.

Unless death is that line.

But let's just for the sake of argument acknowledge that there really is no sense of feeling like you've made it.

That controlling your time is not a thing.

We want it to be.

We're dying for it to be.

I'm dying for it to be.

But our best path forward is just making smarter choices in the here and now and planning for a life that we expect to live.

And then when those moments arrive, once again, the same thing repeats.

Make a smart choice.

Plan for a better one.

Make a smart choice.

Plan for a better one.

That's it.

And it's very subjective, very complicated.

This is not easy.

None of this is easy.

And yet it's very human.

And we've done this for millennia.

And we're going to do it for a lot longer, I hope.

So this is the epic time management challenge.

What do we do with all this?

How do we live in these moments that are difficult, complicated, confusing, destructive, but also hopeful and beautiful and ambitious and positive?

I want to choose the positive side of this coin.

If there's a yin and a yang here, there's a difficult philosophical downside to all of this that is dark and destructive and just a side of life we don't want to agree with.

The other side is one where we do have some power.

We do have some control.

We can make better choices.

And I want to live in that space more.

Not one where I control my life, but one where I accept it and simultaneously challenge it to be more than it is.

It's a paradox.

It's confusing.

But that's what life is.

So hopeful, Jeff.

Good job.

Okay.

From that note, that's all I've got about this book, but I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

If you've read this book or one like it, email me, jeff@jeffsanders.com.

What did you think?

What are your thoughts on time management?

Do you think I'm on the right track here in terms of our paradox or is all of this a bit of nonsense?

Either way, I want to hear from you.

Once again, jeff@jeffsanders.com.

And for the action step this week, yes, go pick up your copy of Oliver Berkman's 4,000 weeks time management for mortals.

You know, I did hear the audio book initially, but I did get the hardcover version afterwards because digging into this book is powerful.

However you choose to read it, please do it.

It is absolutely worth your time to consider what is worth your time.

Yes, subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast app or become a VIP member of the 5am miracle community by getting the premium ad free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5ammiraclepremium.com.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5ammiracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life, not control it.

And all that fun begins bright and early.

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