Most people rush through life, trying to complete all their to-dos and maximize their productivity because they believe they should be able to “get everything done.” However, in Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman argues that the idea that you can wield perfect control over your time is a delusion that only fosters guilt and unhappiness. His solution is for humans to accept that they only have a finite amount of time and to operate within realistic parameters to make their lives as enjoyable and meaningful as possible.
In this guide, we’ll first explore Burkeman’s proposal that most humans delusionally believe they can perfectly control how they spend their time. We’ll then move on to the reality: that you’ll never have full control over your time. Finally, we’ll discuss Burkeman’s solution to the issue of never having enough time—to accept your time limitations—and the tactics you can use to get the most out of a finite existence.
Burkeman contends that you and most humans live with the mistaken belief that if you try hard enough and find the right time management solutions, you should be able to gain total control over your time.
(Shortform note: Burkeman alludes to various time management solutions, but what are some of these solutions? One solution is Brian Moran’s advice to separate your time into three different blocks, during which you tackle different activities. You dedicate yourself to thought-intensive projects in one block, administrative tasks in another, and mental rest in the third. Using this approach should give you control over how you spend your time, claims Moran.)
According to Burkeman, having total control over your time encompasses 1) the ability to complete all necessary tasks and projects, both short-term and long-term, in the time you’ve allocated them and 2) the ability to decide exactly how to spend your time.
(Shortform note: Burkeman contends that his definition of having total control over your time is a delusion. However, delusion or not, the belief that you can control your time in the two ways Burkeman outlines might have the unexpected advantage of making you happier. In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert argues that a sense of control makes you happy because you feel you can bring about desired events and outcomes through your efforts. Therefore, feeling that you can complete the tasks you want to complete and decide how to spend your time can elevate your happiness, even if that feeling doesn’t correspond to reality.)
Let’s cover the two reasons why you believe you can gain total control over your time:
The Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries fundamentally altered the way humans regarded time by transforming it into a resource that laborers were expected to use efficiently to maximize profits, asserts Burkeman. Business owners, wanting to derive the greatest amount of labor from their workforce, emphasized the importance of efficiency, hitting targets, and increasing future profits, portraying slowness and idleness as shameful. Today, this attitude manifests as the delusion that we can “use our time well” by maximizing efficiency and getting as much done as possible in a given time frame.
(Shortform note: Burkeman outlines one arguably negative effect of the Industrial Revolution on contemporary society. Other harmful aspects of the Industrial Revolution’s legacy live on today, too: Gender-based wage discrimination can be traced in large part to the Industrial Revolution, for example. Factory owners paid women only half of men’s salaries because women weren’t considered the primary breadwinners of their families and therefore didn’t need as much income. Further, the Industrial Revolution established a pattern of sacrificing the health of the environment—and the people living in it—for monetary gain.)
The Industrial Revolution also changed the way humans view free time, adds Burkeman. Factory owners considered the free time they gave laborers as simply a way to improve laborers’ performance in factories during working hours. Therefore, free time became purpose-driven, rather than enjoyment-driven.
(Shortform note: Burkeman asserts that we feel even our free time should be spent in service of a productive pursuit. In Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin and Joel Dominguez describe an even less leisure-oriented relationship to free time: We actively value free time less than working time. They explain that the Great Depression created mass joblessness, which made people value the ability to work over the ability to rest. This attitude has never fully gone away—many of us see paid work as the best way we could possibly spend our time.)
Time-saving technology contributes to the delusion that you should be able to fully master all your time, believes Burkeman. When you save time using technology, you automatically develop the expectation that you should be able to save and wield greater control over your time in other realms of your life.
For example, your new robotic vacuum cleaner saves you twenty minutes of manual labor by detecting when there’s dirt and starting automatically. Now that your expectation of control over your time has been elevated, you might feel that you should be able to cut down your commute time, as well, or that your dishwasher should detect when it’s full and start itself.
(Shortform note: Burkeman describes how time-saving technology elevates your expectation of how fast other things should move in your life. This experience of becoming accustomed to greater speed is a facet of the psychological phenomenon called hedonic adaptation: the process of acclimating to changed circumstances so that your general level of happiness returns to its base level. When this occurs, you don’t value the new circumstances as much as you did initially. For example, if you eat a doughnut every morning, you’ll soon adjust to the pleasure of a daily doughnut and will need two doughnuts to get the same amount of joy you got initially.)
We’ve just described the delusion you and most humans live under, which is that if you’re disciplined and use the right tools, you can gain control over your time. Now, let’s turn to the reality: Contrary to the promises of self-help gurus and time management tools, you’ll never be able to wield total control over your time, alleges Burkeman.
(Shortform note: Others disagree with Burkeman’s claim that common time-saving tools and tricks don’t work, arguing that the only reason these tools may fail is that you don’t know how to effectively use them. If you develop time-awareness and planning skills before testing out time-saving tools, you should be able to use them to gain greater control over your time, they claim.)
Let’s discuss the three reasons why it’s impossible to have full control over your time:
According to Burkeman, the more tasks you complete, the more tasks will appear to occupy your newly freed-up time. This is because, as discussed in Part 1, humans feel they must spend their free time productively. When you have free time, you may decide that a task you might otherwise not deem important is important, because completing it feels like a productive use of your free time. In this way, you fill up your free time with unnecessary tasks.
For instance, if you finish your work for the day and could technically leave the office, you might decide instead that you need to follow up on an email, even though you hadn’t deemed it important before and it doesn’t technically require follow-up.
(Shortform note: Though Eat That Frog! is an example of the type of time management book Burkeman feels to be misguided, its author, Brian Tracy, nonetheless offers a solution to the problem of new tasks popping up to occupy your free time. He recommends figuring out what the three most important tasks are at work and in your personal life and either postponing, delegating, or cutting all other tasks. If you do this diligently, you might be able to keep yourself from taking on new tasks that pop up.)
Similarly, if you accelerate your pace of work in an effort to complete all your tasks, you’ll feel forced to increase that acceleration in the future, writes Burkeman. This happens first because others—co-workers, family members, and so on—will raise their expectations of how quickly you can work and will demand quicker output from you. Second, as discussed in Part 1, if you can complete a task more quickly, you’ll develop the expectation that everything should move more quickly. This means you’ll seek out more tasks and continue to have an incoming stream of to-do items that appear at an accelerated rate.
Here’s an example: If you implement new software to accelerate part of your work, your colleagues will adjust to your increased pace and will send you new work faster, eliminating any time your new software might have initially freed up. Additionally, having completed your work in less time, you’ll develop the expectation that all your work should take less time, thus freeing up time to complete more tasks.
(Shortform note: The pressure to continuously accelerate your pace of work, as Burkeman describes, can be exacerbated if you’re a high achiever by nature. High achievers strive for external validation, which they can attain by completing tasks faster and faster and gaining the respect and awe of those around them. Additionally, high achievers are often perfectionistic, which can lead them to increase their acceleration to maintain a perfect accomplishment track record. For example, someone might try to respond to a hundred emails in a day to maintain their perfect response record. Ironically, high achievers often produce poorer quality work because they’re trying so hard to work fast.)
You also lack control over your time because you allow yourself to be distracted from important tasks that matter to you by minor tasks that don’t, writes Burkeman. This is because when tackling a task you want to execute well (like being a good parent or writing a novel), you risk falling short (by taking your anger out unfairly on your child or writing a bad novel, for instance). When you fall short of achieving your ideal, you’re forced to confront the unpleasant possibility that you may not be good at the task and that you might never master it in your lifetime, claims Burkeman. By distracting yourself with minor tasks, you can avoid facing these disturbing thoughts—but you lose control over how you spend your time.
Distraction and the Ego
Burkeman believes that you distract yourself from important tasks because you fear that doing them might reveal a personal weakness. Burkeman doesn’t elaborate much further on this idea, but Eckhart Tolle goes into greater detail on why and how humans engage in behaviors like self-distraction in his exploration of the ego in A New Earth.
Tolle claims your ego fears the threat of being rendered insignificant, so it compels you to prove your ego is significant and valued. Your ego does this by forcing you to acquire material possessions, ideologies and opinions, and a set of feelings. It then seeks validation of those feelings, possessions, ideologies, and opinions in the external world, which can lead to negative behaviors.
We can now see how self-distraction helps validate an opinion about yourself: For example, if you believe you’re an exceptional soccer player, you risk having that belief invalidated if you attempt to play soccer and fail. You might therefore distract yourself from trying to play so you never have to risk having an opinion invalidated and your ego threatened.
So, how do you overcome negative ego-driven behaviors? Tolle recommends practicing mindfulness, the ability to be present and in touch with your inner self. When you can be present enough to recognize that you’re engaging in an ego-driven behavior, you can stop it.
The delusion of perfect time control you and most humans live under causes four forms of suffering, argues Burkeman:
According to Burkeman, one form of suffering is that you feel perpetually guilty for not “getting everything done” and not “using your time well,” even though doing so is impossible. This guilt causes you to try even harder to complete all your work by doing more, faster—which, as we discussed in the last section, only begets more work.
(Shortform note: Burkeman describes how failing to meet unrealistic expectations of your ability to manage your time can lead to guilt. The implicit idea is that you must lower your expectations of your productivity (which we’ll discuss how to do in the next section) to reduce guilt. However, others would argue that you should try to generally reduce the dominance of all guilt in your life by changing your entire mindset. In The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama advises you to cultivate a happiness mindset by countering unproductive, negative emotions, like guilt, with positive ones, like self-compassion. This makes you generally resilient to unproductive feelings, such as guilt, no matter what happens in your life.)
The harder you work to increase your control over your day, the less tolerance you have for interruptions and the more you isolate yourself as a way to maintain control, asserts Burkeman. This has negative consequences for your mental health and causes you to suffer. For instance, imagine that to gain control over your day, you get to the office at 5 a.m., before any colleagues who might bother you have arrived, and work with your door closed to avoid interruptions. This lets you get more done, but it also makes you extremely lonely.
(Shortform note: Burkeman claims that your desire to be productive causes you to isolate yourself, which negatively affects your mental health. To make matters worse, the more isolated you are, the more you continue to isolate yourself. This is because the body processes loneliness and isolation as a threat, which triggers a “fight or flight” response. This response, in turn, makes you more wary of other social threats, like rejection from your peers. Thus, you steer clear of the people who could lift you out of your isolation.)
Additionally, you suffer because the harder you try to fit everything into your schedule, the less likely it is you’ll get to the most important tasks, Burkeman feels. This is because when you believe you can get everything done, you don’t prioritize the critical over the non-critical.
(Shortform note: Burkeman describes how the belief that you can accomplish all your to-dos prevents you from prioritizing critical tasks. According to David Allen, you can make it even harder to prioritize critical tasks by not writing down all your tasks on paper. In Getting Things Done, Allen contends that when you don’t write tasks down, you think about the unimportant ones as much as the important ones. You might thus expend all your mental energy on a minor task and have none left over for a major one.)
Finally, Burkeman believes that the delusion that you can get everything done makes you suffer because it causes you to spend all your present time working toward an unattainable future goal. Rather than dedicating your present to enjoyable pursuits that add richness to your life, you dedicate it to the less-rewarding act of catching up on work, because you believe if you try hard enough, you can one day get on top of it all.
(Shortform note: In Who Will Cry When You Die?, Robin Sharma explains that letting enjoyable present moments slip by because you dedicate all your time to work and concerns about the future not only causes you to suffer but also leaves you with regret on your deathbed. In fact, he believes most people prioritize the wrong things—future-oriented concerns about career and status, for example—when they should be prioritizing things like cherishing moments of present beauty.)
Burkeman adds that capitalism causes you to think in this future-oriented way because it’s designed to utilize present resources to make future profits. As a member of a capitalist society, you’re compelled to think about the present in terms of how it can improve the future.
(Shortform note: Capitalism has spawned many other widely accepted beliefs beyond the notion that you should use the present to improve the future. According to Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens, capitalism is predicated upon the idea that economic growth is inherently good because it helps promote freedom and justice. A capitalist might argue that when a country is wealthy, it spreads wealth to less developed countries, thereby improving their economic and governmental situations. Like the belief that you should dedicate the present toward the improvement of the future, the idea that economic growth is inherently good is up for debate.)
Now that you know why you’ll never have enough time to do everything you want and how believing that you do causes you to suffer, let’s move on to the solution Burkeman proposes to this problem. The solution involves accepting two unpleasant facts and using tactics to work within the limitations those facts set up.
We’ll describe each fact you must accept and the tactics Burkeman proposes for working within them:
The first fact about your time you must accept is that you’ll never have enough time to complete all the tasks and work you want to, insists Burkeman. Relatedly, you’ll never be able to meet your and society’s expectation of “getting everything done,” and you’ll never have total control over how you spend your time. When you accept this, you free yourself from the burden of trying to meet unrealistic expectations, and you’ll become happier.
(Shortform note: Burkeman writes that when you stop clinging to the belief that you have control over your time, you become happier. One specific, happiness-generating benefit of letting go of society's unrealistic expectations of productivity is that when you stop trying to do everything, you're more likely to excel. In The 12 Week Year, Brian P. Moran proposes that when you try unrealistically to get everything done, you perform all your tasks poorly. Moran specifically writes about multitasking—a manifestation of the struggle to do everything—and claims that this forces you to spread your attention too thin, so you don’t excel at any task.)
Let’s now turn to the six tactics Burkeman proposes for both getting the most done and maximizing your happiness:
Prioritize tasks that matter most by making time for them before you do anything else, advises Burkeman. Don’t wait until time opens up (as discussed in Part 2, new tasks will always pop up to occupy freed-up time). Instead, just do them now, accepting that, due to opportunity costs, you likely won’t get to other tasks that matter to you.
(Shortform note: The idea that you must make time for important tasks is the foundation of Robin Sharma’s book The 5 AM Club. In it, he advocates for making time for key tasks by waking up at 5 a.m. and taking an hour to engage in important activities: exercise, personal reflection, and personal growth. Unlike Burkeman, though, Sharma doesn’t believe there must be an opportunity cost to making time for these important tasks, because you wouldn’t be doing anything else between 5 and 6 a.m. (other than sleeping).)
As part of working effectively within your time limitations, don’t take on more commitments than you can handle just to feel that you’re being productive, recommends Burkeman. Limit yourself to three projects, and only take on new ones once old ones are done. Because you only have a few items to do, this will relieve you of a feeling of overwhelm.
(Shortform note: Burkeman recommends taking on only three projects at a time, but this can mean saying no to people who want you to do something for or with them, which can be difficult and awkward. According to Greg McKeown, you can strengthen your ability to say ‘no’ by thinking about the opportunity costs of saying ‘yes.' If you remind yourself that accepting an invitation to drinks would mean not spending time with your kids, it becomes easier to decline, for instance.)
To work within your time constraints, avoid distracting yourself from high-priority tasks that force you to confront your limitations (as discussed in Part 2) by developing a tolerance for discomfort, suggests Burkeman. This makes the task less unpleasant and allows you to see it through to completion. For instance, when editing a movie you made (which is important to you), you feel you fell short of achieving your vision. This could cause you to distract yourself from editing by watching TV so you don’t have to confront the limitations of your talent and skill. Instead, if you acclimate to the discomfort of editing your sub-par movie, you can see the task through to the end.
(Shortform note: A tolerance for discomfort isn’t just necessary to complete important and challenging tasks: It’s also critical to personal growth. In The 12 Week Year, Brian Moran argues that improving yourself and swapping bad behaviors for good ones is uncomfortable because you’re stretching yourself in new ways. Most people dislike this discomfort so much that they abandon their self-improvement efforts. However, Moran believes that if you can tolerate the discomfort, you can grow into the person you want to be.)
To develop a tolerance for discomfort, Burkeman proposes that when you notice yourself being distracted from an important task, immerse yourself more in it by paying closer attention to it. For example, if you become distracted from the important task of learning how to play the violin, pay even more attention to the details of your practice: Notice how some of the notes sound bad and others good, how your hands feel, and how the bow glides across the strings.
(Shortform note: In Indistractable, Nir Eyal provides a more elaborate, four-step framework for how to resist distraction: First, identify the trigger that makes you want to distract yourself. Next, write down what the trigger is. Third, pay attention to the feeling of discomfort that accompanies the need to distract yourself (as Burkeman recommends). Finally, resist the cravings for distraction by telling yourself you’ll give in and distract yourself in 10 minutes. Usually, the urge to distract yourself passes in that time.)
Having accepted that you’ll never master your time, work within that restraint by being open to the future veering from the plans you’ve created, advises Burkeman. The future is unknowable, and you have little real control over it. When you develop expectations of what should happen in the future and those expectations aren’t met, you both waste time planning and also become unhappy.
For example, you might build an in-home panic room to assure your future safety. However, a new job might force you to move into a new home, rendering your attempt to control the future futile and leaving you unhappy over your wasted efforts.
(Shortform note: Burkeman advises you to stop planning the future as though you can predict exactly how it will unfold. However, for people who suffer from anxiety, trying to control the future can be more of a compulsion than a conscious choice. Anxiety-prone people strongly need to feel in control of their lives, so they plan meticulously to ensure they know what will happen in the future. Beyond the wasted time and unhappiness such behavior generates, highly controlling and anxious people also often cause conflict because they want others to fall in step with their plans.)
Burkeman adds that you can help yourself become okay with the idea of not having control over the future by considering how little control you’ve had over your life until now. Most of your life has been a series of events over which you had no say: the event of being born, your upbringing in a certain area, your chance meeting with your partner-to-be, and so on. If you’ve succeeded thus far in life merely by happenstance—not through your iron control—then it will probably be okay in the future when things occur by happenstance, too.
(Shortform note: Burkeman suggests that you can develop comfort with the idea of not having control over the future by reflecting on how little control you’ve had over your life thus far. You might also develop comfort with your lack of control over the future by becoming aware of how much you’ll change in the future—a process that’s also arguably outside of your control. According to David Epstein, author of Range, humans’ needs, wants, and even personalities change over the course of their lives. Reminding yourself that you don’t know for sure what you’ll want in the future may help you worry less about achieving future goals. )
Rather than expecting the pace of everything in your life to accelerate (as discussed in Part 2), cultivate patience for how long activities take now, advises Burkeman.
(Shortform note: Burkeman writes that you should cultivate patience for how long things currently take as part of accepting your limitations, but he doesn’t propose ways to become more patient. You can cultivate patience by simply paying greater attention to the world around you. When you force yourself to notice things, you also force your mind to slow down.)
According to Burkeman, you can strengthen your patience muscle by breaking a large task into short periods of work and forbidding yourself from doing any additional work after that period has elapsed. Every time you force yourself to stop working before you want to, you confront the feeling of impatience and become a little more comfortable with it. Over time, you’ll get much more accomplished than those who rush through all their tasks and burn themselves out.
(Shortform note: To help yourself break a large task into shorter, repeated periods of work, consider transforming the task into a tiny habit, as described by BJ Fogg in Tiny Habits. Tiny habits don’t demand much time, are actions you can perform right away, and are low-risk. If you make a tiny habit out of the big task, you’ll be able to easily return to it over short periods of time, thereby building your patience as you slowly work toward the long-term goal.)
Finally, having accepted that you’ll never wield total control over your time, align your schedule with that of the people you want to spend time with, counsels Burkeman. Even though structuring your free time around other people’s schedules initially seems restrictive, you’ll be much happier and feel less isolated.
(Shortform note: Burkeman proposes that you align your schedule with those of the people you want to spend time with. But not only does spending time with others free you from the burden of needing to control your time fully, it also has positive physiological effects, like lowering the level of cortisol, a stress hormone, in your body. Relinquishing control and reducing stress can together greatly increase your happiness.)
Burkeman suggests you sacrifice control for community by joining after-work activities that force you to be with people at a set time. You might join an amateur theater troupe or running group that meets regularly, for example.
(Shortform note: Joining after-work group activities, as Burkeman suggests, can be more difficult for introverts, who need alone time to recharge. To participate in group activities with minimal stress, introverts can balance stimulating activities with less stimulating ones. An introvert might spend an hour at home relaxing before going to a running group, for example.)
For Burkeman, the second fact about time to accept is that your life is finite and extremely brief in the context of the universe. If you live to be 76, you’ll only have about 4,000 weeks on Earth. This has two implications, continues Burkeman. First, because you only have limited time on Earth, you’ll never be able to accrue all the experiences you want to have. This is due to opportunity cost: Whenever you make a choice about what to do with your life, you preclude other choices. For example, if you choose to pursue a career in music, you can’t also pursue a career as an astronaut.
(Shortform note: Burkeman argues that your life is finite and that because of this time constraint, you’ll never be able to do everything you want to do in life. Others fundamentally disagree, saying that you can do everything you want to do (specifically in the context of your career) and that this will make you happier and more fulfilled than limiting yourself to just a few pursuits. To do everything, though, you may need to find roles that subsidize those that don’t bring in much money—which is still a form of constraint on your time.)
The second implication of a finite life is that you must use your time carefully and in service of projects and activities that matter to you and make you happy, stresses Burkeman. Don’t waste time trying to get through your to-do list, but rather dedicate it toward meaningful activities—like spending time with family, for example.
(Shortform note: Burkeman advises you to avoid wasting time on unimportant chores and tasks and instead spend as much time on meaningful activities as possible. However, he doesn’t provide help in identifying such meaningful activities. We can turn back to Who Will Cry When You Die?, in which Robin Sharma suggests you identify meaningful activities by reflecting on your strengths and how you can use them to help others. For example, if you’re a great listener, a meaningful activity could be providing empathetic support to your friends and family.)
Let’s now discuss the four tactics Burkeman provides for working within the limitations of a finite existence:
Make and strongly commit to your life choices, insists Burkeman. As we just discussed, you’ll never be able to do everything you want in life, so it will make you happier to choose one option and do it well.
Burkeman elaborates that many people fear committing to choices because they think something better will come up if they keep their options open. However, this makes people unhappy because they constantly worry if there’s a superior alternative to what they’re doing, and it keeps them from experiencing the deeper joy of commitment.
For example, if you’re deciding between becoming a lawyer or a business owner, don’t spend years indecisively trying jobs in both fields or seeking jobs that give you the best of both worlds. Instead, commit to one career and dedicate yourself fully to being good at it. You’ll experience greater joy from being good at your work than from keeping your options open.
(Shortform note: In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert provides a scientific explanation of why you’re happier when you commit to a choice: You have a psychological happiness-protecting response. When something bad happens to you (a car accident, for instance), this response kicks in and allows you to feel happy—or at least less distressed—that it happened (you feel grateful that your kids weren’t in the car, for example). The same response kicks in when you make a firm commitment to a choice: Even if you’re not initially thrilled about that choice, the happiness-protecting response will allow you to become happy about it because you can no longer alter your circumstances.)
As another solution to making the most of your limited time on earth, Burkeman suggests you focus on the only period of time you can completely control: the present. As discussed in Part 2, the delusion of control over your time encourages you to sacrifice your present time in service of improving your future time use. But because you can’t control the future, instead spend more time thinking about how you can make the most of the present.
For instance, if you’re tempted to spend your free afternoon preparing your business’s marketing campaign for next month rather than enjoying the nice weather, consider that you can guarantee your happiness now by going outside, but you can’t guarantee that your marketing campaign will be successful next month: Perhaps your competitors will lower their prices, and you’ll have to change the campaign to include a deal. You might thus opt to go outside, rather than work.
Living in the Past, Present, and Future
Burkeman suggests that you should focus more on the present than the past or future because you can take action now to make the present better. However, others feel that you shouldn’t focus on existing merely in the present and instead balance living in the past, present, and future. In The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo argues that you should consciously apply a past-, present-, or future-oriented perspective depending on the situation you’re in.
For example, when planning a trip, you should likely apply a future-oriented perspective to create an effective itinerary. However, if spending time with family, it’s better to be past-oriented, as your shared experiences will help you appreciate them more, and present-oriented, to better enjoy the moment.)
To spend your limited time pursuing activities that matter to you, Burkeman advises intentionally incorporating purposeless time into your schedule. Purposeless time is time spent doing something you like to do for its own sake, which doesn’t promise a payoff. This could be a hobby or activity like reading or knitting.
(Shortform note: In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport provides a counterpoint to Burkeman’s claim that you should pursue leisure activities that don’t promise a payoff. He claims that when you use your leisure time doing demanding activities with set goals, you feel accomplished and proud when you meet the goal. Perhaps a blend of both demanding leisure activities (like fixing a bike) and fully purposeless activities (like reading) might provide the greatest happiness.)
Incorporating purposeless time into your life keeps you from thinking exclusively about the future in a way that erodes your ability to enjoy the present, elaborates Burkeman. You refrain from orienting all your present pursuits toward a future outcome and instead orient yourself toward deriving the most enjoyment from the present.
(Shortform note: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow might provide additional context for why purposeless time keeps you rooted mentally in the present: Purposeless activities promote a “flow state.” Flow states are characterized by total absorption in and extended concentration on a task. Csikszentmihalyi adds that you feel happy when in a flow state because you have greater control over your thoughts and feelings than when not in flow.)
Finally, refrain from trying to live your life in a grand, meaningful way because you will fail at this, asserts Burkeman. In the broader context of the universe, your life has very little significance, and you won’t be able to make long-lasting change. When you recognize this, you free yourself from the pressure of having to make a huge difference and can focus on making a difference in the smaller ways available to you, writes Burkeman. For example, you might simply visit your grandparents more frequently to bring them joy.
(Shortform note: The Tao Te Ching supplements Burkeman’s somewhat pessimistic assertion that you shouldn’t try to change the world with the advice to instead uncover what your specific function in the world is. It states that you don’t have the ability to improve the world because the world is in a state of sacred balance and order, referred to as the Tao. Any attempt to alter that order by “doing good” will fail. The best you can do is to understand what role the Tao needs you to play and then fulfill that role to the best of your abilities. This may involve simply performing small acts of generosity and kindness, as Burkeman recommends.)
Enhance your capacity for patience by working on a big project over many shorter periods of time.
Think of a large project you’re working on or want to start working on and describe it briefly. How long will this project take you? (For example, you want to complete an art project you’ve been working on, which you estimate will take you 20 hours.)
Now, using your weekly calendar or schedule, note down when you could dedicate a short, set amount of time toward the completion of the larger project each week or day. Once you’ve determined the commitment you can make, add that commitment to your calendar. (You might wish to work on the project for 30 minutes every evening, for instance.)
Finally, put in place a framework to ensure you work on the project at the scheduled times and that you don’t spend more time than allocated. How will you ensure you sit down to your task when it’s scheduled? How will you ensure you stop working, even if the work is engaging? Write down tactics you’ll try. (For instance, you might turn working on your project into an after-dinner habit and create a reward for yourself after your time is up so you’re incentivized to stop.)
Make time for purposeless activities like hobbies to keep you grounded in the present.
Make a list of hobbies or leisure activities you enjoy. These can range from small, daily activities (like doing a crossword puzzle) to more involved pursuits (like traveling). If your list is long, pick three to five activities you feel you can commit to pursuing now.
Now, look at your weekly or monthly schedule and note down when you can make time for these enjoyable activities. Be realistic and only commit as much time as you truly think you can afford. Then, block that time off in your calendar to ensure you don’t schedule anything else at those times (for example, block off 20 minutes in the mornings for the crossword puzzle and a long weekend for travel).
Finally, to prevent yourself from backing out of your leisure activity, write down a few ways you’ll guard against distraction and keep your commitment. (For instance, you might silence your phone while doing the crossword or ask your boss now for the day off you want for travel).