The average human lifespan is brief: Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks. Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we've come to think about time aren't inescapable truths, but choices we've made—and that we could do things differently.
This book is wonderful. Instead of offering new tips on how to cram more into your day, it questions why we feel the need to ... Acting as a warm, funny, if slightly anxious and repetitive narrator, [Burkeman] quotes philosophers, psychologists and spiritual teachers on this issue of how to spend our lives ... My favorite kind of book is this one — a book that doesn’t offer magic solutions to life because there aren’t any. Instead, it examines the human struggle with intelligence, wisdom, humor and humility ... Reading this book was time well spent.
[A] new work of almost meta self-help ... In the end, some of Burkeman’s advice...seems disappointingly traditional, given how good he is at puncturing his genre’s pieties ... But part of the pleasure of reading Burkeman is that you assume he would happily point out these same reversals and contradictions. His tone is not confident or hectoring; he’s in the same leaky boat we’re in, just trying to stop things up where he can ... Four Thousand Weeks is also just good company; it addresses large, even existential, issues with a sense of humor and an even-keeled perspective. I found that reading it — Burkeman might balk at this particular way of describing it — was a good use of my time.
[A] provocative and appealing book ... Mr. Burkeman’s diagnosis of the problem is more compelling than his proffered solution ... Mr. Burkeman could have streamlined his advice on how to make our lives count ... Still, Mr. Burkeman is funny and engaging, and Four Thousand Weeks is an enjoyable, insightful, and occasionally profound book, one well worth your extremely limited time.
