Four Thousand Weeks

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By Oliver Burkeman, 2024

In Four Thousand Weeks, Burkeman writes about how the average lifespan is 4000 weeks, and in knowing that we should consider what this finite time is worth spending on. I expected plentiful research on happiness and thought experiments to make our unconscious values conscious.

This proved too optimistic. Burkeman seemed only to repeat the premise by presenting other authors who agree but without adding any depth to his argument. In my view more people saying ‘considerate it’ doesn’t offer a why, nor how to implement change.

I decided Four Thousand Weeks was not worth spending my finite time on. I only made it to page 80.

I do agree the premise is fantastic and just having this thought provoker on my shelf gave me incentive to work towards a more ambitious life. For this reason I still give it 2 1/2 stars. Also, it is good light reading if you haven’t read about this topic in self development books.

It does better than most in its genre to site female work. At a guess, women to men citations are about 1:5 as opposed to 1:10. I appreciate the efforts to close this gap since women bring a tangibly different experience. Why not cover all perspectives?

More useful information on life’s brevity could be gained through reading books such as Pig Wrestling that was reviewed last month,

Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, by listening to the Minimalist Podcast or some Buddhist mindfulness information.

I think I would have devoured this book if the repetition was edited out and there was deeper arguments.

Sorry, Burkeman… Great concept, disappointing execution.