How to make time for what counts
Number One: accept your inevitable limitations.
Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman’s follow up to 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, is every bit as brilliant as its predecessor. If you’re not familiar with 4000 Weeks, it entreated us to abandon our to-do lists, overfilled inboxes and time management hacks because the fact of the matter is, as beings with a finite amount of time on this earth (approximately the 4000 weeks of the title), we will never get everything done. So don’t die trying.
Meditations for Mortals picks up on the theme and proffers 28 different approaches for thus prioritising what actually matters.
Because, once we’ve made peace with the fact that we will never perfectly ‘sort our life out’, Oliver predicts it’s amazing how productive we can become! As he puts it, “It’s about what changes once you grasp that life as a limited human being in an era of infinite tasks and opportunities, facing an unknowable future, alongside other humans who stubbornly insist on having their own personalities — isn’t a problem you’ve got to try to solve.”
Oliver suggests you read one chapter of his book a day, for 28 days, like a 4-week ‘guide’, The intent being to allow each idea to percolate in your head so you can decide which might work for you. However, I found his writing so compelling I read the whole lot in two very enjoyable sittings. Then I read it through all again in order to share 14 top line morsels from some of the chapters, that I fully intend to (try) to imbibe myself…
Key is that this is not yet another productivity tips book. 4000 Weeks debunked the very notion of these. Rather, this book reminds us that we can’t hoard life to enjoy ‘later’ when we’ve got it all sorted out.
So let’s dive in…