Thoughts on Four Thousand Weeks - Time Management for Mortals

Earlier this year around April, I read the book The Bullet Journal Method, which got me started on maintaining a bullet journal everyday.

It’s August now, and I’m still keeping with my bullet journal. As a person with Too Many Projects, it’s absolutely astonishing that I would still be doing it. It really is that life changing!

So I was very excited to pick up 4000 weeks, eager to learn other life organization techniques that would make me more productive, work on more things that I want in my life.

Even though it has “time management” spelled out in its title, this book is positively not about time management techniques.

Instead, it’s explaining to us how it’s impossible to even manage this thing called “time,” and that we need to rethink what we consider a life well-lived.

What I think is super important to pursue may not be all that important afterall

There are a few projects in my life right now which I think are all life-defining, including the F project (that shall not be named! 😂), my entrepreneurial idea (that has reincarnated many times), and my money job, and oh my dream to open an interdisciplinary arts center.

Thinking of them as actually not all that important actually has taken off a lot of fear and make them more approachable as just something fun that I can keep experimenting with.

In the long run, we’re all dead

That’s the title of the first chapter of this book, and I think it’s a very powerful one.

Yes, I’ll be dead one day, and so will all my family and friends, and everyone I know and don’t know.

So as long as I’m not hurting anybody, why not do something I really want to do in this finite life of mine?

Work on small things

Thinking that I’m insignificant, and that my projects are insignificant, and I’m free to make any small insignificant progress to them is actually relieving.

Look, this blog post is not a masterpiece and it doesn’t need to be. I wrote it, that’s all that matters.

Instead of a productivity book, I consider this book more of a philosophy book.

I hope I can fill my life with small moments that I really enjoy and that I’d feel good about on my death bed.