Someone who lives to age 80 gets far fewer—close to the number in the title of Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.
“The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short,” he writes.
Pinsker: If we accept that there is always going to be too much to do, then what?
Burkeman: I think it’s about acknowledging that we are finite, limited creatures living in a world of constraints and stubborn reality. Once you’re no longer kidding yourself that one day you’re going to become capable of doing everything that’s thrown at you, you get to make better decisions about which things you are going to focus on and which you’re going to neglect.
Pinsker: If time management isn’t for doing more things, what is it for?
Burkeman: First, a little caveat. I don’t think that getting more efficient at things is wrong—if you can clean your kitchen or pay your bills more quickly, then great. But you can have efficiency in the absence of a deeper understanding of what it’s all for, which, ultimately, is to spend more of your limited time on things that matter deeply to you and less on things that don’t. A life spent chasing the mythical state of being able to do everything is less meaningful than a life of focusing on a few things that count.
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