I have compiled a list of quotes from the book “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman so that you can quickly get a glimpse of what it’s about before you decide to read it. If you want to read my full review of the book, check out this post. I explain what I think the author got right, where he is irredeemably wrong and what the most useful takeaways are.

About the main problem of human existence:

“Expressing the matter, in such startling terms, makes it easy to see why philosophers from ancient Greece to the present have taken the brevity of life to be the defining problem of human existence. We’ve been granted the mental capacity to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, but practically no time at all to put them into action.” – Oliver Burkeman

On the real purpose of productivity:

“It follows from this that time management broadly defined should be everyone’s chief concern. Arguably time management is all life is, yet the modern discipline known as time management - like its hipper cousin, productivity - is a depressingly, narrow minded affair focused on how to crank through as many work tasks as possible, or on devising the perfect morning routine, or in cooking all your dinners for the week in one big batch on Sundays. These things matter to some extent, no doubt, but they’re hardly all that matters. The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru, who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing, might be to experience more of that wonder.” – Oliver Burkeman

On why our perspective of time is flawed:

“When time is a resource to be used, you start to feel pressure whether from external forces or from yourself, to use it well, and to berate yourself when you feel you’ve wasted it. When you're faced with too many demands, it’s easy to assume that the only answer must be to make better use of time by becoming more efficient, driving yourself harder or working for longer - as if you were a machine in the Industrial Revolution - instead of asking whether the demands themselves might be unreasonable.” – Oliver Burkeman

On the sad lives of productivity geeks:

“You know how some people are passionate about bodybuilding or fashion or rock climbing or poetry? Productivity geeks are passionate about crossing items off their to-do list so it’s sort of the same except infinitely sadder.“ – Oliver Burkeman

On why we avoid thinking of our finitude:

“Our troubled relationship with time arises largely from the same effort, to avoid the painful constraints of reality. And most of our strategies for becoming more productive make things worse because they’re really just ways of furthering the avoidance. After all, it’s painful to confront how limited your time is because it means that though choices are inevitable, and that you won’t have time for all you once dreamed you might do.” – Oliver Burkeman

On the best time management technique there is:

“I am aware of no other time management technique that’s half as effective as just facing the way things truly are.” – Oliver Burkeman

On the meaning of how we spend our time:

“In other words, it’s precisely the fact that I could have chosen a different, and perhaps equally valuable way to spend this afternoon that bestowed meaning on the choice I did make. And the same applies, of course, to an entire lifetime.” – Oliver Burkeman

On assessing the merits of time management techniques:

“The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.” – Oliver Burkeman

On why we despise boredom…

“This is why boredom can feel so surprisingly, aggressively unpleasant: we tend to think of it nearly as a matter of not being particularly interested in whatever it is we’re doing, but in fact, it’s an intense reaction to the deeply uncomfortable experience of confronting your limited control.” – Oliver Burkeman

… And why we seek to escape it with distraction:

“It’s true that killing time on the Internet often doesn’t feel especially fun these days. But it doesn’t need to feel fun in order to dull the pain of finitude. It just needs to make you feel unconstrained.” – Oliver Burkeman