Time spent with my nephews painting pottery :) In four thousand weeks, I am reminded to make the most of my days. That you just never know what you can get accomplished and putting it off till later may never come. I see this book as a call to action. I understand his tips to slow down, and we truly never have the time we think we do. This book makes me want to spend more time with my nephews who are nine-year-old twins or make time to stop by a friend’s house or finish a project.
We never really have time was a point he made in the book; therefore, we cannot control time. We should choose to enjoy the time we have now. I do find this daunting due to being exhausted some days and not wanting to do anything after work. It feels hard to make the most of your days every day, that is a lot of pressure we put on ourselves for no reason. Which becomes a source of anxiety that we feel, from our vantage point here in the present moment, to be able to know that those efforts will prove successful, as stated in the book.
We must realize that we can’t know that things will turn out all right. We can plan and try to get this to work out for us but must be able to pivot in the face of adversity. Overcoming the obstacle is something you remember verses always taking the easy road. You can take school for example, if you were just handed the grade, would it be worth as much? It is a sense of pride that comes with knowing you made it out the other side. No short cuts, no easy ways, just pure grit to get to the other side by going through the obstacle. The fact that no one can take that sense of accomplishment away from you makes all the late nights or missed events worth it.
You may have some of the best years of your life in college and all those chance encounters would have been missed by not showing up to class. Burkemen talking about these chance moments where you met a new best friend or found the person you would marry years later all because of that flat tire you had or the battery that wouldn’t start. Sometimes those chance inconveniences become blessings.
Other nuggets of wisdom….
• While suggesting that planning is not the problem. It is thought because we plan, that it will be so.
• The real problem isn’t planning according to Burkeman, it’s that we take our plans to be something they aren’t
• “A plan is just a thought” Joesph Goldstein
• We think that because we plan, we can somehow control our future. But the book mentions that all a plan is – is a present moment statement of intent.
Treating time as if we own it or can control it- only makes us try use it well to the point we feel as though we are trying to get through each day to something better in the future. We can miss the present moments for believing there will be something better ahead.
The Causal Catastrophe in the book mentions-
The Idea that there is a right way or wrong way to raise a child and the proof would be in the adult’s success. This can go either way and you can miss the moments in between while being so laser focused on your child turning out successful wishing their life away.
The Last Time……
§ That at any moment, it could be that last time you do something such as going to the movies, spending time with a loved one, or picking up your child from school. He states, that thanks to our finitude, inevitably our lives are full of activities we are doing for the last time.
The book talks about being so future minded only robbed him of enjoying the present moment with his newborn son. His son is only less than a year old once, he reminded himself. The main purpose of a child, is to be a child, mentioned by Alexander Herzen.
Absent in the Present
Burkeman mentions that being future focused has us so fixated on trying to make the best use of our time- of an enriching experience of life right now- that we obscure the experience such as seeing monumental things on vacation, that we can miss the experience all together.
Be here now….. Living more fruitfully in the moment starts with noticing that you are, in fact, already living in the moment….
Rediscovering Rest
This chapter discusses how we now take vacation to rest and get ready for work again when it was the opposite before. Working was the means to the end as; we would work to be able to go on vacation.
Enjoying leisure for its own sake instead of being assumed that a well-rested employee will be more productive upon their return to work. Leisure has now become another task to check off the to-do list.
Business in Latin is negotium, which translate to “not-leisure”
§ We have become more profit driven and if our time is not making money or seen as being used productively, then it is seen as being wasted time.
§ That society has told us how and when we should use our time. Different religious communities understood the importance of rest. He mentions the “Shabbat elevator”: that has been programmed to stop at every floor from Friday evening to Saturday night, because they would violate the rules of the Shabbat by operating electrical switches.
§ The industrialization era created more of the employees being seen as a commodity and the time spent off the clock was not your own. It was inferred that you should spend the time off not to the detriment of the company, but to maintain oneself as to be useful when returning to work. Drinking too much gin and coming to work hungover was seen as not part of the deal with the company because it effected your usefulness at the job.
§ Labor unions campaigned for more time off, securing the eight-hour workday and two-day weekend. They argued that workers would use the additional time to improve themselves, through education and cultural pursuits, for more than just relaxing.
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