because in reality, your time is finite
and other thoughts to ponder as we end one year and start a new one.
I have waxed poetic about the book Four Thousand Weeks from author Oliver Burkeman more times than I can count. I fundamentally believe that everyone needs to read his book, it is absolutely a revelation. The term "four thousand weeks" refers to roughly how much time you have here on earth if you lived to about aged eighty. If you are aged 21, you might think "wow, I have a crazy amount of time left!" As one gets older, well, it's not such a crazy number after all!
I know that not everyone has read his book (psssst! Now's your time to find your local library and check the book out!) But I thought I would share some absolute gems that he wrote because I felt that it would be helpful for everyone that is still in that liminal phase of analyzing 2023, but not quite finalizing their goals for 2024.
I hear you and I am with you. I haven't finalized anything for the new year either. I haven't even finished my Christmas shopping yet, truth be told. But ideas are floating around my brain, some leaving lasting impressions, others drifting in and floating away, never to be heard from again. Nothing has crystalized yet and that is okay. One still has time.
But I thought I would share some fantastic quotes from his book to help you make sense of your end-of-the-year ruminating and your impending plans, goals, and ideas for 2024. I hope they are a guiding light and a source of encouragement for you!
A decision to do any given thing will automatically mean sacrificing an infinite number of potential alternative paths.
Because in reality, your time is finite, doing anything requires sacrifice - the sacrifice of all the other things you could have been doing with that stretch of time.
The point isn't to eradicate procrastination, but to choose more wisely what you're going to procrastinate on, in order to focus on what matters most. The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.
Rather than taking ownership of our lives, we seek out distractions, or lose ourselves in busyness and the daily grind, so as to forget our real predicament.
A plan is just a thought. All a plan is, is a present-moment statement of intent. The future of course, is under no obligation to comply.
Ask of every significant decision in life: "Does this choice diminish me or enlarge me?" The question circumvents the urge to make decisions in the service of alleviating your anxiety and instead helps you make contact with your deeper intentions for your time.
Pay more attention to every moment, however mundane: to find novelty not by doing radically different things but by plunging more deeply into the life you already have.
For those of you wanting to make 2024 the year you limit your time on social media, these ones are especially for you:
It's not simply that our devices distract us from more important matters. It's that they change how we're defining important matters in the first place.
Social media is a giant machine for getting you to spend your time caring about the wrong things, but for the same reason, it is also a machine for getting you to care about too many things, even if they are disputably worthwhile.
One last absolutely brilliant gem:
Once you no longer feel the stifling pressure to become a particular kind of person, you can confront the personality, the strengths and weaknesses, the talents and enthusiasms you find yourself with, here and now, and follow where they lead.
Four thousand weeks is a big number.
What do you plan to do with yours?
Other posts you might enjoy:
comforting books for the new year
If you are anything like me, the short days of winter when your body is naturally craving comfort, are the perfect time to make copious amounts of tea and settle in on the sofa with a good book or two. If you are not quite ready to fully embrace the turn of a calendar year yet but want to do some self-reflecting along with some really great authors, I h…
simple living and slow living books that i reread every year
Hello, I am Mackenzie, and I write The Lovely Road which is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I am a huge bookworm. Big. Giant. Ever since I can remember, I have had my nose in a book. I was that girl reading on the school bus on the way home. I am that woman, waiting in…
I loved this book too Mackenzie and I now want to read it again after reading this! I would also advocate for everyone to read it, it definitely changed my perspective on a lot of things 💜
I loved this book, too. You're right that everyone should read it. I loved his point at the beginning that it would be helpful if we shifted our focus from how finite our time is to how amazing it is that we're here at all in the first place. Amazing that the universe exists. Amazing that life formed on this planet, including humans with our irritatingly conscious brains. Amazing that you were born and survived long enough to pick up a book about time. It's all amazing which maybe makes it easier to accept that it's also finite.