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In response to left_adjoint's review of Burkeman's 4000 weeks.
After reading left_adjoint's review I decided to pick up the book.
left_adjoint wrote:
This is a book that's about accepting our finiteness, our limitations, the fact that we can't do everything we want to do. It's also about how capitalism makes us feel like we can't have leisure, like we can't just let ourselves exist quietly doing something that doesn't have a point. One of the things he talks about is that we don't get to have "atelic" activities, that is things that don't have an end goal: in short, hobbies.
Overall I enjoyed adjoint's take. 4000 weeks is about our finitude. Our limitations. The realization that the shortness of life is the substance of life. How our death instills life with meaning. For, if you're immortal, there's always tomorrow.
Yes, finitude implies we can't do everything we want. To amplify adjoint's point, everyone misses out on 99.9999...% of all experiences life has to offer. From this perspective, FOMO loses its chic. The book offers an alternative ancronym: JOMO. Joy of missing out (Bob Ross would probably approve). The realization that our life is miraculous and that meaning is exactly as you decide it. What we choose to do is inherently meaningful. Painting is meaningful. Play is meaningful. This finitude gives time meaning -- and as Burkeman mentions, 'we are time'.
My take on the theme of the book is presence and how we collectively focus too much on the ends. How the side-effects of vizualizating money as a goal warps our perceptions of time. How that makes us believe we are in control of time. In believing we can optimize our time. But becoming more efficient allows other problems to assume your time, Burkeman mentions. So there isn't more time once everything is moving quickly, there's just more problems. Focusing too sharply on the end, be it money or goals, can lead to suffering. Developing a taste for problems on the other hand is reward in and of itself.
I don't agree with everything in it. I think in the chapter The Watermelon Problem he downplays too much the importance of habits in how we spend our attention. It's true, as he says, that just cutting yourself off from social media or the like will only go so far if you can't train yourself to sit with the discomfort that comes from being undistracted and in-the-moment but I think our habits are still an important part of who we are and how we function. We tend to move along well-worn paths and fixing those paths to be inline with our values is, I think, a big part of the overall solution.
Agreed and IMO Habits are not an end. They form, like all our distortions and biases, the self. Building a habit allows distance from a repetitive task. That's why pilots have takeoff checklists strapped to their knees. Ironically, habits lead to a loss in presence while making room for observation. Like thinking about the neighbor's energetic miniature poodle chihuahua mix that routinely makes deposits in your yard while also driving in rush hour traffic. You wouldn't be so worried about poopers if you're also trying to concentrate on learning how to drive.
Having read Burkeman's previous book I was expecting the term 'memento mori' to appear. Surprisingly, it never did. Memento Mori, from Burkeman's last book, reminds us not to forget about the life-enhancing benefits of remembering death. The ultimate end. And in the end maybe we are special because of our mortality. We are moments in time.