Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Historians call this way of living “task orientation,” because the rhythms of life emerge organically from the tasks themselves, rather than from being lined up against an abstract timeline, the approach that has become second nature for us today.

The real problem isn’t our limited time. The real problem—or so I hope to convince you—is that we’ve unwittingly inherited, and feel pressured to live by, a troublesome set of ideas about how to use our limited time, all of which are pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.

And then fourthly, and the most important of all, is the issue of meaning. If what you’re doing is truly meaningful for you, it will carry you through difficult times. It will help you, support you, sustain you, guide you. And if what you’re doing is not meaningful, you can’t force it, over time, without something awful happening.

Well, yes, first of all, the whole self-help industry out there is fueled by giving people tips, but if they worked, we would know it by now. The real issue is people don’t ask large questions. If you don’t ask large questions, you’re going to have a small life. I don’t say it judgmentally. I say it with sympathy. Large questions bring you a larger

That’s right. I’m going to say something outrageous here, but happiness is overrated. It’s not like it’s a steady state. If you’re thirsty, happiness is a glass of cold water, for example. But too much of it, you drown. So it’s very contextual and it’s short-lived and happiness is the by-product of being in the right relationship with your own soul

That’s an invitation to be thoughtful: What are your choices and in service to what?

Life happens and you’re going to have to deal with it as it comes to you. And a person who has avoided that is not going to be particularly prepared for reality when it does appear.

There’s hard work—and you don’t always get rewarded for hard work.

I think it was Lewis Carroll who wrote, “We are but older children, dear, / Who fret to find our bedtime near.”