My tongue-in-cheek one-liner for this book is the anti-productivity anti-self-help productivity self-help book I didn’t know I needed. Oliver Burkeman combines ancient ideas with relatable, 21st-century-specific anxiety-ridden anecdotes into a lucid meditation on our difficult yet truly inescapable relationship with time. He does it in a way that is useful and accessible but well-researched and honest.
Burkeman argues that cultural obsession with mastery over time — “time sovereignty” — is neither possible nor desirable. Citing the example of the This is only painful until we recognize that it couldn’t be any other way.
Reading, listening to, and re-reading this book has made me happier and my life better. I’ve often returned to it when my anxieties, often time-related, begin to weigh on my chest.
The prose is straightforward in a sobering but in an entertaining way. Burkeman doesn’t shy away from sharing his changing relationship with time: from a recovering productivity nerd to a new father. All of us in this particular moment shares his struggles with times, where time is conceptualized separately from ourselves. Time is reduced to an instrument to be used “well.” Burkman has convinced me that the stakes of his project are quite literally life and death.
Below you will find notes on chapters that I’ve returned to and felt compelled to write about.
Being & Time:
The Efficiency Trap:
- The more (unquestioningly) efficient you become, the more likely you are to take on the tasks that others ask of you to make their lives easier rather than enrich your life.
- WHY?
- Because the optimal time management strategy promises that you will take on more of these commitments.
- It’s a delusional escape from the constraints of your time and energy.
- We much rather think this than confront the harsh, indifferent truth of our limited existence.
“The more wonderful experiences you succeed in having, the more additional experiences you feel like you could have or ought to have on top of all the experiences you already have.”