Are You Helping?

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"I remember being told at a very early age by a sort of, my somewhat hippyish and very sort of er well intentioned parents, that i only needed to do my best in school," he says. "It's quite unusual to have that kind of, that feeling that even as a child, you had this obligation to be a kind of effective steward of your energies", writes the writer. The author is fascinated to hear about anybody who grows up without that sense of control over time.

“The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short.” So begins Oliver Burkeman’s new book, “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.” Make it to 80, and you’ll get about 4,000 weeks. And so, as the poet asked, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” For most of us, the answer is obvious: Get busy. Why squander what little time we have? But in this conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Malcolm Gladwell, Oliver proposes an alternative. If you want to make the most of your time, he says, you have to stop chasing pointless productivity and embrace life’s finitude.