When you were at the guardian, youd spent a lot of time talking about productivity writi thisis a sort of interest of yours. I how long before you started writing about these kinds of topics. Was it right away, or was there a break between? No, i went into journalism pretty immediately,. But no, it was another six, seven, eight years until i was writing much er about them.
“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.