The Best Time Management Hack of All Is to Stop Hacking and Start Living

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Time in the modern world feels like an unstoppable conveyabelt, bringing us new tasks as soon as we can dis the old ones. What if you stop treating your morning run as another joyless entry in your never ending self improvement plan and instead think of it as a pleasant jog around the park? Oliver's thesis is that thefinitude of our time on earth forces us to embrace our limitations and make meaning where we can. Stop chasing pointless productivity and start focusing on what really matters,. Maybe then when we reach the end of the line, we can look back on our four thousand weeks and know they were well spent.

“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.