For the writer Oliver Burkeman, our orientation toward time is flawed. Despite the fact that most people live for only 4,000 weeks, many people regiment their hours, strategize their days, and predict and direct the course of their lives with little thought for their true end. Though it seems that this effortful planning is necessary, it actually catches people in a losing battle. Burkeman exposes this myth in his work Four Thousand Weeks—a provocative, surprisingly uplifting meditation on the nature of time and humanity, and how the two might learn to get along.

As German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote over a century ago, “One thinks with a watch in one’s hand.” To modern people, the presence of the clock often feels inescapable. According to historians, though, time wasn’t always in charge. In medieval life, for instance, people completed their daily chores according to a method called “task orientation,” tending to their animals and land peacefully and taking all the time they needed to do so. Interestingly, in place of today’s typical method of dividing time into minutes or hours, medieval people often compared the time a task took to the amount of time required to read a specific excerpt from the Bible. Much of medieval life may have been physically grueling, but the frantic hustle of our contemporary situation simply didn’t exist. It was an age of bare, simple existence, without a checklist or an agenda in sight.

This way of life couldn’t last forever, though. According to historians, when it came to running medieval monasteries, monks needed something tangible to help them coordinate their daily schedules. As a result, they contrived an early version of the clock to guide their hours. This development and the various changes that came after, such as the evolution of the working day during the Industrial Revolution, were hugely influential. As Burkeman writes, such changes helped fuel the contemporary notion of time as a “resource,” rather than a simple component of one’s experience that used to be as natural and unregimented as a tree or the wind. From here, people started to look at time anew—it became a tool that helped them get things done and a way to measure their value as human beings.

Unfortunately, the negative consequences of this innovation are clear throughout modern life. It’s nearly impossible now for people to simply enjoy the events of a day without growing anxious about what’s next or stewing over the past. Driven by the desire to stuff every second with something “important,” they see every moment as nothing more than a vessel to get something else done. When they fail to reach the goals they heap on themselves every morning, they inevitably feel worried, worthless, and sometimes, less human, too.

The clock is like a double-edged sword. With a close awareness of time, people are able to tackle their many tasks, ensuring they aren’t late to sign their kids out of camp or submit an assignment for work. But, when they trip up, they’re crushed. After all, being the last parent in carline, finishing an important project a week late, or simply not living up to everything you set out to accomplish is never a great feeling. And yet, so many of us experience mental setbacks like these every single day—just like clockwork.

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Many people don’t realize that the habits that often seem so helpful in organizing their days can be pretty harmful, too. Segmenting the day into carefully organized time intervals or getting a head start on assignments at school or work are perfectly fine strategies in themselves. But, when people place too much faith in these plans, they invite inevitable disappointment. Failing to check off all (or any) of those items on your agenda is a deeply troubling experience and a reminder of your finite nature, or “finitude.” It’s also unavoidable. Despite this, many people think if they finish just one more task, finally clean out that closet, or at last visit that country they’ve been dying to see, they won’t feel behind anymore. Sadly, this isn’t true. Burkeman calls this the “efficiency trap,” a cycle in which people think their list of responsibilities will vanish if they just keep chipping away. As they quickly discover, though, crossing one item off only makes way for yet another.

This trend might seem backwards, but it pervades every part of life. In 1955, C. Northcote Parkinson even put a name on it, dubbing it “Parkinson’s Law.” Take, for instance, a day on which you only have a handful of things to do—get groceries for the week, send a few emails, and perhaps even clean the kitchen. You may, in fact, do all of these things, but you probably won’t find yourself restfully lounging on your couch when it’s all said and done. After all, there’s also the pantry you should probably empty out and that restaurant you really should try some day. Similarly, it doesn’t matter how much or how little people may have on their plates, they inevitably experience what Burkeman calls “existential overwhelm.” This kind of time-induced anxiety extends into all parts of life as people bound from one assignment to the next, one concert to another, and one short-lived hobby to yet one more trending fad. In other words, the “fear of missing out,” (which you may know as “FOMO”) infiltrates everything.

Though this feeling is inescapable, it can be managed with counterintuitive thinking. Contrary to what libraries full of “time management” guides teach their desperate readers, people don’t have to fulfill every expectation they devise for themselves. Rather, by realizing at the start that they’re going to be unsuccessful, they can begin to free themselves from the worry of not finishing and avoid the “efficiency trap.” 

As people develop a more realistic perspective, they become much better at discerning which obligations deserve the best of their dwindling time. For instance, it can be tempting to start the day by taking on smaller, more insignificant tasks first. After all, those obligations are the easiest to cross off and help people feel like they at least did something worthwhile. When people see their responsibilities are endless, though, they can refrain from, as Burkeman puts it, “clearing the decks.” Instead, they can shoot to take on their most crucial and challenging obligations. In this way, Burkeman’s revelation isn’t unsettling but illuminating, and may even help people truly enjoy their lives.

Deep down, most people know the plans they devise for themselves are way too ambitious. And yet, they continue to work toward those goals anyway, tricked by the “efficiency trap” and the misguided belief that their efforts will eventually prove worthwhile. Burkeman’s work asks and answers the obvious question: Why do people persist in their efforts even when they know they’re headed nowhere? Drawing on the difficult writings of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and others, Burkeman argues that modern people’s furious planning, organizing, and fretting exists to ignore their ultimate finitude. Their lives might feel hectic as they race after countless goals, visions, and desires, but the frenzy silences their fear. It allows them to feel like they have more control than they really do. After all, in the midst of such chaos, there’s no time to ponder who they truly are as human beings.

That’s why it’s so challenging to quit pursuing every new activity or opportunity. Choosing to instead devote one’s time to fewer but more personally significant endeavors requires that one “decide” on a particular way of life. Interestingly, this word is drawn from the Latin “decidere,” which allows for the translation, “to cut off,” emphasizing the crucial nature of the act. When people choose to seek one activity or way of life over another—for instance, paying more attention to family rather than a career—they inevitably acknowledge their “finitude” and their capacity as human beings. This is frightening. But, according to the philosopher Martin Hägglund, this is also a wonderful position to be in—scarcity of time compels people to make choices, and these ultimately fill their lives with meaning.

Recognizing the delicate nature of human life can be an incredibly powerful experience. It even provokes what the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr calls “bright sadness.” Tragedies such as failing health or other massive life upheavals are always painful, but they compel people to confront their experiences in new ways. For instance, after experiencing the loss of a close and beloved friend, the environmentalist Geoff Lye found much of his behavior changed. Petty situations that typically bothered him before were of little consequence. Understanding how quickly his friend David Watson passed from him, he viewed the events of his own life with more care and less control, often asking himself, “What would David have given to be caught in this traffic jam?”

Extending the same kind of thinking to schedules, planning, and one’s daily habits is the most enriching way to see past the unhelpful feelings that come with falling short. With that in mind, people can decide which activities or tasks they wish to pursue and learn to relish every bit of life, no matter how fleeting it is.

This might come as a surprise, but men and women receive a respective five and four hours of free time every day. Oddly, for most people, it doesn’t seem like they have any downtime at all. The reason for this can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution, wherein the concept of “leisure” underwent a massive transformation.

The ancient Greeks and medieval Englanders who came before prized their personal time even more dearly than their work. The Greek philosopher Aristotle revered leisure (in the form of thinking) as the greatest possible human pursuit, while the medievals held frequent festivities, worked far less than we do now, and took long breaks throughout their days.Those who lived during the Industrial Revolution, on the other hand, experienced a different reality. With new hourly work schedules, people watched the importance of their working day and their downtime reverse—a factory worker’s time off on the weekends helped him or her contribute more efficiently during the week. The time was no longer for the factory worker’s own joy, amusement, or wellbeing, but for the success of the factory. This perspective diverges from centuries of thinking that came before and grounds the way contemporary culture perceives downtime today.

Overachievers and workaholics are probably familiar with an experience known in social psychology as “idleness aversion.” People who struggle with this are unable to lay aside their plans to take a moment to stop, breathe, or simply enjoy a funny movie. Their work dominates their minds and dictates their actions. Though this experience varies in extremity, it’s increasingly common in contemporary culture. Take the writer Danielle Steel, for instance, who often writes for 20 hours a day. This schedule has helped her finish 179 books and counting. In an article featured in Glamour, Steel acknowledged that her strenuous schedule is simply a coping mechanism to comfort her amid the difficulties of her life. The particular reasons people refuse rest may be wide-ranging, but they’re motivated by the same mentality and are similarly damaging.

To counteract this mindset, Burkeman encourages people to add what the philosopher and writer Kieran Setiya terms “atelic activity” into their days. For these activities, pointlessness is the point. Whether it’s through painting landscapes of the ocean, watching a beloved film, or like the music icon Rod Stewart does, creating miniature versions of trains and cities, fruitless leisure is rewarding in its own right. Contrary to the way leisure was perceived during the Industrial Revolution and how it’s often looked at today, these activities don’t exist to contribute to something else. Rather, when people find something they love doing, no matter what that is or how poorly they perform at it, the activity ignites joy within them. And with that, they have more than they need to go on.

Many time management manuals fail to include a key ingredient in their recipes for efficiency: people. Though planners are often encouraged to be as self-sufficient as possible—creating their schedules according to their own agendas and desires—forgetting to take people into account is never beneficial. In fact, planners who do this might organize their time successfully, but they inevitably miss out on one of the most rewarding parts of life itself: friendship and the company of others. Similarly, the path of what Burkeman calls the “digital nomad” seems idyllic, taking work abroad and experiencing new cultures daily, but this way of life isn’t all that it seems. After all, a lifetime of constantly relocating is solitary. These nomads may call the shots when it comes to what they do, when they work, and where they go, but their seemingly self-sufficient schedules don’t leave room for other people or the happiness that comes with simply being in their presence.

Research out of Sweden extends this truth even further, providing evidence for the claim that people don’t want as much agency over their time as they think. According to the 2013 study by Terry Hartig, a professor of environmental psychology at Uppsala University, people desire “the social regulation of time” often found within communal events they’re expected to take part in. By studying when people in Sweden went on vacation and how often they required antidepressants, Hartig discovered that antidepressant usage was lowest when more people were vacationing. Not only do people enjoy being with other people, but according to this study, they also like to know that others are enjoying themselves, too. Interestingly, Hartig and other researchers discovered the trend persisted even among those who were retired or unemployed. Communal activities, whether the Sabbath of Jewish and Christian traditions or the “grandes vacances” of France, are essential. Taking a break with other people and making room for them even in the most pressed-for-time schedule is as crucial as clearing time for leisure.

Whether it’s allowing your agenda to go unfinished, intentionally incorporating rest time into your day, or leaving a bit of space open for loved ones and strangers to fill your life, the underlying “time management” move Burkeman encourages you to adopt is simple: Throw your worry out the window. Even when your day defies your hopes (and your seemingly perfect schedule), and life itself seems to pale in comparison to what you envisioned, don’t fret that something’s gone wrong. Relish your time-bound days. They may often seem demanding, elusive, or altogether frustrating, but they create the reality in which you live.

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