Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It

by Oliver Burkeman

This is the maddening truth about time, which most advice on managing it seems to miss. It’s like an obstreperous toddler: the more you struggle to control it, to make it conform to your agenda, the further it slips from your control. Consider all the technology intended to help us gain the upper hand over time: by any sane logic, in a world with dishwashers, microwaves and jet engines, time ought to feel more expansive and abundant, thanks to all the hours freed up. But this is nobody’s actual experience. Instead, life accelerates, and everyone grows more impatient. It’s somehow vastly more aggravating to wait two minutes for the microwave than two hours for the oven – or ten seconds for a slow-loading web page versus three days to receive the same information by post.