Escaping the Productivity Trap: Experiments with Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks — guest post by David Kowalsky
- Sliding into productivity and Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks
- Applying Four Thousand Weeks
- Conclusion
- About David Kowalsky
Sliding into productivity and Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks
In the last year-and-a-half, I started noticing what seems like an increase in talk about productivity and the closely related topic of time management. I remember in January 2024 reading an ad online for a new AI product:
You know that bottomless list you make every day full of frustrating, repetitive tasks? What if you could clear it and get work done faster? It’s possible, with IBM watsonx Orchestrate™, featuring generative AI and automation technology designed to free you up to pursue more on your “want-to-do” list. (link)
Some more examples: at the library, one of the books on the Seattle Public Library’s Peak Picks shelves caught my eye: Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout (Portfolio) by Cal Newport. The Hard Fork podcast I regularly listen to had a segment on “The Productivity Tools We’re Using.” When the Apple Viso Pro was released, I read an early user review that used a catchy headline: “Apple Vision Pro is the Future of Productivity.”
I decided to create a list to track every time I heard something about productivity or time management. One book I read, which is actually not so new (it was published in 2021) was Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Oliver Burkeman. I really liked the book, so I decided to not keep reading everything on my list and instead focus right away on applying what I learned from it. Before getting to that, I’ll talk about the book.
The title (Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals) refers to the average human lifespan, which is roughly 4,000 weeks. This assumes a life expectancy of around 80 years. (If you are lucky enough to live to 90, you’ll have 4,700 weeks). Burkeman explains in the introduction:
So this book is an attempt to help redress the balance–to see if we can’t discover, or recover some ways of thinking about time that do justice to our real situation: to the outrageous brevity and shimmering possibilities of our four thousand weeks.
Two concepts covered in the book include the efficiency trap and “when I finally.” Starting first with the efficiency trap: this is about striving to be more efficient. You can work on being more efficient by doing things like implementing productivity techniques or by driving yourself harder. The end goal is to eventually reach a point where you can relax or take control of your time. But any increase in efficiency often only means you get faster at doing things while there is still no end to the inflow of new tasks and responsibilities.
The classic example is email. Even if you get caught up in answering all your email and have an empty email inbox, the mail will keep coming. And you may even get more email than if you ignored messages because it may start an influx of email responses to all the messages you sent. Burkeman asks readers to accept the limitations of time and focus on what truly matters, instead of chasing the illusion of total control through efficiency.
The other concept, “when I finally,” refers to being able to relax and enjoy life only after finally reaching a certain goal or milestone. The danger here is in perpetuating a postponing of life until accomplishing something big. Examples may include fixing a part of your life, completing a project, or getting a promotion. An example a lot of people can relate to: after experiencing a job layoff, it’s tempting to put a lot of your life on hold until after you finally get a new job. A message of the book is to not let yourself get into this trap. Don’t wait for “when” moments. Burkeman wants readers to embrace the present, with all its imperfections and limitations, and find fulfillment in the here and now.
Applying Four Thousand Weeks
What have I applied from Four Thousands Weeks to my own life, and how is it going? The following are the practical ideas from the book (listed in the appendix) that I’ve been experimenting with:
Keep two to-do lists, one open and one closed
Burkeman recommends keeping two types of lists:
- Open list: The traditional to-do list to capture everything you want with no limit to how big it can get.
- Closed list: A limited in size list that includes a maximum of 3-5 truly important prioritized tasks that you are committed to finishing in a specific timeframe.
My experience: I’ve always been good at keeping a very long open list, but the closed list concept was new to me. The closed list has really helped me set priorities. I’ve found that keeping the two lists in a small notebook, and not on a computer, works well for me. I keep separate lists for work (which is actually at the time of this writing is a job search task list) and non-work (everything outside-of-work).
Focus on one big project at a time
Burkeman says to focus on one big project at a time and see it through to completion before moving on to the next. He explains that people try to alleviate anxiety by getting started on too many projects all at once but then make little progress on completing all of them. The better approach, he recommends, is to train yourself to get incrementally better at tolerating the anxiety while only working on one project at a time.
My experience: I’m the type of person that tries to take on too many projects. I start and stop them. I spread myself too thin. It has been a big challenge for me to only work on one big project at a time, but I’m forcing myself to do it.
Keep a done list
For people that like to make daily lists, it’s easy to get discouraged by not finishing everything by the end of the day. As an alternative, start first thing in the morning with an empty list. Throughout the day, add to the list all the things you’ve accomplished. The idea is to feel better (“small wins”) by recognizing everything you have got done. Focus on the positive (“Look at all I got done today”) and not the negative (“I hardly got anything done today”).
My experience: It wasn’t hard to start keeping a done list because for me it was just another page in my notebook that I mentioned earlier. What I really like about the done list is that by including a date and notes, it’s something I can refer back to over time. It also has meant that the open and closed lists are “cleaner”—not so cluttered with lots of extra comments.
Conclusion
It’s still a real work-in-progress for me to apply the things I’ve learned from Four Thousands Week to my own life. One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is what should I do when the open list takes up a whole page. Should I create new open and closed lists every month?
What’s next for me? I definitely plan to read the book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout that I mentioned earlier in this post. It was published in 2024, so I’m wondering if it might be able to build and expand on what Burkeman wrote in 2021 in Four Thousand Weeks.
I also plan to start trying Capacities, which was introduced on the Hard Fork podcast I mentioned earlier in this post. Capacities is described as “a note-taking and knowledge management tool designed to help users organize information more intuitively and creatively.”
About David Kowalsky
David Kowalsky has been a technical writer for 15+ years. After completing an MA in East Asian Studies, he got his start working in technology as a software test engineer. After eight years, he switched to being a technical writer. In June 2024, David was part of the first group of students to complete the Specialization in API Documentation course from the University of Washington Professional & Continuing Education. Follow David on LinkedIn.