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Four Thousand Weeks

Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

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Four Thousand Weeks

By: Oliver Burkeman
Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman
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A life-changing gift of a book: What if you tried to stop doing everything, so you could finally get round to what counts?

**The Instant Sunday Times bestseller**

Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny.

Embrace your limits. Change your life. Discover how to make your four thousand weeks count in 2026.

'Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in... Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living' Emma Gannon

'Every sentence is riven with gold' Chris Evans

'Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and useful' Marian Keyes

© Oliver Burkeman 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

 Personal Development Philosophy Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Science Social Psychology & Interactions Stress Management Time Management
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Reviews

This book is wonderful. Instead of offering new tips on how to cram more into your day, it questions why we feel the need to ... My favourite kind of book is this one ... it examines the human struggle with intelligence, wisdom, humour and humility. (Marianne Power)
Perfectly pitched somewhere between practical self-help book and philosophical quest ... as with all the best quests, its many pleasures don't require a fast-forward button, but happen along the way (Tim Adams)
Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in. Enjoy your life. Breathe out. Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living
A wonderfully honest book, Four Thousand Weeks is a much-needed reality check on our culture's crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life (Mark Manson, bestselling author of Everything is F*cked and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck)
His book will challenge and amuse you. And it may even spur you on to change your life. At the very least reading it would be a good use of one of your four thousand weeks (Robbie Smith)
I loved this book - it's a celebration of all that is most human: a deep dive into the value and potency of our finitude. Where we might buckle under pressure and uncertainty, Oliver quietly restores our centre of gravity within. You'll emerge from his writing fortified by wonder (Derren Brown)
A beautiful, uplifting read. Reading Oliver Burkeman, I feel my shoulders relax and my mouth curl into a smile of admiration. Witty, modest and refreshingly sane (Robert Webb, author of How Not to Be a Boy)
Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and USEFUL, actually genuinely useful (Marian Keyes)
Oliver Burkeman provides an important and insightful reassessment of productivity. The drive to get more done can become an excuse to avoid figuring out what we actually want to accomplish. Only by confronting this latter question can we unlock a calmer, more meaningful, more resilient approach to organizing our time (Cal Newport, bestselling author of A World Without Email and Deep Work)
We all know our time is limited. What we don't know - but what Oliver Burkeman is here to teach us - is that our control over that time is also limited. This profound (and often hilarious) book will prompt you to rethink your worship of efficiency, reject the cult of busyness, and reconfigure your life around what truly matters (Daniel H. Pink, author of When, Drive, and To Sell is Human)
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I’ve always been a geek of focusing. This book enlightened me on doing that on purpose, and with intentionality. The two practical takeaways from my experience are: a- always asking myself what is the next most necessary thing I should do and deliberately not caring about anything else, and be b- learning to do nothing.

What is the next most necessary thing I should do?

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A long time student of time management, Oliver Burkeman wrote this time as an antidote to the anxiety that the vain pursuit of mastery of time produces in anyone who embarks on it, and invites us to fully immerse ourselves in life by freeing ourselves from unproductive illusions. 4000 weeks, our average lifespan is a cosmic blink of an eye yet we can do much to enrich it. Burkeman suggests ways to do this, tapping into broad teachings from thinkers who have applied themselves to the questions of purpose through the centuries. The tone of the work is warm, endearing and, despite being predicated on the stark premise of the finitude of our existence, uplifting. Audio is delightfully delivered by the author.

A lovely book, full of practical wisdom

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I really liked the idea of framing life as a finite amount of weeks and common days and moments which, nevertheless, we should appreciate more.
I loved the insight that life is a serie of problems that we solve, that there is no problem-free life as mundane as they might be. And that we are time,
It’s a beautiful work with good insights.

Good common knowledge about time beautifully put together

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This is a book good to read, and re-read whenever someone is overwhelmed by life and all its ups and downs, or simply when everything seems to lose sense.

An excellent book to read over and over again

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different angle from all the time management book. we can't manage time, we cope with it, to make the most out of it.

Practical and profound

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