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Career

Personal time strategy

12 sections · 10 pts/section
Section 1 / 12

You have about 4,000 weeks

Your guess

Say you live to about 80. About how many weeks of life is that, total?

A week feels short. A life feels long.

But a life is just weeks, stacked up.

Live to 80, and you get about 4,000 of them.

Writer Oliver Burkeman did this math in a 2021 book.

The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short.Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks (2021)

His point is simple. You cannot do everything.

So the real skill is choosing what to do.

It is not about cramming in more tasks.

“I'll have more time later, so I can do it all then.”Tap to reveal

Hard to spot because “later” always feels roomy. But each week of waiting is one of the 4,000, already spent.

This module pairs with Habit Formation.

Habits run your days on autopilot.

Time strategy asks a different question. What are those days for?

Sources

  • Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks (2021)
  • The Decision Lab
  • American Psychological Association, “Multitasking: Switching costs”
  • Cal Newport, Deep Work (2016)
  • Valdez et al., Circadian Rhythms in Attention, PMC/NIH
  • Oliver Burkeman, "Four Thousand Weeks" (2021)