Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

⚖The case for it

John Williams in the New York Times: 'In addition to whatever help it might offer, Four Thousand Weeks is also just good company,' a book that 'addresses large, even existential, issues with a sense of humor and an even-keeled perspective.' Burkeman's tone, Williams wrote, 'is not confident or hectoring; he's in the same leaky boat we're in.' Joe Moran in the Guardian called him 'the self-help writer for people like me who find self-help books oversold on magical transformations,' and found the book 'full of such sage and sane advice, delivered with dry wit and a benevolent tone.' Marianne Power in the Times: 'Instead of offering new tips on how to cram more into your day, it questions why we feel the need to.' Tim Adams in the Observer placed it 'somewhere between practical self-help book and philosophical quest,' and Barbara Spindel in the Wall Street Journal judged it 'well worth your extremely limited time.' Every review Book Marks collected was positive. Readers agree: 4.16 on Goodreads across 140,785 ratings. It is the one book on this shelf whose subject is the shelf's own premise: you will not get to most of what you mean to read, so choose.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

No critic panned it; the dissent is the readers'. A two-star Goodreads reader: 'Could have been condensed into an article.' A one-star: 'the author repeats his main point over and over again which becomes tiring very fast.' Another two-star: 'Repetitive and banal self-help content.' The complaint holds up. The whole argument is on the page by the end of the introduction, and the chapters that follow restate it against email, patience, planning and the news. The philosophy is borrowed, and the lenders are on this shelf already: Seneca's Letters and Heidegger's Being and Time say the same thing about finitude at first hand, and a reader who has them may find Burkeman a digest. He is a columnist, and the book keeps a columnist's habit of the anecdote about himself before every idea. Anyone who reads self-help for a method will finish without one. That is the point of the book, and also the fairest reason to skip it.

— the honest librarian

6h

honest hours

9

sittings