Book Review-Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals By Oliver Burkeman

I happened onto this book after watching YouTube videos made by Vashik Armenikus (https://www.youtube.com/c/VashikArmenikus/videos). This book by Oliver Burkeman was one of the many books recommended in one of the videos.

The title refers to the duration of human life in weeks if we lived to the ripe old age of 80 years old. 4000 weeks is all we get. I am not unfamiliar with Mr. Burkeman's work. I thoroughly enjoyed his earlier book:  The Antidote (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2018/08/book-review-antidote-by-oliver-burkeman.html). It was a revelatory read on the subject of happiness: why we chase the elusive goal of being happy and why we have a hard time defining that very happiness that we are chasing. How we are fooled by our own biases and how society has sold us on how to become happy, which of course assumes that we are all unhappy to start, at least in the way that the happiness industry defines happiness. It was both entertaining and enlightening. I am naturally biased towards Mr. Burkeman’s writing, and I expected the same incisive observational scalpel taken to the topic of time management.

This book is about our obsession with managing our time.  The author points out that this culture wide obsession came as a result of the industrial revolution. When we were agrarians, we had all the time in the world. We did not need to manage our time because we had time to do what we wanted after we planted the crops. We sat and waited, did our work when needed, the timing was dependent on nature, and we were along for the ride. It wasn't until after we industrialized, and the factory owners needed workers to work together and at the same time. Which, interestingly, he also addresses in the book, the synchrony effect. This is when time becomes a commodity in everyone’s minds. The industrial revolution made most of the population surrender the choice of how we spend our time to the employers; and anything that was left over would be euphemistically called leisure time. The price we pay in exchange for higher wages and perhaps more economic security.  

Burkeman is a fantastic writer. He is droll in how he presents his case, and he has a writing style that is pleasing to read. I don't know if anyone else reads him as I do, but knowing that he's British, I read the book in my own pseudo-British accent and I try to emulate the dry sense of humor that I have come to associate with Monty Python. I am more than sure that Mr. Burkeman possesses that uniquely British sense of irony. It works well with this book as a matter of fact, with me at least.

The book is structured into two parts and fourteen chapters, each chapter has associated with it a mixture of questions and answers: Why we treat time the way we treat time; why we are so impatient with time; why our society is such a large part of why we are what we are when it comes to the way we view and treat time.

There is a lot to digest.

There is quite a bit of information that is presented, much of the material, as is the case with most of these kinds of books, comes with a significant amount of research, copious amount of anecdotal evidence, and cites numerous studies. The differentiator is Burkeman's particular take on all the information which draws the reader in and keeps us interested, the same perspective that kept me in his thrall when I read The Antidote..

Burkeman is blunt in his assessment of our foibles when it comes to the subject time and how we struggle to “control” time.  He points out the brutal truth that we flatter ourselves in believing that we can harness and use time as a commodity. He exposes our egocentric bias that we can own, control,  and manipulate time in service to our needs and requirements. In chapter after chapter, he bursts conceptual bubble after bubble.

The most brutal takedown is that our most human problems are that we are fear driven, ego dominated, control chasing, care more about how others feel about us than how we feel about ourselves, and we fear disappointing others. These traits all thwart us from seeing through our impossible relationship with time.

One critical factor that Burkeman points out is our steadfast belief that we can save time, to save and preserve time when we speak of time. This implicit belief pre-supposes that the continuous concatenation of preserved time can continue ad infinitum, that this time storage can last into infinite time. We are, assuming that infinitude, rather than admitting to the finitude of our existence; we are denying the reality of our existence.

Burkeman examines the reason why we have the relationship that we have with time. Our impatience, our belief that time can be lengthened and shortened according to our whims. He dives into the idea that time is communal, and the idea of synchrony is critical to our satisfaction in life. This was one of the most exciting chapters in the book.

He proposes solutions in each of the chapters, dealing with each of the topics individually, quite unlike the time management solutions proffered in the business press pap that the typical time management experts spews forth. He poses solutions that are quite difficult to accept, it would take a complete change in outlook, beliefs, and preferences to understand the why, which would lead to the how. But once the perspective is turned around, it was a head slapping moment for me, as in: why didn’t I think of that?

The last chapter, the Afterward, is where  Burkeman pulls it all together. He does not try to tie it up into a nice pretty box tied with a pretty bow. What does is encapsulates the key points he made while addressing the foibles in our modern-day thinking, and here are the acts that we must take on  to overcome this crippling mental crutch that we all believe implicitly: that we must all be impatient with ourselves, that we can postpone the present to the future so that we can be better prepared to enjoy all that preserved time.  The last chapter is a gut check. It is difficult to aggregate into our minds because it is so contrary to the way our society has evolved and how we, as members of society, have created this particular ethos.

Burkeman has also helpfully added an appendix with ten hints that help us realize the finitude of our existence. Foremost amongst his advice is to realize that time is finite, to live in the moment, to stop putting faith on the impossible, to embrace life’s limits, to give up on overcoming the unknown, to realize that this life is not a dress rehearsal, and to just do.

Unfortunately, I don’t think most people hot on the trail of the next time management elixir would stop long enough to even consider the subtlety and nuance that populates Burkeman’s book, let alone accede to his proposed remedies. Even though the book is interesting to read, and the ideas are refreshing. People would rather chase after the snake oil salesmen who are paddling the miracle cure for all our time management problems. If only we had more sense of urgency, discipline, and an ability to multitask. People would rather let their biases and foibles guide them to the open arms of the time management charlatans, even though the emperor has no clothes.

 

 

Volleyball Coaching Life-We Got You

Have you ever listened to your team try to help each other out? Many of us ask, beg, cajole our teams to help their teammates in times of stress and struggle. It is difficult to teach beginning players to be selfless, to be a great teammate, to subsume their own egos for the good of the team bond. It is particularly difficult with the age of the players. Most of us coach at an age where the players are self-centered because they are at that point in their maturation process where they are self-centered, and we are trying to steer against the tide of their nature. Couple that with the societal trends that seemingly encourage selfishness, and possibly the parental influence which also encourages looking out for themselves rather than the team. It is a difficult and frustrating experience, but it is also highly rewarding when self-centered façade cracks and a genuine team emerges.

The terms that we teach them to use make a difference. The phrases that the players use with each other are more important than ever. Given the sensitivities of the psyche and mindset at those ages, everything can be misconstrued, but more importantly the usage of language can reveal the subconscious mindset.

One phrase that is often used is : you got this. Pretty innocuous and it expresses confidence in the person. Usually, this phrase gets used  when something has gone awry: shanked passes, blown swings at the ball, errors of all kinds. Ideally this comes at a dead ball and the teammates gather to pull themselves out of a negative point. The intent is fine, it may even be appreciated after a negative result. It is what is left unsaid that demonstrates the mindset, whether this is conscious or not. The implication is that this is your issue to fix, that I, nor any of the rest of the team members, have anything to do with this error. You own it.  This may not be what is intended but it could be construed that way — consciously or unconsciously. The person at the receiving end can interpret it as: I need to fix this by myself, which is not the ideal situation in a team sport. While it is true that the individual needs to upgrade their game to eliminate that kind of error, the reality is that the whole team and the team game suffered from that error. Which can be extrapolated to mean that a player who caused the team to suffer is singled out for blame, not a good sentiment if we are playing as a team.  Individual errors are things that need to be fixed in practice but not worked on individually while in the heat of the game.  The loss of a point is a result for the collective, the team. The problem word is you. It directly points at the person.

A better response might be: I got you. It means I am being a good teammate; I got your back. I am here to work with you to accomplish our team goals. It is a powerful thought. It tells the person that she is not alone, that there is power in being in tandem rather than being alone, that the dynamism of two individuals together is greater than two individuals alone

If we extrapolated the previous idea, we get the best response: we got you. This unequivacally that we are a team. Our fortunes in this game, this match, this tournament, this season is dependent on us. We have each other’s back. We decide how this will transpire.

This idea is not original, it is a familiar sentiment; all coaches preach this mindset, but even as the coaches talk this talk, how often do the coaches walk this walk? How many coaches dig into the granularities of team communications and the mindset behind the actions of communicating? How many coaches try to change the subconscious mindsets of their players?

This sentiment might seem cliched in our older and more cynical mind, but those youngsters that we are coaching and teaching see what we do —acting and reacting — will absorb the lessons as we teach them to live the lessons.  If we coaches don’t walk the walk, they may intrinsically interpret that talking the talk is all it takes, that commitment to an idea is not a necessary part of the overall execution of the team.

There are many ways that coaches use to demonstrate the concept of the team. In the end it is the difference between being involved and being committed. I like to use my favorite example, of breakfast food: the chicken is involved through the eggs but the pig is committed through the bacon or sausage. Just as if the coach just talks the talk, they are involved, but if they lived their lessons about the team, they are committed. 

This is a small thing in the grander scale of a volleyball season, a tiny snippet, a grain of sand amongst the big rocks; but as Bruce Springsteen sings: from small things big things one day come.  Changing the way the team express themselves while in support of their teammates is a small conscious change, but it could later burgeon into THE team. All it takes is a small butterfly flapping its wings.