Yes, you can do it!
But like anything in life, you have to manage yourself. You don’t want to overdo it.
I recently received an email from a year 10 student called Ben. He explained his situation to me:
“I have a demanding part-time job and also have to balance school with that. I average about 10 hours [at work], but it can range from 4 hours to 25 hours each week.
The job is both physically draining as I can be on my feet for 9 hours and mentally draining as the managers put a lot of pressure on me. There is never any downtime on the job.
I was wondering if you had any tips?”
Ben, I’m so glad you asked!
If you’re working 25 hours a week (that’s 3 full days of work plus overtime), it’s going to be challenging to fit in quality study.
Let’s do some simple maths . . .
You have 168 hours in the week.
Time for sleep = 56 hours
Time at school = 30 hours
Time at work = 25 hours
These things add up to 111 hours, which leaves you with 57 hours in the week.
Sounds like a lot, right? Think again.
Don’t forget to add in your commuting time (getting to and from work and school), time to eat, time to shower and get dressed . . . that doesn’t leave you with a lot of time to study and rest. And rest is super important. Everyone needs a rest day.
The research suggests that working a few hours a week is okay. In fact, it can be beneficial. But what if you work 20 or more hours each week?
This study found that students who work more than 20 hours a week are 40% more likely than other students to drop out of high school.
If money is your main motivation for working, then you must finish high school.
Why?
Because by finishing school you dramatically increase your earning capacity.
Studies have found people who don’t finish high school earn a whopping 65-70% less every year than those who do finish high school. 65-70% less!
School may not pay you an hourly wage, but if you finish school and go to university this will pay great dividends later down the track. Studies show that qualified people have higher employment rates and higher incomes.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2016 people with at least a bachelor’s degree earned $600 more each week than those with no qualifications on average.
But what about all those famous drop outs who became millionaires/billionaires (e.g. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg)?
Most of these famous examples dropped out of university (not high school). And when they did drop out, they weren’t sitting on the couch all day watching Netflix and eating sausage rolls.
All of these famous drop outs had passions and interests that they pursued with intense focus outside of the traditional education system. Often we lose sight of this fact and jump to the conclusion that you can drop out of school and become rich. But it doesn’t work like that.
How much money do you really need? And what are you spending your money on? Are these things making you happier?
I met a year 12 student who was spending $200 a month on dying her hair. It was a source of unnecessary stress. When I asked her what the biggest challenge was in her life, she stated:
“[My biggest challenge is] when my hair colour is not one single colour despite it being a naturally blended blonde from my roots. . . don’t ever dye your hair!”
$200 plus a truckload of stress. Think about that for a moment.
Now think about that in terms of life energy. How much time and energy does it take to make the money ($200) to pay for her hair to be dyed?
For a student on an hourly wage of $15, you’re looking at 13 hours of work (nearly two full days).
You have to ask, “Is it really worth it?”
Obviously, money is only one factor to consider in all of this.
I know a lot of extremely well educated people who don’t earn a lot of money. This is by choice (they value their time over money so they choose to work less). But having a good education has given these people more options in life. For instance, it’s much easier for people with qualifications to get a job.
Ask any adult who is currently unemployed (and looking for work) what’s it’s like to be out of work. They’ll tell you it’s demoralising.
Being unemployed is very hard financially but it’s almost harder mentally. You begin to doubt yourself. A number of studies (such as this one) have found being unemployed leads to a range of physical and mental health problems. What I’m trying to say is . . .
Here’s why:
• They give you confidence.
• They give you a sense of power and freedom.
• They act as an independent testimony to your capability.
• They provide you with important connection to others.
So unless you desperately need the money to survive, your first job needs to be school.
During the school term, I recommend that you work 3 hours per week. If you must work more, make it no more than 10 hours per week.
School holidays are a different story. Knock yourself out. Ramp up those hours!
But during the school term, study needs to be your top priority.
If you do decide to get a part-time job, it’s worth spending a little time developing effective study habits and a few simple organisation skills.
Here are some things you can do:
• Squeeze in 10 minutes of study in the morning before school or before you go to work. If someone is driving you to work, do a quick flashcard session or teach a concept you learnt that day to the person who is driving you.
• If you’re working in the afternoon, smash out your homework during recess and/or lunch.
• Make the most of your time in class. Take notes and pay attention (this makes doing your homework a lot easier).
Managers love young, capable workers. You have energy. Plus you’re cheap to employ. So you have to realise that the more you give, the more they’ll take.
Don’t be afraid to speak up.
When it’s 6-8 weeks out from exams tell your manager that your exams are coming up and you’ll need to cut back on your hours. If your manager values education they should understand and respect your request. And if they don’t? Then it’s time to start looking for another job.
Studying can be boring at times. I get that. It’s easy to think, “How is this going to help me in the future?” There may be moments when you feel like giving up.
In those moments, I recommend using a simple strategy called Mental Contrasting.
Here’s how Dr Barbara Oakley explains the technique in her book A mind for numbers:
“In this technique, you think about where you are now and contrast it with what you want to achieve. If you’re trying to get into medical school, for example, imagine yourself as a doctor, helping others even as you’re preparing for a great vacation that you can actually afford. Once you’ve got that upbeat image in mind, contrast it with images in your current life. Imagine your clunker of a car, your macaroni and cheese dinners, and your mountain of student debts. Yet there’s hope!
In mental contrasting, it’s the contrast of where you want to be with where you are now, or where you have been, that makes the difference.”
I have used this strategy and it works a treat!
For example, when I was a university student, I used to contrast the image of myself working as a public speaker (what I wanted to achieve) with the image of me working on an orchard picking fruit for $10 an hour in the scorching summer heat, surrounded by flies (my job as a student).
This technique made all the difference in those moment when I felt like giving up on my studies!
Do you want to work at a greasy fast food joint for the rest of your life? I didn’t think so.
So make sure your first job is school.
Use your part-time job as a source of motivation to get a good education and progress onto bigger and better things. Trust me, your future self will thank you for it.
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When you feel slightly bored, do you feel a reflexive, gravitational pull to check your phone?
If you spend hours each day clicking, scrolling, and posting, I want you to know that it’s not your fault.
It’s not that your weak willed, lacking discipline, or a lazy person.
It’s none of these things.
It’s no mystery or secret why so many people waste so much time on social media. Like a poker machine, these platforms are designed to be highly addictive.
Apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube contain persuasive design features that hijack your most valuable and precious resources: your time, energy, and attention.
Because the more time we spend on their apps, the more data they can extract and sell for social influence.
The business model of Big Tech companies is simple: Keep people glued to their platforms for as many hours a day as possible.
In other words, your time and attention equal massive profits for these companies.
In his excellent book The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Dr Jonathan Haidt presents data showing teens aged 13-18 spend an average of six to eight hours every day on social media apps. That’s close to 50 hours a week.
Dr Haidt notes that this is just the time spent on the app. It doesn’t factor in the time spent thinking about social media while they multitask in the real world.
So, that’s 50+ hours that could have been spent outside in nature, learning a language, working a part-time (or full-time) job, making art, cooking, exercising, getting more sleep, and hanging out with friends.
Let’s also not forget that these apps intervere with and harm our wellbeing and ability to think and learn.
The multi-tasking that takes place as we engage with these apps throughout the day drains our brainpower, weakens our memory, and makes us tense and anxious.
The social comparisons we engage in on these platforms also warps our perception of reality and leaves us feeling like we’re not enough.
So, here’s something to consider . . .
It’s possible, and I’m going to show you how.
I recently discovered a simple tool that helps people stop mindlessly consuming social media and other addictive apps.
It’s an app called one sec.
one sec is a self-nudging tool that helps you to create barriers to Big Tech that align with your goals and values.
As you open up an addictive app, one sec intervenes by creating a 10-second delay in opening the app.
one sec creates the little bit of friction needed to make you pause and reconsider your behaviour.
After the delay, one sec presents you with a choice: Do you want to proceed with opening up the target app (e.g., TikTok)? Or close the app and do something else?
The creators of one sec explain it works by utilising three intervention strategies:
It’s important to highlight that you’re in control of the whole experience. You specify what apps you want one sec to target. You can also modify the time delay (making it shorter or longer) and change the deliberate messaging.
Or is it just another gimmicky product that fails to change your behaviour in a significant way?
I’ve been experimenting with this app for the last month, and I’m pleased to say it’s working for me!
Even though I don’t have social media and the wicked algorithms that come with them, I recently noticed that I was spending far too much time in group chats.
one sec has helped me be more intentional and deliberate with how I engage with these chat groups.
Instead of mindlessly checking these apps whenever I have time to kill, I now have dedicated periods when I engage with them. I’m following Dr Faye Begeti’s advice when she recommends in her book The Phone Fix to “Set a finite number of times for checking social media, condensing a large number of short checks into defined, longer ones.”
This is what one sec has helped me to do, and as a result, my focus and well-being have improved. I feel calmer. My days feel longer and less frenetic.
But I realise I’m a sample size of one. Plus, I’m highly motivated to reduce my time on addictive apps.
The short answer is yes.
This research study found the app one sec helped people to significantly decrease their social media consumption.
In this study, 280 participants used the one sec app for a six-week period. Here’s what the researchers found:
36% of the time participants attempted to open a target app, they chose to close the app using one sec (i.e., they did not proceed with using the target app).
Over time, participants also opened the target apps less.
Opening problematic apps less or choosing to close problematic apps before engaging with them is actually a really big deal. Here’s why . . .
Less engagement with these addictive apps means less hits of dopamine.
Every quick and easy hit of dopamine you get from social media leads you to crave more stimulation from these apps. Before you know it, you’re in a full blown dopamine driven feedback loop.
Whenever I’m stuck in a dopamine loop, I’m not #livingmybestlife. Far from it! I feel overstimulated, chaotic, and jittery. Here’s why . . .
In his book How to Calm Your Mind, Chris Bailey explains that the brain networks for dopamine and calm are anti-correlated.
What does this mean?
It means when the dopamine network is activated, the calm network isn’t.
Imagine every time you mindlessly reach for your phone to check social media, you’re moving further and further away from a state of calm.
This may explain why participants in the one sec study reported experiencing increased satisfaction and happiness after decreasing their consumption of problematic apps.
The main intervention features (i.e., the time delay and option to not proceed with the target app) will help you decrease your consumption of addictive apps.
But there are many other features available with this app.
As you explore the additional features, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. There’s a lot of extra bells and whistles. For example, there is the “Don’t get lost” notifications (i.e., scheduled reminders to close the target app when you are using it) and website blocking.
But like a lot of things in life, more features don’t necessarily result in a better user experience.
Ultimately, I decided to follow BJ Fogg’s behaviour design principle of ‘Simplicity changes behaviour’. I stuck with using just the basic features of this app.
I knew if I overcomplicated the app, I probably wouldn’t use it.
All that being said, there were two additional features I incorporated:
I use the strict block feature every day. To be clear, the strict block feature is not to be confused with the basic block feature. What’s the difference?
If you select a basic block, you’re not really blocking yourself from the app. But there’s a barrier in place. If you try to open the target app, it brings up the following message:
“Be honest with yourself. Do you really want to stop this block?”
Whereas a strict block is a genuine bona fide block. You cannot use your target apps until the block is over.
If you have developed a mindless habit of reaching for your phone and checking certain apps, you need a strict block in place until your brain has had a chance to recalibrate itself.
Here is the tiny habit I created to give my brain a chance to rewire to lower hit of dopamine from my smartphone:
After I pick up my phone in the morning, I will open one sec and press strict block for six hours.
Activating a strict block means I’m in charge for the first six hours of my day (and the addictive apps are not running the show). This sets the tone for the day and puts me in proactive mode rather than chasing quick hits of dopamine. It also helps me stay calm and grounded.
A word of warning:
Even when you feel like you have regained control over your target apps, you must remain vigilant. It’s super easy to get drawn back into a dopamine-driven feedback loop.
The journal prompt is simple and effective. Before accessing the target apps, I am prompted to write about what I have done and what I feel grateful for.
I write 25 words before proceeding to the target app. This gives me a moment to reflect, which is always a worthwhile practice.
There is a free version of one sec you can use, but it limits you to applying one sec to only one target app.
If you have multiple addictive apps on your phone (as most of us do), I recommend the paid version to unlock all the features.
It costs $25AUD for the year, which is value for money if you ask me. The app has already paid for itself in terms of the time, energy, and attention I’ve reclaimed.
I should mention that I had trouble initially installing one sec and getting it to work on the target apps. The process was a little finicky, and I nearly gave up after 20 minutes of trying to figure out how to get the app to work.
You can find similar intervention apps that are free and easier to install, such as ScreenZen. ScreenZen appears to be based on similar mechanisms (i.e., introducing a time delay and friction to the target app).
My brother recently started using ScreenZen to help combat his mindless habit of scrolling through social media. When I asked for his thoughts on this self-nudging app, he said, “It’s annoying.” But then he quickly added, “But that’s the point. It’s annoying, and that’s why you use the apps less.”
Another great feature of ScreenZen is that after spending seven minutes on the target app, it puts a stopping mechanism in place by prompting you to think about if you want to keep using the app.
I don’t think anyone consciously sets a goal to spend 20, 30, or 50+ hours a week on social media. But if you don’t have strategies to combat the addictive apps on your phone, one thing is certain: Big Tech companies will hijack your time, energy, and attention.
As Michael Harris states in his book The End of Absence:
“Never forget that you live in an ecosystem designed to disrupt you, and it will take you for a ride if you let it.”
So, don’t be taken for a ride. You can easily access self-nudging tools, such as one sec and ScreenZen, to help you defend your time, energy, and attention.
Think of the things you’ve always wanted to do but tell yourself, “I don’t have the time. I’m too busy”. What if you could reclaim a significant chunk of time to do those things today? Would it be worth taking a chance on a self-nudging app?
You’ve got nothing to lose except potentially $25.
I encourage you to test out one of these apps to protect your most precious resources (i.e., your time, energy, and attention).
Note: In case you’re wondering, I have not been paid or sponsored by one sec to write this article.
This is what my life used to feel like.
I was always in a rush.
Always cutting it fine.
Often running late.
I was late for class.
Late for dinner at friends’ houses.
Late for meetings.
In my world, being late was the norm. It was perfectly acceptable to drag your feet and rock up an hour late to an event.
So, I had to learn the hard way.
One morning, I was running late for school. I rocked up to form room three minutes late, and I knew straight away I was in trouble.
My form room teacher said:
“Jane, go to student services to get a late note. You’ve been late too many times. It’s not good enough”.
When you were told to go to student services, this was bad news. You were being told to do the walk of shame.
I pleaded with her:
“Please, no! Come on! It was my dad’s fault. He was late in driving me to school. My dad is always running late”.
My form room teacher wasn’t buying my excuses.
To this day, I can still remember that walk to student services. I felt frustrated and stressed out of my mind.
It wasn’t fun being late all the time. I wanted to be on time and feel less rushed and more in control. But I had no idea how to break this bad habit.
One thing was clear to me: people weren’t happy when I was late. People would get annoyed. Passive aggressive vibes were always coming my way.
Fast forward 20 years: I’m no longer someone who is always running late and rushing around. I’m certainly not perfect, but I can say I’ve come a long way.
From my experience, I can tell you it’s exhausting being someone who is always running late for things. When you live like this, you add so much unnecessary stress, drama, and anxiety to your day.
Your days take on a frenetic feel as you rush from one thing to the next.
But there’s also a larger cost to society.
This is what the famous Good Samaritan study examined. It looked at how being rushed and time pressured impacted people’s behaviour and thought processes.
In this fascinating study, researchers conducted a psychological experiment with a group of theology students who were training to be church ministers. This was one of those psychological experiments where participants were deceived (they were told the researchers were studying one thing when they were studying something else). Here’s what happened . . .
The participants were told they were participating in a study on jobs for theology students and were asked to fill in some questionnaires (this was the bogus part of the experiment).
The real experiment took part in the next phase . . .
After the questionnaires were filled in, the participants were told they had to deliver a presentation in another university building, which was a short walk away. The students were instructed they would need to tell the story of the Good Samaritan (a story about a Samaritan who helps a stranger who has been robbed, beaten up by bandits and left half dead).
They were handed a map and provided instructions on how to get to the building, which involved passing through a dim, dingy, and drab alley.
Students were placed in one of three groups:
• High-hurry group
• Intermediate-hurry group
• Low-hurry group
After they were handed the map, the students in the high-hurry condition were told:
“Oh, you’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago. We’d better get moving. The assistant should be waiting for you, so you’d better hurry. It shouldn’t take but just a minute.”
Students in the intermediate-hurry group were told:
“The assistant is ready for you, so please go right over.”
Students in the low-hurry group were told:
“It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head on over. If you have to wait over there, it shouldn’t be long.”
While the participants walked to the building where they’d be delivering the Good Samaritan story, they encountered a slumped victim in the alley. This victim was a plant by the researchers.
The victim was an actor who was pretending to be someone in need of help. The actor wore shabby clothes and was slumped in the doorway with his head down and eyes closed. He wasn’t moving.
All the students encountered this actor. As the students walked past, the actor coughed twice and groaned (you couldn’t miss him!).
The participants didn’t know that their behaviour was under surveillance. The researchers observed how the students in each group responded to the actor. Did the participants help the man slumped in the doorway? And if so, how did they help?
Here’s what they found . . .
Low-hurry group: 63% offered help
Intermediate-hurry group: 45% offered help
High-hurry group: 10% offered help
The researchers concluded:
“A person not in a hurry may stop and offer help to a person in distress. A person in a hurry is likely to keep going. Ironically, he is likely to keep going even if he is hurrying to speak on the parable of the Good Samaritan, thus inadvertently confirming the point of the parable. (Indeed, on several occasions, a seminary student going to give his talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan literally stepped over the victim as he hurried on his way!).”
As an aside, after the experiment, the participants took part in a debriefing session where they were told what the research was actually about. The researchers made it clear that they were studying the social forces (i.e. the conditions) a person finds themselves in, and they were not passing judgment on the students’ behaviour.
In life, we can’t always control the conditions we find ourselves in (e.g., a workplace that imposes a ridiculous workload on staff). But some things are often within our control that we can do something about to be less rushed and time pressured.
Doing these things can help us to feel more present, have greater awareness of our surroundings, feel calmer and less stressed, and experience more control of our time.
I’m going to share with you some habits, ideas, and practices you can implement to help you in this area. I’ll start with the simplest habits before progressing to the deeper, more complex practices.
One of the best tools you can buy is a basic watch (preferably one that doesn’t have fancy features like the ability to receive calls or texts).
My advice is to wear a watch and look at it regularly.
A lot of people use their phones to check the time, but this can be a time trap (I find my phone way too distracting).
You may look at your phone to check the time but find yourself checking social media while you’re at it. Without any stopping mechanisms in place, you can get sucked in and thrown completely off course.
Tiny Habit:When I wake up in the morning, I will put on my watch.
When I get distracted, I will check my watch and schedule and ask “What do I need to be doing right now?”
The modern world is a distracting place. Even without access to your phone, it’s easy to get derailed. Along with checking your watch regularly, check your timetable/planner/to-do list. Ask the following questions:
• What do I need to be doing right now?
• Am I doing what I need to be doing?
• Is this the best use of my precious time and energy?
Tiny Habit:When I notice I am wasting time, I will look at my to-do list.
A prompt is a reminder. It’s anything that triggers you to move from one task or place to another.
When I need to be somewhere by a certain time, I set my alarm for when I need to leave the house. When I hear the alarm, I grab my bag and take off. No excuses.
You should have a rough idea of how long it takes to get to school or work. Set your alarm for when you need to leave. When you hear your alarm, get moving.
Tiny Habit:
When I hear my alarm, I will pick up my bag and go.
It’s tempting to cram in a few more tasks before you leave for work or school (e.g., sending one more text or watching one more short video). But ask yourself, “Do I have time to do this?”
The answer is most likely no.
Tiny Habit:When I feel tempted to do another task, I will ask “Do I have time to do this?”
When I was a kid, there was no Internet and no smartphones. But we had morning cartoons on the TV.
These cartoons were fun to watch and could easily capture your attention. But you still had some awareness of the time because the time was always displayed in the corner of the screen.
The major problem with most social media apps is they don’t contain clear time cues. This is a deliberate design decision. They want you to lose track of time. Thirty minutes online can feel like three minutes.
The solution is to stay offline in the mornings. If you must go online, have a strict log-off time. I recommend setting an electronic timer for a set time or using an Internet Blocker app to kick you off.
I use an Internet blocker app called Freedom. This app cost me a bit of money but there’s a free alternative called Cold Turkey.
Tiny Habit:
When I feel the urge to go on social media in the morning, I will set a timer for 5 minutes.
Are you feeling time pressured and running late because you’re trying to do way too much?
Our modern culture encourages us to do more, be more, have more, sleep less, etc. It’s not healthy or sustainable.
If this is the case for you (i.e. you’re overcommitted), I realise it may not be your fault. Maybe your boss or teachers have unrealistic expectations about what you can accomplish in a day.
All that being said, your packed schedule may also be due to your inability to say no. Perhaps you feel like you need to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way to build an impressive resume and stand out from the crowd. If so, I get it (I’ve been there).
The major problem with doing too much is it leaves you feeling exhausted. You’re not able to fully engage in the task. As you do the activity, you’re worrying about the next thing you need to do.
If you’re doing a bunch of stuff and not enjoying it, perhaps it’s time to cut back on a few activities.
When you commit to doing less stuff (but more meaningful activities that align with your values), you can do that stuff better. You can also extract a lot more joy from the process.
Tiny Habit:
When I am presented with a new opportunity, I will ask “Is this important to me? Is it something I want to be doing with my time?”
In the book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier, Kevin Kelly states:
“You don’t need more time because you already have all the time you will ever get; you need more focus”.
If you find yourself getting distracted by social media apps and YouTube, it’s time to double down on developing your focus muscles.
You can develop your focus muscles by adopting several different habits that relate to the food you put in your mouth, incorporating regular movement and rest breaks into your day, and creating a focus-friendly environment.
This is an area I’ve been working on for a while. What I’ve noticed is when I focus my mind on one task at a time, I can get twice as much done in the time I have available. But I also find that I enjoy the process a lot more, too.
Tiny Habits:
After I stand on my office mat, I will put away three objects on my desk (removing visual clutter)
When I notice my phone is on my desk, I will pick it up and put it in another room.
After I finish doing a deep work sprint (45 minutes), I will do some gentle shoulder rolls.
These habits may sound lame and boring, but they can inject a sense of power, control, ease and even happiness into your day.
When you’re less rushed, you’re less stressed. Because you’re less stressed, the people around you are also more likely to be less stressed (calm is contagious). It also means we end up with a more helpful and thoughtful society.
In our modern world, where we find ourselves increasingly polarised and tribalised, being less rushed and time pressured is something worth striving for.
It’s around this time of year that many people set big goals for themselves.
“This year is going to be different. I’m going to be more organised. Eat Healthier. Exercise more . . .”
Does this sound familiar?
Up until recently, this was me. I used to be obsessed with setting goals at the beginning of the new year.
In fact, I was part of an international goal setting community of productivity enthusiasts (yes, there’s such a thing). At the beginning of every year, we would meet up online and work in pomodoros (i.e. 25 minute sprints), setting goals and creating plans for the year.
I’ll admit, I loved it.
Here I was hanging out with people that were just as obsessed with effective work habits and productivity as I was! I felt like I had found my people.
But I recently stopped attending the goal setting sessions.
Quite frankly, I’d had enough.
Now I don’t want to give the impression that I’ve turned into an unmotivated sloth. It’s not like I went from being a hardcore goal setter to anti-goal setting.
These days I’m just less obsessed about being super productive. I’m still setting goals (just different ones and not as many as before). For instance, this year one of my goals is to do more fun activities, such as drawing, drumming and hiking.
Ironically, what I’ve found is in not trying so hard to power through my to-do list, I’m actually getting more meaningful stuff done. Plus, I’m a bit more relaxed about life, which is a good thing.
In his brilliant book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals Oliver Burkeman argues that being too focused on the future can suck the joy out of life.
I saw a lot of myself in Burkeman’s story. To give you a little background, Burkeman is a reformed productivity geek. He used to write a column for a newspaper on productivity hacks. So he has experimented with dozens of time management and productivity techniques.
But interestingly, he found very few of these time management techniques actually worked. And the more he used them, the more stressed out and unhappy he became. The book Four Thousand Weeks is Burkeman’s attempt to try and make sense of things.
Four thousand weeks is the number of weeks you get if you make it to the ripe old age of 80.
The idea behind this book is simple: life is short. So what are you going to do with your 4,000 precious weeks?
Burkeman argues many time management books perpetuate myths and false ideas about time. Here are some of the myths:
If you just work harder and more efficiently, you’ll be able to do it all.
If you manage your time well, you’ll eventually get to a perfect place in the future where you are in control of time.
Burkeman says these ideas set up a rigged game. A game in which you try to do more and more to create a better future for yourself.
In trying to create this golden future where your life runs smoothly, you never feel satisfied in the present and you always feel like you’re running behind schedule. As a result, this stops you from enjoying what you’re doing right now. And when you think about it, that’s all we really have (this present moment).
Four Thousand Weeks is packed full of great insights and practical advice. Here are seven ideas from the book that really resonated with me:
It’s an illusion that you’ll be able to crank through all the things on your to-do list to finally clear the decks. Accept that there will always be more to do and your to-list will continue to grow. If you can be okay with that, life becomes a lot less overwhelming.
Burkeman suggests creating two to-do lists:
1) An open to-do list: containing everything you need to do but you’ll never get through.
2) A closed to-do list: containing a fixed number of entries (no more than 10 tasks).
When you complete a task on your closed list, only then can you add another item from your open list.
Burkeman suggests channelling your energy and attention on a handful of things that really matter to you. Don’t take on too many projects.
If you have lots of projects on the go, it’s too easy to not finish any of them. Why? Whenever one project gets a little uncomfortable or difficult, you switch over to another project.
All this bouncing around from one project to another means you end up with a lot of unfinished projects. Burkeman recommends focusing on one big work project at a time.
Any project that is important to you will bring up some discomfort and/or fear. “What if I’m not able to do it?” is a thought I frequently have whenever I start a new project. Since we don’t like experiencing these uncomfortable feelings, there’s always this urge to distract ourselves with digital technologies.
Burkeman suggests we get familiar with this discomfort. If you are able to tolerate the discomfort and get started on an important piece of work, it’s like a superpower. What you’ll find is you’ll be able to complete more important and meaningful tasks, which will motivate you to keep going.
It’s easy to fantasise about the future. I know I’m not the only person to have imagined running a marathon, publishing a best selling book and/or opening up a plant-based café.
In our minds, it’s so easy to see ourselves doing these things perfectly and with total ease and control. But what we usually find is when we attempt to do these things, reality is often out of sync with the fantasy in our heads.
You go for a run and your leg hurts. And by choosing to go for a run, you’re saying no to many other things you could potentially be doing.
Here’s my take on all of this: if given the choice between living in reality or fantasy land, choose reality every time. Sure, it’s messy. It’s imperfect. But it’s the real deal.
Since you only get one shot at this life, you might as well have a go at that thing you’ve always wanted to do (even if it makes you feel clumsy and awkward).
Not everything we do needs to bring us some financial, material or academic gain in the future. Some activities bring us pure enjoyment in the here and now.
Hiking is a perfect example of this. Burkeman says there’s no real purpose to hiking but you do it because it’s an inherently enjoyable experience.
Burkeman argues that an hour spent on social media is not just one hour wasted. That time bleeds into the rest of your day, impacting the way you feel, how you view the world and what you value.
To capture your attention, social media’s algorithms feed you the most sensational, outrageous and conspiratorial content. If you spend hours of your day on these platforms, there’s no question that this will distort your perception of reality.
What I took from this is if you want to think more clearly, get off social media.
Although Burkeman doesn’t go as far as saying this, he does suggest we make our devices as boring as possible. How do we do this?
By removing social media from them and changing the colour to grey scale. This way our devices appear more like tools than toys. It’s also makes it much harder for us to escape the discomfort (see point 3).
JOMO is the opposite of FOMO (Fear of missing out) – it’s the joy of missing out. Rather than feeling stressed out about not being able to go to every social event, celebrate the fact that you can’t possibly do it all nor would you want to!
The irony is the more social events you go to, the more you realise you’re missing out on. You’ll never win this game of trying to do it all, so don’t even bother trying to play. Burkeman continuously comes back to this powerful idea of choosing a few things you want to do from the menu of life.
I love this idea of treating life like a menu. When you go to a restaurant you don’t feel the pressure to try every dish on offer. You just pick the dish that appeals to you in that moment and then you forget the rest.
I think this is a great approach to life. You can’t do everything but you can do a few things with your 4,000 weeks. So pick the things that interests you the most and then dive right in and enjoy!
Dr Jane Genovese delivers interactive and engaging study skills sessions for Australian secondary schools. She has worked with thousands of secondary students, parents, teachers and lifelong learners over the past 15 years.
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