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**The instant Sunday Times bestseller**

**A FINANCIAL TIMES, GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR**
**ONE OF THE DAILY TELEGRAPH’S 75 BEST BOOKS OF 2021**

‘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

What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get round to what counts?

We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks.

Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of the challenge. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with ‘getting everything done,’ it 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. Make your four thousand weeks count.

‘A much-needed reality check on our culture’s crazy assumptions around work, productivity and living a meaningful life’ MARK MANSON, bestselling author of THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F*CK

‘Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and USEFUL, actually genuinely useful’ MARIAN KEYES

Publisher Review

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 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 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 This is the most important book ever written about time management. Oliver Burkeman offers a searing indictment of productivity hacking and profound insights on how to make the best use of our scarcest, most precious resource. His writing will challenge you to rethink many of your beliefs about getting things done-and you’ll be wiser because of it — Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife I have long loved Oliver Burkeman’s wise and witty journalism that both interrogates and elevates the ‘self-help’ realm-revealing its possibilities for absurdity while honoring the deeper human impulses that it meets. Four Thousand Weeks is a splendid offering in that spirit. This book is at once sobering and refreshing on all that is truly at stake in what we blithely refer to as ‘time management.’ It invites nothing less than a new relationship with time-and with life itself — Krista Tippett, host of On Being Four Thousand Weeks is a book to read and re-read, to absorb and reflect on. Compassionate, funny and wise, it has not left my mind since I read it. The modern world teaches us to pretend to be immortal-this book is a dip in the cold, clear waters of reality, returning us refreshed and alive — Naomi Alderman, author of The Power Uplifting and original * Guardian, *Books to Look Our For 2021* *