Afterpage · week card
Four Thousand Weeks
Oliver Burkeman
Key ideas
- The efficiency trap.
- Choose what to neglect.
- Limit work in progress.
- Resist middling priorities.
- Practice patience and presence.
The week
| Day 1 | Read the summary. Five key ideas and where the book overreaches. |
| Day 2 | Keep a done list. At the end of today, write down everything you finished, including small things. Bad day: Write down five things you finished today. |
| Day 3 | Decide what to fail at. Pick one area of life where you'll deliberately do a mediocre job for the next month, and write it down. Bad day: Write one thing you'll let slide this week without guilt. |
| Day 4 | Split your list into open and closed. Split your to-do list into an open list and a closed list of no more than ten tasks, and work only from the closed list today. Bad day: Circle up to ten tasks on your current list as the closed list and ignore the rest until one is done. |
| Day 5 | Name your middling priority. Identify one reasonably good commitment that's taking time from your most important one, and pause it. Bad day: Write down the one good-but-not-great commitment you'd pause first. |
| Day 6 | Let one thing take its time. Pick one task or problem you've been rushing and give it a full, unhurried session today. Bad day: Do one routine task today at half your usual speed. |
| Day 7 | Do one thing for its own sake. Spend 20 minutes on something you enjoy with no goal attached, and don't try to improve at it. Bad day: Step outside for two minutes and just look around. |
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