Oliver Burkeman is a recovering “personal productivity” addict. I feel his pain. He’s a writer who knows his Pomodoro Method, his GTD, even his ‘First Things First”. And after years of writing about all the ways we can make more efficient use of our time, he had an epiphany: we only live around 4,000 weeks (5,000 if we get lucky) so there’s really no way we can ever do all the things we want to do, or think we should do. This book is much more philosophy (and we’re talking Heidegger, Arendt, Orwell, Jung and many more) — and much less focus on how to do a better to-do list. I liked it.

I didn’t agree with all of it, and I actually think that some of the personal productivity gurus may have been on to something (Stephen Covey, David Allen, and even the guy who invented the Pomodoro method). But well worth reading — especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed and anxious about what you’re not getting done.