Author: Michael

In his book Four Thousand Weeks Oliver Burkeman points out how ridiculously short our average life span is. He explains how pretty much every method to manage that amount of time is bound to fail. The reason? Our lives are limited and the amount of stuff that needs to be done isn’t. Time management is premised on the false idea that if we were only efficient enough, we could reach a moment when we’ve answered every email, returned every call and completed every task. Like a mirage, the illusion of free time hovers just over the horizon, driving us forward.

Burkeman points out that our efforts at time management are little more than a futile attempt at battling our own finitude. Since we think of time as something external to us, we make every effort to “use it well,” to avoid wasting it. For writers “using time well” is a continuous battle. When progress is measured in words on the page, every use of time that doesn’t generate those words seems wasted. Going for a walk when I’m a few thousand words behind my goal feels like an unaffordable luxury. No matter how often I tell myself that the mental efforts of sorting out plots and nailing down character traits are necessary work that will result in better words on the page at a later point, the word count at the end of the week remains to true measure of progress.

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