The trap of getting sh*t done

Hey friend,

For the past year and a half, I've been locked in an exhausting battle with time. Each day ends with the same deflating assessment: I didn't get enough done. I wasn't efficient enough. I wasted precious hours.

The mental scorecard I keep tallying up my productivity always shows me in deficit. ⏳

Then I stumbled across Laurie Wang talking about Oliver Burkeman's "Four Thousand Weeks" on YouTube, and it felt like divine timing. Just when I was drowning in productivity anxiety, here was a book challenging my entire relationship with time.

As I read, I felt my shoulders physically relax. The perspective shift was immediate: this obsession with productivity optimization isn't normal or natural; it's distinctly modern, particularly American, and has especially trapped those of us in the millennial generation.

Here are the five most transformative insights I took away:

1. Why time management isn't the solution

The central premise is counterintuitive but liberating: time management itself is the problem, not the solution. 

I've been operating under the assumption that with the right system, app, or routine, I could finally "get on top of everything." But this pursuit of mastery over our finite time (roughly 4,000 weeks if we're lucky) is precisely what causes our anxiety.

What's fascinating is how recent this obsession with optimizing every minute actually is. For most of human history, people lived with a completely different relationship to time. Medieval farmers didn't stress about "productivity" or "efficiency." They simply did what the seasons and daylight dictated. It's only in our modern industrialized world that we've come to see time as something to control, manage, and leverage for maximum output.

2. You can't control time (so stop trying)

This is why staying up later or waking up earlier never actually solves my time problems: I'm still operating under the illusion that I can somehow bend time to my will or create more of it. The uncomfortable truth is that I'll never be able to control it, and acknowledging this limitation is the first step toward a healthier relationship with it.

3. The productivity trap

The productivity trap functions as a way to postpone fulfillment to some future point when we'll "finally" have everything under control. But that moment never arrives. Instead, I keep pushing the goalpost further away ("Once I implement this system..." or "After I finish this project...") without ever arriving at the peace of mind I'm seeking.

As a millennial who fell hard for hustle culture, I've internalized the message that every moment should be "productive." I find myself reflexively reaching for my phone during elevator rides or creating mental to-do lists while brushing my teeth. But this constant optimization leaves no room for the very experiences that make life worth living.

4. Rediscovering rest and purposeless activity

Burkeman makes a compelling case for rediscovering what he calls "atelic activities." These are things we do for their own sake: hobbies that have no purpose beyond the enjoyment and activities where the doing itself is the entire point.

This hit me hard because I've spent years trying to justify even my leisure activities in terms of productivity. I convince myself I'm reading fiction to "improve my creativity" or taking walks to "boost cognitive function. "But the reality is, simply enjoying something is reason enough. It begs the question: What would it feel like to do something with zero productivity justification because it brings me joy?

5. Our overall insignificance is actually liberating

Perhaps the most profound insight from "Four Thousand Weeks" is that our time is extremely limited and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The average human lifespan is shockingly brief at just 4,000 weeks (if we're lucky!).

That number stopped me in my tracks when I read it.

But rather than being depressing, Burkeman suggests this notion can be deeply liberating. When we zoom out and recognize how small we are, the pressure to be extraordinary loosens its grip. We don't need to achieve some remarkable level of productivity or accomplishment for our lives to matter.

This is the message I most want to share with fellow millennials caught in the hustle culture movement: Life is short and gone in an instant. And that's precisely why we shouldn't waste it trying to optimize every second or hustle our way to some imagined perfect future.

What I'm taking away from this book is simple but powerful: We don't need better time management systems. We need the courage to accept that we'll never get it all done, and the wisdom to choose what matters most in our absurdly brief 4,000 weeks. That feels like the real work.

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