I read the book 4000 weeks and share what I’ve learnt. I then attempt to apply the lessons by setting 3 focused priorities for August 2022.
4000 Weeks
The book “4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman is a book written for productivity geeks. The title refers to the number of weeks in 80 years, a reasonable lifespan for someone in the developed world. For people who think that if they can fully optimise their life, they’ll be able to get everything they want done, this book will be a wake-up call.
The book argues that in 4000 weeks, it is physically impossible for anyone to experience every aspect of human life there is. While this may come as a dismay to some who might have been trying to avoid even entertaining this idea, he believes that confronting our finitude is crucial to living out our lives meaningfully. If we had an infinite amount of time, none of our choices would really matter.
While I have mixed feelings about this book, particularly about its structure and overall coherence, I think it did its job in making me try to confront my life and view it in a different way than I have been. It is almost like the antidote to the hustle mindset that has been plaguing popular culture in the last couple of years.
One of the few points that I remember most from the book is that I will have to choose. These choices necessarily means saying no to the millions of other opportunities or experiences that I could have. Not making a choice is also making a choice. For instance, I had gone through the last five years making choices with the mindset that I wanted to “keep my options open”. But that’s a myth! By not choosing to specialise in one thing, I closed myself off to opportunities in specific areas that required more extensive experience or interest. So no matter what choice I make, I just have to make it and be okay with the fact that I can’t actually have it all.
The three areas of “yes”
So with this idea in mind, my choices now become more meaningful, as the author suggests. On the way home from work the other day, I tried to come up with a list of three broad areas that I wanted to pursue outside of my work and social life. The three areas are:
- Ice skating
- German
- Project jieyiintheworld (writing, art, video, etc.)
How to choose what to say “yes” to
Hang on, how did I choose those three areas?
If you’re anything like me, you probably have a basket of interests that is full of stuff you’d like to do or try. But out of all these interests, I chose based on another key point in the book “4000 weeks”.
The idea is that our future is not guaranteed. We could live to be a 100 years old, but this could just as easily be our last day on Earth. So instead of making choices all the time that serves some esoteric future purpose, that would theoretically make our future lives better, the author suggests finding activities that you do for the sake of it. Where there is no end reward.
At face value, this does seem a little extreme. I’ll take this advice with a grain of salt, as I still think it’s a good framework for choosing hobbies. Especially for serial hobbyists like me.
Why I chose my three areas of “yes”
1. Ice Skating
There are quite a few reasons why I want to focus on ice-skating, including external motivations like becoming a competitive skater. I could go more in-depth in a separate post but suffice to say that the enjoyment I get from skating is enough for me to keep going. I find it comforting that it’s statistically improbable for someone like me to achieve immense success in this area. It’s stronger evidence that I enjoy skating for its own sake, which means that I’ll be able to sustain this interest for a longer period of time.
2. German
Learning German ties into a large hobby of mine which is language learning. There are plenty of languages that would be useful to me in my career or just by virtue of where I live. But for one reason or another, I find myself wanting to enjoy videos and books and other types of content in the language. I also enjoy the language in itself for its structure, and perhaps also for how it sounds. There is no future motivation here because German won’t advance my career. I just do it because I want to and that’s reason enough.
3. Project jieyiintheworld
This project refers to my collective platforms, namely my blog, my Instagram, and my YouTube channel. I also have an online store but that was more of an experiment.
I know, I know. This doesn’t sound focused at all. I admit this last focus area is sort of a cop-out. I wanted to focus on just one aspect alone but I had a feeling that this project had a larger purpose beyond just writing articles, drawing comics, or making videos. After some thought, I think it makes more sense for me to view my blog, Instagram, and YouTube channel as different mediums to do the same thing:
Document life and tell stories to entertain, educate, and inspire.
Writing: I’m invested in my blog because I’ve already paid the fees for hosting and everything, so I want to see how far I can take it. I also enjoy writing, having been blogging for most of the last 10 years.
Visual art: I could theoretically start an art shop or make art into my full-time job. But I feel like I haven’t really come to a place in my art journey where I feel like that’s something I want. Currently I just have a creative muscle that I need to stretch every now and then. Most of all, making art is when I am most often able to enter a “flow state”, where it is as if time and place doesn’t exist. It’s wonderful.
Videos: I enjoy making videos, though that enjoyment is tempered by my dislike for laggy rendering, poor camera and audio quality, and a shyness that makes filming videos more difficult. In this case, making videos are more extrinsically motivated as discoverability is much better on YouTube. Of course, I also really enjoy watching YouTube videos (thought less so recently) and I want to be a part of that creative community. For this medium, my goal is to figure out how to make it easier to publish videos.
My flexible plan for August 2022
The key note here is flexible. Something that has not been mentioned yet is that I still have to work at my 9 – 6 (and often 7+) day job and engage with my family and friends. I call this a “plan” when really I just mean this as a way for me to encourage myself to make time for these things that I’ve decided are important to me. Ultimately, as long as I’ve engaged in the activity in some way, that is enough for me.
1. Ice Skating
On-ice practice
- Before getting skates: One session/week (Lesson or self-practice) = 2.5 hours/week
- Once skates arrive: One lesson/week and One self-practice session/week = 5.5 hours/week
Skating sessions are 2 hours each or 2.5 hours with lessons. I try to incorporate a 15 minute warm up before and a 15 minute cooldown after. This plan is tentative because I’m still skating in rentals after more than 50 hours of skating in the past 3 months. I’m also still settling into my day job so I’m not sure if I will be able to enforce leaving the office on time to make it for evening ice sessions.
Off-ice practice and prep
- Post-skate reflection journaling
- Morning exercise every alternate day (alternate cardio, strength, flexibility)
What I do off-ice is very interesting to me. I’m still very new to the sport so I hope to continue documenting my journey on this blog. 😄 Click here to read about my progress in learning ice-skating as an adult in Singapore.
2. German
For German, I want to be more flexible with the plan because I think imposing a very strict schedule around it makes me less likely to do it in the long-term. I once tried a 30 day language challenge and while it really pushed my learning, I burned out and didn’t touch languages for a long time after. My target is a hard stop of 20 minutes of German learning daily-ish.
Activities include:
- Passive language immersion (e.g. watching videos, listening to songs, reading the news etc.)
- Active language immersion (i.e. taking notes, making flashcards)
- Grammar book exercises
- Lessons on Seedlang, a German language learning app
3. Project jieyiintheworld
Writing:
- A weekly newsletter which includes recommendations and a wrap-up
- One random post a month (interchangeable or in combination with a video)
For the newsletter, I aim to use times on my commute for consuming different types of content and collating them. Then I will spend at most an hour to compile everything into a simple blog post. I’ve tried this before in my previous newsletters but I want to simplify the format to make it easier for me to accomplish. For the random post, I want to push myself to actually bring my many post ideas to life instead of letting them sit in the pile-of-forgotten-ideas.
Visual art: At least an hour of drawing on weekends
I have a bunch of ideas to pull from so as long as I work at it consistently, I think I can accomplish this. I also indicated weekends instead of weekdays because I need to be in a more uncluttered and calm frame of mind to make my art. But if that changes, then I’m open to also make things on weekdays.
Videos: One random video a month (interchangeable or in combination with a blog post)
Final thoughts
Note! This is something like a learning journal for me. The declarations above are a work-in-progress and I will iterate as I see fit. Ultimately, I think it’s just important (personally) not to sweat the day-to-day and just allow things to flow as they may.
Some questions that I will try to attempt to answer at the end of this month are:
- How did I do on each of these goals? (e.g. what did I accomplish)
- Challenges or things I’ve learned along the way
- Have my priorities shifted? Should I remove or swap some of the goals?
- Iterate and set a plan for September
Thanks for reading!
💜