“Consider all the technology intended to help us gain the upper hand over time: by any sane logic, in a world with dishwashers, microwaves, and jet engines, time ought to feel more expansive and abundant, thanks to all the hours freed up.
But this is nobody’s actual experience. Instead, life accelerates, and everyone grows more impatient. It’s somehow vastly more aggravating to wait two minutes for the microwave than two hours for the over – or ten seconds for a slow-loading web page versus three days to receive the same information by mail.”
I started reading “Four Thousand Weeks” by Oliver Burkeman. In the first chapter, he makes good observations about how time management techniques focused on a pursuit of efficiency have failed us.
And, yet, given our life spans are likely to last for just about four thousand weeks, time management is the essence of life.
Four thousand weeks.
It isn’t the first time I’m hearing that number. But every reminder makes me pause. As it should.
I need more of them.
PS: This first chapter is titled “In the long run, we’re all dead.” Definitely my kind of morbid reminder of the brevity of life. :-)
