I first came across Oliver Burkeman in 2023 when I read his book The Antidote and I fell in love with his style of writing and his perspective on life, which truly felt like it mirrored my own.
So when I saw he had written a book about Time Management, I was intrigued about what he would have to say.
It feels presumptuous and arrogant to say that I could have written this book, and what I mean is not that I could have written this book but that this book felt like enormous validation for things I too have been saying and thinking for years, alongside some additional fuel for my metaphorical fire.
Burkeman describes himself as a former productivity junky – a label I very much relate to. A quick glance over the history of my business, the masterclasses I have run, the workbooks I have sold or used as lead magnets, and you can see that productivity has been a core of what I do for a long time.
Always, however, with the message that I wanted to help people get more done in less time SO that they might have more time off.
In fact, for 3 years in the business membership I ran (now closed) I used what I called my “life first” concept – one I had taken from the ‘Profit First’ book then altered to fit my message. In this, I equated everything that made up our life outside of our work with profit, and then prioritised it so that it was ringfenced first, rather than left to chance.
Burkeman discusses this very same subject, using Jessica Abel as an example and quoting her;
If you don’t save a bit of time for you, now, out of every week’ as she puts it, ‘there is no moment in the future when you’ll magically be done with everything and have loads of free time’ (p75)
In my work, this advice is spoken often. I talk about balance and boundaries. I advise my clients to book in gym classes or social events close to the end of the working day to force them to shut their laptops and walk away.
We should never wait to live; life is not the reward we get for hard work and there is no magical threshold that justifies us in having experiences outside of work. Work is what we do in order to afford the necessities we need to live.
Time management, taught by a productivity junky, focuses on teaching tools, tips and tricks to coerce every potential drop of productivity out of every moment. One of the major reasons I stopped teaching productivity was because, not only was it not used for the reasons I intended (more time off) it was creating a more and more negative cycle; people were pushing harder and harder for a level of productivity that could not exist.
It was interesting, however, to see one of the techniques I had previously used in my work, the 2 list method by Warren Buffett, but with a new take I had not previously seen.
When I learned the 2 list method, it was about to-do lists and creating a short list for focusing on, and a longer list for getting around to.
When Burkeman tells this story however, the list of twenty-five things is not what needs to be done, but what he wants out of life, and the top five are not simply what should be done first…
The top five, Buffett says, should be those around which he organises his time.
…the remaining twenty…aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets the chance. Far from it. In fact, they’re the ones he should actively avoid at all costs – because they are ambitions insufficiently important to him to form the core of his life yet seductive enough to distract him from the ones that matter most.
The 2 list strategy goes from a reasonably common sense project management tool, to a more paradigm shifting approach to mindset and priorities.
In my Quarterly Planning workshops, where I help business owners map their actionable strategies for the upcoming quarter, I talk about focus and prioritisation. Specifically, I tell my clients that prioritisation is NOT about putting things in order of importance.
Prioritisation is sacrifice.
Multi-tasking is a myth that perpetuates because society is incapable of sacrifice; we tell ourselves that we can do lots of things all at the same time. Yet we never achieve these things to the best of our abilities BECAUSE we are not being single mindedly focused on one thing.
It is better to do one thing well, than many things half-heartedly, especially if we do not want half-hearted results.
This reframing of Buffett’s parable strongly advocates for this perspective; the secondary ambitions are enough to be seductive and distracting, but not important enough to take a top five spot, so they need to be sacrificed.
Throughout this book, Oliver Burkeman’s aim is to have us acknowledge that time is finite, it is simply limited and there is nothing we can do about it. Instead of trying to make more of it, we need to make the most of it, while it happens.
And, importantly, we should not be defining life solely in relation to work and productivity.
It begins to feel as though you’re failing at life, in some indistinct way, if you’re not treating your time off as an investment in your future. (p142)
The regrettable consequence of justifying leisure only in terms of its usefulness for other things is that it begins to feel vaguely like a chore… leisure no longer feels very leisurely. (p143-144)
As societally we have moved more and more into a work-focused existence, our leisure time has become either obsolete or commandeered into a new way to work. Hobbyists are encouraged, if they are ‘good enough’ to turn their hobby into a side hustle. Our collective shift towards perfectionism means that anyone not ‘good enough’ rarely continues because what is the point if not perfection?
Furthermore, time off and outside interests are being hailed as “good for productivity” – you’re more productive if you are well rested… but that is not the point of the rest.
Work, now, demanded to be seen as the real point of existence; leisure was merely an opportunity for recovery and replenishment, for the purposes of further work. (p146)
I cannot do justice to this book in just a blog; all I can do is say that if you have ever been drawn towards time management as a topic, ever felt that you need more time or that there is never enough time… you must read this book.
I will leave you with a final quote, an important question to ask yourself;
What would it mean to spend the only time you ever get in a way that truly feels as though you are making it count? (p205)
