How are you Choosing to Spend your 4 Thousand Weeks with Oliver Burkeman

Nov 17, 20212 min read

Join me on my #Perspectives podcast with Oliver Burkeman; the author of the book '4 Thousand Weeks'.

He has won the FPA's Science Story of the Year for a piece on the mystery of consciousness as well as the Foreign Press Association's Young Journalist of the Year award.

We discuss:

- Time as a Tricky Master

- Dealing with Distractions

- Cosmic Insignificance

Throughout the entirety of the conversation with Oliver we spoke about the relationship we all share with time. His book, '4 Thousand Weeks' speaks of the ways in which we spend our 4 thousand weeks; the average human life span.

I shared with Oliver an instance when I attempted to be present to the creative process and not the outcome. Throughout the exercise I counted a couple hundred distractions within a 3 hour period. I had to stop counting because I realised that we subconsciously start giving other things our attention. Distractions and procrastination are a part of everyday life that we have to deal with.

Our conversation was deeply philosophical. We unpacked the meaning of life, how we give our own meanings to things, because meaning is subjective.

We discovered that there needs to be a balance of not wanting to waste time combined with an attitude of friendliness that we give to close friends. You want your friends to be happy and enjoy themselves but you also want them to aim high and not waste the talents and gifts that they've been given.

Learning to be compassionate with ourselves is a necessary part of life otherwise we will constantly be hard on ourselves for 'wasting time'.

We explored 'Cosmic Insignificance' which in short explains how the decisions we make every day are hugely insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe. And that it is liberating to think this way because we can now pursue the things that we find 'meaningful'.

Finally Oliver shared some tips on how to tackle your goals and tasks to wrap up our hugely insightful interview. You can check it out below :)