My primary fictional reading genre is science fiction. Every so often, I like to step outside my comfort zone and read something a little different, especially when a book comes highly recommended.

It’s how I happened upon The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab. Both Amanda and Courtney read and spoke highly of it, so I figured it would be a welcome diversion from my usual reading routine.

Everything I’ve been taught about time management, everything I’ve read, everything I’ve learned is about how to organize our time to get more things done. It’s been beat into me that time management is about focus, discipline, planning, and prioritizing.

Is it possible that what I’ve been taught, that what I’ve learned is wrong? Have I’ve been managing my time incorrectly all these years?

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman challenged my relationship with time and how I manage it. Instead of laying out yet another system that shows how to squeeze more tasks and activities into the limited time we have, Burkeman turns the concept of time management inside out. He start with the premise that we have a limited amount of time, approximately 4000 weeks if we’re lucky enough to live to 80 years of age, and works backward from there to develop techniques that get the most out of those 4000 weeks. Keep in mind that I didn’t say how to get the most things done in that limited time. I simply said getting the most out of that time, which is an important distinction that I’ll come back to in a bit.