There haven’t been many books that I have read by myself multiple times in my life, at least not since becoming an adult. Rereading something that I had already read seemed like a waste of time. It had already been ticked off the to-do-list. Why on earth would I put it back on there?

But then came along 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, which I have just finished reading for third time. It’s really been forcing me to question a lot of assumptions and expectations that I’ve had around productivity.

At the end of the book, Burkeman suggests ten techniques for bracing finitude that really seemed to me to be 11 recommendations when I copied them down.

Burkeman says that we live in an age of infinite tasks and finite lives. Where even if we only put the most important tasks first, we’re still not going to be able to do everything we want to do. By really understanding that there will always be limitations, we don’t have to keep telling ourselves to do more and continuously optimising things to fit more in. We can instead embrace our limitations, stop trying to rush to the end of our to-do-list, make deliberate choices on what we choose to focus on, and see if we can enjoy our lives as we go.

Burkeman’s 11 Recommendations for Bracing Finitude

01 — Fixed Volume Productivity: Have a maximum of three action items at one time

Most productivity systems fail because they treat your to-do list as a bucket that must eventually empty. It never does. Instead, try to keep two lists. The first is your open list, an unconstrained repository of everything you might eventually do. Think of it as your maybe/someday file, rather than things that you are currently working on. Put down absolutely anything on it that you think you one day might want to do. The second is your active list, and it can only hold a maximum of three items at one time. That’s it. Three.

These three items represent the only things that you want to focus your attention on and put effort into. Everything else is, by definition, a distraction. You do not add to the active list until something is completed and taken off the active list first.

If you cannot take any action on an item in the active list until you hear back from someone else, move the item back to your open list, and move something else that you can take action on into your active list. If the task feels too big and you are procrastinating on it, break it up into smaller components, and only put the component into your active list that you can take action on today. Put everything else back into your open list.

This fixed-volume approach creates a kind of productive pressure. When you can only hold three things, you become remarkably deliberate about which three they are.

02 — Time Boundaries: Decide when work ends before the day begins

Parkinson’s Law says that work expands to fill the time available. Use this deliberately and to your advantage. Set a hard stop for your working day in advance, regardless of how much work you have done. Try not to trick yourself into thinking that using momentum and doing “just one more thing” is going to be what is best for your productivity and work output in the long run.

Some of the most prolific writers, such as Stephen King or R.L. Stine, set up a daily goal of writing 2000 words, and then stop as soon as they reach it. This is a task-based goal, and can work better for some people. For others, time-based goals are more effective. Try to set a specific finishing time for yourself for a week, and then assess how things have gone by the end of the week. You might be surprised by the results for yourself.

When the finishing boundary for you is predetermined, everything before it becomes more purposeful. You stop fiddling. You prioritise. The boundary is not a reward for finishing. It’s a constraint that makes finishing possible.

“If you can’t feel good until it’s all done, and it’s never all done, you’ll never feel good.” – Oliver Burkman

03 — Serialise: Work on one project at a time for a set period of time or until you finish the task

As much as some people disagree, multitasking is a myth. Yes, it is possible to listen to classical music and study, or chew gum while walking and listening to music. But what we’re actually doing when we’re “multitasking” is switching rapidly and expensively, with every switch costing attention and context.

Instead, serialise. Choose one task or project to see through to completion before beginning anything else. If the project is too large to feel tractable, break it into chunks and commit to finishing a chunk before shifting gears.

Even a time-box could work. Give an active project that you are working on one hour a day, every day, until it’s done. Your goal is hopefully sustainable progress, not chaotic, scattered effort with minimal results.

04 — Strategic Underachievement: Decide in advance what you’ll fail at

This recommendation sounds provocative, but it’s just honest. You cannot excel at everything simultaneously. The people who seem to do it all have simply made peace with doing some things badly and some things not at all.

Lebron James and Roger Federer both claim to sleep a massive amount of hours per night, as well as being at the top of their games for a long time. I wonder what things they decided to fail at or not prioritise?

Rather than letting that happen by accident and feeling guilty about it, make it a choice. Decide which areas of your life will receive less, for now, so that the things that matter most to you can receive more. Intentional underachievement is not failure. It is strategy.

05 — The Done List: Celebrate what you’ve already completed

The to-do list is by its nature demoralising, as it only measures what remains.

A done list, kept daily or weekly, on the other hand, measures all of the hard effort you’ve already put in and the things you’ve already accomplished.

This isn’t being up yourself or bragging to yourself or others. It’s just being accurate. You did things today. Some of them may have been challenging. Some of them hopefully mattered to you. The practice of recording what you have already done helps you to notice your own output, to recognise that progress is being made even when the horizon never arrives.

Commemorate and savour your small wins. They are, in aggregate, the whole game.

06 — Consolidate Your Caring: You cannot care about everything equally

Attention, like money, is finite. When you spread it across too many concerns, none of them receive enough.

Identify your top five priorities in life. What are the things that genuinely, deeply matter the most to you?

Then give yourself permission to care significantly less about everything else.

This isn’t you being cynical. It’s an honest reckoning with the limits of a human life. And it makes it possible for you to properly care about the things that matter the most to you. So that you don’t join all the other people at the end of their lives who wished that they had the courage to live the life that they wanted for themselves, rather than the life that others expected them to live.

07 — Boring Technology: Make your devices as dull as possible

Your smartphone has been engineered by some of the smartest and richest people in the world to capture and hold your attention. The least you can do is fight back a little. Delete your social media apps off your phone. Remove email apps. Delete any games that you spend more time using than you want to. Then switch your phone to greyscale, as removing the colour will make looking at your phone much less appealing or addictive. Or buy a Brick.

If you want to read, get a Kindle, which is good at one thing and doesn’t notify you about anything. Or better yet, buy a physical book.

The goal is to make your technology suit your intentions. Either we do that, or have them be overridden by others’ intentions, which is generally to keep your attention on their products for as long as possible.

08 — Novelty in the Mundane: Look for the new in what you always do

Time accelerates when life becomes routine, because the brain stops recording.

Seek novelty in your day-to-day life. This doesn’t have to be the expensive kind either, such as skydiving. It can be the quietly observational kind. Take a different route to the one you normally take on your commute. Look at something familiar as if you’ve never seen it before, or savour it as if you’ll never see it again. Pay closer attention to what’s already here.

Meditation cultivates exactly this capacity. Fortunately, we can practice informal mindfulness with anything we do. Do unplanned walks, unhurried meals, and conversations without an agenda. When you look more carefully, time slows. Life gets bigger without going anywhere.

09 — Relationships as Research: Be curious about the person in front of you

Relationships deteriorate not from lack of love, but from lack of curiosity. We think we know the people we love, and so we stop looking.

Try instead to approach the people in your life as a researcher would. Genuinely wonder who they are, what’s changed in them and what they’re quietly carrying.

Don’t approach a conversation with a predetermined outcome you’re trying to reach. Adopt curiosity as your default posture, and then pay attention to what you find.

10 — Instantaneous Generosity: Act on the impulse to give before it fades

Generosity has a half-life. The impulse to call someone, to give or say thank you, can arrive suddenly. Then, if you don’t act on it in that moment, can dissolve just as quickly. You meant to, but now the moment is gone.

The practice of instantaneous generosity is simple. When the urge arises, act. Send the message. Make the call. Put money in the hand that’s there. Tell someone that what they did mattered. The impulse to give and be kind is the thing, so honour it before it disappears.

11 — Doing Nothing: The practice of purposeful stillness

This may be the hardest recommendation for a lot of people. I always think back to one study where people could sit in a room and do nothing or administer themselves a painful shock, and a lot of people chose to shock themselves, even though they knew it would hurt.

Doing nothing can be challenging, especially initially. I know that whenever I go camping, at the start of the trip it can feel quite uncomfortable. But then, something else happens. I slow down, accept it, and relax.

What if there were more times in our lives where we stopped trying to accomplish anything, and just allowed ourselves to be?

Imagine having the capacity to be still without escaping, without reaching for your phone, without optimising? This is a form of freedom that is vanishingly rare. Letting things be as they are. And being okay with that.

Together, these recommendations are not a path to the inbox zero version of a life well-lived. They are, instead, an invitation to stop measuring your days by what you still need to do and start paying attention to what’s actually here.

What if what is actually here is already enough? What if you are already enough? Then everything else you do from here would be a bonus.

Dr Damon Ashworth

Clinical Psychologist