The title refers to the time most humans spend on Earth, assuming they live until their 80s. When the author Oliver Burkeman first made the calculation, he felt unexpectedly queasy at our “insultingly” short lifespans. He also began thinking about how we manage our time.
“Arguably, time management is all life is,” he notes. “Yet the modern discipline known as time management is a depressingly narrow-minded affair, focused on how to crank through as many work tasks as possible, or on devising the perfect morning routine, or on cooking all your dinners for the week in one big batch.” But what is the point of all that “doing” when life is so short?
This book, then, is a meditation on life’s “outrageous brevity and shimmering possibility”. Though it is technically a self-help title, it avoids the pieties associated with the genre along with the impulse to get us to live more productively. Instead, in addressing “the busyness epidemic”, it suggests that we adjust our expectations and look at the value of our day-to-day activities.
Burkeman is the narrator, reading with warmth, humour and without a trace of condescension. Drawing on the wisdom of, among others, Nietzsche, Seneca and Rod Stewart, he espouses a commonsense approach to living where fomo – fear of missing out – is a fact of life, where trying to clear the email backlog is a fool’s errand and where a person may never have the ideal partner or job. If we can embrace these truths rather than feel overwhelmed by them, we may find a fulfilling life is within our grasp.
• Available via Penguin Audio, 5 hr 54 min
Further listening:
Sophie From Romania
Rory Cellan-Jones, Penguin Audio, 8hr 20min
A year in the life of a former BBC journalist and his rescue dog, read by the author. While Cellan-Jones helps the traumatised Sophie adjust to her new surroundings, she helps him navigate his Parkinson’s diagnosis.
The Garden Against Time
Olivia Laing, Picador, 9hr 18min
The Lonely City author reads her memoir documenting her move to a Georgian house in Suffolk and her efforts to bring its beautiful but neglected garden back to life.
