I’ve given away about 30 copies of a book called, The Obstacle is the Way. And I just finished reading a book that might become my new go-to giveaway book…
4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
I’ve read the book and now listened to close to 40 hours worth of interviews and explainers about the book and author. So this week, I chose three questions that this book prompted along with some quotes and stories pulled straight from the book.
What’s the cost of this convenience?
Convenience makes things easy but without regard to whether easiness is truly what’s most valuable in any given context.
(Oliver Burkeman, 4,000 Weeks, p.52)
Email.
One of the most efficient and convenient ways to connect. Send a message to a loved one around the world in a split second. Conduct business with colleagues in near real-time. Email was definitely a huge shift forward in connecting people quickly and cheaply.
AND, it comes at a cost.
The technologies we use to try and ‘get on top of everything’ always fail us, in the end, because they increase the size of the ‘everything’ of which we’re trying to get on top.
(Oliver Burkeman, 4,000 Weeks, p. 47)
I don’t want to be the old man on the front porch grumbling about how technology has destroyed mankind and we need to bring back the stone tablets and messenger pigeons. But we also can’t ignore that some of our favorite conveniences carry hidden costs.
This morning I drove in a taxi with my daughter almost an hour to the other side of the city. I could have sent her in a taxi by herself. That would’ve been more convenient for me, but at what cost? I would have lost an hour of undistracted time for conversation. Time that won’t always be there. It wasn’t as convenient but I was willing to be less efficient in order to get what I really wanted.
What’s nature’s intended speed for this experience?
Earlier this week, I realized I was having conversations with my friends and family at 2x speed 🤦🏻♂️
I use a video messaging app called Marco Polo and I hit the 2x button every time I listen to a message on my walk to work. I went back and watched some of the most recent videos at normal speed and realized I missed some of the pauses, facial expressions, and the moments between the words that actually offer a deeper layer to what’s being said. In my quest for efficiency, I took ‘conversation’ and turned it into another checkbox to be completed. Nature didn’t give our bodies a 2x button for our conversations so it was probably never intended to be done at that speed.
In the book, Oliver shares a story about Harvard art professor, Jennifer Roberts. Jennifer gives the exact same assignment at the start of every semester:
Go to a local museum.
Select a single work of art.
Stare at it and study it for 3 straight hours.
3 freaking hours. Besides sleeping, when was the last time you did something for 3 hours without distraction?
Jennifer insists on the assignment being 3 hours because she knows it’s uncomfortable and painfully long - especially for students used to living life at a certain speed. She said that because her students face so much external pressure to move as fast as possible in an ultra competitive atmosphere, she felt “it was insufficient for a teacher like her merely to hand out assignments and wait for the results.” She felt she needed to also attempt to influence the tempo at which her students worked, helping them slow down to the speed that art demands.
“They needed someone to give them permission to spend this kind of time on anything - somebody had to give them a different set of rules and constraints than the ones that were dominating their lives.”
(Jennifer Roberts, 4,000 Weeks, p. 175)
Talking with a friend.
Enjoying art.
Hiking.
Writing a letter.
Reading a book.
Tending a garden.
There are just some activities that nature intended to be experienced in their own realm of time. Sometimes we just need to let things take the time they need to take.
How will this choice impact your people?
In 2013 Swedish researchers compared the cadence of Swedish citizens holidays to the rate at which pharmacists dispensed antidepressants. The first finding was pretty much what you would expect - there were less antidepressants dispensed during holidays. But the second finding was much more interesting - antidepressant use fell by a greater degree in proportion to how much of the population of Sweden was on holiday at any given time—the more Swedes who were off work simultaneously , the happier people got. The researchers proposed that what people need isn’t greater individual control over their schedules but rather, “the social regulation of time’—greater outside pressure to use their time in a particular way.
I forced my team last month to engage in a 40-hour workweek challenge. They were each given 40 hours at the start of one week and I told them that once they had spent their 40 hours they weren’t allowed to do any more work—no matter what. This was my own version of “the social regulation of time” the researchers mentioned. It was obviously a much smaller scale but if you know your boss is prioritizing their time differently, the hope is that it gives you the freedom to do the same.
I definitely think the book is worth checking out, even if you’re not into the whole nonfiction thing. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I’ll send one of you a copy this week. All you need to do is come join me on Instagram and leave a comment on this Reel. I’ll randomly select a commenter and DM them to get the best address to ship them the book. Super easy.
Also, I’ve been doing a daily question Reel over on Instagram (linked above) and over here on YouTube as well, so join me on one or both of these if that’s your type of thing.
Keep Asking,
Kyle
Great post!
I am a big fan of 4,000 weeks (and The Obstacle is the Way). You mentioned you have listened to ‘40 hours worth of interviews and explainers about the book’. Was that on the author’s site or YouTube. Want to check out. Thanks!