The Joy of Missing Out
Happy new year! 🎉
I’m currently reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks, and I can see why the Guardian calls it the “time-unmanagement” book, while Adam Grant says that it’s “the most important book ever written about time management”. I will be talking more about the book in future newsletters, but the focus today is one key notion that Burkeman wants us to be aware of — our finitude.
We tend to regard time as the biggest issue we have — we don’t have enough of it. But another way to think about is — we are time. A very limited amount of it. Four thousand weeks that is — if we live up to 80.
Our limited time isn’t just one among various things we have to cope with; rather, it’s the thing that defines us, as humans, before we start coping with anything at all. Before I can ask a single question about what I should do with my time, I find myself already thrown into time, into this particular moment, with my particular life story, which has made me who I am and which I can never get out from under (Burkeman, p.59)
As we make hundreds of decisions throughout the day, thinking that we are “creating” our life, we are also closing off the possibility of countless others. The Latin word for “decide”, decidere, means to “cut off”. It shares the same root as “homicide” and “suicide” 🙃
“Any finite life - even the best one you could possibly imagine - is therefore a matter of ceaselessly waving goodbye to possibility” (p.60)
Although this take on life may seem depressing, Burkeman argues that it is essential that we acknowledge and confront the truth of our finitude, and it’s only then that we do become fully human, capable of living a truly authentic life. What is depressing, is avoiding and denying our finitude by seeking out distractions, or losing ourselves in the busyness and everyday grind.
So how shall we approach life, under this light? Reminding ourselves that we are closing off opportunities every time we make a small choice? FOMOing every second? It’s natural to feel this way. You could, however, recognize that the fact that you have to make such choices is a privilege.
In this situation, making a choice — picking one item from the menu — far from representing some kind of defeat, becomes an affirmation. It’s a positive commitment to spend a given portion of time doing this instead of that — actually, instead of an infinite number of other “thats” — because this, you’ve decided, is what counts the most right now. [...] And the same applies, of course, to an entire lifetime (p.68)
Getting married forecloses the possibility of meeting someone else, potentially a better partner. But it’s precisely this fact that makes marriage meaningful. So maybe we should be chasing JOMO — the “joy of missing out” instead, which is this exhilarating realization when we embrace the fact that we are foregoing certain things that we want to do, because we know that whatever we’ve decided to do instead, is how we’ve chosen to spend a portion of our borrowed time/life that we never had any right to expect. 🙂
BURKEMAN, O. L. I. V. E. R. (2022). Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for mortals. PICADOR.
Favourites of the Week:
Read: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Watched: Don’t Look Up (2021) - I liked it 🙂 Very satirical, hilarious, and hits close to home. And Ariana’s singing was the cherry on top 🍒
Listened: Both/And by Huma Abedin - an open, honest, and raw memoir of Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s most famous top aid. Her story, as well as Hillary Clinton’s, is absolutely fascinating and inspiring.
Have a great week!
Ingrid
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