Making It Count
Fortunately, precisely because [doing the next and most necessary thing is] all you can do, it’s also all you ever have to do. If you face the truth about time in this way—if you can step more fully into the condition of being a limited human—you will reach the greatest heights of productivity, accomplishment, service, and fulfillment that were ever in the cards for you to begin with. And the life you will see incrementally taking shape, in the rearview mirror, will be one that meets the only definitive measure of what it means to have used your weeks well: not how many people you helped, or how much you got done; but that working within the limits of your moment in history, and your finite time and talents, you actually got around to doing—and made life more luminous for the rest of us by doing—whatever magnificent task or weird little thing it was that you came here for.
This is the final paragraph of Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. The title is based on the number of weeks in the average American lifetime. It seems like a lot, and also like not very much. On a recommendation from a good friend, I picked it up about a month ago. I always like to read at least a few pages of any recommended book—though, to be fair, I am a fickle reader and often don’t finish books. I would guess my completion rate is about 50%.
This one, however, I found hard to stop reading. The tone is inviting and it focuses on what it means to be mortal and how we do (or don’t) manage our relationship with time. Mostly we don’t. Mostly, it seems, we try to control it while also secretly knowing that controlling it is impossible. But perhaps it makes us feel better, because so much in our lives is actually out of our control.
The question really is: what does it mean to live fully, knowing we are mortal? How might we focus on the “now,” and not keep striving for a future happier life, even as we are struggling in the present? It reminds me a bit of what happens when we ask students whether we should spread out all their assessments so that they have a steady moderate flow of tests and quizzes and papers, rather than heavy weeks and lighter weeks. Invariably, they are adamant that spreading out the work is a terrible idea. The peaks of work are very hard, they will say, but the valleys are so delightful—it all seems worth it for one valley.
Many people know that I cry easily at plays, assemblies, concerts, and athletic competitions. In fact, it happened again last month—and at a comedy! The Lower School play, Rogue’s Gallery, was hilarious, delightful, and witty. Certainly my tears were just the sheer joy of seeing our wonderful young actors doing incredible things. But I have come to realize that it’s also because they are doing it together, because they are doing something that no single person could do alone. You need more than a forward for a soccer game, and you need more than one actor for an ensemble comedy. They have committed to each other, and have worked together to accomplish something tremendous—and, truly it doesn’t matter whether it’s the greatest performance or a championship title. Being the best, if that is measurable, has its place. But individual achievement is nothing compared to group accomplishment. You feel, in your deepest self, that you are part of the web of human connection, and that you have done something valuable, worthwhile, and meaningful with your time.
I think about the things in my life that produce that feeling—the sense that I have done the exact right thing that the moment called for, that I shouldn’t have done anything else with those hours. Maybe I will carry that experience with me for a long time, or perhaps it will be a very tiny moment that will be gone in a flash. Almost anything with our students, celebrating and laughing with our faculty and staff, visiting with a group of alums and hearing their stories, having dinner with my family, visits with my college roommates, mornings on the river with my rowing teammates—this is a short list and you will of course have your own. What is on it? If you imagine taking Burkeman seriously and facing your limited time on this earth, how will you ensure that you “have used your weeks well”? What is the richest, funniest, sweetest, most loving, silliest, or most generous thing you might do?
This sounds high-minded, of course, and there has to be time for frivolity and practical jokes, and also realistically sometimes we have to do things that are not fun. Sometimes we struggle greatly, and sometimes we don’t know at all how to get back to who we want to be. But I love Burkeman’s challenge to be more in the present, less focused on storing acorns for a far-off spring and more focused on what is needed now.
Education’s main focus is a future educated graduate who can take on the world. And it should be. But we can also keep asking whether we are truly present in this moment and what such present-ness might look like. And we can keep asking how to help our young people be young people now, and not just future graduates. When they are together on stage, or in games and practices, or hosting wonderful celebratory assemblies for Lunar New Year and Black History Month, they are a gift and a reminder. And also simply a lot of fun.
