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samkilbride's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Death
bluejayreads's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
4.0
This is a bizarre book to review. While I was reading it I found it groundbreaking and earth-shattering, but as soon as I stopped reading for a moment I could no longer remember what was actually so profound about it.
I can’t even really give you a succinct statement on what the book was about, because it was “about” many things. It was about how leisure has become another task, the failure of time management systems, the invention of the modern idea of time during the Industrial Revolution, the creation of meaning through conscious choices, and that you are definitely going to die someday and the end is sooner than it seems. And probably a few other things too, there were a lot of topics in this book.
If I boil it down to a single message, it would be something like, “Life is short and you can’t do everything, so pick what you actually want to do and ignore the rest.” Which is not at all groundbreaking and is a message I’ve heard from a good 80% of self-help products. Oliver does make some good points. He points out that time management systems fail because they’re built on the premise of helping you to do everything when we, as finite mortals, are inherently incapable of doing everything. He also proposes that doing things has meaning because we are choosing to do that with our limited time to the exclusion of all the other things we could do with our time – which is an interesting point to think about, but he uses the example of a marriage having meaning because you chose this one person to the exclusion of all others, and as a polyamorous person that’s not at all what gives my marriage meaning.
I think it’s the way that it’s written that makes this book feel so profound, because every time I put it down the feeling of this book containing incredible deep wisdom completely disappeared. You can’t do everything, and this fact should be obvious. But I suppose we all need reminders every now and then, and this is a good book to remind you of that fact.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death
Extended and frequent discussions of death and your own mortality
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