Review: Four Thousand Weeks

Title: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Author: Oliver Burkeman

Genre: Philosophy/Productivity

Trigger Warnings: Discussions of death and mortality

Back Cover:

The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.

Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless struggle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society–and that we could do things differently.

Review:

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.

Review: Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD (DNF)

Title: Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

Author: Susan C. Pinsky

Genre: Organization/Productivity

Trigger Warnings: Is a writer being neurotypical but considering themself an ADHD-whisperer a trigger?

Read To: 61%

Back Cover:

If you’re one of the 10 million American adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), every day is a struggle to keep your home, your office, your electronics, and your calendar organized.

Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition—Revised and Updated presents a simple but effective, long-term solution to get you back in control of your life. Written by professional organizer Susan Pinsky, it outlines a practical, ADHD-friendly organizing approach that emphasizes easy maintenance techniques and methods for maximum efficiency, catering to the specific needs of the ADHD population. Susan’s practical solutions address the most common organizing dilemmas among her ADHD clientele, while also drawing on her own personal experience as the mother of a child with ADHD. Color photos, useful tips, and bulleted lists make this a quick and manageable read, no matter how fleeting your attention span.

Armed with this unique, step-by-step approach to organizing, you’ll receive the tools and the knowledge you need to eliminate stress from your home and lead a happier, healthier, more organized life.

Review:

I want to start with a disclaimer: I do not have ADHD.* I do, however, have autism and C-PTSD, both of which have a lot of overlapping symptoms with ADHD. A lot of things that help ADHD people also help me, and I relate to 99% of r/adhdmeme. So I thought this book might be helpful.

Susan Pinsky rubbed me the wrong way from the very beginning. She opened with a way-too-long and very repetitive chapter explaining how she wasn’t ADHD herself, but she had ADHD children and has worked with ADHD clients as a professional organizer and that makes her the ADHD whisperer. I don’t think she meant to come off as condescending, but that’s the impression I got.

She also doesn’t actually know how ADHD people work. Or how poor people work, either (but I suppose I can’t fault her for that, because all the people she’s worked with are people who can afford to hire a professional organizer). Her organizing methods rely on an ADHD person:

• Doing laundry on time 100% of the time
• Making a thorough shopping list, remembering it when they go to the store, and only purchasing what’s on the list
• Doing chores and run errands on a strict schedule
• Not only being okay with running out of something important (like bread or toilet paper), but celebrating it as a win and finding a substitute or living without until the next regularly-scheduled shopping trip
  • To me that sounds more like poverty than successful organization and I don’t think that’s a kind of life anyone should have to live, ADHD or not
• Hiring a housekeeper to do the cleaning (she claims that all the money you save by sticking to the shopping list and only the shopping list will let you afford one … I have doubts about that)

I know Marie Kondo is like the big name organizer person and other people with thoughts about organizing should be able to present their ideas without being compared to her. But at the same time, Susan Pinsky came off as a worse version of Marie Kondo. Both are all about getting rid of things that don’t assist your life, but Marie Kondo’s method is “only keep things that spark joy,” where as Susan Pinsky’s method is “you should own as little as possible! Only one set of sheets per bed! If you have five people living in your house you only need 5 plates! Never store extras or stock up, running out of staples means you’re organized and that’s good so just live without it! You only need two tupperwares! Trash the rest!” I guess it is true that if you only own two sets of clothing then your bedroom floor will never be covered in clothing, but that’s not really a life that I want to live.

I don’t want to act like this book is completely worthless. It came on my radar from someone on Tumblr who does have ADHD and found it very helpful. It also makes some good points about organizing for usability over aesthetic and minimizing the effort it takes to put things back where they belong. But I couldn’t get over the author’s ADHD-whisperer complex or her insistence that extreme minimalism is the only way to ever be organized if you have ADHD. This book has a few good ideas, but was a generally unpleasant read.

*Update: It turns out I do, in fact, have ADHD. The rest of the review still stands.

Review: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning

Title: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter

Author: Margareta Magnusson

Genre: Organization/Memoir

Trigger Warnings: Extended discussions of death and death of loved ones

Back Cover:

In Sweden there is a kind of decluttering called döstädning, dö meaning “death” and städning meaning “cleaning.” This surprising and invigorating process of clearing out unnecessary belongings can be undertaken at any age or life stage but should be done sooner than later, before others have to do it for you. In The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, artist Margareta Magnusson, with Scandinavian humor and wisdom, instructs readers to embrace minimalism. Her radical and joyous method for putting things in order helps families broach sensitive conversations, and makes the process uplifting rather than overwhelming.

Margareta suggests which possessions you can easily get rid of (unworn clothes, unwanted presents, more plates than you’d ever use) and which you might want to keep (photographs, love letters, a few of your children’s art projects). Digging into her late husband’s tool shed, and her own secret drawer of vices, Margareta introduces an element of fun to a potentially daunting task. Along the way readers get a glimpse into her life in Sweden, and also become more comfortable with the idea of letting go.

Review:

Margareta insists at the beginning of the book that death cleaning (and this book) is not morbid, and somehow she’s right. Despite being about “death cleaning,” or dealing with your stuff now to spare your loved ones the burden of dealing with it after you die, it’s actually a lighthearted and yes, gentle, book.

That said, this isn’t really an instruction manual. Margareta does add a few general “this is how I think you should do it” bits here and there, but it’s mostly about the author’s own thoughts about her own impending death and her experiences death cleaning for others and herself. The bulk of the book is stories about the things she’s accumulated through her life, the memories they contain for her, and how and why she decided to keep or get rid of them.

In some ways, it almost feels like this book itself is part of Margareta’s death cleaning – processing her journey and recording the stories of her things.

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning is a quick read – I completed it in a single afternoon – and quite pleasant despite being about “death” cleaning and containing frequent (yet remarkably lighthearted) reflections on death. Personally, I think is best approached more as a topical memoir (Margareta’s life told through her process of cleaning out her possessions) than as any sort of advice or instruction manual.

Review: Spark Joy + Update: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

The Review

Title: Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up

Author: Marie Kondo

Genre: Organization/Productivity

Trigger Warnings: None

Back Cover:

Spark Joy is an in-depth, line illustrated, room-by-room guide to decluttering and organizing your home. It covers every room in the house from bedrooms and kitchens to bathrooms and living rooms as well as a wide range of items in different categories, including clothes, photographs, paperwork, books, cutlery, cosmetics, shoes, bags, wallets and valuables. Charming line drawings explain how to properly organize drawers, wardrobes, cupboards and cabinets. The illustrations also show Ms Kondo’s unique folding method, clearly showing how to fold anything from shirts, trousers and jackets to skirts, socks and bras.

Marie Kondo’s first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, presents her unique tidying philosophy and introduces readers to the basics of her KonMari method. It has already transformed the homes and lives of millions of people around the world. Spark Joy is Marie Kondo’s in-depth tidying masterclass, focusing on the detail of how to declutter and organize your home.

Review:

Two years after reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the original book outlining the KonMari organizing method, I picked up Spark Joy, the companion book. I originally started reading it because I’d already read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and wanted new information, but then after reading this book I went back and reread that one anyway. (See below.)

Spark Joy is short and sweet, going into further detail on what she talked about in the first book. If you were confused by written descriptions of how to fold things, there’s illustrations in here to clear it up. There’s also diagrams of where Marie thinks the best places for things to go in each room are.

It also clears up what I thought was the most confusing part of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – what to do about things that don’t necessarily spark joy but are needed. My saucepans, for example, don’t particularly spark joy, but cooking will be kind of difficult if I get rid of all of them. Marie’s solution may be a little “woo-woo,” as my husband put it, but at least there’s a reason behind it and it fits with the rest of the method.

Overall, this was a good expansion to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and is just as inspiring as the original. Which is why I ended up rereading the original book after I finished this one.

The Update

I reread The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. (Click here for my original review.) My main reason for doing so was because I really want my husband to get on board with KonMari-ing our new apartment and I know he won’t read the whole book, so I decided to write a summary (which turned out to be 9 pages long – much more likely to get read).

My thoughts on the book haven’t really changed since my initial review. It’s still inspiring and seems to have a solid practical foundation, and the personification of houses and objects seemed a lot less weird the second time around. Though I remembered the basic ideas, the reread was a good refresher and reminded me of some of the details I’d forgotten. Summarizing it for my husband also helped me remember it better, and now I have a summary if I need a quick refresher.

Now let’s see if we ever get around to actually KonMari-ing the apartment!

Review: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Image from Marie Kondo

Title: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Author: Marie Kondo

Genre: Organization/Productivity

Trigger Warnings: None

Back Cover:

Japanese organizational consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly declutter your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Whereas most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, the KonMari Method’s category-by-category, all-at-once prescription leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo’s clients have been repeat customers (and she still has a three-month waiting list of new customers!). With detailed guidance for every type of item in the household, this quirky little manual from Japan’s newest lifestyle phenomenon will help readers clear their clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home–and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.

Review:

I’ve heard a lot about this book in organizing circles – a lot of people recommend the KonMari Method for organizing, there are a lot of articles on using the KonMari method on closets/kitchens/etc., and in general it’s had a pretty high profile. And since I actually really enjoy cleaning and organizing (odd, I know), when I found this as an audiobook at the library, I snatched it up to listen to on my commute.

If I had to pick one word for this book, it would be: Inspiring.

Admittedly, I love organizing anyway. But something about the way Marie Kondo laid out the method she developed was inspiring. She detailed her experience with organizing, all the mistakes she made and the good ideas she found, and how she developed her method. She also gave a lot of examples from clients she’s worked with and how her method has helped them. So the KonMari method has a very practical foundation.

But it was really the method itself that was the most fascinating. Mainly because it’s so simple. The entire premise is “keep things that bring you joy, discard things that don’t.” There’s some more to it, and Ms. Kondo goes into a lot of detail and explains specifically how it should be done – including what order you should go through your things in – but she promises that even if you’re the laziest person in the world, none of her clients have ever recluttered their house and you won’t either.

There was one weird part about this book, though – the personification of things and places. Ms. Kondo focuses a lot on how sad and dejected unused items feel, how thanking items for their use makes them happier and therefore last longer, methods for helping your items rest and relax … basically treating them like people. She also talks a lot about how your house knows how much stuff should be in it and each item knows how it should be stored. Maybe that’s a Japanese thing, but as a westerner, I found it cool, but a little odd.

The main result of listening to this book for me was that I wanted to go home immediately and organize everything – and if 95% of my stuff wasn’t in boxes right now, I would have. (As it is, my epic organizing binge will have to wait until the plumbing in our new house is fixed and we can move in and get everything out of boxes.) I honestly plan on buying this book just so I can read through it a couple more times – the information in it is so useful, interesting, and inspiring. It’s definitely worth all the hype I’ve been seeing!

2019 update: I read the companion book and re-read this one!