I’m 45. Wife. Kid. The works. Painfully aware of how precious life is. 20 years ago when I was your age (which btw feels like only a few years ago…) this type of content resonated a lot more with me. I assume it was because the concept of aging was still pretty abstract. Now I’m in the shit so to speak.

My point is that I’ve seen a million of these. Hell I’ve read 4K weeks! You’ll get no argument from me that spending your time wisely is important but try to keep in mind that making the most of Every Second Of The Day is a sure way to make yourself miserable. I should know. I’ve done it. So, the intent of this page might be to inspire, but for a lot of folks it will trigger unnecessary existential panic.

I guess just try to remember the very wise advice from LOTR: “not all who wander are lost.”

> I assume it was because the concept of aging was still pretty abstract.

Heh, true that. When you get old your body will communicate the limited remaining time to you more deeply than any website ever can.

I'm in the exact same phase of life as you. Same age, mortgage, kids, wife, etc.

Recently I've been feeling distracted at work and unable to commit anything to completion, especially since I've been WFH since you-know-when. It's been a blessing to not have a commute but at the same time demands more of my concentration. At the same time, I have a hard time saying no at work. Throughout the day I tend to flit between tasks, along with starting/stopping work altogether as my mind wanders.

I like the message this article brings. One thing I definitely don't do is think about things I've completed.

I've talked to a counselor about this. They've gotten me to think about being more graceful to myself about my concentration and my work. I don't know if I'm there yet but we'll see.

> spending your time wisely is important but try to keep in mind that making the most of Every Second Of The Day is a sure way to make yourself miserable.

That was the whole point of the book though? Stop trying to make the most of every second and do what you think is important.

I'm not critiquing the book. I am critiquing the site.

That’s a good point. Whenever I’ve felt existential dread it’s been soothing to know I can improve myself and live life in a better way. However if you’re already in what you consider to be an ideal state, you don’t have any wiggle room. And with a wife and kids on top, you have others who depend on you and also your own attachment to those people, which makes it all the more difficult to acknowledge that life is finite. All of the above which I haven’t experienced for myself.

"Ideal" is pretty far from what I would call my state :) I will however say that I wouldn't go back to any earlier point in my life given the choice. The only thing that I _truly_ miss is the 6 pack abs and being functional on 2 hours sleep.

It’s great you read 4000 Weeks, but as others have mentioned, I’m not sure you gathered the major takeaways. 4000 Weeks is about embracing finitude and accepting that you can’t do everything. The notion is freeing, because once you acknowledge you are finite, you can then make conscious decisions about how you want to spend your time. The intent of the book is to encourage people to choose time wisely, not “fill every day”. It very much has a quality over quantity kind of message. As an ADHD sufferer/chronic procrastinator/perfectionist type, I found it incredibly helpful and freeing to acknowledge that you will never be able to create everything to an unrealistic perfect standard, so instead focus on the things that matter the most to you.

> It’s great you read 4000 Weeks, but as others have mentioned, I’m not sure you gathered the major takeaways.

I've commented this many times but I'll say it here again: I am not critiquing the book. I understand its message fine. I am critiquing the site.

I don't know if it really matters if you are 20, 40, or 80; we can get caught up in certain traps no matter what our age is. Experience is definitely something we should be able to tap into later in life, but we can be stressed and feeling like we need to do much more than we are capable of even when we are 'old'.

I have a little startup and I keep a 'TODO' list of features to implement, bugs to fix, things to test, documentation to write, etc.. I could stress out because the list never seems to get any shorter. Every time I cross one thing off the list, I think of two more to add. Instead, I try to focus on what I can accomplish that day (or that week) and stop when I have spent a certain amount of time on it.

If I am in an ambitious mood, I might speed many hours tackling a single issue. Other times, I can go a whole week without ever opening up the IDE. That is OK! I have the luxury of not depending on the startup for financial survival. I also realize some others do not share this freedom so I don't criticize them if they feel stress and overwork on their project. I just work at my own pace and try to gain satisfaction on what I am able to accomplish.

I try to apply this technique to other areas of my life as well.

very strange that you've read "Four Thousand Weeks" but associate it with "making the most of Every Second Of The Day" which is the precise opposite of its philosophy

Re-read my comment dude. I'm critiquing the site. Not the book.

The site literally says "Practice Doing Nothing."

And has a counter for how many weeks of life you have left.

> I’m 45. Wife. Kid. The works.

Should someone who is 45 years of age who has none of those things perhaps visit that website?

I guess that depends. Do you want those things and feel like time is running out to get them? If so, maybe not the best for your mental health.

It's one of those self-help contradictions: View life as both abundant and scarce at the same time.

Another is: love yourself, but avoid narcissism.

I don't really think it's a contradiction. I think the idea, rather, is to focus on expanding the depth of your life (abundance), knowing you have little control over the length of it (scarce).

And here's a Buddhism quote for the rescue:

> Someone came to him [Ajahn Chaa] complaining of all the conflicting advice he gave to his students. Sometimes he would suggest one thing and then later just the opposite. Ajahn Chaa replied, “It’s like this. If I see someone walking down a road and about to fall off into a ditch on the left, I’ll shout, ‘Go right.’ Later, if the same person, or someone else, is walking on the road and about to fall into a ditch on the right, I’ll say, ‘Go left, go left.’ It’s always about staying on the path.”

from Joseph Goldstein, _Mindfulness_ (2013)

Ironically, free broadband internet is one of the saddest time accelerator I've ever experienced. Way worse than work.

Tbh I’m sick of these supposedly well-intentioned “reminders” to be better, to not “waste time”, and so on: for most people they demonstrably don’t work, as evidenced by the fact that out of one thousand people that know it applies to them, only a handful will do something about it. While the rest will verbally acknowledge it, will fret about it in their minds, and yet will do nothing about it.

If one individual fails to change, that’s their problem: if a method of change doesn’t work for the vast majority of people, then the problem is with the method.

Just my pet theory here but I don’t think that most people can just get off reddit because they have only X weeks left; can lose weight because they know they are eight kilograms overweight; can start exercising because someone told them something bad will happen to them in twenty years if they don’t; can start socializing because someone told them that in studies XYZ, people who are lonely are 90% more likely die of pancreatic cancer… it’s all completely backwards.

Because you know what makes people do anything? A purpose, goal, or meaning. By trying to “get the most out of my remaining 2800 weeks” like some little optimizing robot, you’re trying to improve “in life” (who wants to be a loser in life right) by doing the equivalent of maintaining your garden by removing all the weeds with a tweezer; already having some kind of purpose is what compels people to lose weight and to focus their time, because they might need that time to fulfill their purpose, they might need to lose weight in order to be fit enough to do what they need to do, and so on.

I also notice that having a purpose has a large impact on getting through the day. Because then everything I do, I do in support of that purpose. But when I lack a purpose? Then most things are mundane, robotic, tedious checklists. Things I do in order to avoid things like maybe possibly getting pancreatic cancer in thirty years time.