I loved this book. The premise is this: life is short; each of us, on average, is alive for only four thousand weeks. It's impossible to accomplish and experience everything we want to. So how do we decide what is actually worth our time? I especially appreciated his thoughts on how everyone is just winging it, all the time, and that serializing our tasks will save us. I read this book very slowly: I rarely spend more than a week reading a book, but I read this one over the course of three, which was perfect for the material.

From the publisher: "Looking both east and west, in bulletins from the past and from far afield, Oliver Burkeman introduces us to an unusual group of people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. Whether experimental psychologists, terrorism experts, Buddhists, hardheaded business consultants, Greek philosophers, or modern-day gurus, they argue that in our personal lives, and in society at large, it's our constant effort to be happy that is making us miserable. And that there is an alternative path to happiness and success that involves embracing failure, pessimism, insecurity, and uncertainty—the very things we spend our lives trying to avoid."

I loved Oliver Burkeman’s first title, Four Thousand Weeks, and read it slowly over the course of three weeks. This one was no different–I enjoyed taking it in snippets over my morning coffee. In Meditations for Mortals, Burkeman gives us a path to embracing limitations we can’t escape: the number of hours in our day, the temptation toward perfectionism, and more. This was a breath of fresh air.