‘4000 Weeks’ Delivers 3 Gut-Punches in the First 50 Pages

DM (Donna) Hanton, Writer
5 min readApr 9, 2024
My tagged and bent copy. Photo: DM Hanton

The book, 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman is not new; it was published back in 2021. But somehow, it passed me by at the time. Then, late last year, three people, over the course of two weeks, mentioned on social media that they were reading it. I took this as the Universe trying to get my attention. And get it, it did — though some of its insights hit hard.

Gut Punch #1

Gut punch number one comes from the title 4000 Weeks, which is based on the premise that if we live to be 80, this is roughly the amount of weeks we have to live (4160 for the pedants!). Given the life expectancy in Canada is 83.9 years for women, I calculated I might get 4363 weeks. However, I potentially have to subtract 5 to 10 years, because I have Multiple Sclerosis. Which would put me at an approximate life expectancy of 73.9 years to 78.9 years. I’m already 61. Which leaves me with somewhere between 620 and 880 weeks left. Holy shit, that’s sobering — if not downright depressing!

Logically, we all know that we’re going to die. And logically, we know it could happen at any time. None of us are guaranteed an old age. Just as, logically, I know that at 61 I am at least 3/4 of the way through my life. However, emotionally, I was not ready to see the fact that I have, comparatively, so few…

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DM (Donna) Hanton, Writer

Hi, I’m Donna. Fiction Writer. My current WIP is domestic suspense, titled Love to Hatred Turned. I post about writing, life — all the stuff, really!