Audiobook: Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman

Four thousand weeks is the average number of weeks we get (if we take 75 to be the average age that people live to).

My take home from this book is that there are a lot of productivity programs out there, but the long and the short of it is, that regardless of how productive you want to be, there isn’t really a point to it. The main aim is to enjoy the here and now. Projects that you work on will always take longer than anticipated regardless of how well you try and plan them.

Small increments of work each day gets much more done than trying to do it all in once.

People who take breaks at the same time, e.g. over weekends / holidays, are a lot less stressed, because you don’t feel guilty or stressed about not being at work while others work. I think that is why Christmas / December is just such a magical time in South Africa.  

I didn't enjoy the book as much as I would have liked to. I found the narrator (author)'s voice a bit grating the more tired /irritable I was.

3/5

Audiobook: You are the star in N.P.H’s Life Story. Neil Patrick Harris. Choose Your Own Autobiography. Read by the Author.

What a fun book! Neil Patrick Harris has written his autobiography as an adventure book. A book where you can decide what happens next, and which chapters to flip to. As this is an audiobook, flipping through chapters isn’t possible, but, you still get to hear all the different options. It’s fun. What’s also great about the audiobook version is that he has included the audio clips of e.g. his speech about optimism when he was eight years old.

He has a marvellous sense of humour.

5/5