Hello, this is Emma Ganon, and thank you for listening to this podcast. I just wanted to let you know that my new book, The Success Myth, Letting Go of Having It All, is out on May the 18th.

I think it's my best book yet, so I'm excited for it to come out. And the book unpicks the eight success myths from happiness, to money, to productivity, to celebrity, to the idea of finally arriving, and how chasing a version of success that doesn't align with your values can really take you off track, and this book is about getting back to yourself.

Breaking free, finding a new way forward, and it's available on May the 18th. If you love this podcast, you'll love the book, and it's available soon from all good bookshops, so you can order yours now. I hope you like it.

Hello, and welcome back to Control Out Delete. This is a replay of my episode with the fantastic Oliver Birkman. It was recorded in 2021 around the time his book, 4,000 weeks had just come out.

He is an award-winning writer for the Guardian. He writes a popular weekly column called This Column Will Change Your Life. And in this episode, we talk about his new book, 4,000 weeks, Time Management for Mortals.

It's so great. I recommended this book to everyone when I got a proof copy before it came out, and I'm so glad they got all the attention it deserves.

It's a truly uplifting, engrossing, and deeply realistic look at productivity culture and time management. And it's looking at it through a new lens, which is rejecting society's obsession with getting everything done,

our obsession with a million to do lists, and really unpicks why our obsession with productivity is ruining our lives essentially.

So I hope you enjoyed this book. It's one of my favourite non-fiction books of the year, and I hope you enjoyed this episode.

The day has arrived that I have Oliver Birkman on the podcast. I really loved your book so much, and you know this because I keep telling everyone to buy it.

But I actually bought the US copy as well because I wanted the cover. I like the US cover.

We've got both copies on my bookshelf, and yeah, I wanted to kick off really with how you did come to this realisation on the 4,000 weeks,

because you talk about it in the book, but it's funny. I started the book with a bit of an existential meltdown, and then I ended the book with like this meditative relaxation.

And so could you talk us through that timeframe and what it means to you and to us?

Yeah, no, I'm glad that was your sort of journey through the ideas, because it was mine as well.

And I think this idea of 4,000 weeks, which is very approximately the average human lifespan in the West,

expressed in terms of weeks, you know, if you live to be 80, you'll get about 100 more than 4,000.

But broadly speaking, 4,000 weeks is a human life on average.

I mean, I did wanted to be like arresting and to grab people's attention.

I've been a little bit worried that it might grab people's attention and then horrify them so much that they definitely don't want to read a book that has that title.

Luckily, that hasn't seemed to be the case.

It's just this notion that there is this kind of hard limit somewhere to the amount of time we get.

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