This year feels different – heavy, terrifying, enraging, yes – but instead of retreating, self-isolating and mourning, we are hungry for connection and community. We are taking stock of our resources. Some are limited, like our time on earth; others are boundless, like our capacity for giving and receiving love. How do we maximize and nurture goodness in the time we have right now?
Our 2025 Murmurations books are meant to guide us toward what matters, and help us recognize the quiet, mobilizing power of love in all its forms.
March 21: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals a book by Oliver Burkeman
I tend to look sideways at books promising “productivity” – but this is not that. Instead, Oliver Burkeman puts into words and numbers our time alive (4,000 weeks, if we’re lucky), and how to consider spending our time within those weeks. This is a mind-shifting read if you’ve ever thought about changing your relationships with work, family, nature, Phone, or any of the things we’d like to spend more or less time on each day.
About the book:
Nobody needs to be told there isn't enough time. Whether we're starting our own business, or trying to write a novel during our lunch break, or staring down a pile of deadlines as we're planning a vacation, we're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless struggle against distraction. We're deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and yet the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon.
Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks, the average length of a human life.
Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with "getting everything done," Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we've come to think about time aren't inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we've made as individuals and as a society--and that we can do things differently.
Friday March 21st at Abide West at Willow Room Collective
15810 Detroit Ave, Lakewood
Sliding Scale: Pay What you Wish $5 - $30
Bring a snack or drink to share!