Four Thousand Weeks and What to Do With Them

A move made later has fewer weeks to enjoy it in.

By Neil Solomon · 2 min read

Picture a couple named Hugh, 66, and Opal, 64. They have talked about retiring abroad for ten years. The plan always has a condition attached. They will go when the house sells or when the grandchildren are older.

Opal was reading a book called Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Neil is reading it too, and his description is short. An eighty-year life is about four thousand weeks.

"Ten years of talking is about five hundred weeks," Opal said.

"That sounds like a lot," Hugh said.

"It is one-eighth of the whole thing."

Hugh checked the arithmetic. Opal was right.

We say no more about the book than that, and we quote nothing from it. What follows is what the number did for one couple.

Another piece on this site, "How Many Weeks Might We Have?", shows the weeks left at each age. This one looks at the weeks already gone while a plan waited.

Waiting has reasons. A house is worth money, and a grandchild's first years come once. Retiring abroad also takes weeks of its own, for paperwork, a first lease, and the months before a city feels like home. A move made later has fewer weeks to enjoy it in.

Neil believes each person gets one life. He says, in jest, that he is spending his kids' inheritance.

Opal and Hugh decided nothing that night. They put a date on the calendar for a visit to the city they liked best. One week there would take one of their four thousand.