Four Thousand Weeks

Most productivity books don’t talk much about death. But Burkemann takes Steven Covey’s maxim “begin with the end in mind” to its memento mori conclusion. Borrowing heavily from Buddhism and the Greek stoics, he wants you to abandon all hope (literally, that’s the point of the final chapter).

Burkemann would prefer you to adopt his cheery brand of nihilism, but you don't need to share his philosophical commitments to embrace your human limitations. In fact, it might make more satisfying sense in a trinitarian frame, where we're dependent creatures created by love, for love. You're Only Human is a recent take on finitude from that perspective, and Death By Living is a punchy memoir from a similar angle. It all comes back to mortality somehow.