Today, we come to the last day of the year, a day that inspires both retrospection and awe. I’m thinking of the awe part right now. Of the fact that, in what seems like six or at the very most nine months time, an entire year has passed.

How to savor these days that pass so quickly, to empty them to the dregs, to leave behind the worries that cloud them. I turn to a book that made an impression when I read it early last year, enough of an impression that when asked my favorite book of 2025, this is the one I picked. (Weirdly, I don’t seem to have written about it here.)

In Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman reminds us that “the trouble with attempting to master your time, it turns out, is that time ends up mastering you.” It’s when we’re in a flow state, practicing our art, or caring for a newborn, that time drops away.

This isn’t some touchy-feely book about losing one’s self in the moment, though. Instead, it’s a cold-eyed look at how much time we really have, about 4,000 weeks, give or take a few.

This is a philosophical tract more than a “how to” book. When we accept the finiteness of our time on earth, we pick out a few important tasks and concentrate on them.

For some strange reason, I find this comforting — especially on the last day of a very full year.