The abstract view of time, whereby time is an entity that is measured independently of tasks, has been prevalent in Western society since the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century. The metric of hours, minutes, and seconds measures the length of a day but is also independent of it, as an eight-hour workday or a school day, for example, is maintained regardless of the position of the sun.

The abstract view of time serves the interests of capitalism, as it creates productivity targets that are independent of workers’ capacities, thereby spurring them to compete in ever increasing their output. While the anxiety about productivity was originally instilled by factory bosses who wanted to get the most out of their workers, increasingly, workers themselves internalized this mindset as they sought to squeeze out as much as possible from their day. Oliver Burkeman shows that the modern fixation with schedules stems from this anxiety, as people set their limited capacities against the expectations of what they should complete in an abstract measure of time.

Finitude is the opposite of infinity and can be defined as the state of things— principally life and time—coming to an end. Burkeman adopts Heidegger’s theory of finitude as the definitive aspect of human life in his approach to time management.