I remember being sat by a hotel pool in San Pedro. It was October 2021 and I was on a golf holiday during my half-term break from school. Enjoying some post-round time in the sun, I was reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks. Looking back, there is a lot to unpack from that anecdote.
Golf lessons
I played golf as a teenager. I had some lessons early on but otherwise just muddled through. Unlike some (a minority I suspect, regardless of what people may tell you), I didn’t make much progress without proper instruction and practice. As such, I set myself into a maddening rut of turning up to play golf, invariably playing below the expectations I set myself and then being frustrated with how I’d played. There were periods when I played more frequently, other times when I played less. I told myself I needed the rhythm of regular play, but even when playing regularly I still found myself frustrated.
Around 2013 I remember walking off a golf course in Flixton (just outside Manchester) and as I headed to the car park with my playing partner, Jack, he asked the customary ‘same time next week’ question and I responded ‘no’. In that moment I decided that I no longer wanted to spend my time doing something which frustrated me so much. Of course, there was much that is illogical with such a decision, but at the time there was also good reason. For the next seven years or so, I didn’t really miss playing golf. I went through periods of cycling or going to the gym, or spending an increasing amount of time on politics. Golf disappeared from my schedule but it didn’t seem to matter.
Early on in the Covid pandemic, I returned to golf, almost accidentally. It was one of the few social activities you could do and I had the gear I needed (not that that would stop me spending plenty of money on new golf golf over the next few years). In those first few rounds, even allowing for seven years of rust, I found the old frustrations coming back. This time though, perhaps out of maturity, I decided to take a different approach and my first step would be getting lessons.
Having golf lessons, on a roughly weekly basis, I wasn’t just getting the technical assistance I needed with my swing, I was also putting a bit more structure into my approach to the game. I would spend more time on the driving range and also on the course practising. As I was having lessons, it was easier for me to see that my game was a work in progress. Also, the lessons were part of a broader commitment (and financial investment) into my golf. It seemed logical to also join a club, which added to the time I could play and practice.
Joining a club was now part of a snowball as I was dedicating more and more time to golf. Membership also led to me getting my first official handicap, which would become both a measuring stick and a source of motivation. The next step, with friends following me into club membership, would be playing competitive golf. I had never played any kind of competitive sport in my life, but now I was going to be entering tournaments every weekend. I was investing time and money and there was progress there, but there were still some of those mental frustrations.
Rounds might start well but at some point there’d be a bad shot or a bad hole, the red mist would descend and very often the scorecard would soon be wrecked. For all the money I was spending on lessons (valuable) and equipment (less valuable, despite being more expensive!), it was really important that the time I was spending was being well spent. That was when I came across the work of golf writer Jon Sherman.
Sherman isn’t a swing instructor, in fact a lot of his early work was product reviews. He was fascinated with game improvement though, specifically through game management and decision-making. A key element of that game management is keeping your mind in check. I’d read a number of other mental game books (Zen Golf is a good one), but Sherman wasn’t just giving mental tips, he was supporting it with evidence. This reasoned approach to why we should approach the game in a certain way mentally really resonated with me.
One of the Sherman’s key points which really sticks with me is that playing golf is a privilege. Playing golf is entirely discretionary. We do not have to play golf. We play golf because we have the means and most importantly the time do so. In light of this, it is really important that we enjoy our time playing golf. Sherman gave lots of other advice on controlling our thoughts and emotions to maximise that enjoyment, but it all traces back to that key thought which is broader than golf: we have choices on how we use our time and, while the freedom of choice may vary for a range of reasons, it is important that we make choices that use our time well.
Infinity pool?
Going back to that poolside reading. Golf had become a big part of my life, to the extent that I was spending a week of my holiday on a golf break. My reading choice, Four Thousand Weeks, is also a reflection of my interests and concerns. Even before the pandemic, I had enjoyed those books, broadly categorised as self-help, which might cover topics such as management, careers, psychology and so on. I was particularly drawn to Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks though as it spoke to a lot of frustrations I had at the time.
For most of my teaching career, I had also spend a good chunk of my time involved in politics. While labelling it a political career may be a little grandiose, I was elected at a local level and had also stood in three General Elections. The third General Election campaign was especially bruising and was a big source of my frustration. I was juggling different commitments and ambitions. I had probably been kidding myself into believing that I could compartmentalise my life around these different paths, let alone my personal life. They are of course competing paths: competing for time.
I’m not sure I started reading Four Thousand Weeks with the right expectations. I was looking for advice on how to juggle priorities. What Burkeman provides is a deeper appreciation of the time we have and how we have to grapple with the difficult decisions in how to use it. Far from telling me how I could fit in the amount that I wanted – essentially doing more in the the same amount of time – what Burkeman was telling me was I couldn’t keep cramming more in, I had to make choices.
The message wasn’t entirely comforting. To stop kidding ourselves that we can do everything, we have to take a deep break and recognise our finitude. Even the title of the book was sobering. I found myself working out that four thousands weeks is just under 77 years. It felt like I was drawing a tally chart in my mind. I’m not quite sure Burkeman had quite that level of morbidity in mind. Sat by that pool, shifting uncomfortably while reading the book, the irrational sense of infinity was disappearing.
Sixty years on
Just a few months after returning from that golf trip, with the book completed, I wasn’t really doing much differently. I guess there is a separate thread there about the efficacy of self-help books. In December 2022 though, I got a random message from a friend about a job going at the school he’d just moved to: in the USA. An initial glance at the message, met with quick dismissal, was followed by repeated glances, each one longer and more considered. The thought train was in motion.
Had the message come at any other time during the term, it would likely have been left on that ever-growing pile of options marked ‘the roads not taken’. As chance would have it, this message came on the last day of term and so I had plenty of time to ponder. I spoke to friends about the opportunity and got a range of good advice. The best advice I got though was from a friend who, in fairness, used to give university students career advice for a living. Opening with the caution that the best advice often sounds a little cruel, I was asked to considered my life as it was. I had my middle leadership job in school, I was a local councillor. I also spent a lot of my social time, including on the golf course, with the same small group of blokes. The killer question posed: I could easily spend the next twenty years of my life doing exactly the same things, enjoying myself, but when I inevitably looked back, what would I feel about that?
That thought stayed with me. I was very happy, but it didn’t take too much self-reflection to realised I had created a very comfortable life, albeit maybe a bit of a rut for myself. And the train of events continued and eight months later I was in the USA. I moved to Washington DC without long-term accommodation in place. Just that one decision was key, as I can think back on it and take confidence. Two years ago, I hadn’t even thought about leaving Warrington. Now, I wonder where I might be in the next decade. While a different context, I remember reading Kiefer Sutherland describing receiving a new TV script (for Designated Survivor) and feeling like he could see the next ten years of his career. Time would prove Sutherland’s premonition wrong, but I get the feeling and I too can see opportunities now which I doubt I’d have considered.
Opportunity cost
Behind career moves and country moves, the complete change in environment has allowed me to think again about the fundamentals which I want to guide my decisions. Whether it is being involved in politics, pursuing a career, playing golf, travelling to places, or whatever, a lot boils down to time and how I want to spend it. I saw, and am now enjoying, opportunities beyond my hometown. Of course, the cost of those opportunities is ultimately time.
I was talking to one of my students and her mum at a parent-teacher conference earlier this month. They’re seriously bright and I said that they will have an almost daunting range of choices before them in terms of higher education, careers and so on. It is important that you think about what they key things are which you want to guide your decisions. I said that for me it was about being able to be curious, to communicate and collaborate with people, to build people up, and ideally to have some sense of social impact.
I take real pleasure from reading and listening to podcasts, especially when they touch on that intersection between philosophy, psychology and sociology trying to understand human behaviour and learning. I enjoy writing, such as this post, but don’t worry so much about whether I’ll ever publish a book. I push on what professional development at work, but more because I am interested in the ideas and the value of the process rather than just with a career outcome in mind.
At times, I’m still thinking in terms of career moves, promotions, etc, but what I try to remind myself matters more are those key drivers or values. If I look back in thirty years, I might be a little annoyed if I didn’t get to a job at a certain level, title and all, or I might wonder what might have been if I didn’t pursue a certain opportunity, such as trying to be an MP, but if we don’t have time to do everything, and when there are some factors beyond are control which determine some of those opportunities and outcomes, then I can take some satisfaction from being able to pursue those values with my time.
Commonplace 