British Museum

British Museum is the national museum of human history in London. It turns up in Four Thousand Weeks (Oliver Burkeman): A borrowed illustration of instrumental, future-focused attention.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Four Thousand Weeks	Oliver Burkeman	backdrop	Steve Taylor watches tourists at the museum recording the Rosetta Stone on their phones instead of looking at it, an example of using time…
Three Men in a Boat	Jerome K. Jerome	turning point	J. reads a medical dictionary in the museum and finds he has every disease but housemaid’s knee.

Four Thousand Weeks — Oliver Burkeman (2021)

Source: Four Thousand Weeks · Original · Readwise highlight

watching tourists at the British Museum in London who weren’t really looking at the Rosetta Stone

• Role: backdrop
• In the book: Steve Taylor watches tourists at the museum recording the Rosetta Stone on their phones instead of looking at it, an example of using time for a future benefit.
• Why it matters: A borrowed illustration of instrumental, future-focused attention. The Rosetta Stone setting is incidental.

Three Men in a Boat — Jerome K. Jerome (1889)

Source: Original · Readwise highlight

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was.

• Role: turning point
• In the book: In chapter 1, J. goes to the museum to read up on hay fever, works through a medical dictionary and convinces himself he has every disease in it except housemaid’s knee. He crawls out a ‘decrepit wreck’ and goes to his doctor.
• Why it matters: The hypochondria born in the reading room is the joke that sets up the whole river holiday.