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Episode Transcript
The transcript is computer generated. There may be errors.
Sharad Lal: Hi, everyone. Welcome to How to live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host Sharad Lal. This is episode 70. I have some very, very exciting news to share. The how to live podcast is now In the top 2.5% of all podcasts globally. We listen to over 135 countries. Thank you very much for your support. Today we have a very special guest. Award-winning journalist and critically acclaimed author. Oliver Burkeman. Do you know how many weeks most of us will live? Is it 20,000 or 30,000?
Actually it's only around 4,000 weeks. But that's not a reason to despair argues Oliver in his latest book, 4,000 weeks time management for mortals.
Confronting this finiteness of time and how little control we have can be liberating and is the key to a meaningful life. 4,000 Weeks is a New York Times bestseller, Earning praise from Adam Grant, Mark Manson, and others while studying at the university of Cambridge. Has been shortlisted for the famous or we'll prize. And has won the foreign press association award. In our conversation. We speak about issues with time management techniques. The finitude of time. Fun freedom. Patient meaning and a lot more. What I like about Oliver is that he challenges the cult of positive thinking. And then through logic offers us actionable meaningful insights. Now here's the remarkable thing. Oliver Berkman.
Sharad Lal: Hi Oliver. Welcome to How to Live. Good afternoon to you in London.
Thank you very much. Great to see you. Thank you very much for making time and let's get right to it. Your book, 4,000 Weeks, is such a fascinating read and
one of the things that you talked about just struck me so strongly, and I'm sure it strikes many people, is we're trying time management tools, efficiency tools, and the more you do it, the more things you have to do.
And you then flip it around. Time efficiency is not the way to look at time. Finitude of time is the way to look at it. So if you can describe how you arrived at that.
Oliver Burkeman: Yeah. It was a personal journey in the sense that I spent many years as what I describe as a productivity geek. And then I wrote this column for the Guardian newspaper here in the UK, which enabled me to indulge this. Unhealthy passion, because one of the things I did in that column was test out different methods.
What changed for me was that I think this happens with many people in many different domains of life.
If you really spend enough time trying to find control and security and the solution to all your emotional issues in a particular avenue, and you keep not finding the time management technique that enables you to do everything and never have to disappoint anybody and never have to make tough decisions with your time.
eventually you start asking some deeper questions, The sort of second order kind of questions where you say, maybe there's a problem with what I'm looking for here, rather than that I just haven't yet found. The perfect answer to it. And I think that, that personal experience fed into what I say about this in the book.
And broadly, I just want to make the point that there's nothing wrong with efficiency. but that efficiency is not ever going to be the way to achieve peace of mind with regard to time,
You're never going to make yourself so efficient that you are doing all the things that you can think of that feel like they might need doing and then you can finally say, okay, now I'm in charge. Now I'm in control. The simple reason for that is just that. The supply of those things is effectively infinite. You can receive an infinite number of emails.
You can have an infinite number of ambitions for things you'd like to do in your life or places you'd like to go. So there's no way to get through that supply. And in fact, what will happen, is that, all else being equal, if all you do to try to deal with a feeling of having too much to do is get more efficient, you will just get busier and more stressed it's not a good way of ever achieving the peace of mind that we want to achieve.
With respect to time, I think the only way to come closer to that peace of mind is to face the reality of the situation, the fact that there will always be too much to do, too many things that matter, and just to learn to thrive as a finite person in that infinite ocean, rather than trying to, drink the whole ocean down, right? Because that's never happening,
Sharad Lal: I love that because that struck me in so many things, even in terms of money. Sometimes people feel that, Hey, I'm going to keep working hard. And at this point of time, when I get enough money, then I'm going to get peace of mind, or I'm going to be efficient in time. And then later I have a lot more time to do, and that doesn't happen.
Once we shift our mindset, we realize that time is finite, but supplies are finite. So, let's focus on the finite amount of time. How does that shift of mindset help us use our time better?
Oliver Burkeman: The most simple immediate response to that is just that you find yourself naturally, I would argue, taking, making better decisions about how to use your time. Everybody craves an answer to the question, okay, what things should I be spending my time on?
And occasionally, People are annoyed with me because my book doesn't say okay, it's this, and it's this. The problem with that approach, partly just like everyone knows what's on that list already, right? Everyone knows it's like social relationships and spending time in nature and doing things that you love.
The reason we don't do those things is not that we have no idea what they are. It's that, a lot of the time anyway, we don't approach our days with a sense of needing to focus on those things. We go through life as if we have all the time in the world on some level.
And so we sort of postpone these things that we care about so much until we've got all this other stuff out of the way. And I'm trying to repeatedly tell people in the book, you're never going to get all the other stuff out of the way. So that doesn't mean you should neglect it. Like life admin completely, everyone's got to pay bills and answer emails and all sorts of things, but postponing the other stuff until all of that is done is a recipe for postponing it. indefinitely for the whole of your life.
Another part of what I want to try to communicate is the complete mismatch between our finitude as humans and the infinity of things we could do.
It's so total, right? The difference between finite and infinite is absolute. It's actually very liberating, I think, and relaxing because it's not a question of if I make all the right decisions and really have a lot of self discipline, then I can live the perfect life. no, if the perfect life is defined as doing all the things that matter.
You're never gonna live it. So you can give up hope of that particular outcome. You can accept defeat, but it's a really kind of constructive form of defeat because it's a form of defeat that says, okay I'm only gonna get to do a handful of the things that would have been good things for me to do.
That's just absolutely a given. I'm going to have to neglect all sorts of things in life that would be perfectly good things to spend my time on. It's not that they're irrelevant or unimportant; it's that I just have to make some choices. I can really pour my time, energy, and attention into the ones that I choose.
I don't need to be tormented by the fact that there are all these others.
I would argue that it's not a recipe for accomplishing less in life. It's actually an argument for accomplishing much more in life. Once you have given up this futile waste of energy of trying to accomplish all the things that seem important,
Sharad Lal: Yeah,it's not the anxious energy that I have limited time. I have to do many things at the same time. It's not like I've given up on life. I can't achieve anything, so let me not do anything. So it's something in between that I will not do all the meaningful things in life.
There will be meaningful things that I will leave out. But because I have this amount of time left, I can try to find pleasure and do some meaningful things. It's a different energy that comes in there.
Oliver Burkeman: You're absolutely right. I'm always struggling to sort of put this into words, but I think that one way of thinking about it is Types of energy is a very good way of phrasing it, I think, because there's the type of energy of the person who's just given up, the type of energy of the person who's just lazing around doing nothing, the type of anxious energy of the person who's racing to try to get to the summit of things. But there's also that very special kind of, of energy that is associated with words like invigorating bracing or exhilarating probably doesn't work for the part of the world where you are, as I understand it, but where I am here in the sort of windswept rainy countryside of England, when you go for a in an environment like this, it's very energising, but it isn't being on a tropical beach and it isn't like you know being cosy by a warm fire, it's like there's energy in this kind of,you're encountering your limitations, you're encountering your edge, You're very small in the landscape, just as you're very small in the world of potential things that you could do. And there's a kind of relish in that, right? There's a kind of sense of like, now I can get stuck into a few things. There's something a little bit difficult about it in a way that lifts your spirits.
like that metaphor. And if I bring it to practical terms as we think about it, I loved your concept related to this and the joy of missing out versus FOMO, where you're okay to miss out on certain meaningful activities, which reduces the pleasure, but then you can also go out and do things that are meaningful.
Sharad Lal: So, can you talk about FOMO and JOMO, as you put it, and how does it come into play?
Oliver Burkeman: FOMO, the famous fear of missing out that is made so much worse by social media and by the sort of the fact that we're just so connected to people around the world, you can see so many things about how people are living and the edited sort of highlights reels of their lives.
And of course, I want to argue from the point of view of humans being finite, that sort of missing out on a lot of things is inevitable. Because you can only be in one place at a time, you're always missing out on almost everything. So firstly, that's a good reason not to feel too much FOMO, right?You don't need to try to persuade yourself of the answer to the question, is there a great party happening somewhere that I'm not at? You don't need to try and reassure yourself that the answer to that question is no.
you can relax because the answer to that question is definitely yes. And so that in itself is liberating, I think. But then more than that, what I, when I talk about Jomo, the joy of missing out, other people use this phrase in slightly different nuanced ways. But really what I mean by that is that when you.
Take account of this situation and you understand that anything you choose means missing out on all these other things. It actually gives more meaning to the choice that you make, Because it means that you're deciding to focus on bedtime with your kids or cooking a meal for your spouse, whatever it is, whatever example it is.
Something minor, but that actually is the kind of thing that makes up a life. It gets more value from the fact that. there are all these other things you could be doing. and a sort of third just finally quickly a sort of third aspect to this is it also means that Sometimes people want to take this as meaning okay I've really got to figure out what I care about and focus on those things It also helps you see that quite a lot of the things you're already doing in your life
They are really meaningful, right?
This is not necessarily about making big changes to your life, like if you're hearing this and saying, okay, that means I should stop just sitting at home watching streaming movies. I should go and do something more social or spiritual or something. Maybe it means that. That could be right for any one person, but maybe it could just cause you to really, enjoy the heck out of that movie that you were watching.
So it's not necessarily about change. It's about deepening the experience of whatever it is you're doing.
Sharad Lal: I love that. I love that. Two, two very good points. That point about choice because you talk about FOMO comes from a fear anxiety based place that I have to do it versus. Jomo comes from a place of choice and leaning in and because you've learned in that itself shows the meaning that it has so I love that and I also love the second thing that you talked about which is being those things might already be there in your life.
It's not like changing life. It's looking around and you could be doing it, but deepening that experience related to that. You also talk about attention. And where we are putting attention becomes so important in life to have meaningful experiences. What are some practical tips in which we can cultivate attention in places that are meaningful to us?
Oliver Burkeman: in many ways, this is the big question, isn't it? Because the argument is that attention is a finite resource, but it's more than a resource. It's not something we use in order to have meaningful lives. It is just life.
If you don't put any attention on something, the idea that it's part of your life at all is very questionable. If you have some terrible problem in your life, but it, but you never think about it, then I would say you don't have that terrible problem. On the other hand, If you claim that you have a friendship in your life, but you never give it any of your attention, then I would say you don't really have that friendship in any way that matters. So it really matters what we put our attention on. There are a couple of overall approaches that people take in the sort of personal development and wellness, spirituality, all those spaces to attention.
It's not so much always that our attention is being grabbed by other things, which does happen and is true, absolutely, but it's also. That we feel active discomfort in letting our attention rest on things that matter to us.
There is this, apparently at first glance, rather strange phenomenon where it's exactly the things that I care about. Writing books, paying attention to my son, listening in a conversation with my wife, right? It's exactly these things that are the hardest to let my attention stay with. And it's not because I'm lying to myself when I say they're important. It's because, I think my argument is, it's precisely because the stakes are quite high. It's precisely because Interactions with people, your nearest and dearest, require you to be emotionally vulnerable in a way. It's precisely because when I'm writing a book, like that's something I really care about and it could go well, or it could go badly, people could like it or they could dislike it and I could make some money out of it or I could not make some money out of it.
there's things that matter there. And I think that's natural, it's natural then, though counterintuitive, but when we're doing things that matter like that, we're really brought up against our limitations and we feel restless, like we don't want to just give our attention to them.
And then it's way more fun to just scroll through social media or do something low stakes, Do something where it doesn't matter, where you can't go well or badly. It's just a respite from the sort of. intensity of things that matter. So that is how I resolve in my mind, anyway, this paradox that we seem to be most easily distracted from the things that we care about the most.
And it also just brings that focus onto I think a big part of the challenge of attention.
Sharad Lal: Oliver, that's such an interesting point. And if I can dig in a little deeper into that because it's so interesting where you talk about these things matter so much. That level and intensity of attention that we need to give, or we think we should be giving is very high. And sometimes when we are not able to do that, we just tap out and do something else, which is fidgety and stuff.
Is that the direction? Is that why we don't give attention to these things?
Oliver Burkeman: I think we don't give attention because it's difficult. And one of the difficulties is that, yeah, it just feels like the level of attention that's required is beyond us when we're tired or beyond us when we're feeling stressed or something. I think listening, Deeply listening to another person is a great example.
It's so hard. I'm in the easy position here because I'm the guest on your podcast. So on some level, I'm here to say the things I think. But I think in many ways, the host's job is the more challenging one to really Actually be present to what somebody else is saying.
and it's notoriously an issue in relationships that people don't feel like the other person is listening to them. On the one hand, I want to say, I think it's so difficult for the reasons that we've been discussing. It's because it's very vulnerable and brings you up against uncertainty and insecurity.
Whereas the person who just says what they want to say.is very much in a position of control. But to just be open to what the other person is saying in ways that might trigger you, might upset you, might all sorts of things might happen takes a different kind of willingness to be present.
my son really obviously thrives from having me pay attention to the things that he's doing, but it's far better that it's okay attention than that it's no attention at all and holding myself to a standard of like laser focus trained through years of meditation or something like that doesn't help anybody because then as you say, you just say Oh, I can't do it now, another time.
People want to be heard and seen, but they don't. Need you to be hearing and seeing them with 110 percent of your energy at all the time.
Sharad Lal: You put out some very good points. I think the second point is that people don't want that fixed attention. Sometimes. I just remember some people who are really looking at you, it puts a lot of. Pressure on you. Even when you're
Oliver Burkeman: Right? Yeah, it's not always that nice. Yeah.
Sharad Lal: Hopefully I'm not doing that.
And I love your point about vulnerability. That is because when you're putting your presence, you're not in control. You don't know what's going to come out from the other side and you're vulnerable and adjusting to whatever happens. And that's. takes some effort. I never thought of it like that. So thanks for sharing that.
And I assure you, I am fully present. I don't have a video game window open on the other side. I'm fully present. The thing related to this, which was again, very interesting, and you've touched upon it. And so has Cal Newport. And that got my interest in that is boredom.you've talked about boredom that we don't know how to be bored, and that itself is a problem.
If you can talk a little bit about boredom, and maybe some benefits of boredom, as you see it.
Oliver Burkeman: I've occasionally talked about benefits of boredom, I also associate a bit more with Cal Newport and a few other people and I'm sort of getting at something very similar. I think I've tended to talk about patience, which is not, it's not the same thing, but it's all, we're in the same territory.
I think it's the idea of, Not being able to control how things are unfolding in your environment, boredom, and this is where I do write about boredom. It's really strange when you stop to think about it, how agonising boredom can feel.
word and the context that arises, you'd assume we're just talking about a sort of non feeling, Nullness, but actually when you're really bored, it's very aggravating feeling
It's because these are moments where you really don't have a sort of comforting sense of total control over how life unfolds. If you're waiting in a long line and you've got to wait in that line and you wish you weren't in that line, boredom is one way of saying that.
The other way is it takes so much surrender to the situation to just wait in it. And very different situations can seem boring.anyone who has spent time parenting very young children knows that the sort of moments of utter magic alternate with serious stretches of boredom.
and I think that a part of that is just like, you're completely responsible for this two-year-old for the next five hours. There are no choices involved. It doesn't mean it won't be wonderful at certain points, but you don't have the power because a two-year-old cannot be left for half an hour while you go and do something else.
And although I've tried not to do it myself, I do have some sympathy when you're at the playground and All the parents and other people looking after kids just like on their phones. Because it's like a tiny escape hatch from there's a way of talking about that kind of phenomenon where people are like, do these parents just prefer Instagram to their own kids?
And it's no, it's there's some tiny little assertion of freedom. I'm going to escape through this portal into the internet.
As you also hinted at in your question, you can see how it would be very useful to learn to relax into boredom a little bit more and feel the discomfort. It's not about stopping feeling those things, but not reacting to that discomfort by Being so restless or needing to go and scroll through things or leaving the situation. Just being able to be like, okay, yeah, it's that discomfort.
And it's a superpower, I've found, to be able to accept the speed at which things are going. Then, you emerge with one level more agency in the situation. You can manage yourself a bit more.
Sharad Lal: I've seen this concept of control, release, and acceptance come through a lot of the concepts that you've talked about, and it seems to work in the framework that you just described. We want to have control, and that doesn't work, so we surrender. Once we surrender, we feel empowered, and then we come somewhere in between where we have agency and we can do stuff.
Oliver Burkeman: I think that's exactly right. So occasionally people will argue, it's good to have control. Like you shouldn't be telling people that they can't achieve control. And it's of course, if what you mean by control is a degree of efficacy over And, it's poison. To be in a position where you have no influence over events and over what happens to you. That's a deeply psychologically distressing and unhealthy place to be. So I, but I'm really talking about total control or domination or something. there's some way you could phrase it that would really mean you are the one who calls the shots about reality.
And I think you're absolutely right. If you unclench from that, you unclench. You stop grasping after that, and you go to this place of surrendering to the fact that humans just don't get to have that kind of control. You do then emerge through into a place where you have much more real, yeah, agency is a word for it, influence.
Sometimes I say like just sort of getting a purchase on life, right?
Sharad Lal: Getting a purchase of life. I like that phrasing. You've talked about fun, and I think you hit one inside, which me and a lot of my friends associate with. It's really difficult for us to have fun because even when we are having fun, we want it to be useful. We want to be learning rather than just having fun.
So I was wondering, how did you uncover that insight, and how can we move towards just having fun and leaving this growth, learning, and other things aside?
Oliver Burkeman: Yeah. It's a really interesting point because a lot of times. When people want to diagnose what is wrong with the approach that we take towards our day to day activities, they want to say something like, you shouldn't be so obsessed with money, or you shouldn't be so obsessed with fame or something, right?
So they take a specific goal and say this goal is not the most fulfilling one, and we should be careful to spend our lives pursuing that goal instead of some more wholesome goals. And there's some truth in that. But what I want to draw attention to is there's something problematic with too much investment in the whole structure of pursuing goals, Of doing things for instrumental reasons. It's not just that some instrumental reasons are worse than others and that you shouldn't think that material goods are the answer to everything. It's also that whole idea of always doing things for some other reason. And that, as you rightly say, I think is the part that sort of reaches out from outside our work.
And obviously some level of goal focus is essential for doing all sorts of things, but it tends to bleed into leisure. In a way, people become unable to go running. They have to be training for a specific goal or beating a personal best or following a fitness goal or something.
And it can be motivating. I'm not like to throw these things out of your life. It's just it's worth remembering that there are things, there is value in doing things In the moment of doing them as well as because you're trying to get to some other point and if all you do Is try to get some other point then you'll spend your whole life You know never getting to the point where the value is to be found So a couple of things that I think are very useful.
I mean in the book I talk about hobbies. This very sort of unfashionable idea now at least in many parts of the world. We roll our eyes a little bit at people who are really into hobbies because it doesn't seem very constructive.
And I think it's really interesting to ask, as this is a point originally from Carl Jung. I would like you to think back to what you enjoyed doing as a child and see if there are versions of that that you might want to re-integrate into your adult life.
There's also a role for something that you're bad at. Certain activities are very freeing and very absorbing precisely because there's just no hope of coming brilliant at them.
And I give the example in the book of me playing the piano, cheesy piano rock standards. When I'm writing, I love writing. Writing is at the heart of my work. and the meaning of my life in a work sense, but there's always this issue that I want to be good at.
There are lots of different pressures brought to bear on that. None of that is present in my piano playing because. The day is never going to come when I make a dollar from playing the piano. People are not insane. They do not pay people to play the piano as badly as I play the piano.
And so that's actually fun in a way, right? That takes the pressure off. It means that it's something that I can just do for myself.
Sharad Lal: I completely get the gist of it. So for me, it was like yoga, where it was my own self thing. I wasn't trying to do the crow pose or this pose or something. It was just my little thing. And I, and like you, it helped that I sucked at it so it . I didn't take myself too seriously. It was just a fun thing.
Just moving on to the next topic, all of us are looking to get that freedom, have time. But he said, when you don't sync it to other people's time, when you're free and just sitting by yourself and we are, we live in a community, other people are not free, schedules are not matched.
What's the value of that freedom? So I'd love for you to talk about that.
Oliver Burkeman: Okay, sure. Yeah. this is just, it's one of those points that is almost too obvious to see. Our modern ethos with respect to time is that the person who is doing the very best is the one who has total freedom over their time.
We should all aspire to the ability to choose to do what we want with every single minute of our day. I give the example of being a digital nomad, right? It's this sort of lifestyle where you can run your business from anywhere.
You can travel whenever you like, wherever you like. You're not bound by the limitations of office hours or your specific communities, rhythms or anything like that. And many people will tell you in that situation that the main problem that they face is loneliness because you get to travel the world, not really with other people.
and if you make friends, they tend to be more fleeting. and then sometimes people like to meet their partners that way. And so then settle down and then it's different, Cause then they're in a rhythm with somebody else, but there are all these different contexts where actually just about anything,
From dating to friendship to Parenting, business, politics, there are all sorts of things that give meaning to life in very different ways. They just require us to be doing things with other people at the same time. So, actually, we don't want to have total freedom of choice. We want freedom of choice that is synchronised with other people.
It's sort of an absolute cliche of life, both in the UK and in New York, where I used to live. It's just impossible to find a time to go and to meet up with a friend for a social occasion. It's just using these endless email chains where you're trying to find a time that works.
And if there are three people involved,
Forget it right. That's never happening.
Getting to that point of synchronisation is so difficult. But,if you lived in the kind of community where on Saturday or on Sunday, that was the day because of a religious tradition in that area where everybody was off work and everybody was just at home or visiting other people. That's something where everything is aligned. In that alignment, it's a lot easier to find times to see people because they're those times, or just, the old days when people worked for large paternalistic corporations and all stopped work at 5pm and went home.
So that's just one example of how we've desynchronized ourselves. as societies, and so it gets harder and harder to do a lot of the things that benefit from that synchronisation. It doesn't mean there's nothing you can do. And, simple pieces of advice here are just to literally join the kinds of organisations that Make a difference here. It could be anything, right? all sorts of hobbies and spiritual traditions and sports and music and, if you all have to be somewhere at 6pm every Wednesday for the meeting of some group, you are actually surrendering a little bit of your free time to agree to do that, but you're getting a huge benefit.
This is a very interesting way to look at freedom. I never heard it talked about like that. As I was reading your book, I was trying to figure out where a lot of the inspiration is coming from. So some people you can make out with, Hey, there's a spiritual thing there.
Sharad Lal: Some people think it's psychology or philosophy. I can see some philosophy, psychology, but I was just wondering, What have been the influences that have shaped your thinking which helped you write a book like this and even as a journalist, what has influenced your thinking?
Oliver Burkeman: I find this a hard question to answer because I think it's just so eclectic. I think I'm sure there are blind spots in terms of my, what sources that I have drawn on or not drawn on. But in some ways, I think my training as a journalist means I'll take anything from anywhere.
And I take sort of active pleasure in quotingHeidegger, the Buddha, and Rod Stewart
I smashed them all together because they've all got things to say and just in quite a mercenary way, really just plundering the bits that, that, that seem helpful to me.
There's definitely a strong component of Eastern philosophies, we would say, Buddhism and Taoism and Zen and and Things going on in what I've written about, there's definitely sort of psychoanalysis and the Western psychotherapeutic tradition has quite a big showing, but. Really, I don't come from a very particular sort of scholarly or academic side of things. The journalistic approach is very much okay, I've got a week to write this long magazine article. So I just need to go and find stuff wherever it is. And I actually think, it's only one kind of writing, but I think that's my contribution in a way is that sort of synthesis rather than having one tradition that I'm trying to
Sharad Lal: But it's a very logical kind of writing. it's, you never Just leaning on an uncertain thing. Everything is a QED kind of thing. So I don't know if that comes from somewhere. Hmm.
Oliver Burkeman: flattered by that. I'm quite keen on making arguments and defending against potential objections and things like that. I probably learned that at Cambridge university doing social political sciences several thousand years ago, whatever that was.
But that sort of a style, but again, also it's a journalistic thing, right? It's not formal philosophy. You don't need to have that level of discipline in the writing, but it is an argument. It isn't just a sort of collage of thoughts and it isn't a sort of argument from authority that says, in the end, I'm going back to this religious or scholarly figure.
Like I do tell stories and anecdotes, but I don't tend to do this thing where you'll read like a whole chapter, which will just be one person's tale.
And then I'll draw out the lessons. One of the nicest emails I got was from somebody who said what I really like about writing is that you're writing about the thing itself. Like not about, not some sort of impressionistic way of getting there, but no, This actual thing, and I'm flattered by that.
Absolutely. And to me, it was like that, like you said, it is a philosophical argument, but it doesn't have ego. So it's not like you just have to prove a point. You just said, this is how I'm thinking. There's an argument flow. And as you do the flow, it's accessible to everyone because everyone connects.
Sharad Lal: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you talk about convenience causing and we didn't go into that, but convenience causing inconvenience later and washing machine, all those things. yes. And that's how you're hitting people with insights and you're building the case. And I like that. And I think interestingly, you pointed out that you don't have stories, but because you have that logical structure, people don't miss the engagement of a story because you're moving quickly as you're reading your book through the argument and assimilating it.
Oliver Burkeman: Very cool. What are some of the pushbacks in all these different topics that you've explored that you've got from people?
it's a bit of a self selecting process, right? you hear less from people who disagree with you than people who agree with you. I'm giving a biassed account here where I get to triumph as the correct person in the exchange.
So you should take that into account, but there are definitely people who think, who seem to think that what I'm saying is. A council of giving up, of despair, right? That there's something almost nihilistic about it, that it's about saying we should give up on this idea that we should do amazing things.
We do have this language I'm talking about in the book about not trying to do impossible amounts and recognizing that you can't do impossible things, like impossible quantities of work and impossible numbers of different projects. And we do have this way of talking about doing the impossible. That is more positive, right?
People want to say that, if people hadn't dreamed of doing the impossible, we might never have eradicated smallpox or we might never have invented space travel. Is that right? and I pushed back against that and said, no, I don't mean things that are incredibly ambitious. things that are literally impossible, like being in two places at once or answering an infinite number of emails in the course of a day or something, but there is.
Sometimes, people see something as anti-ambition. I don't think it's a fair criticism, but I am totally within their rights to make it.
Absolutely. Your tone is very open as you discuss this. So, Oliver, I was wondering, as we wrap up, is there one piece of advice that you'd like to leave everyone with?
I think one thing that's worth saying is that when people are asked a question like that, very often, I think what some people want is a habit or an approach to life—do this thing every day. And I'm not against that, but I do feel like a very useful thing to say in that context is my advice is don't worry about habits and new systems and changing your behaviour in permanent ways for now.
if you're listening to this and there's something in your life that. You're not giving time to that. You know it is really central to what counts as a meaningful life for you, right? If there's a creative pursuit or a particular relationship in your life or some other activity Or a place that matters to you that you don't get to as often as you would like to say Just do something about that right away for ten minutes.
Sit down and talk. Do 10 minutes on the novel you want to write or the songs you want to write or send an email to meet up with the person who you know you want to see more of in your life. And sure, maybe you can start building habits to do this all the time, but for now just do it once.
You know what I mean? And don't necessarily be intimidated and overburdened by this whole idea of how you should change your life. Obviously, just change your life for one 20-minute period. If it's something like seeing a friend, it might be a couple of weeks before it actually happens.
If it's something like going somewhere, it might be a matter of making the plan to go there now. but I'm always just no, just do the thing, just pick something and do it.
Sharad Lal: Love that. So accessible. So practical. Very much in line with what you've written, Oliver. Thank you very much for spending this hour with us. very useful conversation. I loved having this with you.
Oliver Burkeman: Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for asking me.
Thank you, Oliver, for such an insightful conversation. For more on Oliver, please check out the show notes.
Now here's something all of us could reflect on. Let's take Oliver's advice.
What's the one thing that will bring some meaning to your life.
What can you do about it? You don't need a system or a process. What's the small step you can take? Now, maybe just in 10 minutes. Let's do it. Best of luck. I hope you enjoyed this episode. The next episode will drop two weeks from now on July 2nd. Do join us for that till next time. Have a wonderful day ahead.
Bye bye.
Sharad Lal: Hi, everyone. Welcome to How to live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host Sharad Lal. This is episode 70. I have some very, very exciting news to share. The how to live podcast is now In the top 2.5% of all podcasts globally. We listen to over 135 countries. Thank you very much for your support. Today we have a very special guest. Award-winning journalist and critically acclaimed author. Oliver Burkeman. Do you know how many weeks most of us will live? Is it 20,000 or 30,000?
Actually it's only around 4,000 weeks. But that's not a reason to despair argues Oliver in his latest book, 4,000 weeks time management for mortals.
Confronting this finiteness of time and how little control we have can be liberating and is the key to a meaningful life. 4,000 Weeks is a New York Times bestseller, Earning praise from Adam Grant, Mark Manson, and others while studying at the university of Cambridge. Has been shortlisted for the famous or we'll prize. And has won the foreign press association award. In our conversation. We speak about issues with time management techniques. The finitude of time. Fun freedom. Patient meaning and a lot more. What I like about Oliver is that he challenges the cult of positive thinking. And then through logic offers us actionable meaningful insights. Now here's the remarkable thing. Oliver Berkman.
Sharad Lal: Hi Oliver. Welcome to How to Live. Good afternoon to you in London.
Thank you very much. Great to see you. Thank you very much for making time and let's get right to it. Your book, 4,000 Weeks, is such a fascinating read and
one of the things that you talked about just struck me so strongly, and I'm sure it strikes many people, is we're trying time management tools, efficiency tools, and the more you do it, the more things you have to do.
And you then flip it around. Time efficiency is not the way to look at time. Finitude of time is the way to look at it. So if you can describe how you arrived at that.
Oliver Burkeman: Yeah. It was a personal journey in the sense that I spent many years as what I describe as a productivity geek. And then I wrote this column for the Guardian newspaper here in the UK, which enabled me to indulge this. Unhealthy passion, because one of the things I did in that column was test out different methods.
What changed for me was that I think this happens with many people in many different domains of life.
If you really spend enough time trying to find control and security and the solution to all your emotional issues in a particular avenue, and you keep not finding the time management technique that enables you to do everything and never have to disappoint anybody and never have to make tough decisions with your time.
eventually you start asking some deeper questions, The sort of second order kind of questions where you say, maybe there's a problem with what I'm looking for here, rather than that I just haven't yet found. The perfect answer to it. And I think that, that personal experience fed into what I say about this in the book.
And broadly, I just want to make the point that there's nothing wrong with efficiency. but that efficiency is not ever going to be the way to achieve peace of mind with regard to time,
You're never going to make yourself so efficient that you are doing all the things that you can think of that feel like they might need doing and then you can finally say, okay, now I'm in charge. Now I'm in control. The simple reason for that is just that. The supply of those things is effectively infinite. You can receive an infinite number of emails.
You can have an infinite number of ambitions for things you'd like to do in your life or places you'd like to go. So there's no way to get through that supply. And in fact, what will happen, is that, all else being equal, if all you do to try to deal with a feeling of having too much to do is get more efficient, you will just get busier and more stressed it's not a good way of ever achieving the peace of mind that we want to achieve.
With respect to time, I think the only way to come closer to that peace of mind is to face the reality of the situation, the fact that there will always be too much to do, too many things that matter, and just to learn to thrive as a finite person in that infinite ocean, rather than trying to, drink the whole ocean down, right? Because that's never happening,
Sharad Lal: I love that because that struck me in so many things, even in terms of money. Sometimes people feel that, Hey, I'm going to keep working hard. And at this point of time, when I get enough money, then I'm going to get peace of mind, or I'm going to be efficient in time. And then later I have a lot more time to do, and that doesn't happen.
Once we shift our mindset, we realize that time is finite, but supplies are finite. So, let's focus on the finite amount of time. How does that shift of mindset help us use our time better?
Oliver Burkeman: The most simple immediate response to that is just that you find yourself naturally, I would argue, taking, making better decisions about how to use your time. Everybody craves an answer to the question, okay, what things should I be spending my time on?
And occasionally, People are annoyed with me because my book doesn't say okay, it's this, and it's this. The problem with that approach, partly just like everyone knows what's on that list already, right? Everyone knows it's like social relationships and spending time in nature and doing things that you love.
The reason we don't do those things is not that we have no idea what they are. It's that, a lot of the time anyway, we don't approach our days with a sense of needing to focus on those things. We go through life as if we have all the time in the world on some level.
And so we sort of postpone these things that we care about so much until we've got all this other stuff out of the way. And I'm trying to repeatedly tell people in the book, you're never going to get all the other stuff out of the way. So that doesn't mean you should neglect it. Like life admin completely, everyone's got to pay bills and answer emails and all sorts of things, but postponing the other stuff until all of that is done is a recipe for postponing it. indefinitely for the whole of your life.
Another part of what I want to try to communicate is the complete mismatch between our finitude as humans and the infinity of things we could do.
It's so total, right? The difference between finite and infinite is absolute. It's actually very liberating, I think, and relaxing because it's not a question of if I make all the right decisions and really have a lot of self discipline, then I can live the perfect life. no, if the perfect life is defined as doing all the things that matter.
You're never gonna live it. So you can give up hope of that particular outcome. You can accept defeat, but it's a really kind of constructive form of defeat because it's a form of defeat that says, okay I'm only gonna get to do a handful of the things that would have been good things for me to do.
That's just absolutely a given. I'm going to have to neglect all sorts of things in life that would be perfectly good things to spend my time on. It's not that they're irrelevant or unimportant; it's that I just have to make some choices. I can really pour my time, energy, and attention into the ones that I choose.
I don't need to be tormented by the fact that there are all these others.
I would argue that it's not a recipe for accomplishing less in life. It's actually an argument for accomplishing much more in life. Once you have given up this futile waste of energy of trying to accomplish all the things that seem important,
Sharad Lal: Yeah,it's not the anxious energy that I have limited time. I have to do many things at the same time. It's not like I've given up on life. I can't achieve anything, so let me not do anything. So it's something in between that I will not do all the meaningful things in life.
There will be meaningful things that I will leave out. But because I have this amount of time left, I can try to find pleasure and do some meaningful things. It's a different energy that comes in there.
Oliver Burkeman: You're absolutely right. I'm always struggling to sort of put this into words, but I think that one way of thinking about it is Types of energy is a very good way of phrasing it, I think, because there's the type of energy of the person who's just given up, the type of energy of the person who's just lazing around doing nothing, the type of anxious energy of the person who's racing to try to get to the summit of things. But there's also that very special kind of, of energy that is associated with words like invigorating bracing or exhilarating probably doesn't work for the part of the world where you are, as I understand it, but where I am here in the sort of windswept rainy countryside of England, when you go for a in an environment like this, it's very energising, but it isn't being on a tropical beach and it isn't like you know being cosy by a warm fire, it's like there's energy in this kind of,you're encountering your limitations, you're encountering your edge, You're very small in the landscape, just as you're very small in the world of potential things that you could do. And there's a kind of relish in that, right? There's a kind of sense of like, now I can get stuck into a few things. There's something a little bit difficult about it in a way that lifts your spirits.
like that metaphor. And if I bring it to practical terms as we think about it, I loved your concept related to this and the joy of missing out versus FOMO, where you're okay to miss out on certain meaningful activities, which reduces the pleasure, but then you can also go out and do things that are meaningful.
Sharad Lal: So, can you talk about FOMO and JOMO, as you put it, and how does it come into play?
Oliver Burkeman: FOMO, the famous fear of missing out that is made so much worse by social media and by the sort of the fact that we're just so connected to people around the world, you can see so many things about how people are living and the edited sort of highlights reels of their lives.
And of course, I want to argue from the point of view of humans being finite, that sort of missing out on a lot of things is inevitable. Because you can only be in one place at a time, you're always missing out on almost everything. So firstly, that's a good reason not to feel too much FOMO, right?You don't need to try to persuade yourself of the answer to the question, is there a great party happening somewhere that I'm not at? You don't need to try and reassure yourself that the answer to that question is no.
you can relax because the answer to that question is definitely yes. And so that in itself is liberating, I think. But then more than that, what I, when I talk about Jomo, the joy of missing out, other people use this phrase in slightly different nuanced ways. But really what I mean by that is that when you.
Take account of this situation and you understand that anything you choose means missing out on all these other things. It actually gives more meaning to the choice that you make, Because it means that you're deciding to focus on bedtime with your kids or cooking a meal for your spouse, whatever it is, whatever example it is.
Something minor, but that actually is the kind of thing that makes up a life. It gets more value from the fact that. there are all these other things you could be doing. and a sort of third just finally quickly a sort of third aspect to this is it also means that Sometimes people want to take this as meaning okay I've really got to figure out what I care about and focus on those things It also helps you see that quite a lot of the things you're already doing in your life
They are really meaningful, right?
This is not necessarily about making big changes to your life, like if you're hearing this and saying, okay, that means I should stop just sitting at home watching streaming movies. I should go and do something more social or spiritual or something. Maybe it means that. That could be right for any one person, but maybe it could just cause you to really, enjoy the heck out of that movie that you were watching.
So it's not necessarily about change. It's about deepening the experience of whatever it is you're doing.
Sharad Lal: I love that. I love that. Two, two very good points. That point about choice because you talk about FOMO comes from a fear anxiety based place that I have to do it versus. Jomo comes from a place of choice and leaning in and because you've learned in that itself shows the meaning that it has so I love that and I also love the second thing that you talked about which is being those things might already be there in your life.
It's not like changing life. It's looking around and you could be doing it, but deepening that experience related to that. You also talk about attention. And where we are putting attention becomes so important in life to have meaningful experiences. What are some practical tips in which we can cultivate attention in places that are meaningful to us?
Oliver Burkeman: in many ways, this is the big question, isn't it? Because the argument is that attention is a finite resource, but it's more than a resource. It's not something we use in order to have meaningful lives. It is just life.
If you don't put any attention on something, the idea that it's part of your life at all is very questionable. If you have some terrible problem in your life, but it, but you never think about it, then I would say you don't have that terrible problem. On the other hand, If you claim that you have a friendship in your life, but you never give it any of your attention, then I would say you don't really have that friendship in any way that matters. So it really matters what we put our attention on. There are a couple of overall approaches that people take in the sort of personal development and wellness, spirituality, all those spaces to attention.
It's not so much always that our attention is being grabbed by other things, which does happen and is true, absolutely, but it's also. That we feel active discomfort in letting our attention rest on things that matter to us.
There is this, apparently at first glance, rather strange phenomenon where it's exactly the things that I care about. Writing books, paying attention to my son, listening in a conversation with my wife, right? It's exactly these things that are the hardest to let my attention stay with. And it's not because I'm lying to myself when I say they're important. It's because, I think my argument is, it's precisely because the stakes are quite high. It's precisely because Interactions with people, your nearest and dearest, require you to be emotionally vulnerable in a way. It's precisely because when I'm writing a book, like that's something I really care about and it could go well, or it could go badly, people could like it or they could dislike it and I could make some money out of it or I could not make some money out of it.
there's things that matter there. And I think that's natural, it's natural then, though counterintuitive, but when we're doing things that matter like that, we're really brought up against our limitations and we feel restless, like we don't want to just give our attention to them.
And then it's way more fun to just scroll through social media or do something low stakes, Do something where it doesn't matter, where you can't go well or badly. It's just a respite from the sort of. intensity of things that matter. So that is how I resolve in my mind, anyway, this paradox that we seem to be most easily distracted from the things that we care about the most.
And it also just brings that focus onto I think a big part of the challenge of attention.
Sharad Lal: Oliver, that's such an interesting point. And if I can dig in a little deeper into that because it's so interesting where you talk about these things matter so much. That level and intensity of attention that we need to give, or we think we should be giving is very high. And sometimes when we are not able to do that, we just tap out and do something else, which is fidgety and stuff.
Is that the direction? Is that why we don't give attention to these things?
Oliver Burkeman: I think we don't give attention because it's difficult. And one of the difficulties is that, yeah, it just feels like the level of attention that's required is beyond us when we're tired or beyond us when we're feeling stressed or something. I think listening, Deeply listening to another person is a great example.
It's so hard. I'm in the easy position here because I'm the guest on your podcast. So on some level, I'm here to say the things I think. But I think in many ways, the host's job is the more challenging one to really Actually be present to what somebody else is saying.
and it's notoriously an issue in relationships that people don't feel like the other person is listening to them. On the one hand, I want to say, I think it's so difficult for the reasons that we've been discussing. It's because it's very vulnerable and brings you up against uncertainty and insecurity.
Whereas the person who just says what they want to say.is very much in a position of control. But to just be open to what the other person is saying in ways that might trigger you, might upset you, might all sorts of things might happen takes a different kind of willingness to be present.
my son really obviously thrives from having me pay attention to the things that he's doing, but it's far better that it's okay attention than that it's no attention at all and holding myself to a standard of like laser focus trained through years of meditation or something like that doesn't help anybody because then as you say, you just say Oh, I can't do it now, another time.
People want to be heard and seen, but they don't. Need you to be hearing and seeing them with 110 percent of your energy at all the time.
Sharad Lal: You put out some very good points. I think the second point is that people don't want that fixed attention. Sometimes. I just remember some people who are really looking at you, it puts a lot of. Pressure on you. Even when you're
Oliver Burkeman: Right? Yeah, it's not always that nice. Yeah.
Sharad Lal: Hopefully I'm not doing that.
And I love your point about vulnerability. That is because when you're putting your presence, you're not in control. You don't know what's going to come out from the other side and you're vulnerable and adjusting to whatever happens. And that's. takes some effort. I never thought of it like that. So thanks for sharing that.
And I assure you, I am fully present. I don't have a video game window open on the other side. I'm fully present. The thing related to this, which was again, very interesting, and you've touched upon it. And so has Cal Newport. And that got my interest in that is boredom.you've talked about boredom that we don't know how to be bored, and that itself is a problem.
If you can talk a little bit about boredom, and maybe some benefits of boredom, as you see it.
Oliver Burkeman: I've occasionally talked about benefits of boredom, I also associate a bit more with Cal Newport and a few other people and I'm sort of getting at something very similar. I think I've tended to talk about patience, which is not, it's not the same thing, but it's all, we're in the same territory.
I think it's the idea of, Not being able to control how things are unfolding in your environment, boredom, and this is where I do write about boredom. It's really strange when you stop to think about it, how agonising boredom can feel.
word and the context that arises, you'd assume we're just talking about a sort of non feeling, Nullness, but actually when you're really bored, it's very aggravating feeling
It's because these are moments where you really don't have a sort of comforting sense of total control over how life unfolds. If you're waiting in a long line and you've got to wait in that line and you wish you weren't in that line, boredom is one way of saying that.
The other way is it takes so much surrender to the situation to just wait in it. And very different situations can seem boring.anyone who has spent time parenting very young children knows that the sort of moments of utter magic alternate with serious stretches of boredom.
and I think that a part of that is just like, you're completely responsible for this two-year-old for the next five hours. There are no choices involved. It doesn't mean it won't be wonderful at certain points, but you don't have the power because a two-year-old cannot be left for half an hour while you go and do something else.
And although I've tried not to do it myself, I do have some sympathy when you're at the playground and All the parents and other people looking after kids just like on their phones. Because it's like a tiny escape hatch from there's a way of talking about that kind of phenomenon where people are like, do these parents just prefer Instagram to their own kids?
And it's no, it's there's some tiny little assertion of freedom. I'm going to escape through this portal into the internet.
As you also hinted at in your question, you can see how it would be very useful to learn to relax into boredom a little bit more and feel the discomfort. It's not about stopping feeling those things, but not reacting to that discomfort by Being so restless or needing to go and scroll through things or leaving the situation. Just being able to be like, okay, yeah, it's that discomfort.
And it's a superpower, I've found, to be able to accept the speed at which things are going. Then, you emerge with one level more agency in the situation. You can manage yourself a bit more.
Sharad Lal: I've seen this concept of control, release, and acceptance come through a lot of the concepts that you've talked about, and it seems to work in the framework that you just described. We want to have control, and that doesn't work, so we surrender. Once we surrender, we feel empowered, and then we come somewhere in between where we have agency and we can do stuff.
Oliver Burkeman: I think that's exactly right. So occasionally people will argue, it's good to have control. Like you shouldn't be telling people that they can't achieve control. And it's of course, if what you mean by control is a degree of efficacy over And, it's poison. To be in a position where you have no influence over events and over what happens to you. That's a deeply psychologically distressing and unhealthy place to be. So I, but I'm really talking about total control or domination or something. there's some way you could phrase it that would really mean you are the one who calls the shots about reality.
And I think you're absolutely right. If you unclench from that, you unclench. You stop grasping after that, and you go to this place of surrendering to the fact that humans just don't get to have that kind of control. You do then emerge through into a place where you have much more real, yeah, agency is a word for it, influence.
Sometimes I say like just sort of getting a purchase on life, right?
Sharad Lal: Getting a purchase of life. I like that phrasing. You've talked about fun, and I think you hit one inside, which me and a lot of my friends associate with. It's really difficult for us to have fun because even when we are having fun, we want it to be useful. We want to be learning rather than just having fun.
So I was wondering, how did you uncover that insight, and how can we move towards just having fun and leaving this growth, learning, and other things aside?
Oliver Burkeman: Yeah. It's a really interesting point because a lot of times. When people want to diagnose what is wrong with the approach that we take towards our day to day activities, they want to say something like, you shouldn't be so obsessed with money, or you shouldn't be so obsessed with fame or something, right?
So they take a specific goal and say this goal is not the most fulfilling one, and we should be careful to spend our lives pursuing that goal instead of some more wholesome goals. And there's some truth in that. But what I want to draw attention to is there's something problematic with too much investment in the whole structure of pursuing goals, Of doing things for instrumental reasons. It's not just that some instrumental reasons are worse than others and that you shouldn't think that material goods are the answer to everything. It's also that whole idea of always doing things for some other reason. And that, as you rightly say, I think is the part that sort of reaches out from outside our work.
And obviously some level of goal focus is essential for doing all sorts of things, but it tends to bleed into leisure. In a way, people become unable to go running. They have to be training for a specific goal or beating a personal best or following a fitness goal or something.
And it can be motivating. I'm not like to throw these things out of your life. It's just it's worth remembering that there are things, there is value in doing things In the moment of doing them as well as because you're trying to get to some other point and if all you do Is try to get some other point then you'll spend your whole life You know never getting to the point where the value is to be found So a couple of things that I think are very useful.
I mean in the book I talk about hobbies. This very sort of unfashionable idea now at least in many parts of the world. We roll our eyes a little bit at people who are really into hobbies because it doesn't seem very constructive.
And I think it's really interesting to ask, as this is a point originally from Carl Jung. I would like you to think back to what you enjoyed doing as a child and see if there are versions of that that you might want to re-integrate into your adult life.
There's also a role for something that you're bad at. Certain activities are very freeing and very absorbing precisely because there's just no hope of coming brilliant at them.
And I give the example in the book of me playing the piano, cheesy piano rock standards. When I'm writing, I love writing. Writing is at the heart of my work. and the meaning of my life in a work sense, but there's always this issue that I want to be good at.
There are lots of different pressures brought to bear on that. None of that is present in my piano playing because. The day is never going to come when I make a dollar from playing the piano. People are not insane. They do not pay people to play the piano as badly as I play the piano.
And so that's actually fun in a way, right? That takes the pressure off. It means that it's something that I can just do for myself.
Sharad Lal: I completely get the gist of it. So for me, it was like yoga, where it was my own self thing. I wasn't trying to do the crow pose or this pose or something. It was just my little thing. And I, and like you, it helped that I sucked at it so it . I didn't take myself too seriously. It was just a fun thing.
Just moving on to the next topic, all of us are looking to get that freedom, have time. But he said, when you don't sync it to other people's time, when you're free and just sitting by yourself and we are, we live in a community, other people are not free, schedules are not matched.
What's the value of that freedom? So I'd love for you to talk about that.
Oliver Burkeman: Okay, sure. Yeah. this is just, it's one of those points that is almost too obvious to see. Our modern ethos with respect to time is that the person who is doing the very best is the one who has total freedom over their time.
We should all aspire to the ability to choose to do what we want with every single minute of our day. I give the example of being a digital nomad, right? It's this sort of lifestyle where you can run your business from anywhere.
You can travel whenever you like, wherever you like. You're not bound by the limitations of office hours or your specific communities, rhythms or anything like that. And many people will tell you in that situation that the main problem that they face is loneliness because you get to travel the world, not really with other people.
and if you make friends, they tend to be more fleeting. and then sometimes people like to meet their partners that way. And so then settle down and then it's different, Cause then they're in a rhythm with somebody else, but there are all these different contexts where actually just about anything,
From dating to friendship to Parenting, business, politics, there are all sorts of things that give meaning to life in very different ways. They just require us to be doing things with other people at the same time. So, actually, we don't want to have total freedom of choice. We want freedom of choice that is synchronised with other people.
It's sort of an absolute cliche of life, both in the UK and in New York, where I used to live. It's just impossible to find a time to go and to meet up with a friend for a social occasion. It's just using these endless email chains where you're trying to find a time that works.
And if there are three people involved,
Forget it right. That's never happening.
Getting to that point of synchronisation is so difficult. But,if you lived in the kind of community where on Saturday or on Sunday, that was the day because of a religious tradition in that area where everybody was off work and everybody was just at home or visiting other people. That's something where everything is aligned. In that alignment, it's a lot easier to find times to see people because they're those times, or just, the old days when people worked for large paternalistic corporations and all stopped work at 5pm and went home.
So that's just one example of how we've desynchronized ourselves. as societies, and so it gets harder and harder to do a lot of the things that benefit from that synchronisation. It doesn't mean there's nothing you can do. And, simple pieces of advice here are just to literally join the kinds of organisations that Make a difference here. It could be anything, right? all sorts of hobbies and spiritual traditions and sports and music and, if you all have to be somewhere at 6pm every Wednesday for the meeting of some group, you are actually surrendering a little bit of your free time to agree to do that, but you're getting a huge benefit.
This is a very interesting way to look at freedom. I never heard it talked about like that. As I was reading your book, I was trying to figure out where a lot of the inspiration is coming from. So some people you can make out with, Hey, there's a spiritual thing there.
Sharad Lal: Some people think it's psychology or philosophy. I can see some philosophy, psychology, but I was just wondering, What have been the influences that have shaped your thinking which helped you write a book like this and even as a journalist, what has influenced your thinking?
Oliver Burkeman: I find this a hard question to answer because I think it's just so eclectic. I think I'm sure there are blind spots in terms of my, what sources that I have drawn on or not drawn on. But in some ways, I think my training as a journalist means I'll take anything from anywhere.
And I take sort of active pleasure in quotingHeidegger, the Buddha, and Rod Stewart
I smashed them all together because they've all got things to say and just in quite a mercenary way, really just plundering the bits that, that, that seem helpful to me.
There's definitely a strong component of Eastern philosophies, we would say, Buddhism and Taoism and Zen and and Things going on in what I've written about, there's definitely sort of psychoanalysis and the Western psychotherapeutic tradition has quite a big showing, but. Really, I don't come from a very particular sort of scholarly or academic side of things. The journalistic approach is very much okay, I've got a week to write this long magazine article. So I just need to go and find stuff wherever it is. And I actually think, it's only one kind of writing, but I think that's my contribution in a way is that sort of synthesis rather than having one tradition that I'm trying to
Sharad Lal: But it's a very logical kind of writing. it's, you never Just leaning on an uncertain thing. Everything is a QED kind of thing. So I don't know if that comes from somewhere. Hmm.
Oliver Burkeman: flattered by that. I'm quite keen on making arguments and defending against potential objections and things like that. I probably learned that at Cambridge university doing social political sciences several thousand years ago, whatever that was.
But that sort of a style, but again, also it's a journalistic thing, right? It's not formal philosophy. You don't need to have that level of discipline in the writing, but it is an argument. It isn't just a sort of collage of thoughts and it isn't a sort of argument from authority that says, in the end, I'm going back to this religious or scholarly figure.
Like I do tell stories and anecdotes, but I don't tend to do this thing where you'll read like a whole chapter, which will just be one person's tale.
And then I'll draw out the lessons. One of the nicest emails I got was from somebody who said what I really like about writing is that you're writing about the thing itself. Like not about, not some sort of impressionistic way of getting there, but no, This actual thing, and I'm flattered by that.
Absolutely. And to me, it was like that, like you said, it is a philosophical argument, but it doesn't have ego. So it's not like you just have to prove a point. You just said, this is how I'm thinking. There's an argument flow. And as you do the flow, it's accessible to everyone because everyone connects.
Sharad Lal: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you talk about convenience causing and we didn't go into that, but convenience causing inconvenience later and washing machine, all those things. yes. And that's how you're hitting people with insights and you're building the case. And I like that. And I think interestingly, you pointed out that you don't have stories, but because you have that logical structure, people don't miss the engagement of a story because you're moving quickly as you're reading your book through the argument and assimilating it.
Oliver Burkeman: Very cool. What are some of the pushbacks in all these different topics that you've explored that you've got from people?
it's a bit of a self selecting process, right? you hear less from people who disagree with you than people who agree with you. I'm giving a biassed account here where I get to triumph as the correct person in the exchange.
So you should take that into account, but there are definitely people who think, who seem to think that what I'm saying is. A council of giving up, of despair, right? That there's something almost nihilistic about it, that it's about saying we should give up on this idea that we should do amazing things.
We do have this language I'm talking about in the book about not trying to do impossible amounts and recognizing that you can't do impossible things, like impossible quantities of work and impossible numbers of different projects. And we do have this way of talking about doing the impossible. That is more positive, right?
People want to say that, if people hadn't dreamed of doing the impossible, we might never have eradicated smallpox or we might never have invented space travel. Is that right? and I pushed back against that and said, no, I don't mean things that are incredibly ambitious. things that are literally impossible, like being in two places at once or answering an infinite number of emails in the course of a day or something, but there is.
Sometimes, people see something as anti-ambition. I don't think it's a fair criticism, but I am totally within their rights to make it.
Absolutely. Your tone is very open as you discuss this. So, Oliver, I was wondering, as we wrap up, is there one piece of advice that you'd like to leave everyone with?
I think one thing that's worth saying is that when people are asked a question like that, very often, I think what some people want is a habit or an approach to life—do this thing every day. And I'm not against that, but I do feel like a very useful thing to say in that context is my advice is don't worry about habits and new systems and changing your behaviour in permanent ways for now.
if you're listening to this and there's something in your life that. You're not giving time to that. You know it is really central to what counts as a meaningful life for you, right? If there's a creative pursuit or a particular relationship in your life or some other activity Or a place that matters to you that you don't get to as often as you would like to say Just do something about that right away for ten minutes.
Sit down and talk. Do 10 minutes on the novel you want to write or the songs you want to write or send an email to meet up with the person who you know you want to see more of in your life. And sure, maybe you can start building habits to do this all the time, but for now just do it once.
You know what I mean? And don't necessarily be intimidated and overburdened by this whole idea of how you should change your life. Obviously, just change your life for one 20-minute period. If it's something like seeing a friend, it might be a couple of weeks before it actually happens.
If it's something like going somewhere, it might be a matter of making the plan to go there now. but I'm always just no, just do the thing, just pick something and do it.
Sharad Lal: Love that. So accessible. So practical. Very much in line with what you've written, Oliver. Thank you very much for spending this hour with us. very useful conversation. I loved having this with you.
Oliver Burkeman: Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for asking me.
Thank you, Oliver, for such an insightful conversation. For more on Oliver, please check out the show notes.
Now here's something all of us could reflect on. Let's take Oliver's advice.
What's the one thing that will bring some meaning to your life.
What can you do about it? You don't need a system or a process. What's the small step you can take? Now, maybe just in 10 minutes. Let's do it. Best of luck. I hope you enjoyed this episode. The next episode will drop two weeks from now on July 2nd. Do join us for that till next time. Have a wonderful day ahead.
Bye bye.