October 8, 2025 • 27 mins
Author Oliver Burkeman shares how to be effective while accepting our limits
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am excited to welcome Oliver Berkman to the show. Oliver
is the author of four thousand Weeks Time Management for
(00:32):
Mortals and also Meditations for Mortals, which is newly out
in paperback this month. So Oliver, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, very glad to have you. Why did you tell
our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Gosh, well, I wrote them books that you mentioned, so
I won't mention them again. I'm British, as is easy
to tell. I worked as a journalist at the Guardian
newspaper for quite a few years and wrote a column
that sort of got me into all this kind of
personal development, self healthy stuff, although partly by testing a
(01:08):
lot of it out finding it not to deliver.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
In the ways that I felt I needed it to.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
I lived in Brooklyn, New York for a bunch of years,
and now our family lives in North Yorkshire. In the
North York Moor was sort of Wuthering Heights territory where
I'm speaking to you from now.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Very literary sort of area, like you inspired to write
some sort of great British novel just by walking around.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
I am sure all my work is going to become
really gothic from now, yes.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, but your earlier work, when you were a columnist
for The Guardian, you was there a particular reason you
wound up on the self help beat?
Speaker 4 (01:53):
I mean, looking back, it seems very obvious to me
now that I was attempting to find ways personally for
my self, sort of therapeutically, grappling with these questions of
how do you feel more in control than I did,
or how do you feel happier or you know, not
beset by anxiety or feelings of crushing, feelings of duty
(02:15):
and obligation, all the personal hang ups from which I suffered,
And so it didn't feel particularly like that at the time.
I think that's probably true. A lot of reasons people
write about a lot of stuff. Maybe in a lot
of your work, you're a bit more sort of transparent
about this fact. And maybe it's more, maybe it's more
(02:38):
unconscious in other people. But I think I was at
first through a kind of often being quite sarcastic and
critical about self help world, which I still think is
probably entirely justified at least in some instances. But I
was sort of backing into asking difficult, vulnerable questions with
this alibi that it was just for work, and I
(03:00):
always just work exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, Well, there's an interesting thing about productivity.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I mean a lot of it is mental, right.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I mean, we were we were having a discussion before
we started recording about you had something that happened to
your day which was not planned, and sort of through
through the day off a little bit.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
And then we're still here talking and I had you
introduced me as someone who's going to share wisdom about
how to how to really make the day go so
fluidly and wonderfully. So I'm I'm I'm really being obliged
to figure out if I walk the talk today.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
But but you know, okay, so productivity is probably how
we feel about it. You had something happened to your
day that you didn't anticipate, not anybody's fault.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It is what it is.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
We're still here having the conversation. At the time, you
weren't late at all, but you said earlier that you
were feeling a little.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Bit sort of off for the day.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I'm curious why why that is what happens when things
go awry, that that makes you feel differently about your time.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Well, I think, I mean the first thing, in my defense,
after claim after you know, implying that I'm not at
all the paragon of productivity or calm that I present
myself as or something like that, I would have been
massively more knocked sideways. And it's not a secret. My
my son had to come home from school with a
(04:20):
sort of minor illness. It's no big crisis, but it's
enough to sort of sway the day for people who
work from home, and you know, back in the day,
although before I became a parent, so it's kind of
a bad comparison, but things that happened like that would
sort of knock me completely off course and I would
like feel like I had to call off the whole day.
And that is a response, I think to this fundamental
(04:42):
issue that manifests for lots of people in different ways
of control. Right, you want to feel like you're in
control of your stuff and your time, and if something
happens that really challenges that feeling of control, then if
you have the luxury, as freelance self employed writers do,
(05:02):
and not everyone does, but if you have the luxury
to sort of just kind of be thrown completely of
course and give up on the day, then it's very
tempting to do so, because it's like, well, Okay, I've
lost control of today, but tomorrow will be different.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Tomorrow I'll be.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Back in the saddle and I will exert full control
over the day. And I did have a sort of
I still get flickers of that. I did have that
sense today of like, oh, this wasn't planned. I had
to take a couple of hours out from what I
was expecting to be doing, So now like, what's the point?
And then I actually see myself doing that. I think
that's the big thing that's changed for me. I understand
(05:39):
that dynamic, and I say, look, I never really had
that control in the first place. It is absurd to
think that if I can't do seven hours of effective
work today, then there's no point in doing one or two.
This just makes no sense at all, and you can
sort of and maybe it changes what I want to
(06:01):
focus on, maybe it changes what I feel able to
focus on. But to be able to more fluidly navigate
among those things, I mean, I've got a lot better
at that. And it came from realizing that I never
really had the control I thought I had in the
first place, because actually, long before I became a parent
(06:22):
or even was in a long term relationship or anything,
I would have those days when just turned out my
mood wasn't on board for the day, and it's like, well, okay,
but am I just going to be completely thrown off
course by some sort of internal weather pattern like that?
So I think learning the limits of my own control
over time and learning to sort of work with that
(06:43):
and go with that has been really huge for me.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Well, one of the things you talk about in the
book and Meditations for Mortals is a lot of different
sort of I guess product of any strategies or mindsets
or things that you know could be helpful. And one
you mentioned is that we probably only have three to
(07:10):
four hours of good creative energy on any given day,
and that has a couple of different implications. I wonder
if you could talk about that rule a little bit.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Yeah, and again, this is something where it's really vividly
clear for people like me and I think you who
have a lot of autonomy over our time, who have
to do the work, like over the long term to
pay the bills, but who you know, can probably choose
a lot of the time. What we do with a
specific hour of a specific day be different for people
(07:43):
in other kinds of jobs, but the essence of the
wisdom of it, I think is universal. There's really good
evidence all through history that the great sort of authors
and artists, scholars and composers and mathematicians, scientists, all sorts
of people who have that kind of autonomy, the greatest ones,
when you look at their daily routines, they do not
(08:05):
ask of themselves more than three or four hours of
intense focused brain work, depending on who it is and
where in history. You then find that they've got, you know,
twelve servants and a dutiful wife to do all the
other things in life, so they get to just sort
of swan about for the rest of the day.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
And this is not how the world works for us
these days.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
But that basic idea that if you're a knowledge worker,
and you have the autonomy to kind of limit the
amount of time that you try to defend for deep, deep,
deep reflection, you should limit it to that amount of time.
I think is really is really true and important. One
of the ramifications of this, I think is that we should,
to whatever extent we can, try to ring fence try
(08:50):
to defend that stretch of hours of about that amount
if we can, in the course of a working day.
But a really important second sort of corollary insight, I
think is that you shouldn't stress too hard about defending
and structuring the rest of the time. So there is
in this kind of three or four hours idea both
a sense of discipline, like, yeah, try to pick the
(09:11):
hours that work the best for you and be as
uninterrupted as you possibly can and focus on your core projects.
But then don't be yourself up for the fact that
the rest of that time is going to be the
way life is right, full of interruptions and serendipity and
things that you didn't realize were going to come up
until half an hour ago. And I find this a
much you know, again, not exactly a typical day to day,
(09:33):
but I find this a much happier way to do things.
It doesn't Trying to structure and plan the whole day
for me is often a recipe for a lot of
in a combat because it feels like reality isn't conforming
to my wishes or something like that.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yes, reality sometimes does not conform to our wishes, A
deep truth of life. Well, we're going to take a
quick ad break and then I will be back with
more from Oliver Berkman. Well, I am back talking with
Oliver Berkman, who is the author of several books, including
four Thousand Weeks and Meditation for Mortals, which is newly
(10:13):
out in paperback this month.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
So, Oliver, another tidbit in Meditation for Mortals.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Is the idea of thinking, well, what if it were easy?
That you know, looking for something that is hard or
difficult is not always necessary. I wonder if you could
talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Yeah, yeah, happily. I mean, this was a big deal
for me when I realized how I had been approaching things.
In one sense, making decisions about what to spend your
time on and getting yourself to do that is difficult,
And that's another theme in my writing right.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
The difficulty is that there are.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Far more things than we have time available that we'd
like to do or feel obliged to do that we
have time to do, we have to make painful choices,
and we don't have the level of control over how
reality unfolds that we would like. So in that sense,
like being a finite human is difficult, but there's a risk.
(11:14):
I think a lot of us are brought up and
raised and encouraged by the culture to assume that the
actual experience of doing a meaningful action in work or
in many other context too, sort of probably has to
feel quite grueling. That if it isn't hurting, it isn't working.
As British politicians like to say about sort of economic
(11:37):
austerity policies.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Right that somehow, if I'm doing something.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
That matters, it's going to feel like a fight, and
I'm going to get to the end of the day
and feel like, wow, that was really painful and exhausting,
but at least you know I did the thing that matters.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
And what that.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Means is we're two things. Firstly, it can trick you
into thinking that just because the day was really exhausting,
that must therefore have been worthwhile, and a lot of
busy work is exhausting, but actually would be best maybe
delegated or ignored completely or postponed or something like that.
And most importantly, it means that you don't think to
(12:16):
ask that question right at the beginning of some difficult
or seeming or intimidating project, like what if this is
actually easier for me than I'm assuming? What if instead
of like girding myself and bracing myself for it to
be really difficult, I sort of approached it with at
least the possibility that I know how to do this,
(12:36):
and that you know, the ideas and the energy and
the focus will come together in the right way, and
it doesn't always happen, but you actually, you know, greatly
enhance the chances of it happening when you move into
projects in that spirit, and so definitely, sort of anything
that counts as creative, I find that the effect of
(13:00):
going into them expecting difficulty is to sort of bring
down that. It sort of brings difficulty to the experience,
It makes it harder, It squeezes things so that ideas
flow less regularly, less easily.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
So I think that's really important.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
If you go into reality as if it's going to
be a fight then you often get a fight that
for that very reason.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Well, one of the things you talk about, you know,
in terms of changing our mindset about time as well,
is creating a done list, so sort of a reverse
to do list, but things that you have done and accomplished.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
How is that helpful?
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Again, it's really the perspective shift that counts, and this
is like one of a million ways of executing or
implementing this perspective shift. But what I find really useful
about a done list, which of course people seem to
think I'm saying should be instead of a to do
list and you should throw away all your lists. I mean,
I think there's an argument for that, but that's not
what I'm saying here. A done list is just an
extra thing, right. It's just a way of recording the
(14:03):
actions that you take as you move through the day,
whether or not they were on an initial plan or
a to do list. And I think what's so important
about that is it just has this effect of shifting
the kind of internal comparison you're making when you look
at what you've done. Right, It's very simple and very
(14:23):
natural going through the day to sort of compare what
you've done to the hypothetical list of all the things
that feel like they need doing today, which is always
going to be longer than time is going to permit,
and in some sense maybe.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Sort of infinitely long, so you're never going to get
to the end of it.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
But this then to keeping a done list sort of
shifts your focus back because you're looking at these things
that you're adding to the list. It's correct, it's proper
that the list is getting longer as you add more things.
It's not a problem that it's getting longer. You're not
trying to get rid of it. And you're implicitly comparing
your output with the day, but on the data what
you would have achieved if you've done nothing thing at all,
(15:00):
So the comparison is with zero instead of with infinity.
And this is a much better basis for comparing your
for sort of judging your your actions. And I find
it delivers a real sense of kind of self efficacy,
of agency, of like, oh, look like I am actually
doing things in the world. I am actually sort of
contacting reality and doing things with them. And as I
(15:23):
write in the book, if if you're in a particular
sort of motivational rut, if you're in bad shape and
can't really bring yourself to do anything at all. You
can just really lower the bar for what gets to
get put on the done list, right, nobody needs to
see this. You can put made coffee or took a shower,
walk to the dog, right. You don't only need to
(15:43):
put the sort of core work.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Project on it.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
And when you do this, you actually find I find
that things snowball quite quickly and you see, oh, just
that feedback evidence of like, yeah, I didn't do nothing
because I made some coffee. I didn't do nothing because I,
you know, loaded the dishwasher. It can snowball into sort
of more overtly impressive accomplishments than that quite quickly.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
One of the things you talk about in the book
is not being so kind to your future self. And
obviously there's a thing with productivity literature that many of
us are spending a lot of time preparing for say
the upcoming week, you know, preparing all our meals on
Sunday for the entire rest of the week, putting out
outfits for many days to come. How can we create
(16:28):
the right balance so it's not total chaos, but we're
not spending so much time dwelling on the future that
we're not, you know, living.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely a balance, and
it's a matter of introspecting and figuring out, like what
your issue is. Certainly there are people, I think who
are prone to sort of hedonistically squandering all their time
and their money and their resources sort of on instantaneous
gratification in a way that means they don't make plans
for the future. But there is an opposite problem, and
(17:03):
I think it probably is the kind of problem that
people who are interested in all this stuff and productivity
and time management and conversations like this in the first
place are probably more prone to.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
And that is the yeah, the risk of.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Being so good, as it were, at delayed and deferred
gratification that you spend your whole life like dutifully doing
the things that will make the future better in a
way that makes life in the present feel kind of provisional. Right,
everything you're doing is always for some future moment. And
(17:37):
the sort of classic example of that, I suppose is
the person who makes a huge ton of money and
then has to feel psychologically impelled to carry on just
making grinding to make more and more money. Instead of
using it for things that you know they would enjoy
or that would be good.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
For the world.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
But I think we do all do that in subtler ways,
right we get into this mindset a lot of us do. Anyway,
We get into this mindset of everything is about planning,
everything is about finishing things for the future, and you
fail to kind of lives as fully as you might.
So the analogy here is the famous mushmallow studies, which
(18:14):
I'm sure a lot of people listening will know about,
where children were given a marshmallow and told that if
they waited ten minutes without eating it, they could get
a second marshmallow, and the kids who have the self
discipline to wait for the second marshmallows supposedly had all
sorts of very very much more positive life outcomes as adults.
Those studies have been contested in certain ways, but even
if they're right, like, it's also the case that at
(18:36):
some point you have to eat a marshmallow if you're
going to gain the benefit of collecting all these mrshmallows.
Just holding a big pile of marshmallows and then dying,
it's not a successful way of having used a finite
human life so for me, you know, in terms of
what this really concretely means, it might be about finding
(18:58):
ways to figure out what it is you want in
your life, or maybe you know this, and then bringing
them from the future back into the present in little ways.
So instead of just telling yourself you're going to take
a sabbatical in a year and a half time, so
right now you're just going to work really hard so
that you're ready for that. Maybe there's a way in
which you could bring that spirit of rest into your
(19:21):
life today for fifteen minutes. If there's some hobby or
some kind of experience that you're putting off until you've
got all your ducks in a row, as it were,
maybe there's some way in which you could engage in
that this week a little bit as well. I think
it's really important to sort of remember that eventually, at
(19:41):
some point, a fulfilling and enjoyable and worthwhile life has
to be happening in a now, right in a present moment.
Otherwise you do run the risk of spending your whole
life preparing and then there's no more time left.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
So we should give the batch cooking? Are we giving
up the batch cooking?
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Are we well? Again, you know you need to ask
yourself this question, right, that it's not that, like, firstly,
it's not that every kind of instance of batch cooking
or preparation is negative, and like, honestly, it's probably the
case that as human animals we're just not capable of
not somewhat living in that goal oriented way, even if
(20:23):
it was a good thing to abandon it, and I
don't think it is. But yeah, I mean maybe if
you're the kind of person who is always doing that
kind of batch preparation, maybe it's worth sort of having
a bit more trust in the person that you'll be
in the future when you meet that question of like, Okay,
it's dinner time, what can I do? Maybe you don't
(20:45):
need to have it all planned in advance. Again, if
one specific thing like batch cooking really works for you,
please don't let me put you off it. But that
general spirit of like I've got to do it all
now so that later on everything runs smoothly, it's like, well,
maybe you can find ways for it to run smoothly
(21:05):
in the moment when those present moments arrive.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, I would like to say your future self will
not be incompetent, so we don't have to overcare take
for him or her.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
We're good, all right.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
We're going to take one more quick ad break and
then I will be back with more from Oliver Berkman. Well,
I am back talking with Oliver Berkman, who is the
author of several books, including four thousand Weeks Time Management
for Mortals, also the book Meditations for Mortals, which is
out in paperback this month. So, Oliver, one question I
(21:38):
always ask my guests is what is something you have
done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Huh, that's a good question.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I don't know if I can articulate this properly, but
I think what I've really found very useful recently, and
I can remember a few times I've done it.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
In the very recent past, is.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
I'm learning that it to sort of give myself the
time that I need to transition between phases of the
day and work to family and kinds of.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Work to other kinds of work.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
I'm someone who, like by default, does not like the
idea of maybe stopping working twenty twenty five minutes before
it's time for school pickup or something, because I don't
have enough time as it is, and I want to
try to use that time as well as I can.
But I'm gradually learning that actually using that time as
well as you can for me involves allowing that sort
(22:35):
of seemingly useless, seemingly neutral time to sort of adapt
from one to the other so that in each of
those phases, I can be my best that I can
be and sort of enjoy it and give as much
as I can to it. A very closely related example
of this is sort of withholding judgment about how an
(22:55):
experience feels at the beginning of it. I'll explain what
I mean, like, if I've spent the morning in a
frenzy of kind of deadline focused work and then sort
of emails and calls. If I then want to turn
to a difficult book that I'm trying to read for
work purposes, I sort of am learning now that the
first ten to fifteen minutes of that experience, it's not
(23:16):
going to feel good, because I really am in that
transition place. But if I can just sort of notice
that negative feeling be okay work alongside it, that's often
the precursor to really getting deeply absorbed into the next thing.
So I'm trying not to sort of rush to judgment
(23:36):
about how something feels just at the beginning of the experience.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, Well, we don't want to get lost in transition,
but transitions are part of life and have to build
them in to just get from one thing to another. So, Oliver,
what's something you are looking forward to right now?
Speaker 4 (23:54):
I am looking forward to building out the new writing
space that I that I have for the really for
the first time in a very long time, I have
a room here in the northilk Moors that I can
use sort of set up as I as I am
want to for my for my work, and there is
(24:15):
something very very enjoyable about that sense of, you know,
completely empty space that I can do exactly what I
want with. I am extremely aware at the same time
that there is a major risk from my sort of
historical perfections tendencies to tell myself that I'm going to
get this exactly right and then after that writing is
(24:36):
just going to feel easy and I'm going to have
no more challenges in my work, and so I'm trying
to stay aware of that. But I am looking forward
to sort of shaping that way I the way I
want to, because I haven't had that opportunity in a
long while.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, well, of course we've got to be careful because,
as you know, home office rearrangement is a very good
way to put procrastinate.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yes, there's that as well.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
And you know that that risk that you tell yourself
like you don't need to it makes sense to not
make any progress on your writing for now, just until
you've got this all sorted out. To that end, I
would just say, in my defense, I have, you know,
in the space I'm talking about, I've got I've got
a surface, but I put my computer on and a chair.
So like, I've been trying very consciously to sort of
(25:26):
organize the day such that I first of all, do
a few hours on the work that is not endlessly
organizing the writing space, and then get to turn to
that enjoyable.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Task later in the day.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
That's a sort of one version of a more general
point that I've really tried to implement and that I
do write about in the in the in the books,
which is again that sense of not trying to kind
of clear the decks, not trying to get everything sorted
out first, and then I I'm going to get these
acres of wonderful time for the work that is most meaningful.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
But actually to sort of, you.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
Know, do an hour first thing, do a two or
three hours first thing on the work that is most meaningful,
even while I don't feel like the setting is right
or the context is right, the writing room isn't set
up yet, or the inbox is too full of emails
or whatever. It is, to sort of learn to tolerate
that anxiety and still put a bit of time into
the things that matter the most. That's a that's a
(26:26):
real superpower, and one I am only you know, a
work in progress.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Think we are with We are all a work in
progress on that one, for sure, Oliver.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
So where can people find you.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Books?
Speaker 4 (26:39):
So wherever you get your books and the audiobooks too,
which are read by me, And then everything else, including
my newsletter and stuff, is all at my website Oliver
Berkman dot com.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Excellent, Well, Oliver, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
(27:14):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(27:36):
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am excited to welcome Oliver Berkman to the show. Oliver
is the author of four thousand Weeks Time Management for
(00:32):
Mortals and also Meditations for Mortals, which is newly out
in paperback this month. So Oliver, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, very glad to have you. Why did you tell
our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Gosh, well, I wrote them books that you mentioned, so
I won't mention them again. I'm British, as is easy
to tell. I worked as a journalist at the Guardian
newspaper for quite a few years and wrote a column
that sort of got me into all this kind of
personal development, self healthy stuff, although partly by testing a
(01:08):
lot of it out finding it not to deliver.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
In the ways that I felt I needed it to.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
I lived in Brooklyn, New York for a bunch of years,
and now our family lives in North Yorkshire. In the
North York Moor was sort of Wuthering Heights territory where
I'm speaking to you from now.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Very literary sort of area, like you inspired to write
some sort of great British novel just by walking around.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
I am sure all my work is going to become
really gothic from now, yes.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, but your earlier work, when you were a columnist
for The Guardian, you was there a particular reason you
wound up on the self help beat?
Speaker 4 (01:53):
I mean, looking back, it seems very obvious to me
now that I was attempting to find ways personally for
my self, sort of therapeutically, grappling with these questions of
how do you feel more in control than I did,
or how do you feel happier or you know, not
beset by anxiety or feelings of crushing, feelings of duty
(02:15):
and obligation, all the personal hang ups from which I suffered,
And so it didn't feel particularly like that at the time.
I think that's probably true. A lot of reasons people
write about a lot of stuff. Maybe in a lot
of your work, you're a bit more sort of transparent
about this fact. And maybe it's more, maybe it's more
(02:38):
unconscious in other people. But I think I was at
first through a kind of often being quite sarcastic and
critical about self help world, which I still think is
probably entirely justified at least in some instances. But I
was sort of backing into asking difficult, vulnerable questions with
this alibi that it was just for work, and I
(03:00):
always just work exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, Well, there's an interesting thing about productivity.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I mean a lot of it is mental, right.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I mean, we were we were having a discussion before
we started recording about you had something that happened to
your day which was not planned, and sort of through
through the day off a little bit.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
And then we're still here talking and I had you
introduced me as someone who's going to share wisdom about
how to how to really make the day go so
fluidly and wonderfully. So I'm I'm I'm really being obliged
to figure out if I walk the talk today.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
But but you know, okay, so productivity is probably how
we feel about it. You had something happened to your
day that you didn't anticipate, not anybody's fault.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It is what it is.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
We're still here having the conversation. At the time, you
weren't late at all, but you said earlier that you
were feeling a little.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Bit sort of off for the day.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I'm curious why why that is what happens when things
go awry, that that makes you feel differently about your time.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Well, I think, I mean the first thing, in my defense,
after claim after you know, implying that I'm not at
all the paragon of productivity or calm that I present
myself as or something like that, I would have been
massively more knocked sideways. And it's not a secret. My
my son had to come home from school with a
(04:20):
sort of minor illness. It's no big crisis, but it's
enough to sort of sway the day for people who
work from home, and you know, back in the day,
although before I became a parent, so it's kind of
a bad comparison, but things that happened like that would
sort of knock me completely off course and I would
like feel like I had to call off the whole day.
And that is a response, I think to this fundamental
(04:42):
issue that manifests for lots of people in different ways
of control. Right, you want to feel like you're in
control of your stuff and your time, and if something
happens that really challenges that feeling of control, then if
you have the luxury, as freelance self employed writers do,
(05:02):
and not everyone does, but if you have the luxury
to sort of just kind of be thrown completely of
course and give up on the day, then it's very
tempting to do so, because it's like, well, Okay, I've
lost control of today, but tomorrow will be different.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Tomorrow I'll be.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Back in the saddle and I will exert full control
over the day. And I did have a sort of
I still get flickers of that. I did have that
sense today of like, oh, this wasn't planned. I had
to take a couple of hours out from what I
was expecting to be doing, So now like, what's the point?
And then I actually see myself doing that. I think
that's the big thing that's changed for me. I understand
(05:39):
that dynamic, and I say, look, I never really had
that control in the first place. It is absurd to
think that if I can't do seven hours of effective
work today, then there's no point in doing one or two.
This just makes no sense at all, and you can
sort of and maybe it changes what I want to
(06:01):
focus on, maybe it changes what I feel able to
focus on. But to be able to more fluidly navigate
among those things, I mean, I've got a lot better
at that. And it came from realizing that I never
really had the control I thought I had in the
first place, because actually, long before I became a parent
(06:22):
or even was in a long term relationship or anything,
I would have those days when just turned out my
mood wasn't on board for the day, and it's like, well, okay,
but am I just going to be completely thrown off
course by some sort of internal weather pattern like that?
So I think learning the limits of my own control
over time and learning to sort of work with that
(06:43):
and go with that has been really huge for me.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Well, one of the things you talk about in the
book and Meditations for Mortals is a lot of different
sort of I guess product of any strategies or mindsets
or things that you know could be helpful. And one
you mentioned is that we probably only have three to
(07:10):
four hours of good creative energy on any given day,
and that has a couple of different implications. I wonder
if you could talk about that rule a little bit.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Yeah, and again, this is something where it's really vividly
clear for people like me and I think you who
have a lot of autonomy over our time, who have
to do the work, like over the long term to
pay the bills, but who you know, can probably choose
a lot of the time. What we do with a
specific hour of a specific day be different for people
(07:43):
in other kinds of jobs, but the essence of the
wisdom of it, I think is universal. There's really good
evidence all through history that the great sort of authors
and artists, scholars and composers and mathematicians, scientists, all sorts
of people who have that kind of autonomy, the greatest ones,
when you look at their daily routines, they do not
(08:05):
ask of themselves more than three or four hours of
intense focused brain work, depending on who it is and
where in history. You then find that they've got, you know,
twelve servants and a dutiful wife to do all the
other things in life, so they get to just sort
of swan about for the rest of the day.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
And this is not how the world works for us
these days.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
But that basic idea that if you're a knowledge worker,
and you have the autonomy to kind of limit the
amount of time that you try to defend for deep, deep,
deep reflection, you should limit it to that amount of time.
I think is really is really true and important. One
of the ramifications of this, I think is that we should,
to whatever extent we can, try to ring fence try
(08:50):
to defend that stretch of hours of about that amount
if we can, in the course of a working day.
But a really important second sort of corollary insight, I
think is that you shouldn't stress too hard about defending
and structuring the rest of the time. So there is
in this kind of three or four hours idea both
a sense of discipline, like, yeah, try to pick the
(09:11):
hours that work the best for you and be as
uninterrupted as you possibly can and focus on your core projects.
But then don't be yourself up for the fact that
the rest of that time is going to be the
way life is right, full of interruptions and serendipity and
things that you didn't realize were going to come up
until half an hour ago. And I find this a
much you know, again, not exactly a typical day to day,
(09:33):
but I find this a much happier way to do things.
It doesn't Trying to structure and plan the whole day
for me is often a recipe for a lot of
in a combat because it feels like reality isn't conforming
to my wishes or something like that.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yes, reality sometimes does not conform to our wishes, A
deep truth of life. Well, we're going to take a
quick ad break and then I will be back with
more from Oliver Berkman. Well, I am back talking with
Oliver Berkman, who is the author of several books, including
four Thousand Weeks and Meditation for Mortals, which is newly
(10:13):
out in paperback this month.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
So, Oliver, another tidbit in Meditation for Mortals.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Is the idea of thinking, well, what if it were easy?
That you know, looking for something that is hard or
difficult is not always necessary. I wonder if you could
talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Yeah, yeah, happily. I mean, this was a big deal
for me when I realized how I had been approaching things.
In one sense, making decisions about what to spend your
time on and getting yourself to do that is difficult,
And that's another theme in my writing right.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
The difficulty is that there are.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Far more things than we have time available that we'd
like to do or feel obliged to do that we
have time to do, we have to make painful choices,
and we don't have the level of control over how
reality unfolds that we would like. So in that sense,
like being a finite human is difficult, but there's a risk.
(11:14):
I think a lot of us are brought up and
raised and encouraged by the culture to assume that the
actual experience of doing a meaningful action in work or
in many other context too, sort of probably has to
feel quite grueling. That if it isn't hurting, it isn't working.
As British politicians like to say about sort of economic
(11:37):
austerity policies.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Right that somehow, if I'm doing something.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
That matters, it's going to feel like a fight, and
I'm going to get to the end of the day
and feel like, wow, that was really painful and exhausting,
but at least you know I did the thing that matters.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
And what that.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Means is we're two things. Firstly, it can trick you
into thinking that just because the day was really exhausting,
that must therefore have been worthwhile, and a lot of
busy work is exhausting, but actually would be best maybe
delegated or ignored completely or postponed or something like that.
And most importantly, it means that you don't think to
(12:16):
ask that question right at the beginning of some difficult
or seeming or intimidating project, like what if this is
actually easier for me than I'm assuming? What if instead
of like girding myself and bracing myself for it to
be really difficult, I sort of approached it with at
least the possibility that I know how to do this,
(12:36):
and that you know, the ideas and the energy and
the focus will come together in the right way, and
it doesn't always happen, but you actually, you know, greatly
enhance the chances of it happening when you move into
projects in that spirit, and so definitely, sort of anything
that counts as creative, I find that the effect of
(13:00):
going into them expecting difficulty is to sort of bring
down that. It sort of brings difficulty to the experience,
It makes it harder, It squeezes things so that ideas
flow less regularly, less easily.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
So I think that's really important.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
If you go into reality as if it's going to
be a fight then you often get a fight that
for that very reason.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Well, one of the things you talk about, you know,
in terms of changing our mindset about time as well,
is creating a done list, so sort of a reverse
to do list, but things that you have done and accomplished.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
How is that helpful?
Speaker 4 (13:41):
Again, it's really the perspective shift that counts, and this
is like one of a million ways of executing or
implementing this perspective shift. But what I find really useful
about a done list, which of course people seem to
think I'm saying should be instead of a to do
list and you should throw away all your lists. I mean,
I think there's an argument for that, but that's not
what I'm saying here. A done list is just an
extra thing, right. It's just a way of recording the
(14:03):
actions that you take as you move through the day,
whether or not they were on an initial plan or
a to do list. And I think what's so important
about that is it just has this effect of shifting
the kind of internal comparison you're making when you look
at what you've done. Right, It's very simple and very
(14:23):
natural going through the day to sort of compare what
you've done to the hypothetical list of all the things
that feel like they need doing today, which is always
going to be longer than time is going to permit,
and in some sense maybe.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Sort of infinitely long, so you're never going to get
to the end of it.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
But this then to keeping a done list sort of
shifts your focus back because you're looking at these things
that you're adding to the list. It's correct, it's proper
that the list is getting longer as you add more things.
It's not a problem that it's getting longer. You're not
trying to get rid of it. And you're implicitly comparing
your output with the day, but on the data what
you would have achieved if you've done nothing thing at all,
(15:00):
So the comparison is with zero instead of with infinity.
And this is a much better basis for comparing your
for sort of judging your your actions. And I find
it delivers a real sense of kind of self efficacy,
of agency, of like, oh, look like I am actually
doing things in the world. I am actually sort of
contacting reality and doing things with them. And as I
(15:23):
write in the book, if if you're in a particular
sort of motivational rut, if you're in bad shape and
can't really bring yourself to do anything at all. You
can just really lower the bar for what gets to
get put on the done list, right, nobody needs to
see this. You can put made coffee or took a shower,
walk to the dog, right. You don't only need to
(15:43):
put the sort of core work.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Project on it.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
And when you do this, you actually find I find
that things snowball quite quickly and you see, oh, just
that feedback evidence of like, yeah, I didn't do nothing
because I made some coffee. I didn't do nothing because I,
you know, loaded the dishwasher. It can snowball into sort
of more overtly impressive accomplishments than that quite quickly.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
One of the things you talk about in the book
is not being so kind to your future self. And
obviously there's a thing with productivity literature that many of
us are spending a lot of time preparing for say
the upcoming week, you know, preparing all our meals on
Sunday for the entire rest of the week, putting out
outfits for many days to come. How can we create
(16:28):
the right balance so it's not total chaos, but we're
not spending so much time dwelling on the future that
we're not, you know, living.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely a balance, and
it's a matter of introspecting and figuring out, like what
your issue is. Certainly there are people, I think who
are prone to sort of hedonistically squandering all their time
and their money and their resources sort of on instantaneous
gratification in a way that means they don't make plans
for the future. But there is an opposite problem, and
(17:03):
I think it probably is the kind of problem that
people who are interested in all this stuff and productivity
and time management and conversations like this in the first
place are probably more prone to.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
And that is the yeah, the risk of.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Being so good, as it were, at delayed and deferred
gratification that you spend your whole life like dutifully doing
the things that will make the future better in a
way that makes life in the present feel kind of provisional. Right,
everything you're doing is always for some future moment. And
(17:37):
the sort of classic example of that, I suppose is
the person who makes a huge ton of money and
then has to feel psychologically impelled to carry on just
making grinding to make more and more money. Instead of
using it for things that you know they would enjoy
or that would be good.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
For the world.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
But I think we do all do that in subtler ways,
right we get into this mindset a lot of us do. Anyway,
We get into this mindset of everything is about planning,
everything is about finishing things for the future, and you
fail to kind of lives as fully as you might.
So the analogy here is the famous mushmallow studies, which
(18:14):
I'm sure a lot of people listening will know about,
where children were given a marshmallow and told that if
they waited ten minutes without eating it, they could get
a second marshmallow, and the kids who have the self
discipline to wait for the second marshmallows supposedly had all
sorts of very very much more positive life outcomes as adults.
Those studies have been contested in certain ways, but even
if they're right, like, it's also the case that at
(18:36):
some point you have to eat a marshmallow if you're
going to gain the benefit of collecting all these mrshmallows.
Just holding a big pile of marshmallows and then dying,
it's not a successful way of having used a finite
human life so for me, you know, in terms of
what this really concretely means, it might be about finding
(18:58):
ways to figure out what it is you want in
your life, or maybe you know this, and then bringing
them from the future back into the present in little ways.
So instead of just telling yourself you're going to take
a sabbatical in a year and a half time, so
right now you're just going to work really hard so
that you're ready for that. Maybe there's a way in
which you could bring that spirit of rest into your
(19:21):
life today for fifteen minutes. If there's some hobby or
some kind of experience that you're putting off until you've
got all your ducks in a row, as it were,
maybe there's some way in which you could engage in
that this week a little bit as well. I think
it's really important to sort of remember that eventually, at
(19:41):
some point, a fulfilling and enjoyable and worthwhile life has
to be happening in a now, right in a present moment.
Otherwise you do run the risk of spending your whole
life preparing and then there's no more time left.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
So we should give the batch cooking? Are we giving
up the batch cooking?
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Are we well? Again, you know you need to ask
yourself this question, right, that it's not that, like, firstly,
it's not that every kind of instance of batch cooking
or preparation is negative, and like, honestly, it's probably the
case that as human animals we're just not capable of
not somewhat living in that goal oriented way, even if
(20:23):
it was a good thing to abandon it, and I
don't think it is. But yeah, I mean maybe if
you're the kind of person who is always doing that
kind of batch preparation, maybe it's worth sort of having
a bit more trust in the person that you'll be
in the future when you meet that question of like, Okay,
it's dinner time, what can I do? Maybe you don't
(20:45):
need to have it all planned in advance. Again, if
one specific thing like batch cooking really works for you,
please don't let me put you off it. But that
general spirit of like I've got to do it all
now so that later on everything runs smoothly, it's like, well,
maybe you can find ways for it to run smoothly
(21:05):
in the moment when those present moments arrive.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, I would like to say your future self will
not be incompetent, so we don't have to overcare take
for him or her.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
We're good, all right.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
We're going to take one more quick ad break and
then I will be back with more from Oliver Berkman. Well,
I am back talking with Oliver Berkman, who is the
author of several books, including four thousand Weeks Time Management
for Mortals, also the book Meditations for Mortals, which is
out in paperback this month. So, Oliver, one question I
(21:38):
always ask my guests is what is something you have
done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Huh, that's a good question.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I don't know if I can articulate this properly, but
I think what I've really found very useful recently, and
I can remember a few times I've done it.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
In the very recent past, is.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
I'm learning that it to sort of give myself the
time that I need to transition between phases of the
day and work to family and kinds of.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Work to other kinds of work.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
I'm someone who, like by default, does not like the
idea of maybe stopping working twenty twenty five minutes before
it's time for school pickup or something, because I don't
have enough time as it is, and I want to
try to use that time as well as I can.
But I'm gradually learning that actually using that time as
well as you can for me involves allowing that sort
(22:35):
of seemingly useless, seemingly neutral time to sort of adapt
from one to the other so that in each of
those phases, I can be my best that I can
be and sort of enjoy it and give as much
as I can to it. A very closely related example
of this is sort of withholding judgment about how an
(22:55):
experience feels at the beginning of it. I'll explain what
I mean, like, if I've spent the morning in a
frenzy of kind of deadline focused work and then sort
of emails and calls. If I then want to turn
to a difficult book that I'm trying to read for
work purposes, I sort of am learning now that the
first ten to fifteen minutes of that experience, it's not
(23:16):
going to feel good, because I really am in that
transition place. But if I can just sort of notice
that negative feeling be okay work alongside it, that's often
the precursor to really getting deeply absorbed into the next thing.
So I'm trying not to sort of rush to judgment
(23:36):
about how something feels just at the beginning of the experience.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, Well, we don't want to get lost in transition,
but transitions are part of life and have to build
them in to just get from one thing to another. So, Oliver,
what's something you are looking forward to right now?
Speaker 4 (23:54):
I am looking forward to building out the new writing
space that I that I have for the really for
the first time in a very long time, I have
a room here in the northilk Moors that I can
use sort of set up as I as I am
want to for my for my work, and there is
(24:15):
something very very enjoyable about that sense of, you know,
completely empty space that I can do exactly what I
want with. I am extremely aware at the same time
that there is a major risk from my sort of
historical perfections tendencies to tell myself that I'm going to
get this exactly right and then after that writing is
(24:36):
just going to feel easy and I'm going to have
no more challenges in my work, and so I'm trying
to stay aware of that. But I am looking forward
to sort of shaping that way I the way I
want to, because I haven't had that opportunity in a
long while.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, well, of course we've got to be careful because,
as you know, home office rearrangement is a very good
way to put procrastinate.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yes, there's that as well.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
And you know that that risk that you tell yourself
like you don't need to it makes sense to not
make any progress on your writing for now, just until
you've got this all sorted out. To that end, I
would just say, in my defense, I have, you know,
in the space I'm talking about, I've got I've got
a surface, but I put my computer on and a chair.
So like, I've been trying very consciously to sort of
(25:26):
organize the day such that I first of all, do
a few hours on the work that is not endlessly
organizing the writing space, and then get to turn to
that enjoyable.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Task later in the day.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
That's a sort of one version of a more general
point that I've really tried to implement and that I
do write about in the in the in the books,
which is again that sense of not trying to kind
of clear the decks, not trying to get everything sorted
out first, and then I I'm going to get these
acres of wonderful time for the work that is most meaningful.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
But actually to sort of, you.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
Know, do an hour first thing, do a two or
three hours first thing on the work that is most meaningful,
even while I don't feel like the setting is right
or the context is right, the writing room isn't set
up yet, or the inbox is too full of emails
or whatever. It is, to sort of learn to tolerate
that anxiety and still put a bit of time into
the things that matter the most. That's a that's a
(26:26):
real superpower, and one I am only you know, a
work in progress.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Think we are with We are all a work in
progress on that one, for sure, Oliver.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
So where can people find you.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Books?
Speaker 4 (26:39):
So wherever you get your books and the audiobooks too,
which are read by me, And then everything else, including
my newsletter and stuff, is all at my website Oliver
Berkman dot com.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Excellent, Well, Oliver, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
(27:14):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(27:36):
listen to your favorite shows.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com