Why Productivity Will Never Make You Feel Fulfilled | Oliver Burkman | Be Well Moments

Watch the FULL podcast here: https://youtu.be/KO_kNTtWahUDo you feel torn between sticking to a plan and staying spontaneous? Recognising that you’re always choosing in the present can make it easier to keep a commitment when it matters and to pivot when it’s wiser.This clip explores planning versus spontaneity, why busyness can make us more unconscious, how self-compassion can support genuine time off, and why efficiency gains, including AI tools and better systems, often lead us to fill freed-up hours with more work.Here, I’m discussing the mindset of treating every moment as a choice, so the freedom we fear losing to strict schedules is already there, and the uncertainty of spontaneity is simply the basic state we live in. We look at the expansion trap in creative work and content, the impossibility of being on every platform, and the importance of deciding where to stop rather than waiting to be told you’ve done enough, much like choosing to finish a book.As a nutritionist and health communicator, I connect these habits to sustainable wellbeing: less frantic doing, more intentional decisions, and kinder boundaries with your time.***This episode is sponsored by: NOWATCH: Health tracking reimaginedKnow your body, trust yourself.15% off with code LWBW15 at nowatch.com***Sign up to Sarah’s Compassionate Cure newsletter: Science Simplified, Health Humanised. Join thousands in exploring actionable insights that prioritise compassion, clarity, and real-life impact. https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/***Let’s be friends!📷 Instagram: / sarahannmacklin📹 Subscribe: / @livewellbewellsarah 🐦 Twitter: / sarahannmacklin 📱 TikTok: / sarahannnutrition 💌 Newsletter: https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Live Well Be Well, a show to help high performers
improve their health and well-being.
The focus on on using time well each day makes you feel like
something to survive when you realise what you were doing.
When did you realise you were actually doing this to yourself?

(00:21):
So allowing you to use your timewell.
And I think that I could productively write down my time
well, but then that made me think, well, is that the best
way to do it without having these pockets of inspiration,
without having these moments of joy and novelty and these free
time in your diary to actually explore that?

(00:41):
Yeah. I mean, I think one useful thing
that I find here, maybe what we're talking about is the
distinction between like living in a planned way and living in a
spontaneous way. And that sense that a lot of us
have that neither one is quite enough on its own because
planning Scotch is the life fromthings.
But pure spontaneity, like you're worried that you might

(01:03):
forget all the things that matter.
And that's what I thought for a long time.
Like, OK, I've got to find time for both of these.
And then you start doing weird things like time boxing space
for serendipity into your schedule or some rate.
It's completely insane when you think about it in detail, but
it. Is, but we've both done that,
yes. Right, exactly.

(01:24):
Laughing because I'm. Like.
We've both seen. That this is the time of day,
the 90 minute period when I'm going to be completely
spontaneous. This is something I find useful
and you may not, but might just be how my mind works in a sense.
You're always acting spontaneously whether you like
it or not, right? So even if what you decide to do

(01:46):
with a spontaneous moment is implement your very strict time
boxing schedule, you are in thatvery moment making that
decision, whether you do it consciously or unconsciously.
Unless you're literally like in jail or you know, someone's
physically manhandling you put that aside.
You're always in the moment deciding what to do.

(02:07):
It's just that quite often, if you're a certain kind of, you
know, anal person, you're, you're what you're doing is what
you're deciding to do in that moment is carry out your strict
plan that you made yesterday. So I found this a very sort of
liberating realization. Again, it's one of these things

(02:27):
not where you change how you live, but where you see more
clearly how you're already living.
I'm always deciding moment to moment what to focus on, where
to go, whether to keep a commitment I've made, whether to
show up to a podcast recording, or just, I don't know, just fail
completely to do so, right? It's all technically within my

(02:49):
power and all I need to do is sort of be aware of that and be
aware that there are consequences of doing 1 and not
the other and etcetera. I think that makes it a lot
easier to know when to stick with a plan and when to diverge
from a plan. If you see that what you're
actually doing is the same thingin every moment, you're you're
choosing how to use that moment.And then I think it's very much

(03:15):
easier to sort of say, well, OK,my plan for my day is to put a
few hours into this project and try to get to this outcome with
it, and then to do that and thendo that.
And then something else arises and oh, OK, now I'm just making
a decision in this moment about whether that's something to
change course for. You see what I'm saying?
I don't know if I'm expressing it properly, but like actually

(03:36):
every moment is, is a choice. Even You're not actually
governed by the plan you made yesterday.
You're choosing to implement theplan you made yesterday.
And so the freedom that we fear losing when we stick to strict
plans is actually always there. The serendipity and spontaneity
that we're a little bit scared of because it feels so out of
control is just in fact the basic state of our whole lives.

(04:00):
So we're already in that kind ofscary situation and all we all
we ever need to do is try to make the wisest decision about
what to do in the very next moment.
I don't know if you find that convincing or not.
You'll have to tell. Me, well, sometimes I feel like
I can just go through and add more and more on and be more
unconscious. I feel like the busier I get,

(04:22):
the more unconscious I am. That's the way I feel.
And actually when I give myself that time, but the pressure to
have that time, it's also quite hard.
I mean, for instance, as as I amsomeone who loves to be busy, so
I fill myself with more busyness.
Is that me moving away from feeling?
Yes, probably. Is that why I'm connected to

(04:44):
self compassion? Yes, probably because I have to
have it as an efficient tool to allow myself to have time off.
But it's interesting you talk about when we free up time in
our diary or in our lives, we just fill it with more stuff.
And so we live in this weird moment where actually we tried.
I think about this now with AI, people are implementing more
into their daily lives because of AI is allowing them to free

(05:07):
themselves up. They're becoming more efficient.
So we're put out putting more. I think about this, the show
started off the show with just me maybe one other guest five
years ago and us just having this conversation back and forth
and every weekend, OK, maybe I should record another show.
Now we're doing 3 shows a week, we're putting out more content
than ever. We've, you know, gone to

(05:28):
YouTube. We're we're making it bigger and
better than trying to do more than ever before.
But we've also utilised our systems better.
So we've obviously bought in more AI tools, less people
become more efficient, but my time is actually smaller.
Yeah, yeah. And I think the real like I,
yes, I am not here to question your content strategy, right?

(05:50):
But but what I but what I think is really important to connect
to and I recognise equivalent things from my own different,
different domains and stuff. But like, I think the important
question is always like, why areyou doing it right?
And, and if tools and technologies, AI or otherwise,
enable us to do more of the spend more time like expressing

(06:15):
our passions and enjoyment of the world in action, that's
fantastic and really good. If you think.
And because you're human on somelevel, you probably do.
There's no shame in it at all. That like this expansion process
is like, it's a trajectory that would eventually get to a point
where you'll be like, OK, now this is the correct size of

(06:37):
things and this is the correct scale.
And we're on all the platforms that count.
And now we've arrived. You know, I think that's the bit
that one always has to be a little bit skeptical of just
because obviously that is never going to be the case.
And like, you know, feels like every week I, I encounter news

(06:58):
of a social media platform that I like literally haven't heard
of its existence. So clearly I cannot be expected
to already be all over that withmy thoughts and content, you
know, So there's a pointer. Again, it's this idea that like
what you're ultimately, I think what we have to say we're doing
when we try to sort of get on top of everything and conquer

(07:20):
these mountains of opportunitiesor of demands, whatever they are
in each different person's life is say like, you're not going to
get your arms around at all. You're going to have to stop at
a certain point. You're going to have to let
certain people down in some contexts or turn down certain
opportunities, you know, not be on certain platforms, right?

(07:40):
This is just a given. It's baked into the world.
And then it's just a matter of of making those decisions as
well as you're able. It's the same with writing a
book, right? You could do it.
You could keep tweaking it for years until it was even better
than you. You know, you could just that
isn't that is an absolutely unfinishable project.

(08:03):
It's finished when you develop the sort of agency and authority
to say that's where I'm going tostop.
And, you know, that's the only thing we can do.
I think the the problem is, yeah, when we're sort of chasing
this notion that at some point the world is going to tell us
that we've done enough and, and,and, and reached the sort of the
the correct place to be able to finally relax.

(08:25):
Thanks so much for listening to hear the full episode.
There's a link in the description.