September 13, 2022 • 54 mins
Oliver Burkeman tells us how "The ability to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower" why we should "Let things take the time they take" why it's important to "Seek enlargement rather than happiness " and more. Hosted by Duff Watkins.
About Oliver BurkemanOliver Burkeman is an award-winning British journalist who wrote a long-running weekly column for The Guardian, entitled "This Column Will Change Your Life." Burkeman has won the Foreign Press Association's Young Journalist of the Year award, FPA's Science Story of the Year 2015 and has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2006. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Psychologies, and New Philosopher. He lives in New York City.
He is the author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking focuses on his theory of negativity and Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done (2011). He also has his own blog, on which he features a wide range of articles covering topics such as business management and various interviews with noteworthy individuals including Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter His new book, Four Thousand Weeks - time management for mere mortals , is about making the most of our radically finite lives in a world of impossible demands, relentless distraction and political insanity (and 'productivity techniques' that mainly just make everyone feel busier).
Episode Notes
Lesson 1: Seek enlargement rather than happiness 06:47 Lesson 2: Everyone is totally just winging it 11:01 Lesson 3: You're always procrastinating on something 18:23 Lesson 4: Nobody else really cares what you do with your life 23:34 Lesson 5: The ability to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower 26:33 Lesson 6: What makes it unbearable is your mistaken belief that it can be cured 30:49 Lesson 7: Let things take the time they take 33:06 Lesson 8: You wouldn't want the control you think you need 35:15 Lesson 9: Don't fight time; it always wins in the end 40:42 Lesson 10: You don't need to justify your existence 43:59
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Because time is finite because everydecision to do something is a decision
(00:03):
not to do something else It's better tothink about procrastination as something
to become better at, rather than somethingto try to eradicate from your life.
Of all the projects, you wishyou were working on or want to be
working on there's no option, but toneglect most of them at any one time.
So the important questionis not, how do I not neglect
anything that I have on my plate?
The important question is how do I makethe wisest choices about what to neglect?
(00:31):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
10 lessons.
It took me 50 years to learn where wedispense wisdom for career and life.
That's wisdom for your career, your life.
My name is Duff Watkins and I'm your host.
Our guest today is OliverBerkman, an award winning British
journalist who for many yearswrote a column for The Guardian.
The column was called "thiscolumn can change your life".
(00:53):
And it did Oliver.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you very much.
Thanks.
This whole trip began for me.
I read your book, The Antidote,happiness for people who
can't stand positive thinking.
I thought if a book was ever engineeredfor somebody who's engineered for me,
and by the way, I just checked the re Ijust checked the Amazon ratings, various
(01:15):
rating sites, that book for listers andviewers is ranked 4.5 stars on Amazon,
Amazon, Brazil, and other ones as well.
So it's quite a popular book, but you'vegot a new book out called 4,000 weeks.
And there's a story behind that title,
right?
Yeah.
The, the title, the book is 4,000 weeks.
(01:36):
The subtitle is time managementfor mortals and 4,000 weeks
is very approximately.
The life that you can expect tolive on average, you know, today
in the west, if you live to be 80,you've had a few more than 4,000
actually to get precise about it.
And if you're lucky, you might have 5,000and certain record breaking figures in
(01:57):
history have gone above 6,000, but it'sall still pretty, pretty low figures
when you put it in weeks, I think.
and so, you know, I just wanted to usethat as a sort of way into the book
theme, which is how we, what changesabout how we understand time and time
management and living a meaningful life.
When you sort of face up to the,the big limitation here, the, the
(02:19):
finitude that we're all dealing with.
Well, in fact, one of the reviewerssaid it was described the book as,
time management equals confrontingfinitude . And I actually did a bit of
math myself is that if you look at yourworking life, the time when you earn
money, the time where you contribute,where you produce, where you are
working, it's closer to 1,800 weeks.
(02:40):
So you don't right.
You don't, we don't have thatmuch time to contribute in, in a,
in a conventional working sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I think there's aswell, I'm sure we'll talk about, as we
talk about other stuff, I mean, I alwayswanna sort of push back even against my
own title in a way and say that, I don'tthink that the message of the book or of
(03:02):
the stuff I write about on this topic.
I don't think it would be rightto take the message as being like.
Oh, my goodness.
There's so little time.
So I better really panic about seizingevery day and, you know, immediately leave
my job to go and set up a base jumpingcompany in the mountains of New Zealand.
But, you know, doing these astonishingthings, these unusual things that is the
(03:23):
path that some people, choose to take.
But it's almost that the reason Iwanna bring up this point about how
our limited our time is, is because Ithink that most of the ways that we go
about thinking about time and certainlya lot of advice that you see on time
management and productivity, it, itactually is premised on this idea.
We might somehow be able to do everythingand be so efficient and perfect at this
(03:47):
stuff that we could never have to makeany tough decisions or let anything go.
And so, in a way it's a relief,I think, to see like, no, no,
that is an impossible quest.
And once you sort of see that it'simpossible, it frees you up to do
something really great and meaningful,but, but possible with your life.
So I think that's it.
(04:08):
I hope it's sort of a liberationrather than entirely a cause
for, panic attacks, you know?
Well, would you say that this obsessionwith productivity, which we have
in the Western world, certainly inthe corporate world, would you say
it's a defense against anxiety?
I think that's how it gets used.
I mean, there's certainly nothingwrong with wanting to be productive
or even wanting to be more efficient.
(04:29):
I still look for ways to, get ridof pointless expenditures of time in
the course of my workflow, whatever.
But I think by and large, certainlyin my personal experience, it gets
used as a form of emotional avoidance.
Right.
Because you can't do everything.
You can't make yourself, hyperefficient to the point where there's
no limit to what you can deal withor what you can execute or implement.
(04:53):
But as long as you are followingsome doctrine of productivity,
that makes it seem like soon , youwill reach that position.
The fantasy can stay alive, right?
And you can keep chasingthis moment, which is never.
Now it's always, maybe next month or nextyear, once I've got this whole system
fully worked out and that's, you know,blah, blah, blah, then you know, your
(05:13):
life will be in perfect working order.
You, you tell yourself, and as long asyou're doing that, you don't have to feel
the discomfort of our real situation,which is, you know, the reality has
certain limitations built in with ourlimited amount of time, the limited degree
to which we can control how it unfolds.
The fact that like other people arealways annoyingly getting in the
(05:36):
way of your own plans already know.
I noticed that too.
Yes.
But one of the subtexts, if Iread it correctly of your book
is choose what to neglect.
Right.
And this is, I think this is animportant point because it's very
much to do with becoming conscious ofsomething that we're already doing.
So I think it's important to saythat, like, you know, as finite
(05:57):
humans, we are always choosing,there are always trade offs involved.
Anything you decide to do with an hourof your life, you are by definition,
deciding not to do countless other things.
This is all a given.
You don't get to choose toopt out of that situation.
But what you do get to choose is tobe more conscious about this fact, not
(06:17):
to seek ways to deny it or not feelthe discomfort of it, but to face it.
And, once you see that you have tobe procrastinating on most things
at any given moment, once you seethat you have to neglect, you know,
most things at any given moment,it's a lot, it's a lot easier.
I think it's a, it's a, it'sa difficult path in a certain
way, but it's a possible path.
(06:38):
Whereas the one about I'm nevergoing to have to neglect anything.
I'm going to please, everybody.
I'm not going to let anybody down.
And I'm going to fulfill everysingle ambition that I can come
up with or whatever it might be.
You know, that is a torment becausethat can't ever come to pass.
Well, and I think as you put it inyour book, your inbox is never empty.
(07:01):
you know.
Right.
And in fact, the process of tryingto clear it generates more emails.
So it's it's like strugglingin quick sand, you know?
All right, well, let's get toyour 10 lessons then 10 lessons.
It took you 50 years to learn.
Number one, seekenlargement, not happiness.
What?
This is not pro obesity.
(07:21):
Is it Oliver?
I mean that that's not gonnawork in this day and age.
I I'm.
Well, there's be there be no I'm.
No.
This is growth, no fat shaming here.
What I wanna say is this is a, this isa line which I wanna fully attribute to
an extremely wise Jungian psychoanalystwhose work I really admire and who I've
(07:43):
since had the privilege of getting toknow a bit James Hollis, all of whose
books I would hardly recommend, but,but who makes this argument that, you
know, if you're facing a fork in theroad in your life, or a difficult choice,
or deciding what to do a much betterquestion than will this make me happy?
Is will this choiceenlarge me or diminish me?
(08:04):
Partly.
It's just well known at this point, right?
That we are terrible at predictingwhat will make us happy.
this is like a famous finding of,of social psychology at this point.
Also, I think happiness and askingthe question about happiness
leads you off in the direction of.
comfort and avoidance and, and sortof not having to feel certain things
that you might not want to feel,whereas enlargement, most people know
(08:25):
the answer to this question, right?
If you, if you're facing a dilemma,most people do know, when they ask
themselves and look inside, maybe theyneed to give it a few weeks, but like
whether the thing they're consideringembarking upon is going to sort of
enlarge their soul in a way to usethat kind of metaphorical language.
So a good example of this and, youknow, we've all, experienced sort of
(08:46):
difficulties in relationships, right?
Dissatisfaction orconflict, or am ambivalence.
And it's very hard to know whether, youknow, sticking with a relationship is
going to make you in the short or mediumterm, happier than if you didn't it might,
it might well be that, you know, happiestwould be on your own sitting at home,
watching Netflix, doing nothing else.
(09:06):
But when you ask this question aboutenlargement, it gets very clear because
I think you can really understand, thereare the kinds of difficulties that you
come across in a relationship where youthink like, okay, this isn't fun, what
we're going through, but it's important.
And we are both becoming biggerpeople as a result of this.
And this applies to professionalrelationships, I think
as well as romantic ones.
You just intuitively know thatit's the kind of, it's the kind
(09:29):
of difficulty that is ultimately,edifying and good to go through.
Versus the kind where you might be, youknow, in a relationship with someone
with a really severe personalitydisorder, or you might be in an
abusive relationship, or it might bea, a professional relationship where
you are just being taken for a rideand exploited, and then, you know, as
well, I think mostly in your heart, inyour gut, oh, this is not that kind of
(09:55):
this is not that kind of difficulty.
This is the kind of difficultyit is actually right.
To get myself away fromand to protect myself from.
And you can only get there by askingthese questions about enlargement.
I think instead of these questionsabout happiness, which will
lead you astray, all the time.
So this enlargement, this personal growthis not to be confused with pleasure.
(10:17):
That is to say it's not always fun,not always pleasurable to experience,
but ultimately it is the payoff.
That's the process to maturation.
Right.
It's a way of, it's a way of filteringbetween two different kinds of problem.
I think that we can experience in life.
One is like the stuff that growth and lifeand meaning is made of, and then the other
(10:38):
is the kind of problem that absolutelypeople should like, you know, do what
they can to minimize and stay away fromtoxic people and, and all the rest of it.
I've found that very useful in my own lifeon multiple occasions to ask that kind of
question, because pretty soon the answerdoes sort of bubble up in a way that it
doesn't when happiness is the question.
(11:00):
Yeah.
Sometimes the quest for happiness sortof pollutes the, the, the question.
Right.
And is it comfort you're seekingand which might actually be
bad in this particular case?
And all sorts of other factors,happiness is a happiness comes along
for the ride, one hopes, but I thinkthat's how you have to think about,
happines not as a not as the goalyou are going to strive for directly.
It's been described as a byproduct.
(11:21):
Yeah.
A byproduct rather than a destination.
All right.
Lesson, number two,everyone is just winging it.
I knew it.
Oliver.
I knew there's no master planbehind all of this just confirms
everything I've suspected for decades.
I wrote a, I wrote a piece with roughlythat headline, what I think it was
getting on for a, well, I must beeight years ago now, something more.
(11:43):
And since then, I feel like it wasabout, it was about some sort of
minor misstep that, President Obamahad made and everyone was responding.
Like how could the white housepossibly have made this mistake?
And you're just like, well, becauseeveryone is just winging it all the time.
And like the idea that justbecause someone is the president,
they've discovered the secretto, to knowing what the heck is
(12:05):
going on in the world is not true.
That feels a little dated now because Ifeel like everything that's happened to
politics since then is like, now it'sincredibly clear over and over again,
pretty much, no matter what your politicalstance that like that our leaders are.
Absolutely no more perfect at, under, athaving things sorted out than anyone else.
(12:27):
Seems like that has, we'rereminded of that over the last few
years on a, on both sides of theAtlantic ocean on a daily basis.
And I just think it'sa really interesting.
It's a good way of dealing withfirstly, I think it's true.
I think in the sense that we assumesomeone somewhere knows what's going on,
actually no one does know what's going on.
I don't mean that, you know, peopledon't have expertises that they are,
(12:50):
that they put to good use in theirwork, but there's this strong sense.
It's a bit like a childwith a parent, right?
Except now we're the grownups.
You want to know, you want to know thatsomebody somewhere, in your company, in
your life, in your state nation, reallyknows, what's going on and isn't sort
of improvising from moment to moment.
(13:14):
And actually, that's why that's atheory behind a lot of, an explanation
behind a bunch of, conspiracy theories.
Yes.
Is that people actually find itmore people find it more calming
to believe that an evil cabal ismanipulating the world than that it
is really as chaotic and random andunpredictable as it, as it really is.
They would rather believe in,in some evil puppet masters.
(13:35):
And that's just another defenseagainst anxiety, the personal anxiety.
Right.
Right.
Because I'm dealing with this entropy,which is real and is out there.
And so it's much better for me to thinkthat, you know, the Jews are behind
it or, or, you know, the the Catholicsociety, whatever it is, you know?
Right.
It's yeah, exactly.
Yes.
(13:55):
It's, it's a comfort.
It's, it's a comfort device and, andpeople are willing to sort of falsify the
facts completely to feel that comfort.
but in daily life, those of us who are notconspiracy theorists, I think what this
is really useful for is just that it is a.
It serves as a big relief and as amotivation, I think to people who
may be afflicted by some degreeof imposter syndrome, you know,
(14:16):
thinking that they're not quite readyto make their contribution, that
they need to know more before they,before they make their voices heard.
That can be true sometimes that, youknow, people it's good that people go
through long medical training beforethey operate on me, you know, but, but I
think it acts primarily in life to sortof hold people back because they're under
(14:38):
a misimpression about the competence andconfidence of the people around them.
The reason you only hear your ownmonologue of internal self doubt is
not because no one else has them.
It's because you only hearyour own internal monologue.
So I'm always saying, you know, somepeople want to respond to, people want
(15:01):
to say about imposter syndrome, like.
No, no, no, you're great.
You know what you're doing?
You can go out there, you can join them.
You're just as you're just as good.
And I wanna say, well, you arejust as good, but only because
nobody knows what they're doing.
So in a way, We're all impostorsin a, in a crucial way, I think.
And I think it's, it's just useful to.
Well, when I read that lesson, it remindedme in my previous podcast, I used to
(15:25):
interview a lot of us, politicians,senators, governors, us ambassadors.
And what I came away with was thatthey're all guys, they're just guys.
We really, you know I mean, really,you know, so many senior executives,
I mean, senior executives that I, I, Iwouldn't personally feed, you know, if
it was up to me, but they're, I mean,they're smart, they're intelligent.
(15:45):
They have their pluses and theirskills of obtaining that position
and maintaining that position.
But, but many a time I walked awaythinking my God, those are people
are awesomely average and that'sokay because that's pretty much
the way the rest of us are too.
And not to be underestimated,so, okay, so we're wing it.
(16:06):
What does that mean for the.
a person listening to this podcastor the person who's going to
pick up your book 4,000 weeks.
I, I think what it means above all, isthat the sense that I think a lot of
people have and that I certainly have ofalways kind of improvising your responses
to things never quite being absolutelycertain, never quite sort of just
(16:30):
following some steps in your, in, in someparticular workplace, it's always having
to sort of create everything afresh alwaysfeeling that you're not quite yet in this
kind of serene position of command andcontrol over your life, that this isn't
a problem, that this is not somethingto sort of feel bad about because it
(16:50):
means you're not, you're not there yet.
And I fall into this myself everytime, you know, I write an email
newsletter every couple of weeks, andI'm always struck by how it feels like.
I'm always sort of starting fromscratch and trying to figure out
what an email newsletter should be.
And wondering if I've got a really goodpoint to make and it, it, you never
get to the stage where you're justlike, okay, it's all in working order.
(17:13):
I just need to like plug and playor whatever the right metaphor is.
You never get there.
And actually, you know, I thinkin writing, it's sort of important
that one never gets there.
Cause it keeps you fresh andcreative, but, but it's really
useful to remember that this isthe nature of being human, right.
One way of thinking aboutit is in terms of time.
And that's the one I explore in,in the book, especially, right.
(17:34):
We're all sort of on theleading edge of the present
moment, moving into the future.
The president of the United States,the chief executive of the world bank.
They are, they have as littlecertainty about what happens in
the next hour as you or I, or theloneliest person one could imagine.
(17:56):
And that's really useful to remember.
I think like it's scary because whatyou really want is somebody saying
like, it's all right, I've looked ahead.
I've, I've gone ahead a century and Ican tell you like this climate change
stuff is scary, but we figure it out.
Maybe we don't, you know?
And I think we have to accept thatin order, precisely to start making
our own meaningful contributions.
(18:16):
Well, facing reality unflinchingly issomething that takes a lot of practice.
I've been working on itfor a long while now and
right.
Yeah.
I don't think you ever get there.
I think it's absolutely the point.
Yeah.
And one of the things that you do upfacing is we are, we are finite creatures.
We have finite out amounts of emotional,physical, psychological energy.
(18:38):
So you have to deploy it wiselybecause it runs out it's renewable,
it's replenishable, but it runs out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Then lesson number three, you'realways procrastinating about something.
Yes.
I mean, this is the truth that I thinkwe touched on a little bit at the
beginning that you know, because timeis finite because every decision to
(19:02):
do something is a decision not to dosomething else It's better to think
about procrastination as something tobecome better at, rather than something
to try to eradicate from your life.
Of all the projects, I mean, differentfor different people, but of how
many, how many projects you wishyou were working on or want to be
working on there's no option, but toneglect most of them at any one time.
(19:23):
So the, so the important questionis not, how do I not neglect
anything that I have on my plate?
The important question is how do I makethe wisest choices about what to neglect?
And I think once you see that it becomesa lot easier to make those choices.
You, you can let go.
If you're gonna beat yourself upabout not making progress on something
(19:44):
that is important, you're alwaysgonna be beating yourself up because
that is the nature of especially theworld in which we live in, right.
Where there are so many effectively sortof infinite demands on our time, but also
infinite opportunities and possibilities.
We, we need a way of thinking about thisthat doesn't maybe once it was possible
to sort of feel like you were taking careof every single thing in your life that
(20:06):
needed taken care of, but, but that'ssort of systematically impossible now.
And so we would do much better to tryand make these decisions carefully.
I think
Nicholas Taleb says in his book,he's very much pro procrastination.
He says, basically, it's justyour brain telling you, get on
with it, go on to something else.
This is, this is not stimulating.
It's not interesting.
It's not worthwhile.
(20:27):
It's not, you can return to itlater, but get on to something that.
Engages you more.
And he said has made his whole careerby doing that reading only what he
wants to read when he wants to read it.
and there is a great dealof truth and power in this.
I, there is even a method which saysyou work in small batches of time,
20, 25 minutes, something like that.
(20:47):
Yep.
And it's it's a, I believe it worksbecause it's a way of feeding you a
constant, sustainable set of stimulationwithout trying to force yourself to, to
co concentrate or focus on this unduly.
Does that ring a bell with you in terms ofyour, your thoughts about procrastination?
Yeah.
I think there's allsorts of benefits to it.
(21:08):
And I love the, the whole like NassimTaleb approach of just like jump from
thing to thing that, that stimulates you.
I think there's an issue therefor a lot of us, which might
not be maybe not for him.
He's a pretty, pretty one off.
He's a different dude.
Yes.
Let's agree.
He's kinda dude.
Which is, you know, that if you if youjust completely let yourself bounce
(21:30):
from thing to thing, a lot of us, Ithink, are going to bounce away from
things as soon as they get difficult.
So we're going to neglect thetruth, that like a lot of meaningful
stuff is gonna feel difficult.
So, I think it's more a questionof understanding that you'll
be neglecting a bunch of stuff,understanding that things that matter
often feel uncomfortable to do.
(21:51):
And that one of the great appealsof distraction is that we get to
not feel that discomfort becausewe are just scrolling through
social media or something instead.
And then you could sort of let go of onceyou that's, what enables you, I think,
to sort of focus on one thing at a time,it's the willingness to tolerate the mild
anxiety that comes from knowing about allthe other things you are not focusing on.
(22:14):
So I guess my slight pushbackagainst just go where your interest
lies from moment to moment is yes.
But be sure that that interestisn't really code for comfort.
Cause I'm always struck with myself, forexample, like I'm not talking about people
suggesting people should like fight theirway through work that they hate if they
(22:35):
can avoid that, they should avoid it.
I can be writing something that Icare about that I'm enjoying the
amount of difficulty that I haveto encounter in order to go and
check Twitter instead is tiny.
You know, it has to be the mild irritationof not being able to get a sentence right.
The first time.
And, and I'm like, oh, forget it.
And then like an hour later, Irealize I've just wasted my time.
(22:58):
Some just because I didn't wanna stickaround for that small feeling of.
Like unpleasantness.
Well, I personally, I, I mean, I havesimilar problems, but when I start
resisting in the procrastinating,I'm, I'm a discipline guy, you know?
So when it, when it happenswith me, I, I think, well, what
is the resistance all about?
(23:19):
And so I'll ask myself self,what is the resistance all about?
You know, just go ahead and tell me,and, and we'll save a bit of time here.
And sometimes I get an answer sometimes Idon't, but it kind of, I now collaborate
with procrastination rather than callmyself names or, or, you know, the self
punitive things that people go on about.
Right.
Yeah.
It's not about taking thisdiscomfort and like eradicating
(23:42):
it, like punching it in the face.
It's about taking it and seeing like,okay, the discomfort is gonna be here too.
All right.
Hello.
Sit down, take a seat.
And meanwhile, meanwhile, I'mgonna do stuff that I wanna do.
We'll work through it together.
You and I discomfort.
Exactly.
All right.
Well, lesson's a number fouris a truly existential lesson.
Nobody else really careswhat you do with your life.
(24:06):
some people object to this one,but I'm happy to talk about it.
I'm sort of quoting here a psychotherapistand writer and yoga person called
Steven Cope who wrote a bookcalled the great work of your life.
And I think what this really gets at ishow easily we can be sent off in a certain
direction in our lives, especially ourwork lives on the basis of the idea that
(24:32):
we need to fulfill a certain agenda.
Often a parental agenda, even longafter people's parents have died.
You sometimes find that peopleare following these agendas.
Maybe a societal, one about the kind of,you know, fame or certain kind of wealth
that our society so strongly rewards.
And like, it's really liberating tosuddenly be like, oh, you don't have
(24:56):
to, no, nobody cares about this.
I don't mean that nobody cares about you.
Hopefully we all have a few peoplein our lives who care that whatever
it is we are doing makes us happy.
And we probably have a few peoplein our lives who care that whatever
we're doing brings in enough moneyto the household to support, to
help support them as well as us.
So it's not like it's not a sort ofnihilistic sort of forget about it doesn't
(25:19):
matter, but it's just like, if yourfriends, your spouse and hopefully your
parents, although that can be difficultif they really Respect you and love you.
They'll be just, they'll be happyto, for you to do whatever you're
doing, , that speaks to you.
And I think it's, that's a very importantkind of message that some people need to
hear, because it's very easy to sort offind yourself 10 years into a career as a,
(25:43):
as a lawyer or all sorts of other things.
And I dunno why I bring that exampleup and be like, hold on, like, I I'm
doing this cuz I thought my teachersat school thought I'd be good at it.
And so I'm trying to please them, butlike not only should their word not
carry the day, but like if you wentback and asked them, they'd be like,
(26:03):
oh goodness, no, no, do do whatever.
Do whatever makes you feelmotivated and, and meaningful?
Right?
well, I encounter this in writingyou're a writer I write and a, a one, a
writer who writes novels and screenplay.
He put it like this.
And we were talking about procrastinatingearlier and he said, nobody cares if
(26:24):
you write, nobody cares if you don'twrite and that's it , you know, so it's,
it's an, to me, it is a very importantlesson to learn that really nobody cares.
And, and I mean, although that can'tbe scary and intimidating, the point
is, you know, it really is up to you.
It's your life, it's your, you're the,you you have some autonomy over it and
(26:47):
that could be very fearful for people.
Yeah, that, I mean, I guessit's also a scary thing as well
as a liberating thing, right.
This idea that you sortof might be up to you.
Yeah.
All right.
That lesson number, Lesson, number five.
Oh, this is the jewel.
This is a jewel.
Your ability to tolerate minordiscomfort is your superpower.
(27:07):
Well, this relates, I mean, I'vealready touched on this as it turns out.
Haven't I in one of the other ones,but I mean, I think this is so.
This is a lesson that I really have feellike I've learned in a very personal
way that I guess it's a key insight ofa lot of psychotherapy in a way, this
idea that we sort of structure our livesto a very great extent about around
sort of not wanting to feel certainemotions that we think implicitly we
(27:31):
seem to think would sort of destroyus if we were to have to feel them.
And I think there's a good, youcan do a whole sort of argument
about why people bring theseideas from their early childhoods.
But again, and again, you find out thatactually in most contexts in life, if
you sort of do the thing that is gonnalet you, that is gonna cause you to feel
these feelings, it's minor discomfortthat you feel it isn't it isn't pain and
(27:55):
agony So, I think it's very importantin that as a, as an idea, I use it as
a reminder that like, when I feel thefirst feelings of anxiety about something
that I'm doing, or a conversation thatI'm having or something it's a useful
reminder that like, that might beabout as bad as it's ever gonna get in
most cases that level of discomfort.
(28:17):
I always In my mind.
I always think of the analogy oflike, if, if you've ever had dental
work done under local anesthetic,like it's really effective.
It works.
You do not feel excruciating pain, butwhen they're sort of grappling around
inside your mouth, you have the feelingthat any moment , it's horrible, you're
brace because you're convinced that anymoment there's gonna be excruciating pain,
(28:38):
but actually at least for the proceduresI've had done, there never is excruciating
pain cuz the local anesthetic works.
And it's a little bitsimilar to that, right?
You sort of, you sit down at your computerto finally try and write some difficult
thing or you decide it's probablytime to have an awkward but important
conversation with somebody and you feellike, but that feeling of that, that is
(29:01):
that's about as bad as it's gonna get.
So it's actually perfectly tolerable.
And, and, and yeah, Imean, I don't know every.
Emotional state that I've everactually experienced thus far in
life, I have been able to tolerateand it hasn't destroyed me.
Hence, you know, here I am.
But the feeling is always, I can'tgo there because if I went there
that that emotional experiencewould be would be intolerable.
(29:24):
Well, you were lesson remindsme of the work of the esteemed
Australian psychiatrist, Dr.
Ainslie Meares, the late Dr.
Meares.
He wrote very similar things backin the seventies and eighties.
And he actually urged people topractice meditation and a, in a, and a
position of minor physical discomfortso that you could relax mentally,
not physically physical relaxation iseasy so that you could relax mentally
(29:48):
and by doing so, your defenses wouldmelt and your mind would present
truth or fact to you about yourselfand you would be unguarded.
He called it a reverting to a primitivedefenseless, childlike state, and you
would be able to accept it and hear itfrom yourself and and it would be okay.
(30:10):
And you would learn thetruth about yourself and you
would be able to tolerate it.
And you mentioned dental.
He would, he had wisdom teethtaken out without any anesthetic.
Wow.
I mean, yes, exactly.
He would put himself in self hypnosisin this deep state of relaxation and you
know, he was not a young guy, but geez,he was a tough bird that's for sure.
(30:33):
Yes.
Yeah.
Right.
Very.
And he said, all you need to do ispractice it a few minutes a day.
And a few, you know, he would talkfive minutes, maybe 10 or more.
And I have been practicing, Ipracticed this on and off diligent
diligently over the years.
And it certainly is effective inthe sense that you become aware of
realities about yourself and for onceyou're not threatened or made anxious
(30:58):
by it, you're just able to see it.
And mm-hmm, the revelations occur.
So, so you commented just wellis certainly verified by Dr.
Meares and me.
Oh, I'm glad to hear it.
Lesson number six, this is a good one.
What makes it unbearable is yourmistaken belief that it can be cured.
(31:20):
This is a quote from CharlotteJoko Beck, the American Zen,
late American Zen teacher.
And she's just talking aboutthe human condition in general.
I think in this quote and this is Ithink, a sort of a guiding principle
that I've really happened upon.
And upon that, that recurs again andagain, in all sorts of contexts, this
(31:40):
idea that certain kinds of problem thatwe encounter in life are really only
such a huge problem, because we thinkthat we ought to have solved them and we
haven't yet solved them and life itself.
I think some people sort of see asa kind of a problem to be solved
and that they haven't yet solved.
It is a, a cause oftorment or agony for them.
(32:01):
And, and what, what she'ssaying here, I think is, you
know, life has sadness in it.
Life has lost life has.
Difficult decisions that are imperfect,where you don't get the best results.
And it, it has times whenyou fail or people ridicule,
you, it has all these things.
They're not pleasant.
You make them a heck of a lot worse.
If you also demand that thereshould not be problems in life.
(32:25):
And if you object not only towhat is happening, but to like the
fact that it is happening as ifthat were itself and injustice.
So it's not about being okay with,it's not about being just like calmly
sailing through the bad stuff thathappens in life, but about remembering
when it happens that like it isn't aproblem that these things are happening.
(32:48):
They are problems.
But, but it isn't sort of a signthat you are doing life wrong.
Or necessarily a sign that other peopleare treating you badly, although in any
given case they might be that you arehaving problems and that if you're sort
of running constantly to this far offidea, that one day you're going to get
(33:10):
to a point in life where you don't haveany problems at all, then you're sort
of just deliberately setting yourselfup for permanent dissatisfaction.
That's the idea.
The word is vicissitudejust the normal trials and
tribulations that occur in life.
yeah, no, no.
Getting away from them.
Yeah, exactly.
Lesson number seven.
Let things take the time that they take.
(33:33):
So I guess this is about discomfortas well in a different way.
It's about patience.
I think.
Certainly when I've struggledwith I think, and I, I sort of
unpacked this a bit in the book.
One of the things thatI think we try to do.
We sort of assume and we're, andwe're aided in this assumption
by the state of technology isthat you know, life moves faster.
(33:55):
We have all sorts of extra controlover how fast things can go.
We can microwave food in two minutes,instead of waiting two hours for the
oven, we can fly somewhere in a fewhours instead of having to get on
a ocean liner for two, three weeks.
It makes it actually worse, to beforced to remember that we can't
(34:15):
actually make the whole world go atthe right pace that we want it to go.
And that there's all sorts of aspects of.
Life that that just do require theyhave their own rhythm and tempo
and you need to let them have that.
Otherwise it's a recipe forsort of endless frustration.
I think one really good example.
I always come back to is reading.
(34:36):
People often complain today thatthey don't have time to read.
And I think usually they don'tmean that they can't find half
an hour in a 24 hour period whenthey could sit down with a book.
What they mean is that when they do that,their mind is sort of conditioned to not
slowing down to the pace of reading a goodnovel reading, a good nonfiction book,
(34:56):
and the flywheel is running too fast.
And we experience a kind of tensionbetween how quickly we'd like to be able
to sort of download the information fromthat book or experience the story in that
book, as opposed to just accepting that.
A book takes a certain amount of time.
Reading takes a certain amount oftime by and large, we don't claim
(35:19):
otherwise about movies or concertos.
You know, they, they, they takethe time they take, but there's all
sorts of experiences where we kindof assume that they ought to be
instantaneous if we want them to be.
And I think that that sort of, again, it'sa sort of refusal to work with reality.
Lesson number eight.
(35:40):
You don't really want thecontrol that you think you need.
I feel like this is another themethat I keep encountering and that I
encounter in myself and that you, thatyou experience one experiences in life
all the time, which is that right.
We, we want.
A lot of us, we want a certain kind offeeling of being in control of things.
(36:02):
Some people wanted a sense of being incontrol of other people on control of our
time in control of what we let into a day.
And yet there's something wrong with thispicture because when you get close to it,
that in any particular domain, you findthat it kind of sucks the life out of
the experience and that, you know, if yousort of are the kind of person who draws
(36:26):
up very strict schedules for your daymostly, or experience will be that life
gets in the way, but occasionally it mightbe that everything goes exactly as planned
and there's something missing there.
There's some, there's somethingthat, that is, is missing
from, from the quality of life.
I, I talk in the book about controlsort of individual versus communal
(36:47):
time, the sense that, you know, in theculture at the moment, we very much.
Certainly in America and the UK,we very much sort of, champion
individual time sovereignty, right?
The goal is that the dream jobis to be like a digital nomad.
You get to take yourlaptop anywhere you like.
You run the day you stop when you want.
(37:08):
And actually lots of digitalnomads will tell you that
they, it gets lonely sometimes.
And and because they're not sort ofcoordinated with the patterns of other
people, and then even just like someonelike me, not a digital nomad have friends
and family here in, in New York, but somany of us are kind of Lance this or
that, or self-employed this or that.
(37:29):
We have a lot of freedom over our time.
But the result of all that freedomis that we are persistently sort
of unsynchronized from each other.
And it's actually incredibly difficult tofind a night when three friends can all
meet for a beer or something like that.
Because, because our schedulesare all sort of out of whack.
And when you look at countries, Ilook at some studies from Scandinavia
(37:52):
where there's a certain amount ofsocially imposed regularity about
when people go on vacation andhow long people work in the day.
And there's a certain loss of freedom ofindividual freedom that do appear to be
quite big benefits in terms of people'shappiness and sense of meaning in life.
I mean, I think you can gotoo far in that as well.
Some sort of freedom isobviously important, but it's an
(38:14):
interesting thing to bear in mind.
So what if people, we okay forme Being a reform control freak.
I mean, basically you, you learn overtime, how little control you have.
So I mean, what a waste of time.
Right?
Right.
I mean, you have the ability toinfluence events, maybe nudge, maybe
inspire, maybe, maybe persuade or I,I don't know, but control four fist
(38:37):
and bugger all is what I reckon.
But so what, and that mightbe a little high , you know?
Yes.
So what what's driving peopleto want to obtain this control?
So what if they got thecontrol that they desired?
What would happen?
Yeah.
What do you reckon?
Yeah, I mean, I think at an extremepoint control and relationship are sort
(39:01):
of antithetical to each other, right.
That they're perfectly.
In control person is not really inrelationship with anybody else because
he's sort of perfectly in controland yet all the good things in life,
ultimately, whether it's , intimaterelationships or it's like work
projects that you are, that you arelaunching, they all require relationship.
(39:23):
It might be that you're working in ateam to produce something, or it might
be that you're working on your ownto produce like a book or an article.
But even then you've got to let it gointo relationship with other people
and see what they make of it andnot try to maintain total control.
I mean, a really grim and awfulparallel to illustrate this is in with
sort of like very, very controllingkind of abusive relationships
(39:47):
and, and the psychology there.
Where sometimes you know, very, veryviolent men commit horrible, horrible
crimes because, and you see it insort of cult psychology as well.
It it's because they crave and imposea certain kind of control and then
achieving it is sort of repulsive tothem, and triggers this kind of blind rage
(40:12):
because they actually feed on the senseof trying to impose the control, rather
than on the achievement of the control.
I don't think one necessarily needs togo into that sort of deeply grim area.
I do think sometimes that's a very,very extreme version of what, like
I'm trying to do with my schedule.
Right.
I'm trying to sort of, I'm trying to sortof wrangle it and feel like I know what
(40:34):
I'm doing, but you know, A day where Ihave no social engagements and my family
aren't around and I'm just sittingthere and I can do exactly what I want.
Like, I'm just like, oh, hang on.
This, this isn't how I like to live.
This is, this is, this is too solitary.
Or, you know, writing articlesand then never publishing
them would be a similar thing.
(40:54):
Right.
It's like, yeah, you get total controland you, as a result, get zero of what
is good in, in relationship basically.
lesson number nine.
Don't fight time.
It always wins.
I guess this is a little bit relatedI'm I'm noticing now really only when
(41:15):
I have this conversation that allthese things stem from a similar place.
But I think, yeah, I think implicitin an awful lot of time management
advice and our, our approach to howwe manage our time is that we are
trying to sort of win something.
It it's an, it's an enemy.
Or as Francesco Cirillo whoinvented The Pomodoro Technique,
(41:36):
says he's, it's a, it's a predator.
And we're trying to sort of, do what we dowith predators, which is protect ourselves
and fight back and kill it and win.
And obviously on a sort of grand level,trying to fight time on the, on the
level of your life is is foolish becauseyou, you know, that you know, eventually
time is gonna, is gonna win the, win thefight, but on a day to day level as well,
(41:58):
I think it's really useful to see that.
If you try to fight time with the day,you are sort of geared to trying to cram
more things in to the time that you haveto try to make yourself more efficient
you're to sort of keep upping the levelof self discipline and effort required.
And then your, your standardsfor what you feel you ought to
(42:18):
be able to fit in, keep rising.
So it's sort of guaranteed frustrationbecause it constantly rises and
you're in this kind of fight.
Time remains fixed.
You have the hours that you have in a day.
And so there's a sort of everratcheting tension, I guess.
And good time management techniquesof which The Pomodoro Technique can
(42:39):
certainly be one depending on I think.
And what is that?
I just realized I came across.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's just this idea of, yeah, go ahead.
I won't go to the details there.
Simple answer is, it's just aquestion of like working in little
25 minute stretches, separated by
that's where I got it froman interview with you.
Cause I'd never heard ofThe Pomodoro Technique and
it's almost a distractionthat is an example of sort of
(43:00):
time blocking or time boxing.
The specifics might work for somepeople, but doesn't really so much.
If you do that in the right spirit, thenit's one of not like, okay, I'm going
to win this battle with time today.
It's more one of saying, look, time hasgiven me this number of hours today.
I am in the position of withregard to time, I am in the sort
of subservient position, right.
(43:21):
I have these hours.
So the question is what would be themost sensible way to use them, to use
my influence over how they get used.
And sort of as again, Cirillo wouldsay treat time as an ally to sort
of say, well, look, I've gotta, I'vegotta work with this limitation.
It's not that you can't try andfit more into your day than you did
(43:44):
yesterday or than someone else might.
I don't wanna make people feel like theycan't sort of try to get smarter about
how they work, but it's just this sortof basic mindset that says I'm always
going to be trying to cram more in.
I'm always going to betrying to be more efficient.
It it's, it, that is a to be in thatmindset all the time by default is
(44:07):
to be sort of never satisfied bydefinition with your use of time.
I think that's what I meanreally by that lesson.
Yes, it's very you won't makea good Buddhist doing that.
That's for sure, because , that's for
sure.
Yeah.
all right.
Lesson number 10.
And if I'm allowed a personalfavorite, this is it.
(44:28):
Lesson number 10, you don'tneed to justify your existence.
I mean, I think I'm stilllearning this lesson.
Maybe that's why I put it at the end.
I wouldn't wanna suggest that I'mwell, probably true of all of them,
but especially this, I think so manypeople in different ways and people
are very different personalities comeout of their upbringing and the, and
(44:51):
the society that we live in with thisbasic unexamined assumption that like,
there's something they have to do inorder that it's okay, that they're taking
up space and that they get to feel sortof minimally adequate about themselves.
And I think the way this happens ona day to day basis is we start the
(45:12):
day often in what I've called a sortof feeling of productivity debt.
You sort of wake up in the morning andit's like, it's like you owe productivity.
Now, obviously, if you're paid a salaryby a company, there is a sense in which
you owe productivity, but this existentialsense is much more dangerous because
it's this notion that like, if you don'tdo enough in the day, you are, you are in
(45:33):
the kind of you are in the red somehow.
And so that's why I suggest that a goodlittle intervention there sometimes is to
keep a done list, you know, keep a listof things you have done and look at it,
building up through the day and be like,you know, I could have done nothing.
I could have stayed in bed.
And instead I did all these, thesethings that sort of resets the balance.
It it's, it, it helps you to thinkthat maybe you start the day, not in
debt, but at but at a zero balance.
(45:56):
And then everything you do isjust extra credit to your account.
I think it's definitelysomething I've struggled with.
Still do struggle with this, this sensethat like, Not just that you'd rather
spend a day doing certain meaningfulthings or that it would be good to
meet the commitment that you made tosomeone to meet a deadline or that
you'd, you know, it would be betterto make sure you get your workout in.
(46:18):
These are all true and it's greatto try to live life in better
ways than, than other ways.
But the idea that you have to dothat just to get up to like a minimal
baseline, I think, I dunno if youknow about this distinction between
fixed mindset and growth mindset,that's attributed to Carol Dweck.
Yeah, I think I grew up I thinkmy parents did a great job.
(46:41):
I'd not blaming them particularly.
I mean, unless accept to the extentthat we all blame our parents,
but like, I think I did grow upwith really with a fixed mindset.
In other words, if I got reallygood exam results, which I did the
main takeaway from that was, oh, no.
Now I have to meet thatstandard or exceed it next time.
And you know, And you know I will justsay this in a way that might maybe is
(47:04):
gonna sound like bragging about thisbook, but since it suddenly came to
my mind, I'm gonna say it, it endedup on on a best seller list last week.
And I was extremely cheered by this.
And the publisher was extremelyhappy and like, everyone was
like being really lovely.
And in the quiet, after thatsubsided, I definitely was aware of
(47:25):
this old archaic childhood thoughtlike, oh, it'll be really bad if
it's not on that list next week.
because like, now this is thestandard that you have to meet.
And it's a terrible way to go throughlife to think that anything cool or good
that happens to you just recalibrates the.
Minimal definition of adequacy.
Like, forget that if you possibly can, youknow, just, just see the good things that
(47:48):
you do as good things and, and, and notneeding any further, you know, context.
Well, let me quote, George Higgins,the writer who said that, you
know, nobody cares if you're right.
Nobody cares.
If you don't write, he, he wouldsay, he would tell you I'm channeling
him to you Oliver he said, if you'renot writing to be read, you're not
a writer and you never will be.
So of course you wanna be read,you know, I mean, that's right.
(48:08):
But, but your point is very good andit let's go back to the Buddhism.
For example Buddhism talks a lotabout suffering and unfortunately
that is translated poorly intowell into suffering, but the best
word would be an unsatisfaction.
And like, somehow you got you're onthe best seller list, but somehow
(48:29):
you would become unsatisfied ifyou're not there the next month.
Right.
Because anything good thathappens to you, it feels like
you're then scared of losing it.
And it's a, yeah, it's a, I mean, I thinkI've made a lot of progress in not being
this person, but I think it, you canstill feel these patterns of like, yeah.
Achievements just reset the minimumbaseline for tomorrow, I actually, I feel
(48:53):
a strange kind of compassion for myself.
When I think about this, I'm like, oh mygoodness, don't go through life like that.
You know?
Well, God, I hope so.
Because one thing I learned in psychiatryworking on the psychiatric hospital
is it all starts with self acceptance.
And that self acceptanceis you as is right now.
I mean, there's no, noself-improvement is necessary.
Whatever, wherever you are, youknow, that's, that's where, that's
(49:15):
what you accept wart and all.
Yep.
And that's why it goes back to thesignificance of when I was quoting
psychiatrist, Ainslie Meares, beingable to experience it without
distortion and without defense.
That's a, that's a real, that'sa real skill and something.
That's a real marketmaturation, at least in my book.
So
yeah, yeah, yeah.
(49:35):
Getting there slowly.
Well, but you're quite right.
I mean, if you go around having to justifyyour existence to other people, including
yourself, something's profoundly wrong.
Cause it's one it's justtoo damn hard to do.
Right.
So I think, you know, and I'mthinking here about like the things
that Albert Ellis the founder ofrational emotive behavioral therapy.
Yeah.
You know, wonderfully sort of eccentriccognitive therapist who right.
(50:01):
It's like you can rate your actions.
Absolutely.
You can say I did a bad thing.
I wanna do more good things, butthere's no need for that to become a
global rating of you as a, as a self.
You know, you can feel that your.
Your right to exist isjust because you do exist.
And I think that's trueof all of every one of us.
(50:23):
And then by all means, yeah, try todo more good things and bad things.
Try to do more things than,than to fail to do things.
But they don't need to all be part ofthis cosmic math equation, I guess,
that is going to eventually spitout a result that you either did.
Okay.
Or you didn't.
I mean, clearly a lot of religioustraditions have quite a lot to answer
(50:44):
for here when it comes to setting upthese kinds of these kind of ideas.
Well, I had a career, he was aBritish Episcopalian priest who
gave me some excellent careeradvice when I was in grad school.
And it was don't take it all so seriously.
so they have some positive input as well.
Oh, definitely.
Yeah, absolutely.
(51:05):
Oliver, let me finish with,let me throw you a curve ball.
One last question.
We've been talking about thethings that you've learned.
What is something thatyou have unlearned lately.
And by that, I mean, something you justknew it was true a while ago, but now
realize that's not the case at all.
What have you unlearned lately?
(51:26):
Wow,
that was a, that's a fascinating question.
I dunno if I'm gonna be able tocome up with a pithy answer to it.
Normally I prep people beforewe start, but I forgot to
. Yeah, you're already getting this.
I mean, I don't, I'm not, I supposewhat I've, I suppose what I've been
on a gradual process of unlearning isit's kind of in a way, a point about.
(51:54):
Politics and political tribalism.
And, and I think it is a, a, anunlearning of the idea that that the
world is sort of neatly separatedinto the goodies and the badies and
that the people I think of as beingon my side are right about everything.
And the people on the other side canbe endlessly condemned and mocked.
(52:17):
I don't think this is only a politicalquestion, but you know, I, I find myself
constantly in these huge sort of culturalconflicts that rage on social media and
people disagreeing about the right wayto react to COVID and all this stuff.
(52:38):
I do find myself sort of seeing at leastthe emotional logic of people who 10
years ago, I would've said were like, Justidiots and I don't think it means you have
to agree with what they with their policyproposals or, or anything like that.
But I do find myself much morelike, I, I'm much less clear about
(53:00):
how to carve the world into thegood people and the bad people.
And I think that's probably a positivedevelopment, but it's but it's
certainly sort of unnerving becauseit definitely sort of destabilizes
your sense of of, what the worldis that you, that you live in.
Well, which means that you're learningto live with ambiguity better.
that's what I'm
hearing.
(53:20):
Right.
Hit hoping.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
All right.
Well, let us close officially.
And formally on that note, you've beenlistening to the podcast 10 lessons.
It took me 50 years to learn.
Our guest today has been Britishjournalist and author Oliver
Burkeman you've been listening to us.
We'd like to hear from youlisteners, you can contact us at
podcast@10lessonslearned.com that'spodcast@ 1 0 lessonslearned.com.
(53:45):
And while you're there, go aheadand hit the subscribe button because
this is the podcast that makes theworld a wise place lesson by lesson.
Thanks for listening.
Because time is finite because everydecision to do something is a decision
(00:03):
not to do something else It's better tothink about procrastination as something
to become better at, rather than somethingto try to eradicate from your life.
Of all the projects, you wishyou were working on or want to be
working on there's no option, but toneglect most of them at any one time.
So the important questionis not, how do I not neglect
anything that I have on my plate?
The important question is how do I makethe wisest choices about what to neglect?
(00:31):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
10 lessons.
It took me 50 years to learn where wedispense wisdom for career and life.
That's wisdom for your career, your life.
My name is Duff Watkins and I'm your host.
Our guest today is OliverBerkman, an award winning British
journalist who for many yearswrote a column for The Guardian.
The column was called "thiscolumn can change your life".
(00:53):
And it did Oliver.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you very much.
Thanks.
This whole trip began for me.
I read your book, The Antidote,happiness for people who
can't stand positive thinking.
I thought if a book was ever engineeredfor somebody who's engineered for me,
and by the way, I just checked the re Ijust checked the Amazon ratings, various
(01:15):
rating sites, that book for listers andviewers is ranked 4.5 stars on Amazon,
Amazon, Brazil, and other ones as well.
So it's quite a popular book, but you'vegot a new book out called 4,000 weeks.
And there's a story behind that title,
right?
Yeah.
The, the title, the book is 4,000 weeks.
(01:36):
The subtitle is time managementfor mortals and 4,000 weeks
is very approximately.
The life that you can expect tolive on average, you know, today
in the west, if you live to be 80,you've had a few more than 4,000
actually to get precise about it.
And if you're lucky, you might have 5,000and certain record breaking figures in
(01:57):
history have gone above 6,000, but it'sall still pretty, pretty low figures
when you put it in weeks, I think.
and so, you know, I just wanted to usethat as a sort of way into the book
theme, which is how we, what changesabout how we understand time and time
management and living a meaningful life.
When you sort of face up to the,the big limitation here, the, the
(02:19):
finitude that we're all dealing with.
Well, in fact, one of the reviewerssaid it was described the book as,
time management equals confrontingfinitude . And I actually did a bit of
math myself is that if you look at yourworking life, the time when you earn
money, the time where you contribute,where you produce, where you are
working, it's closer to 1,800 weeks.
(02:40):
So you don't right.
You don't, we don't have thatmuch time to contribute in, in a,
in a conventional working sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I think there's aswell, I'm sure we'll talk about, as we
talk about other stuff, I mean, I alwayswanna sort of push back even against my
own title in a way and say that, I don'tthink that the message of the book or of
(03:02):
the stuff I write about on this topic.
I don't think it would be rightto take the message as being like.
Oh, my goodness.
There's so little time.
So I better really panic about seizingevery day and, you know, immediately leave
my job to go and set up a base jumpingcompany in the mountains of New Zealand.
But, you know, doing these astonishingthings, these unusual things that is the
(03:23):
path that some people, choose to take.
But it's almost that the reason Iwanna bring up this point about how
our limited our time is, is because Ithink that most of the ways that we go
about thinking about time and certainlya lot of advice that you see on time
management and productivity, it, itactually is premised on this idea.
We might somehow be able to do everythingand be so efficient and perfect at this
(03:47):
stuff that we could never have to makeany tough decisions or let anything go.
And so, in a way it's a relief,I think, to see like, no, no,
that is an impossible quest.
And once you sort of see that it'simpossible, it frees you up to do
something really great and meaningful,but, but possible with your life.
So I think that's it.
(04:08):
I hope it's sort of a liberationrather than entirely a cause
for, panic attacks, you know?
Well, would you say that this obsessionwith productivity, which we have
in the Western world, certainly inthe corporate world, would you say
it's a defense against anxiety?
I think that's how it gets used.
I mean, there's certainly nothingwrong with wanting to be productive
or even wanting to be more efficient.
(04:29):
I still look for ways to, get ridof pointless expenditures of time in
the course of my workflow, whatever.
But I think by and large, certainlyin my personal experience, it gets
used as a form of emotional avoidance.
Right.
Because you can't do everything.
You can't make yourself, hyperefficient to the point where there's
no limit to what you can deal withor what you can execute or implement.
(04:53):
But as long as you are followingsome doctrine of productivity,
that makes it seem like soon , youwill reach that position.
The fantasy can stay alive, right?
And you can keep chasingthis moment, which is never.
Now it's always, maybe next month or nextyear, once I've got this whole system
fully worked out and that's, you know,blah, blah, blah, then you know, your
(05:13):
life will be in perfect working order.
You, you tell yourself, and as long asyou're doing that, you don't have to feel
the discomfort of our real situation,which is, you know, the reality has
certain limitations built in with ourlimited amount of time, the limited degree
to which we can control how it unfolds.
The fact that like other people arealways annoyingly getting in the
(05:36):
way of your own plans already know.
I noticed that too.
Yes.
But one of the subtexts, if Iread it correctly of your book
is choose what to neglect.
Right.
And this is, I think this is animportant point because it's very
much to do with becoming conscious ofsomething that we're already doing.
So I think it's important to saythat, like, you know, as finite
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humans, we are always choosing,there are always trade offs involved.
Anything you decide to do with an hourof your life, you are by definition,
deciding not to do countless other things.
This is all a given.
You don't get to choose toopt out of that situation.
But what you do get to choose is tobe more conscious about this fact, not
(06:17):
to seek ways to deny it or not feelthe discomfort of it, but to face it.
And, once you see that you have tobe procrastinating on most things
at any given moment, once you seethat you have to neglect, you know,
most things at any given moment,it's a lot, it's a lot easier.
I think it's a, it's a, it'sa difficult path in a certain
way, but it's a possible path.
(06:38):
Whereas the one about I'm nevergoing to have to neglect anything.
I'm going to please, everybody.
I'm not going to let anybody down.
And I'm going to fulfill everysingle ambition that I can come
up with or whatever it might be.
You know, that is a torment becausethat can't ever come to pass.
Well, and I think as you put it inyour book, your inbox is never empty.
(07:01):
you know.
Right.
And in fact, the process of tryingto clear it generates more emails.
So it's it's like strugglingin quick sand, you know?
All right, well, let's get toyour 10 lessons then 10 lessons.
It took you 50 years to learn.
Number one, seekenlargement, not happiness.
What?
This is not pro obesity.
(07:21):
Is it Oliver?
I mean that that's not gonnawork in this day and age.
I I'm.
Well, there's be there be no I'm.
No.
This is growth, no fat shaming here.
What I wanna say is this is a, this isa line which I wanna fully attribute to
an extremely wise Jungian psychoanalystwhose work I really admire and who I've
(07:43):
since had the privilege of getting toknow a bit James Hollis, all of whose
books I would hardly recommend, but,but who makes this argument that, you
know, if you're facing a fork in theroad in your life, or a difficult choice,
or deciding what to do a much betterquestion than will this make me happy?
Is will this choiceenlarge me or diminish me?
(08:04):
Partly.
It's just well known at this point, right?
That we are terrible at predictingwhat will make us happy.
this is like a famous finding of,of social psychology at this point.
Also, I think happiness and askingthe question about happiness
leads you off in the direction of.
comfort and avoidance and, and sortof not having to feel certain things
that you might not want to feel,whereas enlargement, most people know
(08:25):
the answer to this question, right?
If you, if you're facing a dilemma,most people do know, when they ask
themselves and look inside, maybe theyneed to give it a few weeks, but like
whether the thing they're consideringembarking upon is going to sort of
enlarge their soul in a way to usethat kind of metaphorical language.
So a good example of this and, youknow, we've all, experienced sort of
(08:46):
difficulties in relationships, right?
Dissatisfaction orconflict, or am ambivalence.
And it's very hard to know whether, youknow, sticking with a relationship is
going to make you in the short or mediumterm, happier than if you didn't it might,
it might well be that, you know, happiestwould be on your own sitting at home,
watching Netflix, doing nothing else.
(09:06):
But when you ask this question aboutenlargement, it gets very clear because
I think you can really understand, thereare the kinds of difficulties that you
come across in a relationship where youthink like, okay, this isn't fun, what
we're going through, but it's important.
And we are both becoming biggerpeople as a result of this.
And this applies to professionalrelationships, I think
as well as romantic ones.
You just intuitively know thatit's the kind of, it's the kind
(09:29):
of difficulty that is ultimately,edifying and good to go through.
Versus the kind where you might be, youknow, in a relationship with someone
with a really severe personalitydisorder, or you might be in an
abusive relationship, or it might bea, a professional relationship where
you are just being taken for a rideand exploited, and then, you know, as
well, I think mostly in your heart, inyour gut, oh, this is not that kind of
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this is not that kind of difficulty.
This is the kind of difficultyit is actually right.
To get myself away fromand to protect myself from.
And you can only get there by askingthese questions about enlargement.
I think instead of these questionsabout happiness, which will
lead you astray, all the time.
So this enlargement, this personal growthis not to be confused with pleasure.
(10:17):
That is to say it's not always fun,not always pleasurable to experience,
but ultimately it is the payoff.
That's the process to maturation.
Right.
It's a way of, it's a way of filteringbetween two different kinds of problem.
I think that we can experience in life.
One is like the stuff that growth and lifeand meaning is made of, and then the other
(10:38):
is the kind of problem that absolutelypeople should like, you know, do what
they can to minimize and stay away fromtoxic people and, and all the rest of it.
I've found that very useful in my own lifeon multiple occasions to ask that kind of
question, because pretty soon the answerdoes sort of bubble up in a way that it
doesn't when happiness is the question.
(11:00):
Yeah.
Sometimes the quest for happiness sortof pollutes the, the, the question.
Right.
And is it comfort you're seekingand which might actually be
bad in this particular case?
And all sorts of other factors,happiness is a happiness comes along
for the ride, one hopes, but I thinkthat's how you have to think about,
happines not as a not as the goalyou are going to strive for directly.
It's been described as a byproduct.
(11:21):
Yeah.
A byproduct rather than a destination.
All right.
Lesson, number two,everyone is just winging it.
I knew it.
Oliver.
I knew there's no master planbehind all of this just confirms
everything I've suspected for decades.
I wrote a, I wrote a piece with roughlythat headline, what I think it was
getting on for a, well, I must beeight years ago now, something more.
(11:43):
And since then, I feel like it wasabout, it was about some sort of
minor misstep that, President Obamahad made and everyone was responding.
Like how could the white housepossibly have made this mistake?
And you're just like, well, becauseeveryone is just winging it all the time.
And like the idea that justbecause someone is the president,
they've discovered the secretto, to knowing what the heck is
(12:05):
going on in the world is not true.
That feels a little dated now because Ifeel like everything that's happened to
politics since then is like, now it'sincredibly clear over and over again,
pretty much, no matter what your politicalstance that like that our leaders are.
Absolutely no more perfect at, under, athaving things sorted out than anyone else.
(12:27):
Seems like that has, we'rereminded of that over the last few
years on a, on both sides of theAtlantic ocean on a daily basis.
And I just think it'sa really interesting.
It's a good way of dealing withfirstly, I think it's true.
I think in the sense that we assumesomeone somewhere knows what's going on,
actually no one does know what's going on.
I don't mean that, you know, peopledon't have expertises that they are,
(12:50):
that they put to good use in theirwork, but there's this strong sense.
It's a bit like a childwith a parent, right?
Except now we're the grownups.
You want to know, you want to know thatsomebody somewhere, in your company, in
your life, in your state nation, reallyknows, what's going on and isn't sort
of improvising from moment to moment.
(13:14):
And actually, that's why that's atheory behind a lot of, an explanation
behind a bunch of, conspiracy theories.
Yes.
Is that people actually find itmore people find it more calming
to believe that an evil cabal ismanipulating the world than that it
is really as chaotic and random andunpredictable as it, as it really is.
They would rather believe in,in some evil puppet masters.
(13:35):
And that's just another defenseagainst anxiety, the personal anxiety.
Right.
Right.
Because I'm dealing with this entropy,which is real and is out there.
And so it's much better for me to thinkthat, you know, the Jews are behind
it or, or, you know, the the Catholicsociety, whatever it is, you know?
Right.
It's yeah, exactly.
Yes.
(13:55):
It's, it's a comfort.
It's, it's a comfort device and, andpeople are willing to sort of falsify the
facts completely to feel that comfort.
but in daily life, those of us who are notconspiracy theorists, I think what this
is really useful for is just that it is a.
It serves as a big relief and as amotivation, I think to people who
may be afflicted by some degreeof imposter syndrome, you know,
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thinking that they're not quite readyto make their contribution, that
they need to know more before they,before they make their voices heard.
That can be true sometimes that, youknow, people it's good that people go
through long medical training beforethey operate on me, you know, but, but I
think it acts primarily in life to sortof hold people back because they're under
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a misimpression about the competence andconfidence of the people around them.
The reason you only hear your ownmonologue of internal self doubt is
not because no one else has them.
It's because you only hearyour own internal monologue.
So I'm always saying, you know, somepeople want to respond to, people want
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to say about imposter syndrome, like.
No, no, no, you're great.
You know what you're doing?
You can go out there, you can join them.
You're just as you're just as good.
And I wanna say, well, you arejust as good, but only because
nobody knows what they're doing.
So in a way, We're all impostorsin a, in a crucial way, I think.
And I think it's, it's just useful to.
Well, when I read that lesson, it remindedme in my previous podcast, I used to
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interview a lot of us, politicians,senators, governors, us ambassadors.
And what I came away with was thatthey're all guys, they're just guys.
We really, you know I mean, really,you know, so many senior executives,
I mean, senior executives that I, I, Iwouldn't personally feed, you know, if
it was up to me, but they're, I mean,they're smart, they're intelligent.
(15:45):
They have their pluses and theirskills of obtaining that position
and maintaining that position.
But, but many a time I walked awaythinking my God, those are people
are awesomely average and that'sokay because that's pretty much
the way the rest of us are too.
And not to be underestimated,so, okay, so we're wing it.
(16:06):
What does that mean for the.
a person listening to this podcastor the person who's going to
pick up your book 4,000 weeks.
I, I think what it means above all, isthat the sense that I think a lot of
people have and that I certainly have ofalways kind of improvising your responses
to things never quite being absolutelycertain, never quite sort of just
(16:30):
following some steps in your, in, in someparticular workplace, it's always having
to sort of create everything afresh alwaysfeeling that you're not quite yet in this
kind of serene position of command andcontrol over your life, that this isn't
a problem, that this is not somethingto sort of feel bad about because it
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means you're not, you're not there yet.
And I fall into this myself everytime, you know, I write an email
newsletter every couple of weeks, andI'm always struck by how it feels like.
I'm always sort of starting fromscratch and trying to figure out
what an email newsletter should be.
And wondering if I've got a really goodpoint to make and it, it, you never
get to the stage where you're justlike, okay, it's all in working order.
(17:13):
I just need to like plug and playor whatever the right metaphor is.
You never get there.
And actually, you know, I thinkin writing, it's sort of important
that one never gets there.
Cause it keeps you fresh andcreative, but, but it's really
useful to remember that this isthe nature of being human, right.
One way of thinking aboutit is in terms of time.
And that's the one I explore in,in the book, especially, right.
(17:34):
We're all sort of on theleading edge of the present
moment, moving into the future.
The president of the United States,the chief executive of the world bank.
They are, they have as littlecertainty about what happens in
the next hour as you or I, or theloneliest person one could imagine.
(17:56):
And that's really useful to remember.
I think like it's scary because whatyou really want is somebody saying
like, it's all right, I've looked ahead.
I've, I've gone ahead a century and Ican tell you like this climate change
stuff is scary, but we figure it out.
Maybe we don't, you know?
And I think we have to accept thatin order, precisely to start making
our own meaningful contributions.
(18:16):
Well, facing reality unflinchingly issomething that takes a lot of practice.
I've been working on itfor a long while now and
right.
Yeah.
I don't think you ever get there.
I think it's absolutely the point.
Yeah.
And one of the things that you do upfacing is we are, we are finite creatures.
We have finite out amounts of emotional,physical, psychological energy.
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So you have to deploy it wiselybecause it runs out it's renewable,
it's replenishable, but it runs out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Then lesson number three, you'realways procrastinating about something.
Yes.
I mean, this is the truth that I thinkwe touched on a little bit at the
beginning that you know, because timeis finite because every decision to
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do something is a decision not to dosomething else It's better to think
about procrastination as something tobecome better at, rather than something
to try to eradicate from your life.
Of all the projects, I mean, differentfor different people, but of how
many, how many projects you wishyou were working on or want to be
working on there's no option, but toneglect most of them at any one time.
(19:23):
So the, so the important questionis not, how do I not neglect
anything that I have on my plate?
The important question is how do I makethe wisest choices about what to neglect?
And I think once you see that it becomesa lot easier to make those choices.
You, you can let go.
If you're gonna beat yourself upabout not making progress on something
(19:44):
that is important, you're alwaysgonna be beating yourself up because
that is the nature of especially theworld in which we live in, right.
Where there are so many effectively sortof infinite demands on our time, but also
infinite opportunities and possibilities.
We, we need a way of thinking about thisthat doesn't maybe once it was possible
to sort of feel like you were taking careof every single thing in your life that
(20:06):
needed taken care of, but, but that'ssort of systematically impossible now.
And so we would do much better to tryand make these decisions carefully.
I think
Nicholas Taleb says in his book,he's very much pro procrastination.
He says, basically, it's justyour brain telling you, get on
with it, go on to something else.
This is, this is not stimulating.
It's not interesting.
It's not worthwhile.
(20:27):
It's not, you can return to itlater, but get on to something that.
Engages you more.
And he said has made his whole careerby doing that reading only what he
wants to read when he wants to read it.
and there is a great dealof truth and power in this.
I, there is even a method which saysyou work in small batches of time,
20, 25 minutes, something like that.
(20:47):
Yep.
And it's it's a, I believe it worksbecause it's a way of feeding you a
constant, sustainable set of stimulationwithout trying to force yourself to, to
co concentrate or focus on this unduly.
Does that ring a bell with you in terms ofyour, your thoughts about procrastination?
Yeah.
I think there's allsorts of benefits to it.
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And I love the, the whole like NassimTaleb approach of just like jump from
thing to thing that, that stimulates you.
I think there's an issue therefor a lot of us, which might
not be maybe not for him.
He's a pretty, pretty one off.
He's a different dude.
Yes.
Let's agree.
He's kinda dude.
Which is, you know, that if you if youjust completely let yourself bounce
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from thing to thing, a lot of us, Ithink, are going to bounce away from
things as soon as they get difficult.
So we're going to neglect thetruth, that like a lot of meaningful
stuff is gonna feel difficult.
So, I think it's more a questionof understanding that you'll
be neglecting a bunch of stuff,understanding that things that matter
often feel uncomfortable to do.
(21:51):
And that one of the great appealsof distraction is that we get to
not feel that discomfort becausewe are just scrolling through
social media or something instead.
And then you could sort of let go of onceyou that's, what enables you, I think,
to sort of focus on one thing at a time,it's the willingness to tolerate the mild
anxiety that comes from knowing about allthe other things you are not focusing on.
(22:14):
So I guess my slight pushbackagainst just go where your interest
lies from moment to moment is yes.
But be sure that that interestisn't really code for comfort.
Cause I'm always struck with myself, forexample, like I'm not talking about people
suggesting people should like fight theirway through work that they hate if they
(22:35):
can avoid that, they should avoid it.
I can be writing something that Icare about that I'm enjoying the
amount of difficulty that I haveto encounter in order to go and
check Twitter instead is tiny.
You know, it has to be the mild irritationof not being able to get a sentence right.
The first time.
And, and I'm like, oh, forget it.
And then like an hour later, Irealize I've just wasted my time.
(22:58):
Some just because I didn't wanna stickaround for that small feeling of.
Like unpleasantness.
Well, I personally, I, I mean, I havesimilar problems, but when I start
resisting in the procrastinating,I'm, I'm a discipline guy, you know?
So when it, when it happenswith me, I, I think, well, what
is the resistance all about?
(23:19):
And so I'll ask myself self,what is the resistance all about?
You know, just go ahead and tell me,and, and we'll save a bit of time here.
And sometimes I get an answer sometimes Idon't, but it kind of, I now collaborate
with procrastination rather than callmyself names or, or, you know, the self
punitive things that people go on about.
Right.
Yeah.
It's not about taking thisdiscomfort and like eradicating
(23:42):
it, like punching it in the face.
It's about taking it and seeing like,okay, the discomfort is gonna be here too.
All right.
Hello.
Sit down, take a seat.
And meanwhile, meanwhile, I'mgonna do stuff that I wanna do.
We'll work through it together.
You and I discomfort.
Exactly.
All right.
Well, lesson's a number fouris a truly existential lesson.
Nobody else really careswhat you do with your life.
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some people object to this one,but I'm happy to talk about it.
I'm sort of quoting here a psychotherapistand writer and yoga person called
Steven Cope who wrote a bookcalled the great work of your life.
And I think what this really gets at ishow easily we can be sent off in a certain
direction in our lives, especially ourwork lives on the basis of the idea that
(24:32):
we need to fulfill a certain agenda.
Often a parental agenda, even longafter people's parents have died.
You sometimes find that peopleare following these agendas.
Maybe a societal, one about the kind of,you know, fame or certain kind of wealth
that our society so strongly rewards.
And like, it's really liberating tosuddenly be like, oh, you don't have
(24:56):
to, no, nobody cares about this.
I don't mean that nobody cares about you.
Hopefully we all have a few peoplein our lives who care that whatever
it is we are doing makes us happy.
And we probably have a few peoplein our lives who care that whatever
we're doing brings in enough moneyto the household to support, to
help support them as well as us.
So it's not like it's not a sort ofnihilistic sort of forget about it doesn't
(25:19):
matter, but it's just like, if yourfriends, your spouse and hopefully your
parents, although that can be difficultif they really Respect you and love you.
They'll be just, they'll be happyto, for you to do whatever you're
doing, , that speaks to you.
And I think it's, that's a very importantkind of message that some people need to
hear, because it's very easy to sort offind yourself 10 years into a career as a,
(25:43):
as a lawyer or all sorts of other things.
And I dunno why I bring that exampleup and be like, hold on, like, I I'm
doing this cuz I thought my teachersat school thought I'd be good at it.
And so I'm trying to please them, butlike not only should their word not
carry the day, but like if you wentback and asked them, they'd be like,
(26:03):
oh goodness, no, no, do do whatever.
Do whatever makes you feelmotivated and, and meaningful?
Right?
well, I encounter this in writingyou're a writer I write and a, a one, a
writer who writes novels and screenplay.
He put it like this.
And we were talking about procrastinatingearlier and he said, nobody cares if
(26:24):
you write, nobody cares if you don'twrite and that's it , you know, so it's,
it's an, to me, it is a very importantlesson to learn that really nobody cares.
And, and I mean, although that can'tbe scary and intimidating, the point
is, you know, it really is up to you.
It's your life, it's your, you're the,you you have some autonomy over it and
(26:47):
that could be very fearful for people.
Yeah, that, I mean, I guessit's also a scary thing as well
as a liberating thing, right.
This idea that you sortof might be up to you.
Yeah.
All right.
That lesson number, Lesson, number five.
Oh, this is the jewel.
This is a jewel.
Your ability to tolerate minordiscomfort is your superpower.
(27:07):
Well, this relates, I mean, I'vealready touched on this as it turns out.
Haven't I in one of the other ones,but I mean, I think this is so.
This is a lesson that I really have feellike I've learned in a very personal
way that I guess it's a key insight ofa lot of psychotherapy in a way, this
idea that we sort of structure our livesto a very great extent about around
sort of not wanting to feel certainemotions that we think implicitly we
(27:31):
seem to think would sort of destroyus if we were to have to feel them.
And I think there's a good, youcan do a whole sort of argument
about why people bring theseideas from their early childhoods.
But again, and again, you find out thatactually in most contexts in life, if
you sort of do the thing that is gonnalet you, that is gonna cause you to feel
these feelings, it's minor discomfortthat you feel it isn't it isn't pain and
(27:55):
agony So, I think it's very importantin that as a, as an idea, I use it as
a reminder that like, when I feel thefirst feelings of anxiety about something
that I'm doing, or a conversation thatI'm having or something it's a useful
reminder that like, that might beabout as bad as it's ever gonna get in
most cases that level of discomfort.
(28:17):
I always In my mind.
I always think of the analogy oflike, if, if you've ever had dental
work done under local anesthetic,like it's really effective.
It works.
You do not feel excruciating pain, butwhen they're sort of grappling around
inside your mouth, you have the feelingthat any moment , it's horrible, you're
brace because you're convinced that anymoment there's gonna be excruciating pain,
(28:38):
but actually at least for the proceduresI've had done, there never is excruciating
pain cuz the local anesthetic works.
And it's a little bitsimilar to that, right?
You sort of, you sit down at your computerto finally try and write some difficult
thing or you decide it's probablytime to have an awkward but important
conversation with somebody and you feellike, but that feeling of that, that is
(29:01):
that's about as bad as it's gonna get.
So it's actually perfectly tolerable.
And, and, and yeah, Imean, I don't know every.
Emotional state that I've everactually experienced thus far in
life, I have been able to tolerateand it hasn't destroyed me.
Hence, you know, here I am.
But the feeling is always, I can'tgo there because if I went there
that that emotional experiencewould be would be intolerable.
(29:24):
Well, you were lesson remindsme of the work of the esteemed
Australian psychiatrist, Dr.
Ainslie Meares, the late Dr.
Meares.
He wrote very similar things backin the seventies and eighties.
And he actually urged people topractice meditation and a, in a, and a
position of minor physical discomfortso that you could relax mentally,
not physically physical relaxation iseasy so that you could relax mentally
(29:48):
and by doing so, your defenses wouldmelt and your mind would present
truth or fact to you about yourselfand you would be unguarded.
He called it a reverting to a primitivedefenseless, childlike state, and you
would be able to accept it and hear itfrom yourself and and it would be okay.
(30:10):
And you would learn thetruth about yourself and you
would be able to tolerate it.
And you mentioned dental.
He would, he had wisdom teethtaken out without any anesthetic.
Wow.
I mean, yes, exactly.
He would put himself in self hypnosisin this deep state of relaxation and you
know, he was not a young guy, but geez,he was a tough bird that's for sure.
(30:33):
Yes.
Yeah.
Right.
Very.
And he said, all you need to do ispractice it a few minutes a day.
And a few, you know, he would talkfive minutes, maybe 10 or more.
And I have been practicing, Ipracticed this on and off diligent
diligently over the years.
And it certainly is effective inthe sense that you become aware of
realities about yourself and for onceyou're not threatened or made anxious
(30:58):
by it, you're just able to see it.
And mm-hmm, the revelations occur.
So, so you commented just wellis certainly verified by Dr.
Meares and me.
Oh, I'm glad to hear it.
Lesson number six, this is a good one.
What makes it unbearable is yourmistaken belief that it can be cured.
(31:20):
This is a quote from CharlotteJoko Beck, the American Zen,
late American Zen teacher.
And she's just talking aboutthe human condition in general.
I think in this quote and this is Ithink, a sort of a guiding principle
that I've really happened upon.
And upon that, that recurs again andagain, in all sorts of contexts, this
(31:40):
idea that certain kinds of problem thatwe encounter in life are really only
such a huge problem, because we thinkthat we ought to have solved them and we
haven't yet solved them and life itself.
I think some people sort of see asa kind of a problem to be solved
and that they haven't yet solved.
It is a, a cause oftorment or agony for them.
(32:01):
And, and what, what she'ssaying here, I think is, you
know, life has sadness in it.
Life has lost life has.
Difficult decisions that are imperfect,where you don't get the best results.
And it, it has times whenyou fail or people ridicule,
you, it has all these things.
They're not pleasant.
You make them a heck of a lot worse.
If you also demand that thereshould not be problems in life.
(32:25):
And if you object not only towhat is happening, but to like the
fact that it is happening as ifthat were itself and injustice.
So it's not about being okay with,it's not about being just like calmly
sailing through the bad stuff thathappens in life, but about remembering
when it happens that like it isn't aproblem that these things are happening.
(32:48):
They are problems.
But, but it isn't sort of a signthat you are doing life wrong.
Or necessarily a sign that other peopleare treating you badly, although in any
given case they might be that you arehaving problems and that if you're sort
of running constantly to this far offidea, that one day you're going to get
(33:10):
to a point in life where you don't haveany problems at all, then you're sort
of just deliberately setting yourselfup for permanent dissatisfaction.
That's the idea.
The word is vicissitudejust the normal trials and
tribulations that occur in life.
yeah, no, no.
Getting away from them.
Yeah, exactly.
Lesson number seven.
Let things take the time that they take.
(33:33):
So I guess this is about discomfortas well in a different way.
It's about patience.
I think.
Certainly when I've struggledwith I think, and I, I sort of
unpacked this a bit in the book.
One of the things thatI think we try to do.
We sort of assume and we're, andwe're aided in this assumption
by the state of technology isthat you know, life moves faster.
(33:55):
We have all sorts of extra controlover how fast things can go.
We can microwave food in two minutes,instead of waiting two hours for the
oven, we can fly somewhere in a fewhours instead of having to get on
a ocean liner for two, three weeks.
It makes it actually worse, to beforced to remember that we can't
(34:15):
actually make the whole world go atthe right pace that we want it to go.
And that there's all sorts of aspects of.
Life that that just do require theyhave their own rhythm and tempo
and you need to let them have that.
Otherwise it's a recipe forsort of endless frustration.
I think one really good example.
I always come back to is reading.
(34:36):
People often complain today thatthey don't have time to read.
And I think usually they don'tmean that they can't find half
an hour in a 24 hour period whenthey could sit down with a book.
What they mean is that when they do that,their mind is sort of conditioned to not
slowing down to the pace of reading a goodnovel reading, a good nonfiction book,
(34:56):
and the flywheel is running too fast.
And we experience a kind of tensionbetween how quickly we'd like to be able
to sort of download the information fromthat book or experience the story in that
book, as opposed to just accepting that.
A book takes a certain amount of time.
Reading takes a certain amount oftime by and large, we don't claim
(35:19):
otherwise about movies or concertos.
You know, they, they, they takethe time they take, but there's all
sorts of experiences where we kindof assume that they ought to be
instantaneous if we want them to be.
And I think that that sort of, again, it'sa sort of refusal to work with reality.
Lesson number eight.
(35:40):
You don't really want thecontrol that you think you need.
I feel like this is another themethat I keep encountering and that I
encounter in myself and that you, thatyou experience one experiences in life
all the time, which is that right.
We, we want.
A lot of us, we want a certain kind offeeling of being in control of things.
(36:02):
Some people wanted a sense of being incontrol of other people on control of our
time in control of what we let into a day.
And yet there's something wrong with thispicture because when you get close to it,
that in any particular domain, you findthat it kind of sucks the life out of
the experience and that, you know, if yousort of are the kind of person who draws
(36:26):
up very strict schedules for your daymostly, or experience will be that life
gets in the way, but occasionally it mightbe that everything goes exactly as planned
and there's something missing there.
There's some, there's somethingthat, that is, is missing
from, from the quality of life.
I, I talk in the book about controlsort of individual versus communal
(36:47):
time, the sense that, you know, in theculture at the moment, we very much.
Certainly in America and the UK,we very much sort of, champion
individual time sovereignty, right?
The goal is that the dream jobis to be like a digital nomad.
You get to take yourlaptop anywhere you like.
You run the day you stop when you want.
(37:08):
And actually lots of digitalnomads will tell you that
they, it gets lonely sometimes.
And and because they're not sort ofcoordinated with the patterns of other
people, and then even just like someonelike me, not a digital nomad have friends
and family here in, in New York, but somany of us are kind of Lance this or
that, or self-employed this or that.
(37:29):
We have a lot of freedom over our time.
But the result of all that freedomis that we are persistently sort
of unsynchronized from each other.
And it's actually incredibly difficult tofind a night when three friends can all
meet for a beer or something like that.
Because, because our schedulesare all sort of out of whack.
And when you look at countries, Ilook at some studies from Scandinavia
(37:52):
where there's a certain amount ofsocially imposed regularity about
when people go on vacation andhow long people work in the day.
And there's a certain loss of freedom ofindividual freedom that do appear to be
quite big benefits in terms of people'shappiness and sense of meaning in life.
I mean, I think you can gotoo far in that as well.
Some sort of freedom isobviously important, but it's an
(38:14):
interesting thing to bear in mind.
So what if people, we okay forme Being a reform control freak.
I mean, basically you, you learn overtime, how little control you have.
So I mean, what a waste of time.
Right?
Right.
I mean, you have the ability toinfluence events, maybe nudge, maybe
inspire, maybe, maybe persuade or I,I don't know, but control four fist
(38:37):
and bugger all is what I reckon.
But so what, and that mightbe a little high , you know?
Yes.
So what what's driving peopleto want to obtain this control?
So what if they got thecontrol that they desired?
What would happen?
Yeah.
What do you reckon?
Yeah, I mean, I think at an extremepoint control and relationship are sort
(39:01):
of antithetical to each other, right.
That they're perfectly.
In control person is not really inrelationship with anybody else because
he's sort of perfectly in controland yet all the good things in life,
ultimately, whether it's , intimaterelationships or it's like work
projects that you are, that you arelaunching, they all require relationship.
(39:23):
It might be that you're working in ateam to produce something, or it might
be that you're working on your ownto produce like a book or an article.
But even then you've got to let it gointo relationship with other people
and see what they make of it andnot try to maintain total control.
I mean, a really grim and awfulparallel to illustrate this is in with
sort of like very, very controllingkind of abusive relationships
(39:47):
and, and the psychology there.
Where sometimes you know, very, veryviolent men commit horrible, horrible
crimes because, and you see it insort of cult psychology as well.
It it's because they crave and imposea certain kind of control and then
achieving it is sort of repulsive tothem, and triggers this kind of blind rage
(40:12):
because they actually feed on the senseof trying to impose the control, rather
than on the achievement of the control.
I don't think one necessarily needs togo into that sort of deeply grim area.
I do think sometimes that's a very,very extreme version of what, like
I'm trying to do with my schedule.
Right.
I'm trying to sort of, I'm trying to sortof wrangle it and feel like I know what
(40:34):
I'm doing, but you know, A day where Ihave no social engagements and my family
aren't around and I'm just sittingthere and I can do exactly what I want.
Like, I'm just like, oh, hang on.
This, this isn't how I like to live.
This is, this is, this is too solitary.
Or, you know, writing articlesand then never publishing
them would be a similar thing.
(40:54):
Right.
It's like, yeah, you get total controland you, as a result, get zero of what
is good in, in relationship basically.
lesson number nine.
Don't fight time.
It always wins.
I guess this is a little bit relatedI'm I'm noticing now really only when
(41:15):
I have this conversation that allthese things stem from a similar place.
But I think, yeah, I think implicitin an awful lot of time management
advice and our, our approach to howwe manage our time is that we are
trying to sort of win something.
It it's an, it's an enemy.
Or as Francesco Cirillo whoinvented The Pomodoro Technique,
(41:36):
says he's, it's a, it's a predator.
And we're trying to sort of, do what we dowith predators, which is protect ourselves
and fight back and kill it and win.
And obviously on a sort of grand level,trying to fight time on the, on the
level of your life is is foolish becauseyou, you know, that you know, eventually
time is gonna, is gonna win the, win thefight, but on a day to day level as well,
(41:58):
I think it's really useful to see that.
If you try to fight time with the day,you are sort of geared to trying to cram
more things in to the time that you haveto try to make yourself more efficient
you're to sort of keep upping the levelof self discipline and effort required.
And then your, your standardsfor what you feel you ought to
(42:18):
be able to fit in, keep rising.
So it's sort of guaranteed frustrationbecause it constantly rises and
you're in this kind of fight.
Time remains fixed.
You have the hours that you have in a day.
And so there's a sort of everratcheting tension, I guess.
And good time management techniquesof which The Pomodoro Technique can
(42:39):
certainly be one depending on I think.
And what is that?
I just realized I came across.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's just this idea of, yeah, go ahead.
I won't go to the details there.
Simple answer is, it's just aquestion of like working in little
25 minute stretches, separated by
that's where I got it froman interview with you.
Cause I'd never heard ofThe Pomodoro Technique and
it's almost a distractionthat is an example of sort of
(43:00):
time blocking or time boxing.
The specifics might work for somepeople, but doesn't really so much.
If you do that in the right spirit, thenit's one of not like, okay, I'm going
to win this battle with time today.
It's more one of saying, look, time hasgiven me this number of hours today.
I am in the position of withregard to time, I am in the sort
of subservient position, right.
(43:21):
I have these hours.
So the question is what would be themost sensible way to use them, to use
my influence over how they get used.
And sort of as again, Cirillo wouldsay treat time as an ally to sort
of say, well, look, I've gotta, I'vegotta work with this limitation.
It's not that you can't try andfit more into your day than you did
(43:44):
yesterday or than someone else might.
I don't wanna make people feel like theycan't sort of try to get smarter about
how they work, but it's just this sortof basic mindset that says I'm always
going to be trying to cram more in.
I'm always going to betrying to be more efficient.
It it's, it, that is a to be in thatmindset all the time by default is
(44:07):
to be sort of never satisfied bydefinition with your use of time.
I think that's what I meanreally by that lesson.
Yes, it's very you won't makea good Buddhist doing that.
That's for sure, because , that's for
sure.
Yeah.
all right.
Lesson number 10.
And if I'm allowed a personalfavorite, this is it.
(44:28):
Lesson number 10, you don'tneed to justify your existence.
I mean, I think I'm stilllearning this lesson.
Maybe that's why I put it at the end.
I wouldn't wanna suggest that I'mwell, probably true of all of them,
but especially this, I think so manypeople in different ways and people
are very different personalities comeout of their upbringing and the, and
(44:51):
the society that we live in with thisbasic unexamined assumption that like,
there's something they have to do inorder that it's okay, that they're taking
up space and that they get to feel sortof minimally adequate about themselves.
And I think the way this happens ona day to day basis is we start the
(45:12):
day often in what I've called a sortof feeling of productivity debt.
You sort of wake up in the morning andit's like, it's like you owe productivity.
Now, obviously, if you're paid a salaryby a company, there is a sense in which
you owe productivity, but this existentialsense is much more dangerous because
it's this notion that like, if you don'tdo enough in the day, you are, you are in
(45:33):
the kind of you are in the red somehow.
And so that's why I suggest that a goodlittle intervention there sometimes is to
keep a done list, you know, keep a listof things you have done and look at it,
building up through the day and be like,you know, I could have done nothing.
I could have stayed in bed.
And instead I did all these, thesethings that sort of resets the balance.
It it's, it, it helps you to thinkthat maybe you start the day, not in
debt, but at but at a zero balance.
(45:56):
And then everything you do isjust extra credit to your account.
I think it's definitelysomething I've struggled with.
Still do struggle with this, this sensethat like, Not just that you'd rather
spend a day doing certain meaningfulthings or that it would be good to
meet the commitment that you made tosomeone to meet a deadline or that
you'd, you know, it would be betterto make sure you get your workout in.
(46:18):
These are all true and it's greatto try to live life in better
ways than, than other ways.
But the idea that you have to dothat just to get up to like a minimal
baseline, I think, I dunno if youknow about this distinction between
fixed mindset and growth mindset,that's attributed to Carol Dweck.
Yeah, I think I grew up I thinkmy parents did a great job.
(46:41):
I'd not blaming them particularly.
I mean, unless accept to the extentthat we all blame our parents,
but like, I think I did grow upwith really with a fixed mindset.
In other words, if I got reallygood exam results, which I did the
main takeaway from that was, oh, no.
Now I have to meet thatstandard or exceed it next time.
And you know, And you know I will justsay this in a way that might maybe is
(47:04):
gonna sound like bragging about thisbook, but since it suddenly came to
my mind, I'm gonna say it, it endedup on on a best seller list last week.
And I was extremely cheered by this.
And the publisher was extremelyhappy and like, everyone was
like being really lovely.
And in the quiet, after thatsubsided, I definitely was aware of
(47:25):
this old archaic childhood thoughtlike, oh, it'll be really bad if
it's not on that list next week.
because like, now this is thestandard that you have to meet.
And it's a terrible way to go throughlife to think that anything cool or good
that happens to you just recalibrates the.
Minimal definition of adequacy.
Like, forget that if you possibly can, youknow, just, just see the good things that
(47:48):
you do as good things and, and, and notneeding any further, you know, context.
Well, let me quote, George Higgins,the writer who said that, you
know, nobody cares if you're right.
Nobody cares.
If you don't write, he, he wouldsay, he would tell you I'm channeling
him to you Oliver he said, if you'renot writing to be read, you're not
a writer and you never will be.
So of course you wanna be read,you know, I mean, that's right.
(48:08):
But, but your point is very good andit let's go back to the Buddhism.
For example Buddhism talks a lotabout suffering and unfortunately
that is translated poorly intowell into suffering, but the best
word would be an unsatisfaction.
And like, somehow you got you're onthe best seller list, but somehow
(48:29):
you would become unsatisfied ifyou're not there the next month.
Right.
Because anything good thathappens to you, it feels like
you're then scared of losing it.
And it's a, yeah, it's a, I mean, I thinkI've made a lot of progress in not being
this person, but I think it, you canstill feel these patterns of like, yeah.
Achievements just reset the minimumbaseline for tomorrow, I actually, I feel
(48:53):
a strange kind of compassion for myself.
When I think about this, I'm like, oh mygoodness, don't go through life like that.
You know?
Well, God, I hope so.
Because one thing I learned in psychiatryworking on the psychiatric hospital
is it all starts with self acceptance.
And that self acceptanceis you as is right now.
I mean, there's no, noself-improvement is necessary.
Whatever, wherever you are, youknow, that's, that's where, that's
(49:15):
what you accept wart and all.
Yep.
And that's why it goes back to thesignificance of when I was quoting
psychiatrist, Ainslie Meares, beingable to experience it without
distortion and without defense.
That's a, that's a real, that'sa real skill and something.
That's a real marketmaturation, at least in my book.
So
yeah, yeah, yeah.
(49:35):
Getting there slowly.
Well, but you're quite right.
I mean, if you go around having to justifyyour existence to other people, including
yourself, something's profoundly wrong.
Cause it's one it's justtoo damn hard to do.
Right.
So I think, you know, and I'mthinking here about like the things
that Albert Ellis the founder ofrational emotive behavioral therapy.
Yeah.
You know, wonderfully sort of eccentriccognitive therapist who right.
(50:01):
It's like you can rate your actions.
Absolutely.
You can say I did a bad thing.
I wanna do more good things, butthere's no need for that to become a
global rating of you as a, as a self.
You know, you can feel that your.
Your right to exist isjust because you do exist.
And I think that's trueof all of every one of us.
(50:23):
And then by all means, yeah, try todo more good things and bad things.
Try to do more things than,than to fail to do things.
But they don't need to all be part ofthis cosmic math equation, I guess,
that is going to eventually spitout a result that you either did.
Okay.
Or you didn't.
I mean, clearly a lot of religioustraditions have quite a lot to answer
(50:44):
for here when it comes to setting upthese kinds of these kind of ideas.
Well, I had a career, he was aBritish Episcopalian priest who
gave me some excellent careeradvice when I was in grad school.
And it was don't take it all so seriously.
so they have some positive input as well.
Oh, definitely.
Yeah, absolutely.
(51:05):
Oliver, let me finish with,let me throw you a curve ball.
One last question.
We've been talking about thethings that you've learned.
What is something thatyou have unlearned lately.
And by that, I mean, something you justknew it was true a while ago, but now
realize that's not the case at all.
What have you unlearned lately?
(51:26):
Wow,
that was a, that's a fascinating question.
I dunno if I'm gonna be able tocome up with a pithy answer to it.
Normally I prep people beforewe start, but I forgot to
. Yeah, you're already getting this.
I mean, I don't, I'm not, I supposewhat I've, I suppose what I've been
on a gradual process of unlearning isit's kind of in a way, a point about.
(51:54):
Politics and political tribalism.
And, and I think it is a, a, anunlearning of the idea that that the
world is sort of neatly separatedinto the goodies and the badies and
that the people I think of as beingon my side are right about everything.
And the people on the other side canbe endlessly condemned and mocked.
(52:17):
I don't think this is only a politicalquestion, but you know, I, I find myself
constantly in these huge sort of culturalconflicts that rage on social media and
people disagreeing about the right wayto react to COVID and all this stuff.
(52:38):
I do find myself sort of seeing at leastthe emotional logic of people who 10
years ago, I would've said were like, Justidiots and I don't think it means you have
to agree with what they with their policyproposals or, or anything like that.
But I do find myself much morelike, I, I'm much less clear about
(53:00):
how to carve the world into thegood people and the bad people.
And I think that's probably a positivedevelopment, but it's but it's
certainly sort of unnerving becauseit definitely sort of destabilizes
your sense of of, what the worldis that you, that you live in.
Well, which means that you're learningto live with ambiguity better.
that's what I'm
hearing.
(53:20):
Right.
Hit hoping.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
All right.
Well, let us close officially.
And formally on that note, you've beenlistening to the podcast 10 lessons.
It took me 50 years to learn.
Our guest today has been Britishjournalist and author Oliver
Burkeman you've been listening to us.
We'd like to hear from youlisteners, you can contact us at
podcast@10lessonslearned.com that'spodcast@ 1 0 lessonslearned.com.
(53:45):
And while you're there, go aheadand hit the subscribe button because
this is the podcast that makes theworld a wise place lesson by lesson.
Thanks for listening.
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