Productivity Expert On How Productivity Ruins Your Life - Oliver Burkeman

Ali Abdaal 0:00 Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive. In this episode, I am doing a conversation with Oliver Burkeman. Oliver is the author of the incredibly re- genuinely really good book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It. The book is, in fact, so good that Derren Brown said, "I loved this book," and Mark Manson, the famous author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck said, "Wonderfully honest, a much needed reality check on our culture's crazy assumptions around work, productivity, and living a meaningful life." This is a really good book. It's kinda like a productivity book, but it's not really a productivity book. It's more like a philosophical, existential look at, like, the finitude of existence and how we're all gonna die, and how, like, the whole productivity guru culture stuff is maybe not the appropriate way to live a meaningful life. So yeah, really wide-ranging conversation. Um, Oliver used to be a jour- or I think still is a journalist at The Guardian, where for 10 years he wrote their column, which was called This Column Will Change Your Life. And he talks about how it started off as a bit of satire, like poking fun at all these productivity gurus. But then what he found as he was doing this is that some of the productivity guru life advice was actually kinda useful, and then it kind of became more of a sincere thing. But now he's written this book, and it's actually sick. The thing I love about Oliver is that he's, it's a very, like, British approach to the idea of productivity and living a meaningful life. And, you know, my, uh, our American listeners will hopefully forgive me for [laughs] making the, the, the distinction between, like, a very American approach to, like, hustle and productivity versus a bit more of a kind of low-key, chilled-out British vibe, where it's like, "Hey, we're all gonna die. Let's not take things too seriously," um, that kind of stuff. So definitely check the book out. Links are gonna be in the video description and in the show notes, depending on whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening to this on a podcast platform of your choice, and I hope you enjoy this conversation between me and Oliver Burkeman. Oliver, welcome. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the show. I, I haven't quite figured out what the terminology for-

Oliver Burkeman 1:44 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:44 'Cause, like, Radio 4, it's, "Welcome to the program."

Oliver Burkeman 1:46 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:46 American podcast is, "Welcome to the show."

Oliver Burkeman 1:48 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48 What do you, what do you think sounds more legit?

Oliver Burkeman 1:49 Ah, yeah. I s- I think show is more common now, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:52 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:52 But if it's program you gotta be spelling it, um, w-

Ali Abdaal 1:55 With an S, right

Oliver Burkeman 1:55 ... M-M-E

Ali Abdaal 1:56 M-M-E. Of course. Yeah. We're not gonna, we're not gonna, you know, bastardize the spelling of it.

Oliver Burkeman 1:59 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:00 Um, thank you for coming on. Uh, we-

Oliver Burkeman 2:01 My pleasure

Ali Abdaal 2:02 ... we are both

Ali Abdaal 2:03 considered productivity gurus on the internet and broadly. Uh, and I, I, I was intrigued by how, how, how, how do you feel about that?

Oliver Burkeman 2:11 Uneasy.

Ali Abdaal 2:12 Hmm.

Oliver Burkeman 2:13 Um, is, is that even... I suppose I must be. I know you are.

Ali Abdaal 2:17 I'm very uneasy-

Oliver Burkeman 2:17 Um-

Ali Abdaal 2:17 ... about it. Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 2:19 No, no. I mean, you are considered one. I don't-

Ali Abdaal 2:20 Oh. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 2:21 I, I suppose, yeah. I, I... Yeah. It's a strange, it's a strange thing, isn't it? 'Cause you're sort of, uh, apart from anything else, you're kind of, um... If, if you spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff and practicing it and putting it into practice, you, you run up against its limitations and its edges-

Ali Abdaal 2:36 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 2:36 ... and you sort of see past it. So it always feels like you're kind of, anything that you've sort of put out into the world [laughs] is always, like, one step behind what you're trying, where your thinking is at-

Ali Abdaal 2:44 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 2:45 ... about it

Ali Abdaal 2:45 I know what you mean. I've got thoughts on this, but f- like, how, how, how, how did you become a productivity guru?

Oliver Burkeman 2:49 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:49 What was the... What, what was the path to get here? [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 2:50 [laughs] Totally accidentally. No, I mean, I guess the main thing that I've done in this area is, is writing this, for a long time, was writing this column for The Guardian, which started off, like, literally f- ah, so I did it for more than a decade, and it, and it started off as, um, basically just, uh, mocking self-help really. Like-

Ali Abdaal 3:10 Oh, okay

Oliver Burkeman 3:10 ... I mean, my, my main motive at the beginning, and we called it This Column Will Change Your Life-

Ali Abdaal 3:14 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 3:14 ... and that was meant to be a joke. And I spent the ne- the next, like, decade of my life explaining to people that it was meant to be sardonic. And, um, and it started off mainly about, like, looking at the sort of, mainly at the nonsense that was, that was in the sector, with a few little gems here and there. I'm afraid it was a kind of a, a, the journey was one of becoming, uh, more sincere really, 'cause I suddenly sort of... It became more interesting to me, especially with the sort of imagined, and I think real, Guardian audience of similarly skeptical people-

Ali Abdaal 3:43 Hmm

Oliver Burkeman 3:43 ... became more interesting to say, "Not look at these charlatan gurus who are being ridiculous," but like, "Look at this thing that you might think is a bit embarrassing, this topic or this book or this person. There's actually something really valuable hiding in that." That's just a, actually a much more interesting, and frankly journalistically sustainable thing to do in a column, is to sort of point to valuable things-

Ali Abdaal 4:05 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 4:05 ... instead of just tear down [laughs] useless ones.

Ali Abdaal 4:07 No, sure. How, how, how, how did you get the gig? How did, how does one become the productivity columnist at The Guardian?

Oliver Burkeman 4:13 I was, uh, totally by accident. I was, I was working as a feature writer there, and I carried on working as a feature writer there, and my editor on Weekend Magazine at the time saw that I was consuming lots of these books-

Ali Abdaal 4:26 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 4:26 ... out of the... With this kind of, definitely with this kind of dual motive of like, "Well, this is silly, but I'm actually kind of-

Ali Abdaal 4:30 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 4:30 ... really interested." And, and she thought, "Might as well get some, some journalistic value [laughs] out of the fact that Oliver has this-"

Ali Abdaal 4:38 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 4:38 ... fixation. So that's how that started. And it wasn't intended to last particularly long, but it, but it ended up doing.

Ali Abdaal 4:44 And it lasted for 10 years?

Oliver Burkeman 4:45 More than 10 years I think.

Ali Abdaal 4:46 Is it, is it still going?

Oliver Burkeman 4:47 A little bit. No. I stopped it, um, a bit over a year ago.

Ali Abdaal 4:51 Why did you stop?

Oliver Burkeman 4:53 Just... I, it just totally seemed like I, uh, it was finally the right time to do so. It was in the run-up to the, this book coming out. That weird thing where you wanna do new things but you feel like you're actually not gonna be able to motivate yourself to do them until you've cut the cord of the-

Ali Abdaal 5:09 Oh

Oliver Burkeman 5:09 ... last thing.

Ali Abdaal 5:10 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 5:10 Which I didn't want to do. I'd far rather get, like, get all my ducks in a row and make a-

Ali Abdaal 5:14 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 5:14 ... make a natural, uh, stress-free transition, but I don't think you can do that, so that was why as well.

Ali Abdaal 5:20 Okay. Yeah. That's cool. Uh, I mean, so the book that you've written is very, very good. Uh, I listened to it on audiobook, but we have a physical version, which I would love for you to sign afterwards.

Oliver Burkeman 5:29 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 5:29 Um, Four Thousand

Ali Abdaal 5:30 Weeks: Time and How to Use It. Uh, you've got a, oh, thingy from Derren Brown. Uh, d- uh, uh, D- Derren Brown is one of my, one of my dream, dream podcast guests. Have you, have, have you read his book, Happy?

Oliver Burkeman 5:39 Yes. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 5:40 Yes.

Oliver Burkeman 5:40 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 5:40 It's great. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 5:41 And I've, I've got but haven't yet read his new one. Um-

Ali Abdaal 5:43 Oh, the Notes On-

Oliver Burkeman 5:45 About a Stubborn Universe. I can't remember the details, but it's, um, of the title, but it looks like-

Ali Abdaal 5:49 Yes

Oliver Burkeman 5:50 ... totally up my street.

Ali Abdaal 5:50 Yes. I pre- I pre-ordered it and it's gonna arrive on Kindle at some point. [laughs] At some point soon I hope. Um, Four Thousand Weeks, what is... Like, what's the, what's the premise? What's the deal with that?

Oliver Burkeman 5:59 The title, uh, that is very approximately the a- average lifespan in the West expressed in weeks. If you live to be 80, you'll have, what? 4,100 and something. Um-

Ali Abdaal 6:08 Hmm

Oliver Burkeman 6:09 I'm not good at maths. I definitely sort of rounded it-

Ali Abdaal 6:11 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 6:12 ... to a, to an imposing number. And, you know, I th- I, I'm a sort of at pains to point out, talking about the title, obviously many people get quite a few more than 4,000 weeks, and obviously many people get far fewer.

Ali Abdaal 6:27 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 6:28 The point is just it's really finite, and something about expressing it in weeks makes it really finite. If, even if you like, if you break the current world record for longevity and live to be like, what, 125 or whatever you'd need to do, um, you still only use like 6, 7,000 or something. It's like or something around that.

Ali Abdaal 6:48 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 6:48 The point is it's just you put it in weeks, it's just like weirdly tiny.

Ali Abdaal 6:53 So what's the, the s- the subtitle is, is Time And How To Use It. And I guess when, when I was, like, describing this book, because I've, I, I recommended it in my newsletter a few weeks ago after I listened to the audiobook, and I was like, "It's sort of like a productivity book, but it's sort of not really a productivity book, and it's sort of like a philosophical-

Oliver Burkeman 7:10 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 7:10 ... th- th- exploration of the finitude of existence." And I found myself using this weird, like, terminology. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 7:15 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 7:15 How, how would you describe what the, what the book's about?

Oliver Burkeman 7:17 That seems good enough to me. I mean, it, it's really s- strange as the writer of something like this. Like, I, I, I don't think first of all like, "Now I'm gonna pick a genre and then write into it." I definitely think, well, firstly what needs to be said, but more in a way, like, what's, what do I need to hear? Like, uh, 'cause it, uh, it's totally, like, written for me to figure out what I need to do with regard to time as much as it is to sort of lecture other people about that. And I think that the point you're making there r- about it maybe being an uneasy fit in different genres-

Ali Abdaal 7:50 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 7:50 ... reflects the fact that I had got to a point where what I wanted as much as anything else was to understand the, the right kind of perspective to take. Not as opposed to tips and techniques, not that they're not valuable, but that they have to sort of be fitted into a broader, like, sense of what it is to-

Ali Abdaal 8:10 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 8:10 ... to have a relationship with time. And then as o- as opposed to thinking that the, the one next technique was gonna, like, be my salvation, which I spent-

Ali Abdaal 8:18 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 8:18 ... many, many years thinking it would be.

Ali Abdaal 8:21 So, so in your 10 years as a, as a columnist for The Guardian doing this stuff, were you... Like, I, I got the impression you were, like, testing different productivity techniques and then you'd write about the effect that they had on your life.

Oliver Burkeman 8:30 Yeah. That was one of the things. It was also, like, writing about new research and new books and stuff.

Ali Abdaal 8:34 Okay.

Oliver Burkeman 8:35 But yeah, that was a big part of it.

Ali Abdaal 8:36 And so I guess how, how did, how did that culminate in this sort of more kind of take a step back, more like, again, like, like relationship to timey approach to a book, rather than, for example, writing a book with like 18,000 tips and tricks?

Oliver Burkeman 8:50 The column was a really useful, like, experimental ground for, like, trying things out. And then if you look in, like, in the rear view mirror after you've written the column for a few years, I could see patterns emerging, things that, things that kept making sense to me and, or that kept really not working. And so both for this book and the last one I wrote, like, were sort of arose from that process. You get to sort of test stuff out, you get feedback from people. Someone says, "I read your column. Have you seen this book that's about it?" And he sort of a- acts as a... I mean, this kind of interaction is much more normal now than it was in the, the, when I began this column-

Ali Abdaal 9:26 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 9:26 ... which was still relatively speaking in the early days of, of the internet for, for-

Ali Abdaal 9:31 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 9:31 ... for newspapers, relatively. Um, but yeah. So that was, that was that way of, that, that was how it sort of, it sort of started. And yeah, I guess in terms of the substance of the i- the idea that, that kept emerging from all of that is there is something to do with acknowledging limitations-

Ali Abdaal 9:53 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 9:53 ... embracing the sort of certain facts, uncomfortable facts about the human situation with respect to time that, that are th- th- that is very important if you're gonna actually sort of plunge into life and do meaningfully productive things. And then there's a quite a lot of sort of unhelpful ways of thinking about time and productivity, including in certain books and coming from certain gurus, that basically just sets you up as being in a war with the na- the human situation in a way that is basically never gonna help. Because if your goal is to try to escape your finitude-

Ali Abdaal 10:29 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 10:29 ... then, um, good luck with that.

Ali Abdaal 10:31 So what do kind of the,

Ali Abdaal 10:34 if, if we ste- stereotype a, I don't know, a s- uh, the, the stereotypical productivity book written by a productivity guru-

Oliver Burkeman 10:40 Mm

Ali Abdaal 10:40 ... what does that get wrong or sort of misguided or different about prod- ... Like, how do you, how do you think about productivity different to that?

Oliver Burkeman 10:49 Well, I think the, yeah, that's the right question, I think. Well, the most, so the most stereotypical book is going to imply that you can get everything done that is important to you-

Ali Abdaal 11:01 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 11:01 ... whether it's ambitions and goals or sort of obligations and demands, all of it, provided that you render yourself sufficiently optimized and efficient-

Ali Abdaal 11:08 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 11:08 ... and, uh, uh, so that you can sort of pack in, uh, more and more and more into the same amount of time using s- techniques, you know, using specific organizational and, and work techniques, that you won't need to make tough choices with what you do about your time, and that if, and that, and that you can sort of achieve a kind of control over your day that is basically absolute and over your life-

Ali Abdaal 11:33 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 11:33 ... and how things, how things unfold in your life that is basically absolute. You get a sort of subsection of this stereotypical bad time management stuff that says, "No, you do have to make choices and you have to prioritize," but it still implies that, like, prioritization and saying no and all the rest of it is, is just a matter of Getting rid of all the tedious things-

Ali Abdaal 11:54 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 11:54 ... so that all the things that matter-

Ali Abdaal 11:56 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 11:56 ... you have time for. And I kind of want to say, no, you don't even have time for all the things that matter, actually.

Ali Abdaal 12:01 We're gonna take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor, Brilliant. Brilliant is a fantastic online platform for learning maths, science, and computer science with interactive and engaging courses that I've been using for many years. But to be honest, I wish I'd had the lessons in maths to hand when I was preparing for my BMAT when applying to medical school. A lot of the time when we're taught maths at school, the focus is on empty memorization of formulas that we can apply in our exams. But the great thing about Brilliant is their courses teach you how to actually understand concepts from a first principles approach and develop the intuition to solve problems. Also, their computer science series is absolutely sick. They've got some fantastic courses on algorithms, on learning to program with Python. They've got a whole series about cryptocurrency and understanding exactly how things like Bitcoin work from the ground up, which is genuinely fascinating. So if you want to give their lessons in maths a try, or even science or computer science, then head over to brilliant.org/deepdive, and the first 200 people to sign up via that link will get 20% off the annual subscription to the website. So thank you so much, Brilliant, for sponsoring this episode. One, so one of the things that really resonated with me was the way you described the rocks analogy.

Oliver Burkeman 12:55 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 12:56 I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that.

Oliver Burkeman 12:58 Oh, yeah, yeah, talking of stereotypical bad time management. I mean, okay, I feel like, a caveat, one or two people have explained to me since the book came out ways in which it's possible to interpret this parallel parable that are-

Ali Abdaal 13:10 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 13:11 ... that are not so ridiculous. But in case anyone doesn't know about it, the, in various different versions, but it's like the teacher or somebody, like, brings in a jar of... Should I go through this whole thing, or is this so well known that this is a waste of, uh, valuable-

Ali Abdaal 13:25 I think it's worth going through

Oliver Burkeman 13:27 ... digital footage?

Ali Abdaal 13:27 I'm not sure it's that... I, it's, it's, it's well known to pe- to people like you and me. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 13:31 Okay. Just very quickly-

Ali Abdaal 13:32 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 13:32 ... and you can decide whether to use it or not. A teacher brings a glass jar into a classroom with, um, some large rocks, some pebbles, and some sand, and challenges the students to fit all of this into the glass jar, and then the students, 'cause they're apparently, like, really dumb, s- start putting the, the sand in first and the pebbles in first, then they find the big rocks won't fit. So the teacher says, "No, no, no. Let me show you how to do it." And he says, "So you put the big rocks in first, then you can fit the pebbles, and then pour the sand in, and it all fits." And the idea is, um, if the big rocks are your major priorities in life, you've got to make time for those, and you can make time for those. And if you do make time for those, then everything else you can fit in around the edges.

Ali Abdaal 14:12 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 14:12 But if you don't put those first, you'll never get around to them at all. And I don't think that's a completely meritless point.

Ali Abdaal 14:18 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 14:18 I just want to say that-

Ali Abdaal 14:19 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 14:19 ... right now so that, you know, the estate of Stephen Covey doesn't-

Ali Abdaal 14:23 No. It might be-

Oliver Burkeman 14:23 ... come and, uh, uh, sue me.

Ali Abdaal 14:25 Sue you for libel or slander. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 14:27 But the experiment is plainly rigged, right? It's set up... The, the, the professor, the teacher, has only brought as many big rocks in as he knows can ultimately, with the right configuration, be made to fit. And I think that extending this metaphor, the, the, the problem most of us have with time management these days, the main one, it, it's not necessarily that we're bad at prioritizing. It's just that there are too many big rocks-

Ali Abdaal 14:50 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 14:51 ... to fit in the jar. In other words, there are too many things that totally legitimately have a claim on your time. Too many people in your life, business opportunities, demands from the boss. Whatever you're setting it, whatever your situation is, like, there are just too many things that legitimately you could use your time on than you have the time and stamina-

Ali Abdaal 15:10 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 15:10 ... available for. So the nature of the hard choice involved is different. It's not just like, "How am I going to organize my day?" It's like, "What am I going to neglect because I'm... And what, what important things am I going to neglect because I am definitely gonna be neglecting some important things?"

Ali Abdaal 15:24 Yeah. Like, so as I was listening to the book, it, it really gave me a lot of reassurance. [laughs] Um, because again, as a productivity guru, I feel like I should have my life in order.

Oliver Burkeman 15:35 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 15:35 And, you know, when the WhatsApp messages pile up to, like, you know, 100 plus, I'm like, "Oh my God, relationships are the most important thing in life. I'm letting people down by not replying to them." And then I spend hours replying to all the people, and then responding to WhatsApp messages, uh, generates more WhatsApp messages, similarly to responding to emails-

Oliver Burkeman 15:53 Yep

Ali Abdaal 15:53 ... it just generates more emails.

Oliver Burkeman 15:54 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 15:55 Um, and you know, at the same time, I care about the work stuff. I care about, like, I don't know, some sort of impact. I care about spending time with my family. And it's like, in the past, part of me was just like, "You know what? I just really suck at keeping in touch with friends, and that's okay." And another part of me was like, "No, that shouldn't be okay. Like, you know, I should use my productivity powers to, like, actually focus on the thing that's important, like keeping in touch with friends." How, how do you, I guess, knowing that, for example, there are too many rocks to fit in the jar-

Oliver Burkeman 16:18 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 16:18 ... how do, how does one go about sol- solving this problem?

Oliver Burkeman 16:22 Well, I think, so the sort of, I think the f- most important point there is that, like, in a certain sense, you can't, and that's the really important point.

Ali Abdaal 16:29 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 16:29 And this is not a despairing message. I think it's a really empowering and sort of thrilling message in a way.

Ali Abdaal 16:35 Yep. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 16:36 But, like, if the, if the challenge, and, like, I f- I, I so, like, vibe with what you're saying there about feeling that there must be a solution-

Ali Abdaal 16:45 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 16:45 ... and that all these things really matter. They do really matter. You don't need to persuade yourself that actually some of them don't matter. Just to get really sort of existential about it, I think there is some kind of urge motivating that, and it's almost universal to want to find a cheat code for life or find-

Ali Abdaal 17:01 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 17:01 ... a sort of, you know, a caveat in the contract of being-

Ali Abdaal 17:04 No, quite

Oliver Burkeman 17:04 ... of being human and, and to get on top of everything or in command of your time in a way, in a certain way that is just not actually available to us as finite creatures. 'Cause we have this fundamental mismatch between our capacity to think of infinite possibilities and feel infinite obligations and our abil- our finite material, you know-

Ali Abdaal 17:26 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 17:26 ... short lives and, and limited time. So this is, like, the vague part, and we can totally talk about, like, more specific and practical things.

Ali Abdaal 17:33 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 17:33 But, but I think there's something really powerful in just seeing, oh, this isn't a problem to be solved. This is just the way things are.

Ali Abdaal 17:40 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 17:40 At the end of life, there will be lots and lots of things you didn't get around to doing that, that totally were legit-

Ali Abdaal 17:46 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 17:46 ... that would've been good things to do. But that was because you were doing other thing, hopefully, things that were, that were good things to do. And you can sort of relax into the discomfort of that a little bit. You can sort of- You can feel the anxiety or anyway-

Ali Abdaal 17:58 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 17:58 ... it leads to anxiety in me that comes from thinking like, "Well, you mean I'm never going to get to this point in my life where I have no problems?"

Ali Abdaal 18:06 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 18:06 Or feel no... No, it's like, no, you're not. That and that would be ridiculous, and you wouldn't want to get there, actually, but it's a separate discussion. Um, you can sort of factor in, like price in to your, to your approach to life that there are going to be good relationships that you don't, uh, nurture, interesting opportunities that you don't pursue, great books that you don't get to, to read. It's like once that's c- if something like that is completely a given, it stops being stressful. Like, we don't beat ourselves up for not being able to, like, jump a mile in the air because nobody-

Ali Abdaal 18:34 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 18:34 ... expects that in the first place-

Ali Abdaal 18:35 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 18:35 ... of human beings. And it's the sa- it should be the same for this kind of stuff. And once you sort of let this whole fantastical edifice crash to the ground and you're just standing in the rubble, you can be like, "Okay, now, I've got this many hours today. What would be the most meaningful, exciting, high impact things to do?" And it's like, it's, it's hard and I don't want to imply that I've, like, totally solved this-

Ali Abdaal 18:59 Hmm

Oliver Burkeman 18:59 ... this, this t- this issue either, but like I think that is the way forward.

Ali Abdaal 19:02 Yeah. How did you come to this, like, realization that in fact it is not possible to juggle all the things comp- competently?

Oliver Burkeman 19:08 I think the column helped there in like a weird, bad way.

Ali Abdaal 19:10 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 19:11 Because if you test things out for week after week for many years, and you begin to see what it is you're wanting from them, which is basically salvation-

Ali Abdaal 19:18 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 19:18 ... or eternal life or something-

Ali Abdaal 19:20 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 19:20 ... equivalent to that, and they, it never happens, and on the 100th time round, you're like, "Oh, maybe there's a problem [laughs] with the framing of this instead of that I haven't just yet found the technique." So that's where being a bit obsessive kind of helps because if you were someone who just tried a couple of time management techniques, you might well imagine that the, um, the, the sort of utopian one you just haven't-

Ali Abdaal 19:42 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 19:42 ... you hadn't seen it yet.

Ali Abdaal 19:43 Haven't come across it yet.

Oliver Burkeman 19:44 Which I was pretty confident-

Ali Abdaal 19:45 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 19:45 ... by [laughs] the end of that decade plus that, like, it wasn't coming anytime soon.

Ali Abdaal 19:49 Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's an unusual position to be in where you ha- have actually [laughs] tried all of the techni- like I feel, I feel like I've come close to trying all the big ones through making videos about this for the last five years.

Oliver Burkeman 20:00 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 20:00 And I find that every time I reread Getting Things Done, I feel about two weeks worth of like, "Yes, capture, clarify, organize, reflect."

Oliver Burkeman 20:07 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 20:07 And, and, you know, it feels like all the cylinders are firing and, and it's all good. And then I miss a weekly review, and another one, and another one.

Oliver Burkeman 20:14 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 20:15 And it's like, you know what? I've had this... Uh, I, I looked at my Todoist, which was the, the app I was recently trying out, and it's like, "Overdue reminder, do your weekly review, 24th of October." [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 20:26 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 20:26 I was like, "I did it for two weeks."

Oliver Burkeman 20:28 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 20:28 And then the reminder just kept on going overdue, and I was like, I, I know in my head that doing a weekly review is an important thing, getting all my priorities in order, reflecting on the week, et cetera, et cetera. There's something about it that just, it actually makes it really hard to do.

Oliver Burkeman 20:40 Uh, yeah, and I think, you know, I don't want to pretend. I still totally... Like, a new app or a new technique, I'm still like, there's still a big part of me that is, like, excited by that and I'll try it out-

Ali Abdaal 20:49 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 20:49 ... and blah, blah, blah. All that happens, and I'm sure you have in this, um, space too, is that you, you do begin to just, like, see through a little bit the motivations that you were bringing to it. So it's to do with the spirit in which you adopt a new technique, right? By all means, try out a new technique or go back to Getting Things Done or do anything, but, like, it's when you slightly drop this idea that it's gonna, like, save you- [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 21:10 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 21:10 ... from the situation. And I've actually had this really interesting, or maybe it's not interesting, it's interesting to me, experience of trying out certain techniques ages ago, finding that they didn't give me what I wanted because what I wanted was sort of this kind of total-

Ali Abdaal 21:24 Yeah, salvation

Oliver Burkeman 21:25 ... mastery of time. Yeah, salvation. And then years later, the Pomodoro Technique is an interesting example of this, like coming back to it in this new kind of disillusioned, but in a positive way-

Ali Abdaal 21:34 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 21:35 ... um, uh, p- from that new perspective and seeing like that's actually a really useful thing to do. It's a great, interesting way to divide up the day. It's, like, totally useful in... for what it is, absolutely great, but I was bringing something weird psychologically to it before, and I think a lot of people do. That's my gamble anyway, that this isn't-

Ali Abdaal 21:55 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 21:55 ... isn't just my personal hang-ups and weirdnesses.

Ali Abdaal 21:58 Have, have you come across the midwit meme?

Oliver Burkeman 22:01 No.

Ali Abdaal 22:01 Oh, okay. I s- I will, I will describe it to you on, on, on the YouTube video of this podcast we can put up the midwit meme. I- it's, it's basically like an IQ bell curve with like 100 h- 100 IQ in the middle, and it's like on the low IQ end of the spectrum, there's, like, this dude being like, um, for, for example, something like, "I just do what I feel like doing." On the other end of the spectrum, IQ 150, there's a Jedi master who says, "I just do what I feel like doing." And in the middle-

Oliver Burkeman 22:25 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 22:25 ... there, there is the person being like, "I manage my time using Getting Things Done. I have a to-do list. I do my weekly review. I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

Oliver Burkeman 22:30 [laughs] Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 22:31 All this kind of stuff. And I think this so much applies in the world of, uh, in, in actually almost, almost anything. Whereas, like, i- in a way, by going through the process of becoming a productivity guru, you come out on the other end with a, just a more of an appreciation of like actually k- keeping things simple is potentially-

Oliver Burkeman 22:48 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 22:48 ... the way forward. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 22:50 But it's the, uh, is this Thoreau or something, but it, it's the simplicity on the far side of complexity, right?

Ali Abdaal 22:55 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 22:55 I think you have to, to some degree, you have to go through that middle bit.

Ali Abdaal 22:59 Mm-hmm.

Oliver Burkeman 22:59 And maybe one way of thinking of this book is my attempt to take readers who haven't gone through that through-

Ali Abdaal 23:03 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 23:03 ... the sort of, the sort of thing. No, it's interesting. And one, one facet of that, just one particular way that plays out, I think, is in this idea of like, what if you, been very helpful for me in the terms of productivity, but I think it applies in other areas. What if you just sort of, what if you gave up the idea that you, that there wasn't gonna be any single ultimate, uh, solution here? Like, what if you just sort of accepted that your techniques and approaches-

Ali Abdaal 23:26 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 23:26 ... were probably gonna, like, change and evolve all the way through your life, like you were never gonna kind of get the set of techniques and approaches and apps that... I mean, and that's kind of obvious in a way that that's what, how it's gonna be, but there is that bit in the back of your mind that's like, for some reason, this particular new do everything notes app is somehow-

Ali Abdaal 23:47 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 23:47 ... like in-

Ali Abdaal 23:49 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 23:49 ... 40 years' time is still going to be the market leader. It's like...

Ali Abdaal 23:51 [laughs] I've, I've had that similar sort of m- journey in a bunch of other sort of productivity adjacent things like in, in the process of writing the book I have read loads of books about note-taking and about the process of writing a book. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 24:04 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 24:05 And so, like Ryan Holiday has a method that, uh, you know, with the physical note cards, and there's a Zettelkasten method.

Oliver Burkeman 24:10 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 24:10 You know, the, all of, all of these various methods for, for note-taking. And I've kind of just landed on Apple Notes, just writing things down as, like, I read them and that resonate with me, and that's kind of what I was doing 10 years ago as well. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 24:22 Right, right, right.

Ali Abdaal 24:23 It's an evident rather than like... But then through this whole process, it's like ... But, but I still feel that there is something out there and that if I, if I did have the perfect Zettelkasten method where all my notes would link up and all the insights, and then generating a book would be as simple as copying and pasting stuff-

Oliver Burkeman 24:38 Right

Ali Abdaal 24:38 ... that I've already written over 10 years.

Oliver Burkeman 24:40 Right.

Ali Abdaal 24:40 Um, given that you've been writing for 10-plus years and have written two books, does that, like, resonate at all? [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 24:45 Yeah, no, it really does. And I mean, one of the things that I found so ... There's a, there's a quest for perfect order in that, in that kind of approach to notes, note-taking information, which is clearly, I think, one part of this overall quest for, like, total control over-

Ali Abdaal 25:01 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 25:01 ... the human situation. You know, it's like, and it all comes down to, like, you know, not wanting to die ultimately. I was sort of seeing this until I, and then I, after that, after I'd begun to stumble on it in my own mind, I saw it expressed very well by, uh, David Perell.

Ali Abdaal 25:13 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 25:13 That these systems kind of, you kind of need to keep them messy in a way. And to the extent that my system of note-taking and storage of notes is, is disorganized a little bit, and it, and it is disorganized [laughs] , like that seems to keep it juicier. Like, I get more interesting insights, and it feels like there's more potential there for new chapters or email newsletters or whatever it is. When you actually get close to achieving the level of total control you think you crave and perfect order, the life kind of goes out of it a bit-

Ali Abdaal 25:43 Oh

Oliver Burkeman 25:43 ... for me anyway.

Ali Abdaal 25:43 What do you mean?

Oliver Burkeman 25:44 Well, like if I've got a kind of perfectly organized database of notes, like tagged or folded away in a, in an absolute... If I get to that point where it feels completely like it's done, I don't know how else to express it than how I just did. Like, the life goes out of it.

Ali Abdaal 25:58 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 25:58 The, the juice of the ideas is not so clear. If I've got a kind of directory in some app that has, um, I'm using Ulysses mainly at the moment-

Ali Abdaal 26:07 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 26:07 ... but which has like, which is kind of... It's not quite properly ordered. There's, there's, there's kind of notes jostling with other notes that probably should be separated out somehow. Like, that's when I see the connections between stuff.

Ali Abdaal 26:20 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 26:20 So, like I've never quite managed to get on board with the real canonical Zettelkasten stuff-

Ali Abdaal 26:25 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 26:25 ... where you, like, link everything in a very, in a very clear way because the links for me seem to come just from the fact that there are two notes next to each other that I-

Ali Abdaal 26:34 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 26:34 ... that are not particularly meant to be there. So yeah-

Ali Abdaal 26:37 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 26:37 ... serendipity, I guess.

Ali Abdaal 26:38 Yeah. Like in my, in my quest for the, the kind of the perfect system to write the book, uh, I was rereading a lot of, um, Austin Kleon's stuff around sort of creativity and having like an analog workstation and a digital workstation-

Oliver Burkeman 26:49 Mm

Ali Abdaal 26:49 ... where the analog workstation is like A3 pads and like notes and bits written on paper, and I... That felt, seemed like a very, like, romantic way of writing a book that, "Ooh, I've got this stuff." And then when I go to my other workstation, then I type things up.

Oliver Burkeman 27:01 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 27:01 And I haven't yet tried this, but every, every time I do get an A3 pad out, I find that just like scrawling stuff on a, on a piece of A3 paper is actually just way better [laughs] than, for example, using a very rigid sort of bullet-pointy structure on like Notion or Roam or any other note-taking app.

Oliver Burkeman 27:15 I, yeah, and I think the, almost the, the more abstract issue here is not s- is not the method, but-

Ali Abdaal 27:20 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 27:20 ... the fact that any method, however good, and I like, I love Austin Kleon's stuff, for example. But like the, the, any method, if you take it from that person, and it's like, "Now I must perfectly reproduce it in my own"-

Ali Abdaal 27:30 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 27:30 ... life, it's gonna, you're gonna give it a rigidity that it almost certainly doesn't have in the, in the, in the world of the person-

Ali Abdaal 27:36 Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 27:37 ... like, um, who originated it. And so I'm constantly changing the-

Ali Abdaal 27:43 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 27:43 ... supposed process that I have for doing these things, and I kind of feel like I'm always gonna be that way, and there might be something good about the fact that-

Ali Abdaal 27:51 Yes

Oliver Burkeman 27:51 ... that's how it is.

Ali Abdaal 27:52 I, I really like that. Like, I get so many questions, like, you know, being a, you know, as you know, being a productivity guru, uh, one is somewhat financially and otherwise motivated to continue to try out different apps-

Oliver Burkeman 28:02 Mm

Ali Abdaal 28:02 ... and to f- find the best one, and part of that is this thing of maybe there is that perfect app around the corner. But like, uh, and another part of it is, well, kind of need content for my newsletter, for my-

Oliver Burkeman 28:11 Right, right

Ali Abdaal 28:11 ... YouTube channel. So, you know, Notion have just released a new feature. Let's, like see if it fits into my life. And people will often discover a video I made two years ago where I talked about how at the time I was using Notion to store a list of database for all the things that I've ever read.

Oliver Burkeman 28:23 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 28:23 Being like, "Oh, you know, I was reading your, I was, I was watching a video about the residence calendar. H- you know, how do you specifically deal with this content type?" And I'm like, "Move on from that." [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 28:33 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 28:34 Three days after I made that video.

Oliver Burkeman 28:36 Right.

Ali Abdaal 28:36 But it feels-

Oliver Burkeman 28:37 Right

Ali Abdaal 28:37 ... a little bit fake to be that person.

Oliver Burkeman 28:39 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 28:39 Um, and so when I was reading this stuff, I was like, I, I, I really got a lot of, um, reassurance from it.

Oliver Burkeman 28:45 I'm glad. There's a, it's, it's reminded me of a thing. I mean, this is making it a bit more sort of like this is more to do with personal life and relationships perhaps, but there's a great, a quote in the book, a psychotherapist called Bruce Tift, who elsewhere, not in the quotes in the book, has this kind of idea that like what if you took the thing you struggled with the most in your psychological life and just kind of imagined never being rid of it to the end of your days? Like, so if you're like, if you've got social anxiety or you're a bit commitment-phobic when it comes to relationships, or you're, or you're always struggling to try to bring order to your, to your productivity in your work, like what if you just thought about the i- the prospect of like never being shot of this, of this particular idiosyncrasy?

Ali Abdaal 29:28 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 29:28 And at first I feel like, oh, like crestfallen when I do that 'cause I'm like, you mean like I'm never gonna get to the, the perfect time? But then I'm like, actually, it's really liberating.

Ali Abdaal 29:38 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 29:38 It's actually really liberating to think like, okay, you don't, maybe we're not in the business here of, of finding a way to like suddenly become, to justify our existence on the planet. Maybe that's taken care of. Maybe-

Ali Abdaal 29:49 Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 29:49 Maybe you're fine, and then if you come up with some adjustments to your workflow that make you even better, great.

Ali Abdaal 29:57 Nice.

Oliver Burkeman 29:57 But like maybe you're not trying to like, maybe there isn't some like big existential problem here that your, that your notes are in disarray.

Ali Abdaal 30:03 In the book, you talk about this and, you know, in, in this conversation so far you've alluded to that kind of- Something along the lines of the, the desire for productivity and control i- is, is ultimately a desire for salvation, a fear of death. Like, what, what, what do you, what do you mean by that?

Oliver Burkeman 30:17 Well, this is where it gets so sort of hard to put into words. But I think we... I think m- most of us today, and I talk in the book about how I don't think this would've been true for, like, medieval peasants-

Ali Abdaal 30:26 Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 30:27 ... and some other people. But, like, we think of time as something that we're, like, in a relationship with, and there are... That's not a given, um, through the history of reflections on time. But, like... And so it naturally becomes something that we've got to try to sort, sort of use well, or we could be guilty of wasting, or we wanna sort of feel confident that the near future is gonna unfold in a certain way. And actually, time isn't really like this, so we don't have... It, it's not... It- we're, we're treating it as something that ultimately it, it isn't, because you don't really have time. You just get given each moment as it comes, and you don't know how more, much more of it you'll have, and you can't really put it aside. All those things that sort of the language and the metaphor of, like-

Ali Abdaal 31:08 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 31:08 ... physical possessions or money-

Ali Abdaal 31:09 Like ownership and management and stuff

Oliver Burkeman 31:10 ... and stuff. Right, right, right.

Ali Abdaal 31:11 Like, yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 31:11 Doesn't quite work. Um, the blogger David Cain has done some really... On Raptitude.com.

Ali Abdaal 31:16 Oh, yes.

Oliver Burkeman 31:17 Some really, some really interesting stuff on this. It's like, so you're constantly approaching your time with a sort of set of concepts that aren't quite properly [laughs] suited to what it really is, and I think that's because it's kind of uncomfortable, and ultimately if you go deep enough, probably quite terrifying to sort of face up to the real truth of the situation, which is that each of us all the time is just completely vulnerable to anything that might happen next. Like, you have no control over the future. You can exert influence and improve probabilities, but, like-

Ali Abdaal 31:49 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 31:49 ... you are just on this raft, on this, um, white water river being borne forward. Um, and you've just got to sort of do what you can in that situation. And in that context, it's really tempting to feel like, "No, can't I come up with a way where I'm like..." You know, the met- stretch the metaphor.

Ali Abdaal 32:08 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 32:08 Like, where I can, like, get onto the riverbank, and then, like, control a fleet of ships or something. Like, no, you're just like, you're just in it, and that's terrifying. And so I think a lot of what passes for sort of bad time management, but also lots of other sort of weird behaviors that we engage in in life are basically forms of emotional avoidance, right? They're ways of not facing up to the, the sort of edgy, nervous, angsty situation-

Ali Abdaal 32:32 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 32:32 ... that we're actually in. So we, we, we think the, the way forward is to i- is to feel more in control than we, than we really are or to distract ourselves.

Ali Abdaal 32:41 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 32:42 And as I say, it's a little bit hard to sort of articulate in, in words, but I think that actually the, the, the better approach in all these contexts is, as to the extent that one can, to actually acknowledge the way things-

Ali Abdaal 32:55 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 32:55 ... really are, and to sort of, like, go with the fact that you're, that you're on the raft on the white water, and then you can start, like, navigating a bit more and, and use what influence you, you have. Does that make-

Ali Abdaal 33:07 Yes

Oliver Burkeman 33:07 ... sense?

Ali Abdaal 33:08 The thing that that reminded me of was, and to sort of con- concretize it-

Oliver Burkeman 33:13 Please do. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 33:13 ... for an example from my life where I feel like this really applies, it's that the, the, the feeling of writer's block in the sense that I sit on my laptop and I've got three hours. I need to do some writing. Ooh, and then there's like, "Ugh, ugh, ugh, I don't really know what's going on." Um, therefore, the solution is my, my note-taking system is just not tuned enough.

Oliver Burkeman 33:32 [laughs] I see. I see what you mean, yes.

Ali Abdaal 33:34 And what I need is the perfect note-taking system. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 33:36 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:36 And once I have that, then writer's block will disappear. And one of the most, like, reassuring things about speaking to any author, like I've done on the, on the podcast or listening to interviews and stuff, is that that feeling never goes away, and this is supposed to be hard, and this is the work. And when I kind of internalized that, now when I have that feeling of like, "Ugh, I'm, but I'm so bad. Like, why would anyone read this?" Et cetera, et cetera. I think, "This is fine. All other people think this." [laughs] So it's all good. And it... Just embracing that then weirdly helps me make progress and also be less beating up of myself about the fact that I've only made 1,000 words of progress rather than the 2,800 that, and 33 that I had, like, decided-

Oliver Burkeman 34:14 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 34:14 ... would lead to a million words a year or, or whatever. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 34:17 Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's so... That, that observation that, like, that, that these things are difficult. And you might get lucky sometimes and go into, like, beautiful flow state-

Ali Abdaal 34:25 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 34:25 ... but, but they are basically difficult. Um, it reminds me of the opening line of a great old self-help book, The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck-

Ali Abdaal 34:33 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 34:33 ... which is, I'm paraphrasing, but he starts off saying, "Life is difficult," and then what he, he says something like, "This is one of the great truths because when you, um, when you fully internalize the truth that life is difficult, it no longer matters that life is difficult." So it's like, it's like, I feel like that's a different way of saying, when you stop treating the difficulty of doing difficult things as a problem to be solved-

Ali Abdaal 34:56 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 34:56 ... then they're not, they're less difficult in a certain, in a certain way. And the way I would put that through, like, my stuff in this book is, like, what's happening when you're writing is you're being brought up against your limitations and your, your edge, right? You're, you're doing something that matters to you. The stakes are high. You don't know that you can do it to your standards. You don't know that it'll be well-received, but you want it to be.

Ali Abdaal 35:20 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 35:20 So all these different things are at stake, and so it, it's, it's unpleasant in a way. And if at that moment you distract yourself with some, like, nonsense-

Ali Abdaal 35:30 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 35:30 ... um, online or wherever, like, that's... You're, you're... It's obvious why you would want to do that. You'd want to do that because it's-

Ali Abdaal 35:38 Of course

Oliver Burkeman 35:38 ... because it, the things are not at stake.

Ali Abdaal 35:39 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 35:39 And it's, and, and you're not worried about whether you can-

Ali Abdaal 35:43 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 35:43 ... can do it or not.

Ali Abdaal 35:44 Another reason I ask is 'cause relationships are allegedly the most important thing in life, and I, I have always thought, like, maybe there's ways to think more intentionally, more efficiently, productively about relationships. And also, you've had a kid recently, which is cool. Um, and I'm always, like, curious about... Like, I feel my calendar is overloaded already, and I don't have a kid.

Oliver Burkeman 36:03 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 36:04 What the hell do you do when you have a kid? [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 36:07 Yeah, I don't really know the answer. I mean, it was only fairly recently now, 'cause he's-

Ali Abdaal 36:10 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 36:10 ... just turned five, which is I, I...

Ali Abdaal 36:12 Oh, five?

Oliver Burkeman 36:13 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 36:13 You've been writing the book for that long. Damn. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 36:14 Well, I, I, I, I sort of sold the book proposal. Then he-

Ali Abdaal 36:17 Right

Oliver Burkeman 36:18 ... came along and then the book was just-

Ali Abdaal 36:19 Oh, okay

Oliver Burkeman 36:19 ... on hold for like three years and then-

Ali Abdaal 36:21 Got it

Oliver Burkeman 36:21 ... then it, then, so, so yeah. It was-

Ali Abdaal 36:23 Soundly.

Oliver Burkeman 36:23 Nothing will, uh, mess with your belief that you can, uh, control your, your, your time. And I'm, I'm not, I don't wanna be... I don't wanna claim I've figured this out perfectly at all. But I suppose the sort of just thinking about parenting just for a second, like the-

Ali Abdaal 36:40 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 36:40 ... th- one way of thinking about that is it does just sort of show you something very clearly that was true all along, which is that you don't have the control over the time that you thought you did, and you don't have the capacity to do everything you were imagining. So, you know, for many years before becoming a parent, I might think that I was constantly just like one a week or month away of, from, uh, of self-discipline and-

Ali Abdaal 37:06 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 37:06 ... applying myself to sort of getting everything totally nailed. And, um, that becomes, again, it becomes a lot harder to continue to believe in that once like 50% [laughs] of your previously available time minimum, it depends on the ti- stage of parenting, I guess, but like has just been taken away and put to this, to this, um, totally non-negotiable, uh, thing instead. And so it's like that's quite useful in a way. Obviously, it's not, obviously, it's not useful from the point of view of one's work to have less time available for one's work. But it is kind of, it, it, it, it helps one's own like growth in a way, quite apart from the many, many huge delights of just being a father. But like it, it helps one's own growth in a way to sort of see the s- see the truth of the situation a bit more plainly, which is like, you know, there's definitely not enough time for everything. Sacrifices will have to be made. Um, and to some extent, this, this effect hasn't been as pronounced for me as it has [laughs] for some people, so I'm slightly annoyed at that. But to some extent, it also, um, reduces your distractibility in the work time that you do get 'cause you're just like, "Okay, it's just a few hours now before I'm back on, you know, before school pickup or whatever, so better get to it." And that does, to some extent, that works for me. I am still prone, a little bit more prone to distraction than, than I would like to be. But what are we gonna do about that?

Ali Abdaal 38:30 We are gonna take a little quick break from the podcast to introduce the sponsor of this podcast, which is Curiosity Stream. If you haven't heard by now, Curiosity Stream is the world's leading documentary streaming subscription platform founded by John Hendricks, who's the founder of the Discovery Channel. And on Curiosity Stream, they've got hundreds of really high quality, high budget documentaries covering all sorts of things from science and technology to history and ancient civilizations to food and medicine and meditation, and like all of the stuff in between. Now, the really cool thing about Curiosity Stream is that they support independent creators, and so there is this service called Nebula, which you might have heard of. It's an independent streaming platform that's run by me and a bunch of other creators. And on Nebula we can put content like videos and behind the scenes and long form, longer form stuff without worrying about things like the YouTube algorithm. And so, for example, on Nebula, I have a bunch of exclusive content that you won't find anywhere else. We actually have the original Season 0 of the Deep Dive podcast, which started off as like remote Zoom live streams during the pandemic, and that is only available on Nebula. You won't find it anywhere else. So if you enjoy the sorts of conversations we have on Deep Dive, you might like to see, you know, a whole year before we started this podcast properly once the pandemic stopped, what sort of conversations I was having with people on Zoom. I've also got a series of videos on Nebula called Workflow, which is where I deep dive into some of my favorite productivity tools. And on Nebula you also get early ad free access to my videos and videos from a bunch of other creators that you might be familiar with like Thomas Frank and Tom Scott and Legal Eagle and Lindsay Ellis. And the really cool thing is that because Curiosity Stream loves supporting independent creators, we've got a little bundle deal, which is that if you sign up for an account on Curiosity Stream, you actually get free access to Nebula bundled with that. So if you head over to curiositystream.com/deepdive, then for less than $15 a year, you can get full access to Curiosity Stream's incredible library of documentaries and also free access to all of the stuff on Nebula bundled with that. So head over to curiositystream.com/deepdive to get the bundle deal. So thank you, Curiosity Stream, for sponsoring this episode. I always have that feeling of, you know what? From next week or from two weeks from now when the calendar is broadly empty or, you know, then my life will be sorted.

Oliver Burkeman 40:22 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 40:23 Because all these ad hoc thing, things that appeared this week, they're not gonna appear two weeks from now. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 40:27 Right. Right. Right. Yep, exactly. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 40:30 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 40:30 And you, and you pair that with a tweet I saw the other day, I can't remember who from, saying like, "All my schemes for self-improvement depend on my waking up tomorrow with like five times as much self-discipline than I've ever demonstrated on any day of my life to date."

Ali Abdaal 40:42 Right.

Oliver Burkeman 40:42 So it's both of those... Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 40:44 Yeah. We, we were doing a little goal setting, goal setting exercise with the team yesterday. Uh, we had this whole like business coaching session, quarterly planning and stuff, and I was like, you know, "What's, what's like my number one priority for the next quarter?" And it's to write the first draft of the book. And I was like, "Okay." Then I was like, "Wait a minute. That's like 12 weeks in a quarter. There's 12 chapters in a book. Shit, that's one chapter a week." [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 41:05 Right. Right.

Ali Abdaal 41:05 A chapter is like, I don't know, like 8,000 words, probably 10,000, but the editors are saying we can cut down to like 6 or 7,000. So am I really saying I'm gonna write 2,000 words in a day, like each day? And I'm like, "Well, three, three hours in the morning, it's quite a long time. How hard can it be?" [laughs] And so it's just like, yeah, I will do the thing. But I think it's, it's very much, you know, as we, as we think about our future selves, we give ourselves superpowers. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 41:29 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 41:29 That like, "Yes, I will wake up on time. I'll be fully disciplined. I will go to the gym like before eight o'clock and then I'll be sit, sat there ready with my coffee to write for four hours solid and not get distracted-

Oliver Burkeman 41:36 Right

Ali Abdaal 41:37 ... and not need to do a poo like in the middle of that." [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 41:38 Yes. Yes. Right. And then the, the, the, the, the reason, I mean, this is maybe obvious, but like there's a lovely quote from Henri Bergson, the philosopher, in his book Time and Free Will, where he sort of says like, "The, the reason that thinking about the future in this way is almo- always more appealing than facing the present is because like anything's possible in the hypothetical future."

Ali Abdaal 41:59 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 41:59 You... The, the limitations of the material world that you're subject to today are not there like in your imagining of next month because you can sort of think like, "Oh, I'll find a way to do this, this, this and this," or, "Yeah, I'll bring more self-discipline and energy to it than, than, uh, than before." And it's... So it's comforting. You get to like, you, you get to sort of squirrel it away in the future so that you don't need to like face the-

Ali Abdaal 42:19 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 42:20 ... face the truth of the situation right now.

Ali Abdaal 42:23 Mm. Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 42:24 It's useful to notice when one is doing that, I think.

Ali Abdaal 42:26 Yeah. I think that's the, that's the balancing act, like, that, that I found as well in my life without a, a child, um, is- Where I will try my best to set an intention for the day of, like, this is the m- this is the one thing that I wanna do. And I will try my best to broadly stick a time block in the calendar for when I will want to do that one thing, knowing that, like, to be honest, if a friend was like, "Hey, do you wanna grab lunch?" I will prioritize social life over work generally. Um, and the way I think of it is, like, the rest of, the rest of the things I wanna do today are a might-to-do list rather than a to-do list. [laughs] And I, I'm, I'm still, I'll say ex- experimenting, still, still, still trying to figure out, like, what is the... What's, like, a realistic maximum number of things, like, I'm allowed to have on that list?

Oliver Burkeman 43:15 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 43:16 Because I think otherwise for me the temptation is there, I'd be like, "Oh, well, I'll call my grandma, and then I'll call my mom, and then I'll call my aunt, and then, okay, so that's the relationship box ticked. Oh, then I need to message about eight different friends, and I need to send thank you cards. And, oh, Christmas is coming up, so let me send great gifts," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I need to do all these different things, checking all these videos that are coming out, and the list just swells. Um, whereas what I've been trying to do recently is just be like, I'm only allowed to do three, three things on this list. And if after that I still have more time and I feel like doing, like, work, then on that point I can, I can freestyle it. But I just never get through just, just even those three things on the list. Um, and one of the things I really liked, um, about your... So, like, at the end of the book you have a sort of practical advicey section-

Oliver Burkeman 43:54 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 43:54 ... for, for those of us that are like, "Okay, I like that mate. Enough philosophy, now we get to the tips." Uh, you talk about, um, I think sort of a, sort of having, having like a, a, a, a maximum number of things that you're allowed to do. Something to that effect.

Oliver Burkeman 44:08 Yeah. There, there's all sorts of different ways of implementing this, and you'll be familiar with many of them. But this idea of, like, limiting your work in progress.

Ali Abdaal 44:13 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 44:13 This idea of saying that, um, I'm only gonna... This idea of saying, like, I'm only gonna work on, um, a, a small... A, a fixed number of, of things, and I'm going to complete one of those things-

Ali Abdaal 44:27 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 44:27 ... before I allow myself to put another item onto that queue. And obviously you can do this at the level of, like, projects. You could say I'm only gonna have, like, one major goal, um, in my work at, at a time. And you can also do it to some extent at the level of tasks, right? You can be like, "Well, these are the, these are the three things I'm going to do and I'm... Until I've done one of them nothing else is coming off that task list."

Ali Abdaal 44:49 Mm-hmm.

Oliver Burkeman 44:50 And, uh, you know, Kanban, um, boards are an obvious way to implement this, and I've got this idea in the book about keeping two to-do lists where you sort of feed items from an infinite to-do list through a, a very narrow limited to-do list. Um, and again, it's just all about, like, saying, "Look, you're already making choices. Your time is already finite. Whenever you're doing something you're already saying no to all the other things in that moment. So now just, like, make it conscious."

Ali Abdaal 45:15 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 45:15 And, and, and sort of hold yourself to it and avoid that thing that I certainly am very prone to, I think lots of people are, where it feels like you're more in control of things if you just sort of spread your, um, attention among 50 of them.

Ali Abdaal 45:29 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 45:30 But actually it isn't, because what... You're not more in control of them, you're not making better progress on them because you just bounce from one to the next whenever they get difficult-

Ali Abdaal 45:38 Yes

Oliver Burkeman 45:38 ... so you just get around it.

Ali Abdaal 45:39 No, exactly.

Oliver Burkeman 45:40 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 45:40 Um, I'm, I'm finding this with the book as well. Which, uh, one of my, my, my, my writing coach says is normal for a first draft, where I will get 80% of the way through and then it starts to feel like, ugh, I need to round off the argument somehow. But I can't be bothered right now. Let me just do chapter eight.

Oliver Burkeman 45:56 Right, right, [laughs] right.

Ali Abdaal 45:57 And I'm hoping that towards the end of it then I'll

Ali Abdaal 46:00 be able to, to think about this, this kind of stuff. Yeah. On, so on the goal, on the goal-setting front, um, I, I also keep on trying to find the perfect system for this. Like, um, in, in, in terms of like, like, like personal goals. One of my theories, or my philosophies shall we say, is that setting... Like, I don't like it when I set goals that are outside of my control. For example, when I set the goal of I want a YouTube video that hits a certain view count-

Oliver Burkeman 46:26 Right

Ali Abdaal 46:26 ... compared to I want to make a video I'm proud of. When I think I want to write a book that hits the Sunday Times bestseller list versus I wanna write a book I'm proud of, and that's all fine. But that almost feels like it's, oh well, I'll just do my best and not worry about the outcome. Which also, which feels a little bit unsatisfying given a bunch of research around the idea of, like, effective goal setting and challenging goal setting, and the fact that kind of high performance, inverted commas, in most fields. You know, it's not like Michael Phelps is just, "You know what? I'll just try my best and see what happens."

Oliver Burkeman 46:52 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 46:52 It's like, you know.

Oliver Burkeman 46:53 Right, right, right. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:54 So, uh, yeah, any, any thoughts around that tension between I'll try my best versus I have this specific outcome I'm aiming for which maybe is sl- somewhat outside of my control?

Oliver Burkeman 47:02 It's interesting. I mean, I... There's a sort of sub-distinction there between there's the goal... There's the things you can control and things you can't control, but then there's specificity or vagueness in the things that you can control. And I, I do think that, like, things like doing your best and being proud of things, like, they're really important values in life, but I can see how they're not, they're not particularly helpful in this setting because it's sort of completely open-ended.

Ali Abdaal 47:29 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 47:30 And so-

Ali Abdaal 47:31 It's not very smart. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 47:32 I... No, right, exactly. Either you can... Either you will end up sort of not doing what you could have done because you say, "Well, that was my best, so I don't care." Like, uh, and you sort of, you sort of make it easy for yourself. Or you do what I think I would do and have done in a lot of my early adulthood which is, like, be convinced that trying your best is really important and then, like, torment yourself constantly with like, "Am I doing my best? Am I... Is this my best? Am I... Can I do..." You know. And those kind of open-ended things seem unhelpful. You... On the other hand if you say... I mean, this is where I feel like quantity-based goals can be really helpful, right? If you say, like, I'm gonna put out this number of videos or this number of... I'm gonna write this many words, uh, on a, on a, by a certain point. Firstly, it's specific. Secondly, it's within your control. And then thirdly it's kind of, it's somewhat drained of the sort of... The qualitative goals are sort of, uh, they, they, they go wrong because they're so sort of emotive. There's something kind of nice about a very, very sort of mechanistic-

Ali Abdaal 48:30 Yes

Oliver Burkeman 48:31 ... goal in that area. I don't think it's the whole piece of the puzzle, 'cause I do think even though I wrote in my first book about, like- How positive visualization is largely nonsense and all sorts of things. I do think there's clearly a role for kind of envisioning the, having a vision of where you'd like things to be and, and using it to-

Ali Abdaal 48:48 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 48:48 ... to determine what you do in the, in the present. But that idea of just being, maybe this is like systems versus goals, the- this, this, that old distinction. But it's like, it's like the idea of saying like this many words, um, or, you know, just something really sort of, that sort of takes out all the-

Ali Abdaal 49:06 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 49:06 ... all the, all the, all the angst from it.

Ali Abdaal 49:08 That's nice.

Oliver Burkeman 49:08 I think that'd be really useful.

Ali Abdaal 49:09 Yeah. Well, well, well one of the ways I'm thinking about it, 'cause I'm, I'm, I was writing the chapter about this in the book, like this week, last week. Um, I intended to do it this week as well, but then time got in the way [laughs] like, like my-

Oliver Burkeman 49:19 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 49:20 Um, is, yeah, like systems versus... Ah, I don't know. I feel like, I feel like all, all of this stuff converges on a few central, so central themes. And m- and we as productivity writers try to put our own stamp on like a thing which people have been doing for centuries, if not millennia. Uh, but that aside, um, what I'm, what I really like is, is that if I kind of break down my implicit process of goal setting, 'cause it's never been like explicit. If I, if I break down what that looked like, what it looked like was step number one, setting a kind of destination goal that is within my control, like write a book I'm proud of-

Oliver Burkeman 49:56 Mm

Ali Abdaal 49:56 ... which is like this big project, big project. Um, maybe in my mind it's like it would be really cool if it hits the bestseller list. It would be really cool if I get invited on conferences and if I, I don't know, get on a podcast 'cause-

Oliver Burkeman 50:05 Mm

Ali Abdaal 50:05 ... I mean that, that, that would be sick. But like those are outside of my control, so let me just not think about those- [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 50:11 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 50:11 ... and just recognize that actually it w- it's a, you know, a preferred indifferent as, as the stoics, as the stoics might, might say. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 50:17 Yeah, right.

Ali Abdaal 50:17 Um, so the, the destination goal is within my control, and then I'll break that down into the kind of quote "journey goals"-

Oliver Burkeman 50:23 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 50:23 ... which are, is more the system stuff of-

Oliver Burkeman 50:25 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 50:25 ... therefore what I like tangibly need to do is that every week or every day I wanna aim to write X thousand words or X-

Oliver Burkeman 50:31 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 50:31 ... hundred words. And again, that is within my control. And then kind of my step three of this three-step process is f- f- for that journey goal that like let's say I wanna write 500 words a day to lower the bar of quality as much as possible. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 50:46 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 50:46 Like I want like l- I, I literally write on my to-do list, write 500 crappy words for crappy first draft of chapter two, and I find that putting the words crappy in there twice- [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 50:54 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 50:54 ... really makes it easier to be like-

Oliver Burkeman 50:55 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 50:56 ... "Okay, you know what? This is actually, this is actually doable."

Oliver Burkeman 50:57 Doable. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 50:58 Like let, let's do this.

Oliver Burkeman 50:58 No, that's great.

Ali Abdaal 50:59 Um-

Oliver Burkeman 51:00 It makes me think of two other things like, um, Dan Harris, the meditation-

Ali Abdaal 51:03 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 51:03 ... uh, writer and, uh, podcaster, um, talks about doing things, specifically meditation, uh, aiming to do them daily-ish and having-

Ali Abdaal 51:10 Nice. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 51:11 ... that, having this built in, built-in fuzziness. Like, 'cause you know whether you did something daily-ish like in a given week. You, you have a feel. Like if you did it twice, it wasn't daily-ish. But it-

Ali Abdaal 51:22 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 51:22 ... but it reduces this kind of like, oh, if I break my streak it's all over and I might as well spend the next three weeks-

Ali Abdaal 51:26 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 51:27 ... n- not doing anything. Um, so I think that's a, s-

Ali Abdaal 51:30 Absolutely

Oliver Burkeman 51:30 ... an important part of that. And then something I've found really helpful, I don't know if this is writing specific, but like might be just specific to writing, but it's also like not keeping going even if you're on a roll. So if you say like, "I'm gonna write 500 words," and you write them and then things are going well and you're like, "Eh, get another 500 out," it's like actually making yourself stop and walk away. Like that kind of enforced low-balling of your, of your aims for the day and like that's really, I think, for people like I suspect you and certainly for me, like that's really hard to do.

Ali Abdaal 52:02 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 52:03 Like when the, when the opportunity for a bit more productivity arises and you don't take it.

Ali Abdaal 52:08 Yes. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 52:08 But there's this amazing old book that I had to like buy as print on demand 'cause it's, 'cause it's so hard to get, called, um, How Writers Journey To Comfort And Fluency by a psychologist called Robert Boice, and it's like a really in-depth study of academic writers and what caused them to be either productive or non, not productive. Um, I mentioned him in the book a couple-

Ali Abdaal 52:26 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 52:26 ... of times. And like o- one of his big findings was that the writers who made writing into a, a, a moderately important part of their lives were, did lots more than the ones who made it into a very important part of their lives because then it becomes this kind of intimidating thing and you have sort of all sorts of angst about it and you forget about it for weeks at a-

Ali Abdaal 52:45 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 52:45 ... a time because you don't dare go back into that scary thing. And part of that is like you figure out what is your short daily session of writing, and he said like, you know, for pe- for sort of amateur writers it might be 10 minutes a day. Even for professional writers it probably should never be more than like three or four hours. And when it's up, you just, you have to stop and like-

Ali Abdaal 53:04 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 53:04 ... go and do something else because otherwise you're kind of giving in to a, an impatient urge to be done with the whole thing that will ultimately backfire on you and cause you to sort of dread, uh-

Ali Abdaal 53:15 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 53:15 ... returning to the project. That ability to keep important things relatively small in your life, I think it's like-

Ali Abdaal 53:23 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 53:23 It's really... I'm not saying I'm any good at it-

Ali Abdaal 53:25 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 53:25 ... but it's, it's really interesting I think.

Ali Abdaal 53:27 I, I was thinking about this, uh, like last night. So I, I got home from here at like 7:00 PM, 8:00 PM, something like that. No, like it w- yeah, it was like, it was like 8:00 PM and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna sleep at 10:30 so I can get a solid like eight hours of sleep, wake up at 7:30, like life, life's gonna be good. I was like, so I've g- I've got like two and a half hours now. Hmm, what do I do with that time? And I said to my housemate, I was like, "Right, Lucia, I could do some writing or I could play PlayStation while listening to an audiobook. What should I do?" And she was like, "Well, you know, Ali, y- you've worked hard to get to this point, like why don't you just play PlayStation?" [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 54:00 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 54:00 And I was like, "All right, cool." And then I had a great session of playing Ratchet & Clank on the PS5 while listening to The Evolution Of Desire [laughs] on 3X speed on Audible, and it was so good.

Oliver Burkeman 54:09 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 54:09 I just love the audiobook with PlayStation experience. Um, and, uh, the, this reminds me of something, uh, do you know Gre- uh, Greg Mckewon? He wrote-

Oliver Burkeman 54:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 54:18 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 54:18 I mean, not personally-

Ali Abdaal 54:19 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 54:19 ... but yeah, I really like his stuff.

Ali Abdaal 54:20 Um, so his, his newish book, Effortless-

Oliver Burkeman 54:22 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 54:22 ... tells the story of like, um, two... It's, it's like one of these perfect stories that I don't, I don't know how like 100% true it is, but like illustrates the point of like these two expeditions, like the British expedition and the American expedition to the North Pole or something, and the Brits were like, you know, what... Or actually probably the Americans [laughs] were like, "You know, every single day we're gonna make as much progress as we can." And the Brits were like, "We're gonna go five miles and no more and no less on any day." [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 54:45 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 54:46 And the Americans ended up dying on the expedition, and the Brits ended up-

Oliver Burkeman 54:48 Right

Ali Abdaal 54:48 ... just like slow snail, snail-mailing their way to just- Five, even so, even, even when it's good weather, even when it's bad weather, we're not gonna bother going above and beyond

Oliver Burkeman 54:57 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 54:57 ... even if we can. And just that, that thing in my mind of 500 words and only 500 words, or two hours and only two hours, and then stop, and then I'm just not allowed to do any more writing.

Oliver Burkeman 55:06 Right. And yeah, and it's, it's, yes, I, I think it's great. I think, and it, and it's hard, right? Because we just as a culture, and I would suspect especially people who are interested in being productive in that culture, like resting is difficult. Like, if I have, doesn't happen very often, but if I [laughs] these days, but if I have, like, two hours to just do whatever I want, and I, and I've decided that it, it would be not appropriate to use that to power through my, my work, like, that's quite challenging.

Ali Abdaal 55:37 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 55:38 It's like I, it, it does not ob- things do not obviously suggest themselves-

Ali Abdaal 55:42 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 55:42 ... to me in that situation. It's, it's better since we moved to the North York Moors because actually going out hiking in nature is an example of that, that sort of holds my attention while clearly being not, you know, more of the treadmill.

Ali Abdaal 55:53 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 55:54 But, like, I think people get confused because we've, we- you hear so much about how important rest is. People know that they need rest. They feel burned out. And then if they ever make it happen in their lives, it makes them feel sort of antsy-

Ali Abdaal 56:09 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 56:09 ... at first. It's not, and, and so one of the, I actually talk about this in the book, you know, it's like you've, you've got to be ready, I think, if you, if you want to pursue these different ways of relating to time for them not to feel totally great in the first, like, half hour or first day-

Ali Abdaal 56:23 Oh, yeah

Oliver Burkeman 56:23 ... of testing things out because, because we are just completely geared to thinking that time not spent productively is time therefore wasted. Um, and so, like, the, the first half hour that you're sitting by the fire with a novel or the first day that you're at a, on a beach for a week's holiday by the beach probably isn't gonna feel great. And actually, if you know that, it's less of a problem 'cause I think-

Ali Abdaal 56:47 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 56:47 ... it then, then starts to feel great, you know.

Ali Abdaal 56:49 Yeah, I, I think one other thing that I th- that I think about on this, on this topic is, you know, you know this idea of, like, s- stopping work at a, at a, at a particular time and how it feels like, oh, but I could, I could get more done if I continue to power through. It's just that, like, really is, and again, I'm, I'm bad at doing this, but when I do, I always feel a little surge of satisfaction. Just the idea that, like, what am I actually optimizing for here? Like-

Oliver Burkeman 57:14 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 57:14 ... you know, if I think of what I, I, I guess what I want from my life, what I imagine is a life where I'm doing some reading, doing some writing, and doing some teaching, and hanging out with the team, like, once a week, and maybe filming a video or a podcast. Like, that is broadly the life that I'm, I'm, I'm leading. And finishing my book any faster-

Oliver Burkeman 57:34 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 57:35 ... and, like, I don't know, getting out one extra YouTube video this week and stuff, like, these things that would be the outcomes of me spending more time working, it's like, why? What's the point? Like, who's that for? [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 57:49 Yeah, right. Right. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 57:50 Like, what-

Oliver Burkeman 57:50 When is, when is enough? When is enough?

Ali Abdaal 57:52 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 57:52 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 57:53 And th- you know, the, what I, what I try and think of is let me sort of enjoy each day on its own merit-

Oliver Burkeman 58:01 Mm

Ali Abdaal 58:02 ... rather than think of the day as a, I guess, a means to an end of having a particular outcome because, like, you know, journey before destination and all that kind of stuff.

Oliver Burkeman 58:12 Yeah. Yeah, no, it's, it's making me th- yeah, it's, it's so true. It's making me think of a time a few months ago when I was hiking in the middle of a weekday with an old friend on a beautiful part of the North York Moors. It just had come together that we could do this. And being struck by the thought in the middle of this very enjoyable few hours, uh, literally being struck by the thought, "I wish I lived the kind of life where I got to do this." Like, I wish I was the sort of person who could just, like, come and do this regularly, and it's like-

Ali Abdaal 58:41 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 58:42 ... while I was doing it, right? And so the, the sense of, like, having to become a kind of person who is so in control of stuff that you can dispense your time in these different ways perfectly is so powerful that it can stop you seeing that you're, like, you're literally doing it in that moment.

Ali Abdaal 58:56 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 58:56 So I mean, it's not quite the same point you're making.

Ali Abdaal 58:57 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 58:57 But it's this idea that, like, you've got to become the kind of person who X. Well, no, you've just got to do those things a bit. And if things, if you value things, just do them a bit, and you're, and that's, that's the whole challenge. So, like, I feel like this thing, I'm changing the topic I guess, but, like, I feel this whole thing of, like, trying to become the kind of person who is actually a really, can often be a-

Ali Abdaal 59:19 Ooh, yeah

Oliver Burkeman 59:19 ... big, a big obstacle.

Ali Abdaal 59:20 It's a mind virus. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 59:21 To just, to just do it. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 59:23 Are you... So okay, so there is another cartoon that I've been thinking a lot about recently, which is you m- you might be familiar with, but we'll, we'll flash it up on the screen, and I will describe it for people who are listening on, on audio. It is, like, a big ele- like a, an elephant and, like, a, a baby elephant in a zoo, and, um, a kid is there with his dad, and the kid points at the little elephant and says, like, "You know, why, why is there a, like, a chain around its leg?" And the dad's like, "Oh, well, you know, the elephant's, you know, is gonna escape otherwise. You know, this is how they, how they keep it there." And then the kid looks at the big elephant, at the mum elephant, and says, "Why is there just a string around her leg?" Uh, and the dad's like, "Well, she's realized that she can't escape," uh, or s- or something like that. And-

Oliver Burkeman 1:00:04 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:00:05 ... it's like often the, the, the reason I think of this a lot is that often we chain

Ali Abdaal 1:00:11 ourselves with our own assumptions even though they're not, may, may not entirely be true. And, and last night I was having dinner with Dan, who is my assistant and our, like, one of our, well, one, one of our team members, um, and I was saying to Dan, "You know, I re- I really wish I could get to the point where I could, I don't know, just go to Bali for a week to do, like, a writing retreat or something." And he was like, "But you can."

Oliver Burkeman 1:00:32 Yes. Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:32 Like, "You, you absolutely can."

Oliver Burkeman 1:00:33 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:34 You know, "This is, this is your team. This is your business. We know that you can work remotely 'cause we've done it. We know you can take Gordon with you, so you can film videos while you're out there if you really need to, but, like, you absolutely can."

Oliver Burkeman 1:00:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:43 And I was like, "Damn. Yeah, you're right." I, I, I just had sort of assumed that I had less control of them over my time, [laughs] control of my time, than I actually did. And in a way it was, in a way it's comforting, I think, to think I will write my symphony tomorrow. [laughs] Um-

Oliver Burkeman 1:01:02 Totally

Ali Abdaal 1:01:02 ... once life becomes more blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when we face up to the fact that, oh, crap, I actually could just, just do that, then it's like, oh, hang on. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:01:13 Yeah, no, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:13 There's something uneasy about that.

Oliver Burkeman 1:01:14 No, absolutely. And I think it's important to say, like, obviously the specific example is not open to everybody.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:20 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:01:20 Many people aren't in a position to go on a writing retreat to Bali for a week.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:23 [laughs] I'm sure.

Oliver Burkeman 1:01:24 But there is-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:25 Like get in touch with a... [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:01:26 No, no.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:26 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:01:26 But there is, there is that same equivalent situation. I think we, we do it to ourselves all the time. It's, it's related to that, um... It's kind of Jean-Paul Satre and the idea of bad faith, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:01:36 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:01:36 This idea that, this idea that like w- and it's in Heidegger as well, if you really wanna get-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:39 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:01:40 ... into the weeds of this. Like, this idea that we, that we, that we tell ourselves we don't have choices that we do have, because it's actually much more scary to sort of face the choices that we do have. And like, no, if you're... Y- you- y- and you have big... People have big... Like, you can. People can walk out of relate- marriages. They can, um, walk out of jobs. They can, they can, like, s- make pu- kind, the kind of public statements that are gonna get them totally canceled. You know? They, you can do this. Like, the, you say you can't do it. What you mean is that the consequences o- of it that you predict are, are scary, and they may well not be worth it in any given situation. Um, but s- but like these choices are always there. There's a lovely quote from the psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp, who, um, has this whole list of life advice in back of one of his books. And the one I always remember is, um, "You're free to do whatever you want. You have only to face the consequences." Right?

Ali Abdaal 1:02:41 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:02:41 And, and you can... I find this incredibly empowering, 'cause it's like, no, no, you can do almost anything within the bounds of the laws of physics-

Ali Abdaal 1:02:48 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:02:48 ... and given my financial and-

Ali Abdaal 1:02:49 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:02:49 ... temporal resources, and some of them would have really, really bad consequences, so I definitely wouldn't do them.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:56 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:02:57 And some of them would have somewhat bad consequences, like people being disappointed in me or angry or something, and they might totally be worth doing. Anyway, I slightly-

Ali Abdaal 1:03:06 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:03:06 ... moved that on. I dunno if it's quite-

Ali Abdaal 1:03:07 No, no, I agree.

Oliver Burkeman 1:03:08 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:08 Like, um, a few, a few... I think it was a few, a few months ago now, I was, I was, I was, I was here on a weekend just 'cause this place was nice, and I was in the middle of moving house. Um, and I was really thinking about kinda consequences of things. Uh, in, in, in particular, I, I was doing, uh, Tim Ferriss's fear setting exercise-

Oliver Burkeman 1:03:25 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:03:25 ... on the what's really the worst that could happen, where I had this thought that, ooh, what if I just stopped caring about, like, the view counts on my YouTube channel, and I just, like, didn't let it affect me at all? What's the worst that would happen? Oh, okay, let's actually kind of think about this, and realized actually, you know, this is actually probably a good thing overall, and there is very few w- worst case scenarios here that I, I, I couldn't deal with. But I'd, I'd, I'd spent the last, like, four years kind of on autopilot, just assuming I had to care about the numbers-

Oliver Burkeman 1:03:53 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:03:53 ... and assuming that, like, how well a video does is some sort of factor that should make me feel more or less good, depending on how, how well the video does. And I think it just, like, comes back to this thing of often we're operating on these invisible scripts with these invisible shackles where, at least, at least in my life and in, in my experience, like, the things that I would want to do are not the things that actually have consequences that I can't handle. It's just where I have made assumptions about, oh, I probably can't do this.

Oliver Burkeman 1:04:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:21 Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:04:22 Yeah, no, absolu- and I think there's a kind of a comf- as you say, is a comfort-

Ali Abdaal 1:04:25 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:04:25 ... but also there's a sort of a false sense of control in worry, right? There's this idea that, like, if I... I think the reason that we worry on some level is because we think that we're somehow affecting reality through our worrying. And it's like-

Ali Abdaal 1:04:37 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:04:37 ... well, if I, if I let my hands off the controls there, terrible things might happen, so I'm gonna keep, like-

Ali Abdaal 1:04:43 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:04:43 ... I'm gonna keep, like, fretting about it. And the truth is, I think in... It's possibly a, a sort of universal truth, or it's mainly just a, or it's maybe just generally true, that, like, the terrible things that can happen in life, like cataclysmic things can happen in life, but they're not part of the... They're not in the realm of the things that you might be worrying and controlling about, right? I mean, like absolutely terrible things can happen, but they will just be like, you'll be blindsided by those.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:08 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:05:08 And stoicism has some ways to maybe-

Ali Abdaal 1:05:10 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:05:10 ... be slightly less blindsided, but-

Ali Abdaal 1:05:11 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:05:11 ... uh, but, but, like, the things that we worry about, we're worrying about because we think that the worry somehow, somehow increases our control over them, and it just, like, it just doesn't. So you might as well not worry about them. Easier said than done.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:27 I think it basically in, in, in every aspect of my life from, well, at least kind of from the time that I remember vividly, like, uh, sort of end of, end of school towards university and beyond, I've had, like, every few months when I come across some article on Lifehacker about setting your goals and figuring-

Oliver Burkeman 1:05:44 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:05:44 ... out what you want, and I do like a, I don't know, visualization-y thing of like, you know, what do I actually want? Like, what does, like, a, a good day look like and, and stuff. Every, every time I do that, I just come up with stuff that I think, there's no reason why I'm just not doing this now.

Oliver Burkeman 1:05:57 [laughs] Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:59 Um, like, you know, at, at one point a few months ago, I decided I w- you know, at, at some point I wanna get into learning how to write songs. I was like, I've got two hours right now. Like, what's, what's stopping me?

Oliver Burkeman 1:06:08 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:08 Uh, all right, cool. Let's just follow a tutorial on YouTube and, you know, download GarageBand or something and make a start on writing songs. Um, similarly, when it came to business stuff, when it came to deciding to get the studio space and building a team in person, I just hadn't really thought about it. I was like, you, you know, I did one of those exercises where it was like, you know, what does your dream future look like five years from now? I was like, oh, it'd be really cool to, I don't know, have, have a studio or something where I don't have to have cameras and lights everywhere at home, and to come in on a Monday and, you know, there's, there's a team there in person just, like, to brainstorm video ideas about and, yeah, interview people in person. And I was like, damn, why don't I just do this? Uh, 'cause before the assumption, and the, the invisible assumption I'd been operating on was that when you, when you, when you work with a team, they just have to be remote, and when you do a podcast interview, it has to be over Zoom. I think the, the pandemic kind of really contributed to this. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:06:59 Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:00 But it was just such my... Like, my model of the world was- How, how can you possibly hire someone for an in-person job? And I mentioned this to someone, they were like, "Dude, do you realize that 99.99% of the workforce is, is in person rather than remote?" [laughs] Mind blown.

Oliver Burkeman 1:07:11 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:07:12 Um, I don't quite know where I was going with this, but yeah, just the, the, this idea of occasionally coming back to this idea of like, what do I actually want? And thinking what are the assumptions that I'm making that are stopping me from being there, and why don't I just do it right now rather than next quarter or next year?

Oliver Burkeman 1:07:27 Right. No, I think that's... It's incredibly powerful, and it just reminds me again of wanting to say, like, I think that it will feel uncomfortable to do that at first, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:07:35 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:07:35 Because that, because what you're doing, if you decide to spend two hours doing the thing that you've told yourself you want to do one day, learn songwriting, you know, is you will be sort of stepping more authentically into the real situation of your life. It's not a dress rehearsal. It's here, it's now, it's limited. You better do these things that matter if you're gonna ever do them. And that will trigger some... There'll be some anxiety, or you'll think like, "Oh, I'm not really doing it properly now. Like, I don't have what it takes to really get into this now, or I haven't found the right, haven't got the right equipment or something," you know? And you just have to sort of ride that out a bit, because-

Ali Abdaal 1:08:06 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:08:06 ... like, yeah, yeah. It's-

Ali Abdaal 1:08:07 Oh. So, uh, two, two nights ago I was at an Ed Sheeran concert in, in, in London. Uh, it was a, it was a, it was, it was quite weird getting tickets for it, 'cause it was, like, only 2,000 people in, like, a tiny church, and you had to, like, pre-order the vinyl of his album [laughs] before it came out.

Oliver Burkeman 1:08:22 Nice. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:08:23 And I, I don't have a vinyl play-player, but I pre-ordered [laughs] the vinyl of his album anyway just to be able to enter this competition to get tickets. And we got tickets in the end. And he said a very, very inspiring story. Um, so he's got this new Christmas song out with Elton John.

Oliver Burkeman 1:08:35 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:35 If you've heard it, absolute banger. I've ha- I've had it on repeat ever since.

Oliver Burkeman 1:08:37 Yeah, it's great.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:37 And before he sang that song, he t- he told the story of how that song came about. And he said that for the last few years, um, apparently he and Elton are mates. Um, so Elton's been being like, "Hey, you know, we should do a Christmas song together." And he was like, "Oh, you know, there's all... there's good, good Christmas songs out there. There's nothing we can add to the genre. You know, Elton why don't you just do it yourself?" Or like, you know, "Uh, uh, maybe I'll think about a Christmas song in, like, 2023." And then he said that a few months ago, uh, one of his best friends passed away, um, and it made him realize that, like, oh my God, you know, the finitude of existence and stuff.

Oliver Burkeman 1:09:10 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:10 And why am I putting off, like, spending Christmas with Elton John doing this cool project-

Oliver Burkeman 1:09:15 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:09:15 ... with, like, my mentor and my friend, where we get to dress up as, like, silly Christmas reindeers and stuff. Why am I putting that off? So let's just do it now. And he said that that realization was what m- made them put the song out this year rather than three, four, four, four years from now. I just find that really inspiring of, like, you know, actually, you know, the kind of the stuff that you talk about, that life is short. And if you wanna do something, then often there are relatively few barriers to actually let's just do it now.

Oliver Burkeman 1:09:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:41 And it's very easy to be like, "Oh, I will... I don't know. I'll, I'll, uh, write my symphony tomorrow [laughs] rather than-"

Oliver Burkeman 1:09:46 Yeah. No, absolutely. I think it's... And I, I totally agree. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:50 I wonder if we can talk a little bit about the end, the practical stuff. Yeah, 'cause I was... As, as I was listening to this, I was like, "Oh, this would be a really good book to do a video about." And I was like, "Oh, crap. I'm gonna have to figure out a way of, like, turning it into practical advice." And then very conveniently in the appendix you have [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:10:04 Yeah, just, just use those.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:05 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:10:05 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:10:06 As I was thinking of it, like, okay, there are 10 main points in this video. Let's start with the philosophical stuff.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:10 Right. Shall we go over some of your 10 tools for embracing your finitude?

Oliver Burkeman 1:10:13 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:14 Which is a nice little title for, uh, for this. Um, so number one you say a- adopt a fixed volume approach to productivity. Like, what's the deal with that?

Oliver Burkeman 1:10:21 This is just like a general approach to work, and I point out in the book that, um, you know, s- uh, Cal Newport is one of the people who's writing, uh, most, uh, in the most focused way about this stuff, I think. Where you, where you sort of, you put front and center your, your capacities, your, the amount of time you have, perhaps also your energy levels. You think about that first, and then you think about fitting what you can into that box in terms of tasks. As opposed to, "I absolutely must get through these 15 things today, and I'm just gonna have to, like, um, find a way to do it." So an obvious, obvious example of this is, yeah, you, you decide that you finish work at 6:00 PM-

Ali Abdaal 1:11:01 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:11:01 ... every day, and then that creates sort of, uh, that, that creates a box that's available for work that day. And then you think, "Well, what's the most important stuff to fit into this box that I reasonably can?" Obviously, it doesn't get you totally past that problem of, um, fitting, trying to fit twice as many things-

Ali Abdaal 1:11:19 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:11:19 ... into the box as, as you actually can do. But it, but it puts your finitude first and says like-

Ali Abdaal 1:11:24 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:11:24 ... okay, these are the facts, time is limited, and then how am I going to respond to that situation today and make the best decisions? As opposed to, yeah, like, I've, I've got to get through this amount of stuff, even if it's, like, literally, literally impossible-

Ali Abdaal 1:11:38 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:11:38 ... that you ever, you ever could.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:39 Okay. Tip number two. Serialize, serialize, serialize. What does that mean? [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:11:44 Again, related, same sort of idea, but this is in a, uh, this is sort of more longitudinal. This is this idea of, of, of, um, limiting your work in progress. Make it choosing, m- m- m- uh, making, if you've got multiple big projects, um, to the extent that you humanly can, doing one at a time, finishing one before you move on to the next one. And, like, expecting to that, that that will make you feel anxious about the ones that you're making wait. Uh, but understanding that, that, that kind of willingness to feel that discomfort but to focus in this way is actually a, just a vastly more, um, practical way to make more progress. And that when you do the opposite of that and sort of try to do them all at once, really you're just giving into this, this desire to feel limitless.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:30 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:12:30 To feel like you're, like, taking care of business. You're the air traffic controller of, of the world, you know? Um, and, and it's, it's a nice feeling, but it's actually not the path to, um, getting more useful, meaningful stuff done.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:43 Nice. Love it. Uh, ooh, tip three, decide in advance what to fail at.

Oliver Burkeman 1:12:48 And the credit here, as I've said in the book, goes to a writer called John Acuff, but this is this lovely notion of, like, strategic underachievement. Where you say to yourself, "Look, life is finite and my capacity is finite. That means that I'm going to be failing at some things that I, that I might otherwise succeed at." That's just maths. That's not, that's not a criticism of anybody. So if you then decide upfront what some of those domains are going to be, that's actually a much more sort of, um, uh, peaceful and happy way to go through life.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:18 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:13:18 Because instead of, instead of sort of getting to the end of the day and feeling terrible that the house isn't as tidy as you wanted it to be, or that you didn't mow the lawn or something, you'd be like, "No, no." Like, you already decided, it's like, for now, for this month, for this period of my life, whatever, I'm, I'm going to not be successful at keeping a tidy house.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:39 [laughs] Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:13:39 And so that one is off the table. And so then you can focus your energies more, more on, um, things that you do care about. I have, I have, you know, spent long periods of my life thinking I, I... wishing I could get much better at cooking than I am.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:53 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:13:53 I'm really not a good cook.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:54 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:13:54 I think I can cook nutritious, basically nutritious meals from the point of view of, like, feeding my son-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:59 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:13:59 ... and then my wife tolerates those nutritious meals.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:02 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:14:02 And it's like actually realizing, oh, it's not gonna happen anytime soon that I give this the thought and the practice that it needs. Huge liberation.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:09 Nice. Yeah, I've been, I've been saying that for the last, like, four years. You know, I, I really should do cooking this year, and I've just been liv- living off takeaways. And I'm like, actually, you know what? That's actually fine for this season of my life. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:14:19 Right. Right. Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:20 As long as the belly doesn't get too, too large. Um, oh, well, what's tip number four? T- t- tip number five is consolidate your caring.

Oliver Burkeman 1:14:28 I think one of the, one of the ways in which we, um, are sort of induced by the modern world to do more than we can do is, is to sort of, is to care about more social, ethical, charitable issues than we possibly could. So especially with social media, you're gonna be... you're gonna find out about vastly more crises around the world and good causes than you could possibly focus on. And you're gonna be, um... And everyone's gonna say that their cause is the most important one in the world, because that's how the attention economy works. You never get a fundraising email from a charity that says like, "This thing that we're focused on is the third, sixth most important issue facing the world today, so can you give us your money?" It's always got to be the first, that everyone's in a sort of arms race in that respect. So I just think it's really useful for people who are, who feel that pull of the duty to, like, be a good citizen. Not everyone does. But, like, if you do, to think, like, when you see the truth of this situation, that there's more to care about than you possibly could, more than, like, the greatest saints in history were ever asked to care about-

Ali Abdaal 1:15:29 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:15:29 ... because they didn't have global digital communication, that's when you can say, "Okay, well, I'm gonna... Maybe I'll pick one, two issues that really matter to me. I'll dedicate some time to activism, some money to, to, to, to supporting them. And then I will, like, proactively decide that the other ones are not my problem, even though they could be really serious and involve-

Ali Abdaal 1:15:51 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:15:51 ... a lot of human suffering."

Ali Abdaal 1:15:52 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:15:53 So you could say like, "You know what? I'm actually not going to be thinking, worrying when I, about, like, what I can do for climate change," say, "because actually, like, the welfare of immigrants is my, is my focus," right?

Ali Abdaal 1:16:07 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:16:07 And it's not because the other one isn't really important-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:10 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:16:10 ... it's that, like, it makes more sense for you to sort of concentrate your limited energies in one and-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:15 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:16:15 ... the other one to someone else.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:16 Yeah. Yeah, I really like that. Um, there's a, an organization called Giving What We Can that has this, um, pledge that I've, that I've taken, that I've made a few videos about, which is that the pledge to donate 10% of your income every year to cost-effective charities.

Oliver Burkeman 1:16:30 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:30 And, you know, in this whole, like, effective altruism and stuff movement of like, hey, how can we do the most good with, with our resources? There is, there is this idea of that, yes, you could donate more. It could be 11 or 12 or 15 or 18, and, and while we're there, why don't you stop working at your job and volunteer at this thing?

Oliver Burkeman 1:16:47 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:47 And while we're there, why not, like... And the list just continues. And what they found is that, like, you know, [laughs] we all have limited bandwidth to think about all of these things which are really, really, really important.

Oliver Burkeman 1:16:56 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:56 And so if we just set a rule for ourselves that, okay, without thinking about it, 10% of my income every year is gonna go to the ch- one of the charities that GiveWell.org deems-

Oliver Burkeman 1:17:04 Yeah. Right

Ali Abdaal 1:17:04 ... to be the most cost efficient.

Oliver Burkeman 1:17:05 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:05 So Against Malaria Foundation or Schistosomiasis professional or whatever, and, and recognizing that, yes, that means that there are some causes that will be underfunded and, uh, but not, not overly beating ourselves up about the fact that there's nothing we can do about those, um-

Oliver Burkeman 1:17:19 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:17:19 ... I think that's, like, a nice way of doing it, which is, like, kind of this, again, this middle ground idea.

Oliver Burkeman 1:17:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:22 Ooh, tip seven, seek out novelty in the mundane.

Oliver Burkeman 1:17:25 Everyone older than about 25 has this experience of time speeding up as they get older, right? So that your childhood seems like summer's lasted forever. And then the older you get, the, the more rapidly time seems to pass, which is kind of really depressing. And the usual advice on reversing it, that feeling, is to, like, have lots of novel experiences because we process more data we process from our experiences, the more, the more we remember them as lasting a long time. Um, but I'm sort of incorporating here a point from the meditation teacher Shinzen Young, who points out that, like, if you really focus on... If you, if you get better at training your attention to process more data from whatever you're doing, like, that's another way to the same goal, right? So it's not just, so it's not just that you, um, have to go on, like, exotic trips all the time, though it's great if you can.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:18:11 It's that you can also just, like, pay more attention to the things you're already doing, and, and you will actually... Life will feel more expansive in, in that sense.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:19 Tip number eight, to be a, quote, "researcher in relationships." What's, what's the deal with that?

Oliver Burkeman 1:18:23 I really benefited from encountering this perspective because it's like, I think if you're... Like, trying to exert too much control over life is a problem anywhere, but trying to exert too much control in relationships, um, whether it manifests as, like, you being a huge controlling jerk or you sort of withdrawing and being a commitment phobe, like, they're both sort of two sides of the same coin.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:44 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:18:44 It doesn't work because other people are kind of endlessly mysterious and infuriating, and that's kind of like the whole, the whole sort of value and point of being in relationships. So this idea that, like, of cultivating an attitude of curiosity. So in the parenting context, that would just be, you know, can I... If I've got, like, a couple of hours where it's me and my son and Solo, can I sort of like ask like- Who is this person? Like, who am I getting to- who is this person becoming?

Ali Abdaal 1:19:12 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:19:12 Like, what, what's he interested in? What, what could we ... what, what does he wanna do that we could do together, you know? As opposed to either, like, I've got a plan and you've got to follow it-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:21 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:19:21 ... which is a total nightmare with small children, or the flip side of that, which would be like, "I don't know, you decide what to do. I'm just here to look after you," which is also kinda like, kind of asshole-ish.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:31 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:19:31 So I think, um, that, that sort of idea of like, oh, who ... like, who is this person I'm getting to know? And I think it works in all relationships. It's really ... I'm not, not saying I'm really good at it-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:40 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:19:40 ... but, uh, it's that sort of openness to whatever might happen-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:43 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:19:43 ... instead of trying to have a strong preference for what should happen.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:47 Yes. Yeah, I think that r- that really applies in, like, the, the dating world as well, where I've certainly found that in, in the past I would go on a date with someone that I liked being like, "Oh, I, I really want them to like me."

Oliver Burkeman 1:19:56 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:56 And now it's more of a, uh ... i- it's, it's ... there's still a, a little bit of that, but now it's a little bit more on the side of I wonder what that's ... I wonder what this person is like, I wonder how we'll connect, and-

Oliver Burkeman 1:20:06 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:20:06 ... yeah, I, you know, this idea of being a, being a researcher, like being genuinely curious to the experience rather than wanting an outcome and trying to push towards it. Okay, so tip number nine is pra- cultivate instantaneous generosity.

Oliver Burkeman 1:20:17 I love this idea so much. I'm ... I, I really am so much a work in progress with it, but, but, um, Joseph Goldstein the meditation teacher has this, has this, th- this practice that if a, if a generous impulse arises-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:32 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:20:32 ... in his mind, the practice is to try to act on it right away.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:36 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:20:36 So if you have the thought, like, I should ... I'd like to give some money to that charity, or I'd like to reach out to that friend and say how much I appreciate them, or send someone some email about th- their work that you-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:47 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:20:47 ... that you liked, like do it then. Because what gets in the way over and over again is not that you sort of decide, oh, actually they don't deserve your ... they don't deserve it-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:58 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:20:58 ... which I should just keep quiet. What, what happens is you ... it, it just gets, it just gets sort of entangled in the stuff of everyday life or in this idea that you're going to become the kind of person. I was talking to someone the other day [laughs] who's, who said, like, they'd made some pledge to themselves that they were gonna try and, like, send one or maybe three, I don't know, it was like emails of praise to people who they really appreciated like every week or every day or something.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:23 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:21:23 And of course, the effect of that is to stop you just sending one email today because you're like, "Oh, I haven't got to the stage yet where I've really got that habit implemented."

Ali Abdaal 1:21:30 Yes.

Oliver Burkeman 1:21:30 "So for now I'm just not going to do it at all."

Ali Abdaal 1:21:32 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:21:33 Whereas, of course, the thing you ought to do, I think, and I aspire to do is, is to just don't worry about the kind of person you're becoming.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:41 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:21:41 Just send that one note.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:43 That's really good. This is a, this is like ex- ex- ex- it's the exact trap that I fall into when ... You know, this morning I was like, ooh, I've just messaged this person who's been, like, a good kind of friend and mentor over the last year. Uh, I should get him something for Christmas. Okay, let me add that to my, to my to-do list of n- nice things to do so that I can bash those, those tasks-

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:02 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:22:02 ... and get them all. I was like, oh yeah, I'm thinking about my old housemate. I should probably send her a message. You know what? Let's add that to, to the list so that-

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:07 Totally. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:22:07 ... when I get round to it-

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:08 Totally

Ali Abdaal 1:22:08 ... then I will just be able to do all this one go, but-

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:10 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:22:10 ... if instead we switch to the model of if it is something related to gratitude, then do it now regardless of what is happening, that will probably lead to a happier life. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:18 Yeah, and you'll, you'll be that person-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:19 Even more meaningful relationships, yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:20 ... that you're waiting to become. Yeah, exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:21 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:22 Nice.

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:22 I love it. Okay, that's a very ... Like, I'm gonna change that from, like, right now. Um, and finally tip number 10-

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:27 Don't, don't try even to do that perfectionistic-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:29 Yeah, no, quite. I was like-

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:29 ... right? Because that's where it all goes wrong

Ali Abdaal 1:22:30 ... yeah, daily issue. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:31 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:32 Um, and finally, uh, tip number 10, practice doing nothing.

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:35 I mean, I think this is just generally excellent advice-

Ali Abdaal 1:22:37 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:22:37 ... but, but I'm talking in that section about, um, specifically about, like, non-directive meditation, this approach to meditation where you're not even trying to follow the breath. You're setting a timer, you're sitting there, and you're not doing anything. And if you catch yourself doing something, thinking about something, following the breath, and it ... for wriggling around, you're just like, just stop doing that thing. Keep stopping, keep stopping, keep stopping. It makes you see how ... Uh, Shinzen Young calls it do nothing meditation. Uh, there are books calling it non-directive meditation. Um, whatever. It makes you see how hard [laughs] it is to do-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:11 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:23:11 ... to do ... And it's probably impossible on some philosophical level to do nothing at all, but, but this sort of action of constantly sort of letting go of the thing that you're doing, doing nothing is really hard and, and, and I think you sort of ... you can actually get some good cognitive training benefits quite, quite quickly from just a few minutes on a regular basis-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:32 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:23:32 ... of really trying to do nothing. And breath following meditation, which is so useful in so many ways, is kind of not the ... That's something different, and ... 'cause then you're sort of really ... You can ... There's a temptation to, like, really bear down on, like, I'm gonna become super focused. Actually doing nothing for a few minutes, it's kind of the scariest thing in the world in a way.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:50 Okay, wonderful. Okay, so we've got a bunch of questions about, uh, productivity and happiness and stuff off of the Instagram and the Twitter,

Ali Abdaal 1:23:58 so-

Oliver Burkeman 1:23:58 Excellent

Ali Abdaal 1:23:58 ... I'll just feed those to you and we can, we can have a bit of chat.

Oliver Burkeman 1:24:01 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:01 So justgrace_ says, [laughs] how, how do you deal with procrastination? [laughs] That old chestnut.

Oliver Burkeman 1:24:07 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:07 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:24:08 Um, well, firstly, I think everything we've been talking about here is, is an answer to that ... in, is an answer to that question, 'cause I think a lot of procrastination has this perfectionistic motivation, like I'm not gonna start until I can know that I can finish or I know that I can do it well. And so anything you can do to just sort of fall into reality [laughs] instead is gonna help you with, um, with that. Um, I'm also really, uh, charmed by a technique that I came across in a ... I mean, it's got other ... It, it, it crops up in other places. I'm really charmed by this technique that I came across in a book called, um, The More You Do, The Better You Feel by, I think David Parker is the author. It's kind of an idiosyncratic, uh, book.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:50 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:24:50 But he just has this method that he calls the just one thing method where you literally, like, write down on a, on a piece of lined paper a thing you're gonna do, do it, cross it out, write another one immediately below it, do it, cross it out, continue.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:05 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:25:06 It's really bizarre how this should- ... possibly work given, especially for those of us who have all our complicated Kanban boards-

Ali Abdaal 1:25:15 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:25:15 ... and all the rest of it. But it's kind of like this is a powerful way to get yourself out of a rut.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:19 Nice.

Oliver Burkeman 1:25:19 It's just to sort of narrow your time horizon down to like what is one thing that I'm gonna do?

Ali Abdaal 1:25:25 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:25:26 Do that thing, cross it out.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:28 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:25:28 Keep, keep making the list longer.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:29 Yeah. That's basically my method, except that th- th- it should, it's, it's like genuinely just that one thing. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:25:35 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:25:35 Which is like, you know, the whole kind of what's the, what's the most important thing I need to do today?

Oliver Burkeman 1:25:39 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:39 Um, my other ki- my whole theory on pr- procrastination is basically I think procrastination is a problem with getting started, and, uh, distraction is the thing that comes later once you've gotten started.

Oliver Burkeman 1:25:49 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:49 And so to beat procrastination, we just wanna make it as easy as possible to get started. So like setting a goal within our control, making sure it's just, look what we've got. It's, it's easy enough to kind of make the time for it. Lowering the bar as much as possible to embrace, embrace that it's probably gonna be a bit crap, but like we do it anyway.

Oliver Burkeman 1:26:05 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:06 And kind of even sometimes convincing ourselves that we're only gonna do the thing for two minutes.

Oliver Burkeman 1:26:11 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:11 'Cause on- once we've gotten started, then at that point it's so much easier to keep going.

Oliver Burkeman 1:26:14 Yes, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:14 It's, it's actually just sitting down and starting to write the first words or, or whatever that, that feels like the hardest part. Um, Midwifes Ibby says, "How can we think about time in a more healthy way, like not in a race to the finish line kind of way?"

Oliver Burkeman 1:26:28 Again, I sort of want to gesture-

Ali Abdaal 1:26:29 Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:26:30 ... to our whole conversation.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:31 The whole, the whole book. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:26:32 Um, but, uh, you know, I think that just seeing the, just, just seeing the fact that the way we relate to time is, is not the only way, not the only way it's ever been done. Um, thinking about this notion that crops up in various philosophers, that, that, that maybe it makes sense to say not that we have time, but that we are time, that we are this kind of little period of time from birth through to death. And then y- you can't really be in, you can't really be in a war or battle with that then because you've sort of y- y- you're, you're thinking about it completely differently. It's just, it's just the medium in which your life is unfolding. Um, i- if the question was seeking a more practical answer than that-

Ali Abdaal 1:27:18 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:27:19 ... then I apologize. I think, um, the answer in a more practical vein is, is just, you know, all the things we've been talking about to be incremental, to focus on one thing, to, uh, set the goal at an attainable level. All these things just sort of reduce the re- reduce the, the momentum of that race to the finish and bring you back to just doing the thing that you're doing right now.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:42 Nice. Love it. Um, Saira Mahmood_ says, "What are your thoughts on The 4-Hour Workweek?" I'm assuming she means the book rather than the, the-

Oliver Burkeman 1:27:51 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:27:51 ... uh, the podcast.

Oliver Burkeman 1:27:52 I mean, it had a big impact on me. Now, I was a little bit rude about it at one point when I was, uh, writing this column, uh, because I was a little bit rude about every successful-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:03 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:28:04 ... uh, productivity book. But I think, you know, um, the, the sort of, um, business m- money-making side of that was not something that I was, that particularly was my, was my thing. But the stuff about the Pareto principle, the stuff about like figuring out that like 80... that 20% of the effort you put into things, 20% of the people that you deal with deliver 80% of the value, 20% of the-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:30 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:28:31 ... and 80% of the problems that you have come from 20% of the projects you're involved in, that sort of thing. And those kind of, that was a, I mean, it was a, like Getting Things Done. I think it was like a really, really important, um, sort of formative text in, in thinking about these things in this new way.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:50 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:28:51 Um, you know, I don't think, as, to the best of my knowledge, Tim Ferriss does not claim that he works four hours.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:57 Not four, yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:28:59 Um, uh, and, uh, you know, so I don't, I don't, uh, I don't think anyone's getting to an actual four-hour workweek in most times.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:07 One of, one of his recent ep- podcast episodes was the audio for the presentation he gave at South by Southwest in 2007 just before the book came out, and someone had found like the high quality audio of it and it was just so interesting to hear like 15 years later him from 15 years ago describe the ideas in the book, which was all around the Pareto principle, this, uh, you know, eliminating stuff.

Oliver Burkeman 1:29:29 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:30 And I think, yeah, yeah, just really good and I think m- for me, one of the books that had, probably the single book that's had the most impact on my life.

Oliver Burkeman 1:29:36 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:36 Uh, not, for me it was less from a productivity standpoint and more from like actually the business passive income-

Oliver Burkeman 1:29:41 Right. Interesting

Ali Abdaal 1:29:42 ... lifestyle standpoint.

Oliver Burkeman 1:29:42 And the other thing I remember from there is the idea of, um, not deferring, like the mini retirements idea.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:48 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:29:48 Is that, that is totally like in tune with what I'm trying to get at here in the sense that it's about like not, not endlessly deferring the, the moment of value in life to some point across the horizon, but taking it now for like going and doing that thing for a week, uh, instead of, instead of it always being in the future.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:04 Nice. Um, Mukund15761 says, "How did it feel to write the book? Was there any sort of regret that you had about your life while writing it?" [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:30:14 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:30:15 It's a very in- in- interesting question. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:30:16 Interesting. I mean, the process of writing the book was the process of kind of coming to understand what I believed about these things. So it was a sort of a therapeutic act, and I was ch- i- it was sort of transformative in the sense that like I couldn't write it to the end until I'd kind of slightly become a different person. Uh, so it was very, very important for me. It was not just a question of like I'd figured these ideas out and now I was going to generously write them down for other people. It was like this was the act of-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:43 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:30:43 ... making big strides in my own sort of understanding of, of all of this. I'm not sure it's quite the question about regret. Looking back on it, I would say if, if the question is do I regret anything about the process of writing the book, which I'm not sure it quite was, but then, you know, I, there were times in that process where I was not a pleasant person to live with-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:04 Oh

Oliver Burkeman 1:31:04 ... because I was so anxious about it, or I was so deep in the ideas, or I was so unsure if I could carry it off and things like that, you know? And then- And then I think you become slightly sort of moody presence around your house, and that's... I don't think that was... So I think I made a lot of sacrifices to get this book written, but kind of my wife did as well a little bit.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:23 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:31:23 And she maybe didn't sign up for them in the same way [laughs] that, that I had. So, uh-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:27 Nice.

Oliver Burkeman 1:31:28 There's that.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:28 Yeah. I wanna ask you much more about that at lunch, like-

Oliver Burkeman 1:31:30 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:31:30 ... the whole process of writing a book. Um, anyway, uh, Noah Shadju underscore says, "How do we stop the fear of missing out, um, factoring in our lives?"

Oliver Burkeman 1:31:39 Again, I really am sorry, but I do think this is a perspective shift rather than a cool technique, and the, the perspective shift is this: The problem is not that... The, the question is not how do you avoid the fear of missing out. The, the, the, the, the, the trick is to see that missing out is just completely guaranteed on an epic scale. Like, even in eras before our own, but especially in this one, the mismatch between the time that you have and the time you'll have to take advantage of various opportunities and the number of those potential opportunities is just, it's so crazy that, like, missing out is the basic situation in life. You'll, like, if you do, like, three really cool things today, there were an effectively infinite number that you didn't do. So, like, that's great actually because then you can be like, "Okay, that ship has sailed. Missing out is happening. Now whi- which of the infinite number of things that I could, in principle, do, shall I actually do?" I think that's a really... It's really helpful to sort of-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:39 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:32:39 And then you then, then you can almost get, in fact I think you can get to the state of actually taking a sort of active joy in the fact that, um, that you're missing out because it becomes an af- an affirmation of the things you do choose. If you just... If I decide to... If I feel like I sort of have to stay home at night and give my son a bath and put him to bed, there's room for resentment. But if I see that, like, I could have done various things and I chose on some level to do this one-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:04 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:33:05 ... I mean, choice is a little awkward in parenting-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:07 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:33:07 ... 'cause he sort of, like, had to happen, but there is choice involved.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:10 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:33:10 If you, if you can see that you're sort of willingly missing out on o- other things because missing out is inevitable, then you can sort of really become more absorbed in the-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:20 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:33:20 ... in the thing you choose to do.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:21 Yeah, it's like the difference between, uh, have to and get to.

Oliver Burkeman 1:33:24 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:25 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:33:25 Right, right. Yes. Seeing life, seeing life as a to-do list you have to get through versus a menu that you're, that you're choosing from.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:31 Get to choose from.

Oliver Burkeman 1:33:31 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:32 Yeah. Yeah, I really like that. I, and I, and I guess, like... I guess recognizing this is important in, in, in other areas of life as well. For example, one thing that Alain de Botton often, often talks about when it comes to ro- romance is that if we marry someone and we think that we're never gonna be attracted to anyone else ever again, we're just setting ourself up, up for failure because of course there are, are a zillion people around the world that you could be attracted to, and you probably would be attracted to.

Oliver Burkeman 1:33:54 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:54 But the fact is that you've chosen to spend your life with this one person and embracing that-

Oliver Burkeman 1:33:58 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:33:59 ... rather than trying to go against it or thinking that it shouldn't happen is kind of this idea of kind of the, the joy of missing out. Yes, I am choosing to miss out on these other potential, you know, dalliances or [laughs] whatever-

Oliver Burkeman 1:34:09 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:34:09 ... the phrase is.

Oliver Burkeman 1:34:10 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:10 Yeah. Um, all right. Duartodua says, "What is the midpoint of being comfortably busy but not too busy in your mind?"

Oliver Burkeman 1:34:19 That's really interesting. In, uh, in the, um, in the book I write about... I think this might pass m- many of the people in the audience by, but I write about, um, Richard Scarry's children's books. Did... Were they part of your-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:30 Never heard of him. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:34:30 ... childhood? Richard Scarry's an American illustrator who wrote these books called, uh, part of a series called Busytown, and they're just like these great super detailed spreads of, like, uh, of, like, city life, but all the people in them are animals. So, like, you know, the, the grocery is run by a family of pigs, and the firefighters are raccoons, I think, and it's all... And they're all... Uh, the whole point is that everyone's really busy. But the, but the kind of busy that they are is not... is, is that they have tons to do, and you just get... and, like, you get the sense from how they enjoy their busyness that they also think they've got about the right amount of time to do all these things, right? They're not overwhelmed. He didn't call it Overwhelmed Town-

Ali Abdaal 1:35:08 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:35:08 ... which would've been a kind of weird, uh-

Ali Abdaal 1:35:10 [laughs] Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:35:10 ... title for a series of children's books.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:12 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:35:12 And that... I think that... I, I bring this up even [laughs] though it's a cultural reference that might pass most people by, 'cause there's something really beautiful about that. Like, it's not bad to be busy. People, you know, um, elderly people sometimes talk about, like, b- being busy as, as a positive in their lives. You know? It's like, "How, how are you doing?" "Well, it's good. I'm keeping busy. You know, there's lots of, lots of things going on." It's like the, the midpoint is being active in the world is great. Having a whole ton of things you want to achieve is great. Thinking that you're going to achieve more of them than is gonna be temporally possible for you to achieve, that's where you, you go over that, um, that boundary. So, um, you know, filling, filling life with activities is, is, is a great thing. I don't think that necessarily having nothing on your to-do list would be a desirable state-

Ali Abdaal 1:36:00 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:36:01 ... at all.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:02 Yeah. I think, I think the way I think of this is sort of like, uh, hmm, climate rather than weather, in that on a given day, I might be very, quote, "busy," like jumping from one meeting to another to another thing to another thing, having breakfast, lunch, dinner, and coffee with different people all in one day, and that would be exhausting if it happened every day.

Oliver Burkeman 1:36:20 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:20 But it's quite exhilarating once in a while.

Oliver Burkeman 1:36:22 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:22 And so if I c- I like to sort of casually think about, you know, the, the, these last couple of weeks, how, how has my calendar felt, how has my schedule felt? And if that's, like, broadly ish, yeah, reasonable-

Oliver Burkeman 1:36:35 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:36:35 ... then, then that's fine. 'Cause I think there is a trap of overthinking, like, "Oh, on, on this day, I felt particularly overwhelmed because of ABC." It's like, oh, I mean, seasons of life, seasons of the week, like, it's, it's all good.

Oliver Burkeman 1:36:45 Yeah, right, and there's a very great tendency to think, like, if a day goes, if a day goes stressfully, "Oh, no, is my life gonna be like this every single day f- for the rest of my existence?" And likewise, that if a day goes really well, um, and balanced, in a balanced way, like, "Oh, I've got to make sure every single day is like this for the end of, to the end of my existence."

Ali Abdaal 1:37:03 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:37:03 Like, not helpful thoughts.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:04 Yeah. It's kind of like [laughs] this is a weird, weird analogy, but, like, when it comes to posture for sitting and stuff, you know, everyone obsesses over finding the perfect posture. But in fact, the perfect posture is the next one, and, like, just changing your posture every hour is by far-

Oliver Burkeman 1:37:17 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:37:17 ... the best thing you can do rather than getting the perfect e- ergonomic chair, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, and I think similarly with this sort of stuff, like- Actually, as long as there is some balance, like, or what you don't, what you probably don't want is a, you know, very, very, very rigid schedule where every day is the same. There is... It's nice to have some level of messiness in it.

Oliver Burkeman 1:37:35 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:35 That's kind of what brings the life into it. Um, and just being a little bit more like, oh, pencil sketch about it rather than inking it in-

Oliver Burkeman 1:37:42 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:37:42 ... I guess.

Oliver Burkeman 1:37:42 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:43 Um, okay. Question. We got a question from Twitter, from Aparna Gurudwan. How do we decide what matters? As we make most of our decisions based of, on a, uh, based on our current understanding of the world, and we can't predict the future, how do we know that what matters to our present selves will matter to our future self?

Oliver Burkeman 1:38:00 I mean, I think the first thing to say, I'm such a downer, is that you can't know.

Ali Abdaal 1:38:04 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:38:04 Um, so, you know, we're all, uh, in the situation of, like, feeling our way from one moment to the next. Uh, but this is where I get to mention one of my favorite questions which I also mention in the book from the Jungian therapist James Hollis, who recommends that people ask of certain life choices they're facing, but I think you could apply it here. Does this choice enlarge me or diminish me?

Ali Abdaal 1:38:27 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:38:28 Um, and it's a kind of a weird phrasing, but it's, as an alternative to, like, will this make me happy or unhappy, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:38:34 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:38:34 There's this, there's something about the phrasing of this question that sort of, m- I think that most people, even if you don't know whether what you're doing right now with your life is, is like, as, as making you as happy as you could be, um, even if you don't know if it's the right thing or not according to some value system you've inherited, you kind of can answer the question, like, am I, am I on a path of enlargement at the moment? Am I sort of in some sense, like, growing?

Ali Abdaal 1:39:00 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:39:00 And what's so helpful about that, to me, is that, like, there's lots of times on a path of meaning and enlargement that are not gonna be fun.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:08 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:39:09 So you could a- you know, if you're experiencing certain kinds of tensions and difficulties in a relationship, like, this question helps you, um, divide between tho- the kind of difficulties that are like, "Oh, this is a toxic relationship, [laughs] you need to get out of it," and those which are like, yeah. Like, be- becoming, uh, closer to somebody in a relationship is tough, and it has interesting difficulties, and you become a bigger person as a result of them. And, like, you've got to be able to distinguish between those two kinds of difficulties [laughs] in life, because one kind you wanna get rid of, but the other kind is, like, totally crucial to, to, to growth. And that question, like, you know whether the job you're in at the moment is, like, hard and challenging and not always fun, but it's, but it's something that is taking you somewhere you wanna go versus, like, it's just making my soul wither by the day, and I need to change radically, you know?

Ali Abdaal 1:39:59 Yeah. I guess, let's say... A- and ag- again, uh, may- maybe this is similar to that rocks thing, but if you're, uh, if you've got, like, multiple options, and they all feel enlarging in some capacity, um, like, like for example, I guess kind of thinking selfishly, I could decide that I want to take the American medical exams and do residency in the US and do practice medicine, and that would be enlarging in some capacity. I could decide to apply for an MBA at Harvard or Stanford, and that would be enlarging in some capa- some capacity. I could decide to actually focus in London and grow the team, and that would be enlarging in some capa- Decide to double down on the book.

Oliver Burkeman 1:40:33 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:33 Like, there's, there's all these different options-

Oliver Burkeman 1:40:35 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:40:35 ... for, like, um, for, for, for things where all options are feasibly reasonable and feasibly enlarging [laughs] and, like, really life is not, like, long enough to do all of the things. Um, any, any thoughts there? [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:40:45 Wow, yeah. Like, uh, partly I want to, like, deliver advice to you here, and then the other part I'm just like, "No, I know exactly how you feel," like about, about in a, in different contexts. It's like it's not easy. Well, firstly, like one, one response to that is just to say, "Great, then, then that's fine. Doesn't matter which you choose."

Ali Abdaal 1:41:00 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:41:00 'Cause, 'cause they're both like-

Ali Abdaal 1:41:00 That was a good point. Yeah. I love them all enlarging

Oliver Burkeman 1:41:02 ... they're all going, they're all going to be-

Ali Abdaal 1:41:03 They're all reasonable. Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:41:03 ... enlarging.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:04 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:41:04 And then the other would be that, you know, if you, if you imagined yourself in those different paths and you maybe, you know, went to a quiet place outdoors somewhere and journaled about them for a bit, would they all stay in that way? Or would you, would you start to be able to distinguish the, the degree to which other people's or parental or-

Ali Abdaal 1:41:25 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:41:25 ... societal agendas were, um, were, um-

Ali Abdaal 1:41:30 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:41:30 ... influencing one or another? Because, like, one thing that's so interesting about the, specifically medicine, right? Is that this is a, this is a, this is a career that attracts very large numbers, as far as I can tell, of two kinds of people. Number one, people who find it deeply and profoundly meaningful to be doing what they're doing in medicine, and the other one, people who are, like, trying to please their parents [laughs] who really wants them to be doctors.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:51 Yeah. Or like society-

Oliver Burkeman 1:41:52 Right. Right, right

Ali Abdaal 1:41:53 ... that recognizes the doctor thing as, like, a good thing. And, or-

Oliver Burkeman 1:41:55 Right. Exactly. So that's kind of really inter- Like, which side of that are you on? Is the...

Ali Abdaal 1:41:57 Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:41:57 Yeah, that's so, so fascinating. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:41:59 Uh, how does one get over an unproductive rut?

Oliver Burkeman 1:42:02 I am gonna repeat myself here, because the answer is that just one thing thing, I think. Part of the answer anyway. It's that idea of, like, just drain all the, if you can, drain all the angst out of this. Just like what is a single thing? There's a quote actually, it's in, it's in Jordan Peterson's book-

Ali Abdaal 1:42:20 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:42:20 ... 12 Rules For Life. And so I've mentioned it occasionally, and, like, people get cross because he's a very divisive figure. But he says this very non-divisive [laughs] thing at one point, which is, you know, um, what is one thing that you could do and would do right now to add a tiny bit more order to your life? And this is where the sort of like making your bed-

Ali Abdaal 1:42:38 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:42:38 ... um, cult comes from. Like, figure out that thing, do that thing, reward yourself for doing that thing, rinse and repeat. Um, I think that's really, uh, helpful if you're absolutely kind of paralyzed, if it's, you're really in the kind of like not doing anything at all kind of rut. If it's a more sort of long-term rut, I think, I think again then something that is really helpful in the same vein is to, is to, uh, of a creative rut, which was a question, I think, right? Like, is, is to sort of take the creativity question out of it. So, like, if you're feeling like I can't... I haven't got any inspiration for my creative work- Then I think it's really powerful to just get quantitative about it and be like, "I'm going to produce X number of words or one picture per however long," and to sort of turn it into quantities-

Ali Abdaal 1:43:26 Yes

Oliver Burkeman 1:43:27 ... and take out the kind of... The, the... If you're feeling uninspired, I think seeking to feel inspired is not-

Ali Abdaal 1:43:33 Yes

Oliver Burkeman 1:43:33 ... is not the way forward. Just like turning it mechanistic into something you can do for a couple of weeks while you wait-

Ali Abdaal 1:43:38 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:43:39 ... for inspiration to return is probably the answer.

Ali Abdaal 1:43:41 Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think, I think also, like, yeah, I'm, I'm reminded of, uh... I think Seth Godin was saying this to Tim Ferriss when Tim was like, "Oh, Seth, I'm not writing anything. I feel unproductive." And he was like, "Well, show me your bad writing." And he was like, "Oh, well, I haven't done any." He's like, "Well, that's your problem." [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:43:58 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:43:59 Where I think often a rut of some description is in- is somewhat on the spectrum of perfectionism, of like, you know, "I only want to do this thing if it'll, if it'll be good enough." And it's like, well, just do a bad version of it. Like do a bad version of cleaning your room. Do a bad version of reading a book.

Oliver Burkeman 1:44:17 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:18 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:44:18 And I'm also thinking of another thing. There's a lovely blog post that I go back to again and again by, um, Susan Piver, the Buddhist teacher who... And it, the headline is something like, Getting Things Done by Not Being Mean to Yourself. And it, and it, um, it, it, it relates to this, it, it relates this experience she had of sort of really wanting to be the person who like lived by that credo of like, um, uh, amateurs wait for inspiration-

Ali Abdaal 1:44:40 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:44:40 ... and the rest of us just get down to work, and how that had turned for her into this kind of aggression towards the self.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:46 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:44:46 And that actually sometimes if you weren't gonna do anything anyway because you're in such a rut, then you might as well ask the question like, "What would be most fun to do today?"

Ali Abdaal 1:44:54 Mm-hmm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:44:54 Because it's not gonna be worse than sitting doing absolutely nothing and feeling miserable.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:59 Yeah. Yeah, I often find this in the evening sometimes where it's like I, I, I can choose to be dissatisfied with what I've done for the day, or I can choose to just simply choose to not be dissatisfied with that-

Oliver Burkeman 1:45:07 [laughs] Right

Ali Abdaal 1:45:08 ... and just, just do something fun. [laughs] And it's often is just a conscious choice of like, do I want to continue to tell the story to myself that beats myself up about this thing? 'Cause either way it's not gonna change how much I've done. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:45:17 Right. Right. No, exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:18 All it's gonna change is how I feel about myself-

Oliver Burkeman 1:45:19 Yeah. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:45:20 ... which is all that matters. Um, and I sometimes, like, I sometimes argue this point with my mom where she says, you know, "Oh, the only reason you're, you're saying that is to make yourself feel better about yourself." I was like, "Well, yes."

Oliver Burkeman 1:45:30 Yeah. And?

Ali Abdaal 1:45:31 That's, that's the point. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:45:32 Yes. Right. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:45:32 Why would I tell myself that story then?

Oliver Burkeman 1:45:34 Right. Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:45:35 But yes. Um, anyway, final question from Twitter. Uh, oh, I guess the question is in two parts. One, is it worth, um... _x5Baran says, "Is it worth pursuing something that matters to me but isn't sustainable to do but might be in the future?"

Oliver Burkeman 1:45:50 I can sort of think, I can sort of imagine contexts where that might apply, right? You-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:55 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:45:55 ... you kind of, there might be things that you really wanna do. You don't think you can make them pay, for example-

Ali Abdaal 1:46:00 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:46:00 ... but they're really important to you. But maybe one day you could make them pay.

Ali Abdaal 1:46:04 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:46:04 I mean, uh, I, I, I mean, yes. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:46:09 Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:46:10 I think, I think it's, I think it's worthwhile to do things that matter. That's virtually a tautology.

Ali Abdaal 1:46:14 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:46:15 And, and, you know, one way to think about that is not to define mattering as... And I do get into this section of the book. Like don't define, don't set a, don't set a definition of mattering that is so high that almost everything worthwhile in life fails by comparison against it. So for some people, that's like, don't... Some people like don't think that they can be novelists if they can't be Tolstoy. In some sort it's that sort of like, you know-

Ali Abdaal 1:46:40 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:46:40 ... historic level kind of mattering. But other people might say like, "You know, what's the point in spending the next two years doing X because I don't think I can, I don't think it's feasible to spend the next 40 years doing X?" Well, there might be reasons to not do that, uh, depending on your sort of highest goals for your life, but that's not a good reason to s- to decide that something doesn't matter.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:01 Yes.

Oliver Burkeman 1:47:01 It can matter to do for-

Ali Abdaal 1:47:04 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:47:04 ... a couple of-

Ali Abdaal 1:47:05 It can matter seasonally

Oliver Burkeman 1:47:05 ... a couple of... Yeah, absolutely. It can matter for a couple of years, and then you move on to something else and it mattered. 'Cause otherwise-

Ali Abdaal 1:47:10 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:47:10 ... you're, again, you're just sort of storing everything up to this like alleged deathbed moment of like-

Ali Abdaal 1:47:15 Yeah. No, I think, I, I think this is a great-

Oliver Burkeman 1:47:17 ... of like, "Is everything great now?" Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:47:17 ... I, I think this is a trap a lot of people fall into, which is, and, and I certainly do as well, which is the, um, if I cannot do this forever, there's no point in doing it now. Like, oh, I don't wanna start a YouTube channel because I'm not gonna be a YouTuber in my 50s. Like, well, okay. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:47:31 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:47:32 That's not a good reason to not start a YouTube channel. Maybe there are other reasons, like you're scared or-

Oliver Burkeman 1:47:35 Right. Right

Ali Abdaal 1:47:36 ... you don't value it or whatever, but like I don't see myself doing this 30 years down the line is absolutely not a good reason. Similarly, when it comes to, you know, uh, yeah, o- o- one, one, one thing we're, we're talking about with, with Gordon, who's, who's been a personal trainer for 12 years, is can we do like a sort of body transformation for me over a may- a period of maybe six months where, you know, work out four times a week, eat super healthily, try and, I don't know, get on the cover of Men's Health Magazine just for the babs.

Oliver Burkeman 1:48:00 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:01 And it's not sustainable, like obviously. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:48:03 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:03 But that's fine. It, it doesn't need to be. It's a bit of fun to happen in the short term, and even then it will probably, if it happens, which it will, it's gonna promote like healthy eating and it's gonna promote some good habits.

Oliver Burkeman 1:48:13 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:13 Recognize it. Yeah, which, yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:48:16 And like what is life other than like some episodes of things that you do-

Ali Abdaal 1:48:19 Yeah. Exactly

Oliver Burkeman 1:48:19 ... until you're not doing them anymore, right? So you might as well make them-

Ali Abdaal 1:48:22 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:48:22 ... meaningful ones in the moment. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:24 Yeah. Absolutely. Um, and finally, what are your thoughts on the idea that... Ooh, okay, so there was this tweet that came out a few days ago. I suspect the person who wrote the tweet did it ironically-

Oliver Burkeman 1:48:38 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:48:38 ... like knowing that this was gonna rile people up the wrong way.

Oliver Burkeman 1:48:41 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:41 And lots of people have become riled up the wrong way.

Oliver Burkeman 1:48:43 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:43 So I'll just read the tweet out to you.

Oliver Burkeman 1:48:44 Best use of Twitter. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48:45 Yeah. Quite. [laughs] "Hot take: The easiest way to put yourself behind in life is going traveling for months on end in your early 20s to, quote, 'find yourself.' It's an absolute success killer and puts you behind the majority. Why waste the key years of your life meant for building and getting ahead?" So that's the, the tweet, which lots of people are dunking on because it, it's just obviously bad. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:04 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:49:05 Um, and I guess this person wants you to also dunk on that. Like what are your thoughts on-

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:08 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:49:09 ... the fact that-

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:09 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:49:09 ... exploring yourself is like a success killer and-

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:11 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:49:11 ... wanna get ahead in life.

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:13 Get down to business.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:13 Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:14 Found Theranos.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:16 Yes. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:16 Be on your way.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:17 Exactly.

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:17 Well, the first thought I have about that is that like it, it's, it's, it, it's obviously- ... nonsense from a certain perspective, which is the perspective I know most naturally wanna take. There might be industries where that is, like, true relative to that industry.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:34 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:34 Like, I don't know, and I wouldn't wanna ev- like, give people terrible advice-

Ali Abdaal 1:49:37 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:37 ... because I don't know their industry. I can... I'm sure there are, um, like, places where the path of advancement is, is structured in such a way that that becomes true for that industry.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:51 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:51 But like-

Ali Abdaal 1:49:51 I think it's, it's pretty true in medicine.

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:53 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:53 You spend your 20s, like, striving for this thing-

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:55 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:49:55 ... such that you can then enjoy life in your 30s-

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:57 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:49:57 ... or 40s. But yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:49:58 So firstly, you have to see that it's relative to that industry.

Ali Abdaal 1:50:00 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:50:00 So the question is, does success in that industry matter to you more than anything else, and matter to you more than exploring and finding yourself in your 20s?

Ali Abdaal 1:50:08 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:50:08 And it might do. Um, and then if it turns out that that was the wrong path, you can always go and explore and find yourself in your 40s. I mean, like, plenty of people do that. But no, I mean, it's obviously not... It, it, it's a, it's a comment that you're gonna tell me now it was from by, made by some, like, close friend or somebody I want to like me or something-

Ali Abdaal 1:50:24 No, no, it's like-

Oliver Burkeman 1:50:25 But I, I don't know who that tweet's from

Ali Abdaal 1:50:26 ... it's all, it's all good. Random. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:50:27 Um, uh, that, like, it, it's a, it's a, it's an o- it's an observation that, that takes as read precisely the thing that we're, like, what should be debating here.

Ali Abdaal 1:50:40 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:50:40 Which is, like, what is a meaningful life for you?

Ali Abdaal 1:50:43 Mm.

Oliver Burkeman 1:50:43 It, it's, it, it assumes that professional advancement in the industries where this applies is the thing that matters the most, and then it says, "Well, don't do this other thing." It's like maybe if you're someone who, for whom what matters, um, sifts out that way, but if you're not, then it's kind of ridiculous. So I think it mainly just shows that, that that kind of very specific advice then offered to literally everyone-

Ali Abdaal 1:51:04 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:51:04 ... as if it would apply to them all is just, uh, is, is, is crazy.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:08 I di- I, I don't, I don't really know if we've, if we kind of touched on this, but do you have a, a theory on how to, how to figure out what actually matters to us? Big question. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:51:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:15 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:51:15 I mean, well, the enlargement and diminishment-

Ali Abdaal 1:51:16 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:51:16 ... stuff that we talked about is a part of it. Um, and then I was very conscious and deliberate writing this book, for example, of not wanting to offer a laundry list. I not wanting it to be like, oh-

Ali Abdaal 1:51:26 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:51:27 ... s- relationships, time spent in nature-

Ali Abdaal 1:51:29 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:51:29 ... getting enough sleep. You know, it's like either people know all that anyway or-

Ali Abdaal 1:51:32 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:51:32 ... it's

Ali Abdaal 1:51:33 Or it's gonna be lost on them anyway. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:51:34 Right, right. Whatever.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:35 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:51:35 You know, it's, I, I can't help you with that. Um, and I'm not necessarily a sort of great exemplar of it either. I do... I think basically peop- most people, certainly my real experience of this question, is just in terms of how it, how it goes in life. It, it's not a question of, like, you, you spend a week at a retreat and you figure the answer to this out-

Ali Abdaal 1:51:57 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:51:57 ... and you never return to it. Lots of books that I remember criticizing in my early days in the col- The Guardian column, you know, they give this idea that you're gonna... It's like, first of all, figure out your, like-

Ali Abdaal 1:52:06 Core values

Oliver Burkeman 1:52:06 ... core life.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:06 Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:52:07 Now, once you've done that, and you're like, hold on a second.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:09 [laughs] Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:52:10 But, like, and I think that seeing it as, seeing these things as part of, as a, as a, as a, as a, a part of the journey that is, is always there on the journey, right? So I think, like, I think it's helpful to think of the process of being alive and moving through life as the process of clarifying what a meaningful life is for you, um, instead of this... I mean, I'm not saying it can't help sometimes to, like, go and spend two days coming up with a vision statement, but, like, that, that's gonna then change and have to adapt within, within days presumably. I think that idea that you're gonna sort it out, that we all have a single stable purpose, and then you've got to just spend the rest of your life-

Ali Abdaal 1:52:46 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:52:46 ... executing on this insight you had, I just... I, I don't know anyone for whom that worked that way, and it certainly didn't for me so far.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:51 Yeah. Agreed. I've tried all these exercises and they're just like-

Oliver Burkeman 1:52:53 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:52:54 Some of them have, have, have been useful, but in the sense that, um, they just give clarity and we... It, they encourage us to ask the sorts of questions we just wouldn't normally.

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:03 Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:03 Um, but I think I'd just come back, come back to that, like, uh, tightness of gripping metaphor that you-

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:07 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:53:08 ... th- that you said earlier, which is that g- gripping too tightly to a vision statement or values or anything like that. It's not that the values are the problem, it's that the, the, the tightness of gripping is the problem.

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:17 And we relax-

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:18 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:53:18 ... our grip and be a l- little bit more chill about it. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:20 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:21 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:21 Yeah. And it's great to put time and thought into, um, you know, your plan that is just a statement-

Ali Abdaal 1:53:27 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:28 ... of intent in the present moment.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:28 Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:29 It's, it's thinking that your plan is anything more than that-

Ali Abdaal 1:53:31 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:31 ... that, uh, yeah, that is a problem, I think.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:32 Nice. Um, so we normally wrap up with a series

Ali Abdaal 1:53:36 of just some quick-fire questions. Question number one, uh, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:41 The, the feel of this is very easy. I'm trying to phrase it right. I mean, it's basically, um, [laughs] it w- it's basically something like you don't need to struggle so hard to, like, justify your existence on the planet.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:56 Nice.

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:57 Little bit candid.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:58 That's good.

Oliver Burkeman 1:53:58 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:53:59 I love it. [laughs] Uh, who has had the biggest influence on your career?

Oliver Burkeman 1:54:03 That is a really hard question to answer. Um, I think that, um, two editors at The Guardian, Ian Katz and Mary Peebles made... probably had the biggest, like, opportunities they offered me or things they saw that figured out that I could do with their, with their, under their guidance probably made the biggest difference. But they're also, like, the very first people who got me my very first start before that, and then my parents. Like-

Ali Abdaal 1:54:31 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:54:32 ... I could answer that question a million ways.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:33 What is one tip for someone looking for success?

Oliver Burkeman 1:54:37 Wow.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:38 I know.

Oliver Burkeman 1:54:38 Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:54:38 Big questions, aren't they? [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:54:39 Yeah. Uh, um, uh, focus on one thing at a time.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:43 Nice. Uh, what does the first and last hour of your day look like?

Oliver Burkeman 1:54:47 Whole day as opposed to a working day? Uh, I've talked about my first hour. Get up about 5:00, 5:30-ish, drink coffee, write in my journal. Um, last hour is, um, sort of stumble around in a, in a bleary-eyed state, uh, sort of closing down the house and, uh, um, having sort of probably read to my son, and then, um, uh, sort of reading or listening to a podcast until I fall asleep.

Ali Abdaal 1:55:19 Nice.

Oliver Burkeman 1:55:19 It's not very interesting, is it?

Ali Abdaal 1:55:20 That's good. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:55:21 It's the truth. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:55:22 Yeah. The productivity gurus. [laughs] Um, what's- One physical thing, maybe under 100 pounds or thereabouts, that has added disproportionate value to your life

Oliver Burkeman 1:55:32 Well, the tiny little digital kitchen timer that I think was 20 pounds that I carry everywhere and have in my bag right now-

Ali Abdaal 1:55:38 Oh

Oliver Burkeman 1:55:38 ... um, uh, is certainly I do use that for, like, sort of various, um, ad hoc time boxing operations. Uh, so, so that's, uh, that's at that price point.

Ali Abdaal 1:55:50 In- instead of your phone?

Oliver Burkeman 1:55:51 That, that's probably true. Yeah, I just... It's, it's separate.

Ali Abdaal 1:55:55 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:55:55 It's, like, my, my phone can be, uh, put away while I'm focusing. It buzzes. Yeah, I, I-

Ali Abdaal 1:56:00 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:00 ... it doesn't have... doesn't lure me into other things. It's, it's single, single task technology. I'm really, I'm really-

Ali Abdaal 1:56:05 Love it. Yeah, you talk about that in-

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:07 I'm really into it

Ali Abdaal 1:56:07 ... the book as well. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:08 Um, at a d- different price point. It's not under 100, but it-

Ali Abdaal 1:56:11 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:11 ... just relates, I'll just mention it if you're interested. I, I have this, um, this tablet called Remarkable.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:17 Oh, do you like it?

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:17 I, I am loving it.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:19 No way.

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:20 No

Ali Abdaal 1:56:20 I tried it for a few weeks and went, went back to the iPad. Like, why, why do you like it? [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:24 Uh, it's just... Yeah, it's just so quiet. You know? It's just, uh, like mentally quiet.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:27 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:27 It's just like-

Ali Abdaal 1:56:28 It's single-

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:28 ... it's n- I'm not gonna click away to other things

Ali Abdaal 1:56:29 ... single task.

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:30 It's just paper, except it has a few benefits and a few downsides-

Ali Abdaal 1:56:33 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:33 ... compared to paper, but, like, the... And it's just, like, it's physically a pleasure to-

Ali Abdaal 1:56:37 It is nice to write on

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:38 ... to write on.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:38 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:39 Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:56:40 Maybe I should dust off-

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:41 No

Ali Abdaal 1:56:41 ... my Remarkable too.

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:42 No, maybe it's not, maybe it's not for you.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:43 Because I do really like the Kindle for that, like-

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:46 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:56:46 ... as opposed to reading on a phone or an iPad, just 'cause there's zero chance of getting distracted.

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:50 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:50 And the only thing I could get, get distracted by is another book, which is a good distraction. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:54 Right. Exactly. You end up sort of, like, searching the Kindle store in order-

Ali Abdaal 1:56:57 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:56:57 ... to not focus on the book you're reading, but that's okay. That's not so bad.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:59 That's it. Fine. Um, what book other than your own would you recommend to anyone?

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:04 At a certain point in life, I would recommend a book called Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by James Hollis, who I've mentioned. Although, um, there may be people in the audience here who are, like, it's a bit of a midlifey kind of-

Ali Abdaal 1:57:15 Second half as in-

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:16 ... kind of a book

Ali Abdaal 1:57:16 ... post 40 or post-marriage? [laughs] People-

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:19 Uh, well, I mean, midlife in the Jungian sense, uh, can be anything from, like, about 35 to 70, I think-

Ali Abdaal 1:57:26 Okay

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:26 ... when, when that sort of moment comes. So, like, you know, it's probably not for people in their early 20s, although James Hollis has written things that, that could be for, definitely could be for everyone. Um, I'm just trying to think if there's a, if there's a book that, uh, is-

Ali Abdaal 1:57:40 Yeah, so what's something you'd recommend to me? Like, you, you've had a look at my bookshelf.

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:42 Thinking

Ali Abdaal 1:57:42 We broadly read the same stuff. Um-

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:44 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:57:44 ... is there anything kind of a bit off the beaten track, like maybe that didn't hit the New York Times list [laughs] -

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:50 Yeah. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:57:50 ... that, that, that you found really interesting?

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:52 Let me think. I will get there. I'll just need to-

Ali Abdaal 1:57:53 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:53 ... you'll need to cut out the bit where I'm just-

Ali Abdaal 1:57:55 Of course

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:55 ... sitting here looking up into my-

Ali Abdaal 1:57:56 Yeah, I can run, run the search function

Oliver Burkeman 1:57:57 ... into my brain. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:57:58 It seems like you read a lot of philosophy stuff, which I haven't read.

Oliver Burkeman 1:58:00 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:00 Like, I feel like I need to start reading a bunch of this stuff 'cause it all is, is, is all the stuff that we read about just a thousand years ago. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:58:08 Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, and the... certainly the, the Stoics in the original are really... That's not a problem to read. Uh, Heidegger, I kind of made a show in the book of the how difficult it was to grapple with Heidegger.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:17 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 1:58:17 I do not recommend that people-

Ali Abdaal 1:58:18 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 1:58:19 ... like, go and read, uh, uh, Being and Time, uh, just for fun, 'cause that is so, uh, crazy. On the writing front, it's not a new, uh, it's not a new observation at all, but Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is a really, really good-

Ali Abdaal 1:58:33 Oh, okay

Oliver Burkeman 1:58:33 ... uh, book about writing.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:34 Never heard of it.

Oliver Burkeman 1:58:34 Sound like you haven't heard of it.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:35 No.

Oliver Burkeman 1:58:35 Wow, we can introduce it to a new generation. Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, uh, Instructions on Writing and Life.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:42 Oh, sick. All right. I'll get that on Kindle right now. I guess the, the next question is more, like, applies to entrepreneurs, but I g- I, I, I guess in your case, yeah, you are basically an entrepreneur. Um, if, if you lost everything, let's say-

Oliver Burkeman 1:58:52 On some level

Ali Abdaal 1:58:53 ... you got canceled, you lost all your money, lost all your following, lo- didn't have the books, didn't have the publishing deals, what would you do to rebuild?

Oliver Burkeman 1:58:59 I guess it would depend how canceled I was, 'cause, you know, the, the thing that I would do, um, based on my skills and contacts right now is I would reach out to various editors for whom I've written things in the past and see if they want me to write things for them.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:14 So, so-

Oliver Burkeman 1:59:14 But if I've been... If the idea is that I've been canceled so much that none of them will talk to me.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:17 Yeah, or that it's kind of in this hypothetical version you're-

Oliver Burkeman 1:59:19 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:59:19 ... kind of starting from scratch-

Oliver Burkeman 1:59:21 Right. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:59:21 ... and you d- you don't have anything other than the skills that you've developed.

Oliver Burkeman 1:59:24 Right. Yeah. That's interesting. On one level, I sort of have explored all these different areas, and I feel like I know quite a lot about quite a lot of different areas. But on another level, there is one skill that I have, which is, like, talking to a bunch of people, reading a bunch of stuff, and turning it into-

Ali Abdaal 1:59:37 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 1:59:37 ... pieces of writing. So I think I would have to, like-

Ali Abdaal 1:59:40 So I guess how, how do you-

Oliver Burkeman 1:59:41 The idea is the i- is the idea of the ideal answer, sorry to make them heavy-

Ali Abdaal 1:59:43 No, of course. Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 1:59:44 ... it's the idea that you're going to say you're gonna find a totally different profession where the same things apply, or is it just that you, like, start again? Because I think I probably would have to just, like, write stuff and-

Ali Abdaal 1:59:53 Yeah. I mean-

Oliver Burkeman 1:59:54 ... find, find an audience for it

Ali Abdaal 1:59:55 ... that makes a lot of sense

Oliver Burkeman 1:59:55 ... who... something.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:57 I, I, I guess the question is sort of aimed at sort of people in their probably early 20s or late teens-

Oliver Burkeman 2:00:02 Right

Ali Abdaal 2:00:02 ... who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives and wanna find, like, a path to, I don't know, salvation. [laughs] Um, uh-

Oliver Burkeman 2:00:08 I mean, I think-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:09 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 2:00:09 ... you know, I think I w- I'm fascinated. I don't think... I'm not saying I could do it.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:12 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 2:00:12 I'm kind of fascinated, uh, because I think I'm probably too self-centered, but I'm fascinated by the career of, by the careers of, like, psychotherapists-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:19 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 2:00:19 ... psychoanalysts, people like that. Um, I think that would be very, very interesting. Um, I could probably be an academic of some-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:28 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 2:00:28 ... some kind, but I'm not sure I'd want to be. I'm really lamely answering this question.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:32 No.

Oliver Burkeman 2:00:32 I don't know is the answer. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:00:34 Yeah. Like, how, how hard would it be to get, to, to, to, uh, how, uh... How, how hard is it for someone to be a professional writer these days, if that makes sense as a question?

Oliver Burkeman 2:00:44 I mean, it depends on what you mean. If you mean h- can you make, exclusively make a handsome living solely off the income from books themselves, then that's a very small number of people-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:53 Okay

Oliver Burkeman 2:00:53 ... I think. Um, or it's people who are so frugal that they're able to make their book advances, um-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:59 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 2:00:59 ... spread out over multiple years.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:01 But I guess as a writer, there are other business models.

Oliver Burkeman 2:01:03 Right. No, no. And if you mean-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:04 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 2:01:04 ... you know, if you mean-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:05 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 2:01:05 ... have a book, get an advance for the book, build an audience, do certain kinds of paid work that you wouldn't have got in the absence of the book-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:13 Yeah. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 2:01:13 ... like, I mean, there are more of them, and I'm one of those people-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:16 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 2:01:16 ... I think now, um, probably more than I am a freelance journalist in terms of the day-to-day content of my work. But if people think it's like you sell, you sell, like- Millions of books-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:28 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 2:01:28 ... and you make huge amounts of money on each one, like none of that applies-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:31 Right

Oliver Burkeman 2:01:32 ... except maybe to like, you know, five people on the planet somewhere.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:35 Yeah. It's like I, I think it's kind of how being a YouTuber, y- yes, there are five people on the planet who are making these stupid amounts of money off the back of their YouTube channels, but there are plenty more who are making stupid amounts of money off the back of the YouTube channel plus the other things that-

Oliver Burkeman 2:01:49 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:01:49 ... offshoot off that and just thinking more intelligently about the business model and maybe making a course, maybe writing a book. Maybe like sort of doing the other stuff that becomes available as an offshoot off of sharing something you enjoy and building an audience around that thing.

Oliver Burkeman 2:02:02 Right.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:02 And I think if I, if I lost all the things, I would probably just do that again. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 2:02:06 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:02:06 'Cause it- it's a skill. Like, and-

Oliver Burkeman 2:02:07 Right. Right

Ali Abdaal 2:02:07 ... it just takes some time and it's kind of fun, and so.

Oliver Burkeman 2:02:10 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:10 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 2:02:11 Yeah. Yeah. A- again, I'm responding to the thought experiment by questioning the premises of the thought experiment-

Ali Abdaal 2:02:16 Well, then-

Oliver Burkeman 2:02:16 ... which is an obnoxious thing to do

Ali Abdaal 2:02:18 [laughs] Okay. What... Feel, feel, feel free to q- [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 2:02:22 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:02:22 ... question the premise of this, but, uh, what quote or mantra do you live by?

Oliver Burkeman 2:02:25 There isn't just one that I'm thinking of every single day, but the ones that spring to mind, uh, partly I've mentioned James Hollis, "Does this choice enlarge me or diminish me?" Uh, Shell and Kop, um, "You're free to do what you want. You have only to face the consequences." And, um, uh, a question that I think I, I, I'm borrowing from a conversation I heard Sam Harris talk about he once... his, his once having where he was moaning about his problems in his work or something to somebody and she responded like, "Hold on, d- do you think you're... Are you under the impression that one day you're going to get to a stage in your life where you don't have problems?" [laughs] Um, so some formulation of that. It's like none of the problems or... I'll quote my wife now, but, but like sometimes when I'm complaining about the problems, uh, that are keeping me from getting down to the, the, the, the meat of my job, she'll say, based on her own understanding that she learned in her own work, like, "No, no. The problems are the job." And like that's a very freeing thing to realize that like th- th- you're not gonna get to the point of-

Ali Abdaal 2:03:28 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 2:03:28 ... without problems. That's not a mantra. Wow.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:30 No.

Oliver Burkeman 2:03:30 That's a long mantra. That 350-word mantra.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:32 [laughs] Yeah, the problems ne- uh, the problems never really go away, they just change in their like glamorousness.

Oliver Burkeman 2:03:38 Right. And you get to choose some really great ones-

Ali Abdaal 2:03:39 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 2:03:39 ... if you're lucky.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:40 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 2:03:40 But they're still problems. [laughs] Yeah, right.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:42 And finally, uh, journey or destination?

Oliver Burkeman 2:03:45 That, I've got to question that dichotomy. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:03:48 Okay.

Oliver Burkeman 2:03:49 Like-

Ali Abdaal 2:03:49 Say more

Oliver Burkeman 2:03:49 ... what the... I, you know, I, I don't accept the distinction. What do I mean by that? I'm not sure what I mean by that.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:59 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 2:03:59 Let's just say journey, but I think that there's something of the destination in every moment of the journey. There you go.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:04 Oh.

Oliver Burkeman 2:04:05 Join my cult.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:06 I love it. [laughs] All right, Oliver, thank you so much. This has been an absolute joy. Um-

Oliver Burkeman 2:04:10 It's been a pleasure. Thank you

Ali Abdaal 2:04:11 ... any- anything you'd like to plug to the audience? We will have links to the book, guys. Read it or get it on Audible, um, 'cause you read the audiobook.

Oliver Burkeman 2:04:19 Narrated by me.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:19 Yes.

Oliver Burkeman 2:04:19 The book is available-

Ali Abdaal 2:04:20 Nice

Oliver Burkeman 2:04:20 ... all the places you'd expect to buy books.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:22 Yep.

Oliver Burkeman 2:04:22 Um, and then at my website, OliverBurkeman.com, there's more stuff, and you can sign up to, uh, my email newsletter, which I call The Imperfectionist.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:30 Oh, that's nice. That's a good name.

Oliver Burkeman 2:04:33 Thank you.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:33 Love it. All right. Thanks, Oliver.

Oliver Burkeman 2:04:34 Cheers.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:35 And thanks for listening, everyone. We'll see you later. All right. So that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.