The Diary of a CEOHow To Finally Stop Procrastinating: Oliver Burkeman | E125
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,072 words- 0:00 – 1:01
Intro
- OBOliver Burkeman
Are you doing a few things every day that your ancestors would have done, what, 250,000 years ago?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oliver Burkeman, he's a journalist, a writer, and one of the greatest thinkers I've had the pleasure of sitting with here on this podcast.
- OBOliver Burkeman
People talk all the time about the importance of learning to say no, right? There's a subtext there. They think what that means is if you just learn to say no to all the stuff you don't want to do, you can spend your time doing stuff you do want to do. It's way harder than that. You have to say no to things that you do want to do. We are wired for racing through things. All of us who are sort of moving at this speed need to experiment a little bit with, like, what it feels like to just slow down to the speed that things take. Any action that actually brings things into the world involves a confrontation with your limitations. Getting through that discomfort to what lies on the other side is so empowering.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. As a
- 1:01 – 4:11
Why do you write about happiness?
- SBSteven Bartlett
journalist, um, I was quite surprised to read some of the articles you'd written, and that the subject matter wasn't necessarily, like, always about the news or what's going on or... It wasn't gossipy. It was quite, I don't know, existential and deep and about regret and life and happiness and these kinds of things. Where did the desire to talk about and to write and research those topics come from in you?
- OBOliver Burkeman
That's a good question. I mean, I think early, early when I was a journalist, I was doing whatever I needed-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... to do. And a lot of that was kind of news, more newsy. But I've always wanted to try to bring into that kind of daily context, um, these big, serious ideas. And I think it's just because I'm fascinated by them, and I think I'm fascinated by them because I, on some level, struggle with them, right? I mean, I don't think anyone, if they're honest, writes about happiness, who is just completely happy all the time, because then that topic is boring to that person. I'm think- I'm probably pretty anxious person going back, less so now, uh, having spent years kind of therapizing myself in public and in the- in columns and books. But, um, that sense that you sort of need to find some secret to address your own issues, and also when it comes to sort of productivity and time management and all those topics, it's like maybe if I could find the system that would m- put me in total control of my time, then maybe I wouldn't need to feel worried about the future and, you know, things like that. We're all just sort of, um, revealing our deepest, uh, issues in the things we choose to focus on and write about.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You alluded to it a little bit there, but y- you said, you know, your- one of the books you wrote was called The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. Interesting title. What was the inspiration? B- I mean, you said struggling with unhappiness? Was- was a bit of a I mean, uh, by the time I wrote that, I was sort of- I'd given all these things a lot of thought. I'd written this column for The Guardian for quite a few years, and I sort of noticed this pattern emerging in the- in the approaches and the philosophies that really seemed to do something for me, and to sort of, um, lift my spirits, help me navigate the world a bit more- more calmly and effectively. And they were not, uh, what I call in that book positive thinking, right? They were not fill your mind with upbeat thoughts and set incredibly ambitious goals and try to push yourself relentlessly towards achieving them. It was actually much more to do with being open to negative stuff and being willing to feel anxiety, insecurity, uncertainty, and potential for failure and all those things. It's actually a much more resilient way to, um, to be in the world, I think. Plus, it- I guess it's kind of- it's the contribution that I can make to the world of self-help and things like that, is to bring my kind of pessimistic, slightly sardonic, I don't know, British Northern... I don't know where this comes from culturally really, but, like, of a- of a field like the self-help industry, like, just so much of this is rubbish, and at the same time, the topic that this is ultimately about is- is really important and, you know, you can't just dismiss it completely.
- 4:11 – 11:25
Happiness and meaning
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, um... What would you say are some of the big sort of central misconceptions about how to become happy? Or what is it that fundamentally makes us unhappy? I sat here with Mo Gawdat, who wrote a book about happiness, um, The Hap- The Happiness Equation, and he talks a lot about expectation management, when your expectations are too high, and if your expectations go unmet, then we're unhappy. Um, and, uh, you know, in a lot of your writings, you talk about being a bit more aware that any lack of productivity or hardship or struggle isn't a sign of our inadequacy as humans-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's very much the nature of Earth-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... for life, I guess.
- OBOliver Burkeman
I mean, yeah, in terms of misconceptions, I think the- the- the sort of fundamental one that I was writing about in that earlier book is- is the idea that happiness is best achieved by aiming for happiness, you know? That- that setting out in your life to get happy is... There's something amiss with this notion, right? Happiness is the kind of thing that seems to arise as a byproduct of certain kinds of meaningful activity. But if you make it the- the sort of goal of your life, you can sort of bear down on it too much, and then it sort of goes away. The book on some level is about, um, turning our attention away from happiness and finding happiness that way, through sort of the pursuit of reality, right? Through engaging in meaningful activities, and we can talk about what meaningful means, I suppose. But- but not- but not sort of what will make me feel better or best as the- as the- as the sort of navigation aid that you use in life, and then happiness coming as a- as a sort of a secondary effect of that. I think, you know, th- the- the- the sort of crassest kind of positive thinking fails just because human mind does not work like that. If- if what you... If you decide that you're always going to fill your mind with positive, upbeat, optimistic thoughts, then every negative thought that creeps in-... it's like a new failure, and something to feel stressed about, and something to try to stamp out. And, uh, that's just sort of not true to the situation of, like, who we are, which is a big mixture of-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... all sorts of feelings.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So if we're not aiming for happiness then, and we're, we're aiming for kind of the meaning, meaningful activities in the process, what are those, what have you come to learn are the meaningful activities that end up creating the byproduct of happiness?
- OBOliver Burkeman
I mean, it's the question, and I don't think I've, like, come to the final answer in, in, in any of this. But, um, I think meaning, it's, it's a really fascinating idea because I think people know, in a sort of intuitive way, whether what they're doing is meaningful. There's a question that I write about that comes from a psychotherapist called James Hollis, whose work has been really, uh, um, had a real big impact on me, which is to ask of a choice or of a life path that you might be on, whether it's enlarging you or diminishing you. And I don't think this language works for everybody, but for me, it's like, oh, okay. You can tell that there are times when life is not enjoyable, but it's about growth, what you're doing. It's like, it's good that you're doing it and it's meaningful that you're doing it. And then there are times when life might be perfectly fun, but if you really stop and think about it, it's like it's missing the point somehow. I think one, the sort of an acute example of this that most people will have experience of is, it's like a friend or a relation of yours is going through a crisis, and you're helping them out in some way, you're there to just as some company or... I, I recall one example when some friends of mine were going through a really awful thing and I was like, literally like doing the dry cleaning for them, right? It was just like they just needed help in this kinda way. And you have that feeling of like, "I'm in the right place here. This is... There isn't something else I ought to be doing now." It doesn't mean it's fun because the whole situation is awful. It doesn't mean it's in great activity because doing someone's dry (laughs) cleaning is not necessarily a great activity. But, but you know that you're in the right place. And I think that we can hope to have that feeling about quite a lot of the sort of work and other things that we do in, in non-crisis moments. So that's how I kinda think about that. This is a good use of this day of your very limited time (laughs) on the planet.
- SBSteven Bartlett
One of the things that I, I view, that seems to be pretty correct, um, when I'm trying to figure out what is meaningful and makes me, gives me that feeling of like fulfillment, that I'm in the right place as you describe it, is when I look back at like the human struggle over thousands of years, and really what made us survive, it tends to be the case that I feel best when I'm doing the things that are kind of in line with how my ancestors lived, right? So, I mean, on one hand, you could say, eating certain things and drinking and sleeping. But then, as we kind of described it there, which is like banding together-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and collaborating, ultimately that's central to how, why we're here. And so it's conceivable that our ancestors might have left that message in my genetic code to say, "Steven, not only are you gonna struggle for it, but you're gonna do it together."
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And so when you helped your friend with their dry cleaning, that was a really human, historically like human act of banding together in support. Um, but I, I feel like we've kind of lost track of those fundamental human things, if that makes sense. And whenever we do them now, which is like helping each other, you know, eating stuff that's grown from the ground, the over-stimulation of digi- like digital items and screens in our lives, loneliness.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
These are all callings to kinda get back to our tribe. And in fact, I, I've, I'm coming to learn, despite what the happiness industry sells you, it actually might be really, really fundamentally simple, in a, in a way, which is trying to be more human.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah, yeah. I've heard... Yeah, that's such a good point. I've heard somebody express this as like, you should ask, "Are you doing a few things every day that your ancestors would have done-"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
"... what, 250,000 years ago?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Exercise.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Being, being together in our tribes.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right. Being outdoors.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Out- outdoors.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The studies on being outdoors-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... are really startling.
- OBOliver Burkeman
And I think the problem with so many of us now, I mean, w- our, writers are the sort of ultimate example, but, but, but so many of us, you for sure, like we're doing... What we're mainly doing with our days is manipulating symbols in one way or another, right? Images, words, ideas, all day long.
- 11:25 – 18:13
Embracing our limits
- OBOliver Burkeman
about.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And in your new book, you talk a lot about kind of stripping back a lot of this bullshit that has consumed our lives and the complexity in these narratives, which have been kinda sold by the happiness and efficiency and procrastination industry, let's call it. Um, your new book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It, which I found incredibly important. I think that's the best way to describe it. So I really wanna go through a couple of the points in the book that I, I found compelling and that I wanted to ask you questions on. The first is Chapter 1, which was the limit of, um, the limit embracing life. Um, and you talk about this concept of embracing our limits. What did you mean by that?
- OBOliver Burkeman
Seems to me, and it's certainly my experience, but I think it is more universal (laughs) than just like my, my issues, seems to me that a, a lot of what we do...... uh, the way we behave in the world and the way we try to manage our time, especially, it's all really based around trying to avoid confronting something about our situation. It- it's a kind of an emotional avoidance. It's, it's to avoid feeling what it is like to be who we are, which is finite human beings, right? Four Thousand Weeks, the title refers to the approximate length of, uh, average lifespan in the West, um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which is terrifying, by the way.
- OBOliver Burkeman
This is terrifying, yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
It doesn't sound like a lot. (laughs) I thought we had more than that.
- OBOliver Burkeman
It's a risky decision, I realize in hindsight to give the book this title, 'cause it might just cause people to, like, run away from the bookshop and not buy the book, but anyway. The, um... So we're very finite in our amount of time, we're obviously finite on the daily level of the amount of time we have, but also finite in how much control we can exert over it, right? You... Nobody knows what's happening in the very next moment. You can, you can take actions to increase the likelihood that what you want is gonna happen, but we're all totally sort of vulnerable t- to events and to every, to every moment. It's increasingly impossible to have sort of complete knowledge about anything that you're doing or any sphere in which you're acting. And then, you know, relationships just inherently involve, you know, romantic relationships, but all relationships, it just inherently involve this kind of vulnerability to other people and, and, uh, things they might do to hurt you or thing, bad things that might happen to them that would cause you to suffer. And so, we're in this kind of very, very limited situation, and the, I guess, the main argument to my book is that, like, if we followed through the ramifications of that, we would use our time in a, in a, in a somewhat different way. And actually, I think, a more relaxing way. I don't think it's a kind of recipe for stress, although the title is probably a recipe-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... for stress but, um, in productivity, for example, the quest to try to do everything to become, like, limitlessly optimized so that you can handle all your incoming email, you can pursue all your ambitions and business ventures, you can meet all the obligations you feel from your family and friends or from society, you can do it all. Like, that's trying to become unlimited, right? That's trying to become limitless. Um, and we ti- uh, there are lots of other examples of this I, uh, where I think what we're really doing is, is just trying to avoid feeling our, our finitude. And some people wanna say, "Well, isn't it great to believe that we're limitless 'cause then you can, like, do astonishing things?" And I want to say, no, I think the kind of limitation I'm talking about, confronting it and feeling it and living into it is actually the precondition of doing the, the most, sort of, extraordinary things with a life. Because you get to kind of give up on this impossible quest to fit yourself to every expectation that, that the world might have.
- SBSteven Bartlett
One in which you can only fail and that make you feel-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right, and just focus on doing the... Right, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... inadequate, yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah. And- and the sort of great inventors and the great entrepreneurs of today and the great sort of historical figures, like, all these people, they didn't... They did things that people thought were previ- previously thought were impossible, yeah, but they didn't, um... They- they very, very deliberately understood that using their time the way they wanted to use it meant sacrifices. Um, it meant neglecting things that would be completely good things to do, right? I'm sure you know what I'm talking about here, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
I mean, it's like you... There are 25 things you could do, it's not that only one of them is any good. Like, 24 of them are good, but even so, most of them are gonna have to... You're gonna have to be able to withstand the anxiety of just neglecting most of them in order to focus on one or two of them.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And fundamentally, y- y- y- you believe, which I also completely agree with, which is, in fact, why I have this sand timer-
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
... here, which I just picked off my desk before we started recording. You believe that, um, people do go through life not almost... I don't... For me, it's like not realizing/not believing that they will die. It's almost like humans aren't able to understand the concept of infinity and they're also not able to understand the concept of finality.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
This- the fact that we will, I will come to an end, so we don't live in such a way, we don't live with such a belief. And if you look at a lot of the decisions I make-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... you would assert that I'm living like I think I'm gonna live forever.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Because my, my misprioritization of things that actually clearly matter more and this kind of constant deference of-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... um, happiness to the future. "I will be happy when."
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then we live in... You know, 'cause one of the things I say, and I say this in my live show is, I say to the audience that if you think about it, probably about 90% of this audience are currently living in a way in which a previous self of them told themselves if they got here, they would be happy.
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs) Right, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But their current self is saying, "Not now, we'll be happy when." So they're deferring it going off into the future.
- 18:13 – 20:23
Why do we put our happiness on the future?
- OBOliver Burkeman
in.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It also means that we continue as humans to struggle forward, right? We continue to take on struggle, whether it's challenge or ambition. We continue to be ambitious. And then I go, "Well, maybe that's also what h- allowed our ancestors to give, give birth to us," because if our ancestors weren't trying to build a better tomorrow and kind of deferring gratitude to the, to the empire-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that they were trying to build, then maybe we wouldn't be here.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, is it a human hu- thing to also kind of defer our happiness to the future?
- OBOliver Burkeman
I think it must be, and really is, and I think we are sort of goal-seeking organisms. I think it's hugely compounded by the culture in which we live and the economic system in which we live. And I think it's sort of gone, uh, into warp speed in a way that we could step back from. But I also think that it's not about giving up goals, right? It's not about stopping trying to achieve things in the future. It's about, it's about not investing the whole value of what you're doing in those, in those future outcomes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- OBOliver Burkeman
You can't build anything, a relationship, business, creative work, you can't do it unless you are partly focused on, on where you're, on where you're going. But you don't have to be exclusively focused on where you're going. And I would say you probably shouldn't be exclusively focused on where you're going, because it will damage the product that you're-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... creating as well.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, you might fall into the efficiency trap, as you call it-
- OBOliver Burkeman
(sniffs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
... which is chapter two.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right. You get, you get completely fixated on (sniffs) valuing the, the present only in terms of how it, um, is gonna help, uh, uh, create the, the, the future thing. And then you find what happens is that actually you get further and further away from achieving that thing, because you, in trying to make yourself more efficient and trying to sort of process more and more tasks to get closer to your goal, y- you make yourself more efficient. And then more and more tasks, like, flood in to fill the excess capacity. Um, this is Parkinson's Law and a whole lot of other kind of... Well, it goes by a whole lot of names. But it's this idea that, um, yeah, if you, if you, if all you do is make yourself more efficient, then you'll just be dealing with a greater incoming volume of things, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And Inbox
- 20:23 – 24:11
Pursuit of efficiency
- SBSteven Bartlett
Zero I felt was the perfect example of that in your book, where the better you get at sending emails and replying fast, in fact the more replies you get, and people come to know you as having a reputation of, "He emails back quickly," which is gonna beget even more emails. And then the challenge of getting to Inbox Zero becomes increasingly harder, and then you find yourself drowning.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah, absolutely. Right. And it's just, uh, when you spell it out like that, it's like, "Of course."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
And, and s- you know, I remember when I was, um, a young journalist, sort of feeling overwhelmed by the number of articles I was being asked to write. So, you get really, really better at writing them really fast, and you get a reputation for being able to write quite a long, complicated ar- article in a short amount of time. Like, who's the editor going to ask when the next one comes up, right? I mean, and, you know, I got a lot of benefit from being the person that the editor asked, but it certainly didn't make me less busy. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. I, I think I have that a bit with my PA at the moment. She... I've got a reputation with her of being able to do 50 meetings a day.
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs) Right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, my calendar is now 50 meetings a day. And we've actually forgotten about the concept of, like, I need to eat at some point.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, like, there's no... I looked at my calendar-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... the other day, and I'm... She's superb, and in fact she, she does ex- exactly what I've always asked her to do, so she's not at fault here. I am. But I looked at my calendar the other day, and I was with her in the car, and I go, "Isn't it funny?" It's like every minute of the next 14 hours is scheduled, but I, but there's no space for lunch or just, like-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... qu- uh, sending a voice note to my girlfriend.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, I've kind of, like, misprioritized my life. But again, it's because I've, I've con- I've, I've not fought back against that. By being successful at being efficient-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... I've be- b- you know, brought more efficiency into my life and taken away things that give me meaning, like connecting with my girlfriend or my mother or my family or, you know, those, or passions, and...
- OBOliver Burkeman
And I think, yeah, I mean, I'd be interested to know if y- this resonates with you. For me, when I've got into that kind of groove, that place where you're sort of pursuing efficiency, uh, at, at the expense of everything else, for me anyway, part of what's going on is, was always to do with self-worth, right? It's this idea that you've got to get to this point where you are this optimal and this efficient and productive that you wouldn't really be justifying your existence on the planet somehow if you, if you, if you didn't do all these things. And so, I think lots and lots of people who sort of accomplish stuff are driven to accomplish stuff because they feel like they need to accomplish stuff. Like, it's not okay if they, if they don't, uh, accomplish stuff. And so, that is a kind of never-ending treadmill as well, because, um, like, w- why are you going to decide that any particular given level of output or accomplishment is the one where you can, where you can relax? And I think s- one of the things I'm always at pains to try to get across talking about this book is that, um, this is meant to be a relaxing message, right? I think this is a liberating message that can be like a weight off your shoulders. Because if you, if you see that what you are doing was trying to do an impossible amount in order to feel, like, okay about yourself on some deep, buried level, what if you really begin to internalize that it's impossible? Then it can't be what you need to do t- in order to feel okay about yourself. May- maybe you're okay already, and then the things that you do in the world are kind of extra. And then I think, you know, the, the message of our being finite, the message of our, of our being limited is not, "So now you've got to, like, squeeze value out of every moment and go base jumping every weekend or something. Otherwise, have you really lived?" It's much more like, "Okay. Oh, great. Pressure's off. I can't do an impossible amount. I can only do a few of the things that seem like they matter. So all I need to do is choose for now which ones seem the most important and focus on them and give my energy to them," and it's much more doable.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I can completely relate to that attachment of efficiency to self-worth. It felt so, it felt like you were calling me out-
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in fact, when you said it.
- 24:11 – 27:45
Living up to your external reputation
- SBSteven Bartlett
And the other thing I have, which I've, I just realized as you were saying was...... because I've become successful in the eyes of society, quote-unquote, I'm now also trying to live up to my own external reputation that people have of me. People say, "Oh, Steve, you're s- you never sleep. You're so, um-"
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs) Right. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
"... you, you work so hard."
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, when I have days where I don't work really hard, and I clearly just achieved nothing that day-
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
... I, I'm, like, haunted by the r- my almost my reputation-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... which is largely false. My reputation that I don't sleep, and that I'm working all the time, and that I'm super productive, and that I'm organized, and I don't procrastinate. I'll tell you now, it is a load of bullshit.
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
I, some days, I do, like... A lot of the, a lot of days, I do way less than the people around me.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But I have this, so, but I do have those moments now where if I have, like, an unproductive day, or I've, like, slept until midday for whatever reason, which happens a lot, by the way, or I've procrastinated, which happens every day, or I'm really unproductive, I go, "B- you're not being Steve Bartlett. You're, you're a fail- you're letting down your reputation."
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"You're a fraud. You are a fraud." I get that a lot, that feeling of like, it doesn't, like, cripple me, but that feeling of, oh, I, if I look at today, and I look at the reputation of Steven Bartlett, I am a fraud.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Um, it's fascinating. And I think it must be, it's a lot, it's a lot worse with a high public profile, but I do think it's kind of almost a, a universal trait that a lot of people-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... have. A lot of people who are sort of... Well, thinking back, we were talking before about, like, being, I was a s- just a sort of your garden variety high achiever at school, right? Like, the kid getting the A grades or whatever. And, and, and, and a lot of people in that situation have what is called in psychology, you probably know, like, a f- they have a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset, right? So, one of the consequences of this is every time you do well, it's not something to be happy about because you did well. It's, like, something to feel pressure about, because now that's the bar that you've got to reach next time.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs) Exactly.
- OBOliver Burkeman
And it's like, you know, it- it- it's suddenly your, your success has become this, um, this standard that you've now got to meet every single time in the future. And that is like, it's, it's, it's a agonizing way to, to live. Usually, that's people thinking that their inner critic demands it or their parents demand it. Obviously, the bigger your audience, the more you, you can fall into thinking that, like, there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who, who demand it. But, of course, that also gives you the power to do something very helpful and liberating for those people when you break the fourth wall or whatever-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... and point out that it isn't like that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Be honest.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The other one that I always get is the morning routine. People will send me the, on Instagram, like, "What, Steve, can you g- tell us your morning routine?"
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And, and I can almost imagine them at home, like, sending the DM and being sat there with their notepad ready for my response.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I'm like, "Honestly, uh, sometimes I get out of bed at 11:00."
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- 27:45 – 33:57
Procrastination
- SBSteven Bartlett
One thing I did talk about there was procrastination.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And this is a topic where, which I think honestly plagues people into feeling like they are inadequate.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If I make a video on my Instagram about procrastination, it will outperform everything. Relationships perform the best. Okay, number two-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... is anything with the title procrastination.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Maybe I'll title this video about procrastination, and it will do really well.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why do people procrastinate?
- OBOliver Burkeman
Well, they, they watch those videos, presumably, while they should be getting on with their-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
... getting on with the work in question.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I hope so. I hope so.
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs) Right? That's the, that, that's probably why pro-
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I can subscribe.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... procrastination videos are really popular. At one level, there's lots of different reasons. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of all sorts of different things. But, but at a deep level, I make the argument anyway, you don't want to feel what it feels like to be limited and imperfect. And so if you hold onto a project, if you keep it in your mind, in the world of fantasy, it can stay perfect. It can be later that you're going to do this great thing. Any action that actually brings things into the world involves a confrontation with your limitations. Maybe you're not gonna have the talent for it. Maybe it's not gonna be well-received. Maybe it's gonna be too complicated. If I'm trying to write a chapter of a book, like, the stakes are high for me, 'cause I want it to go well, but I don't know that it is gonna go well. I want it to be well-received, but I don't know that it will be well-received. It's so much nicer to just spend that time doing something kind of pointless-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Being comfortable.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... and-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... you know, scrolling around or whatever, because, yeah, because I don't have to have, confront my limitations. And what I want to try to convey in that topic in, in, in this book anyway, I think, is to say, look, bringing anything into the world, studying for any, um, qualification, doing any kind of creative work, like, launching any kind of business, like, it, the, the imperfection is guaranteed. Like, you definitely aren't going to get to bring it into the world in, in exactly in tune with your fantasy. And everyone is in the same boat. And this is completely unavoidable and baked in. So, you might as well do it, right? Because it's like, uh, people, I think people, they get caught up in themselves. They think, "Well, I'm going to make a fool of myself," or, "I'm gonna let myself down," or, "I'm going to let my friends or my parents down." But it's like, no, the imperfection, the fact that it will stumble and not be everything you dreamed it could have been, that ship has sailed. Like, that's just for everyone. So, now can we just move forward and do our imperfect things? Is, and lots of them will turn out to be, uh, you know, fantastic things. But they will all be imperfect because, because that's what it is to, to bring things into the world as a human being.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Knowing that and having written a tr- a chapter in your book called Becoming a Better Procrastinator, do you still procrastinate?
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yes. Um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
... I've always, I always feel like the, my, my point about... Th- I get asked this question and I'm always like, "Look, you gotta compare me with who I was before."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
"Not with this perfect person, 'cause I am not that perfect person, but I am a lot better at it than I, than I was." Um, yeah, and what, where I stumble on that is not so much anymore with the idea that it's got to be, like, perfect standard, 'cause if you spend a few years as a journalist, you get that sort of beaten out of you, right? 'Cause like deadlines come, deadlines come. You just gotta send the thing in. And you stop thinking after a while that your, that your glorious prose has got to be perfect. You can't let it out of your sight until it's perfect, 'cause it's just never how it works. Where I still run into trouble is that I do feel this urge to feel in control of all the things that are going on in my life and all the things going on in my work. So, it's very tempting for me to say, um, you know, "I've gotta write that really important thing," or, "I've gotta think through this really important thing, but first I'm going to make sure that all my inboxes are under control, and then I'm going, better do all that admin about finances that I'd left, that I'd left, and I better sort of..." And then you, f- before you know it, it's like, "Better, like, rearrange my desk-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
... so that all the, all the pens are straightened up," whatever. Displacement activities, things that make me feel more in control of my world, but actually don't move the things that I care about forward the most. And I'm getting better on that too, but that's the thing, that's where the, the struggle is for me. I will definitely spend, like, long periods of time getting my ducks in a row-
- 33:57 – 41:20
How to prioritise
- SBSteven Bartlett
- OBOliver Burkeman
It's Warren Buffett, Buddha, and Confucius, basically.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
So, hopefully you as w-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Einstein is well getting riddled out.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yes, right, right, right. But he is suppo- uh, Buffett is supposed to have been asked like, "How do you decide what to prioritize in life?" And to have replied that, "You should make a list of your top 25 goals in life and order them numerically from one to 25. And then take the top five on that list and really focus on them in your life. And take the next 20 and avoid them like the plague, because they are the ones that you care about enough to let them distract you from the, from the top five, but not the ones that you're, that are easy to let go of because you don't really care about them," right? They belong in this middle zone. Whether or not that exercise is a useful exercise, the, the, the principle here, I think, is that you have to sort of be especially wary of, of claims on your attention and your time that do matter a bit, but just not as much as the things that you care about the most. It's very easy to, um... People talk all the time about the importance of learning to say no, right? But people often, I think in the... there's a subtext there. They think what that means is if you just learn to say no to all the stuff you don't wanna do, you can spend your time doing the stuff you do want to do. But I quote, actually, Elizabeth Gilbert, the, the writer, in the book saying like, "No, it's way harder than that. You have to say no to things that you do want to do, because there are more things that matter than you have time for." So middling priorities are, you know, that friendship that, yeah, it's fine. You know, it's nice when you meet up with that person, but it's not... neither of you are getting that much out of it, and it's taking another hour away from, I don't know, your partner, your child, your best friend, you know. Definitely sort of, uh, pfff, work projects that sort of... yeah, you can do them, you could handle that. It might make you a little bit of money, or, uh, you know, whatever, but it's just not, it's not the number one thing. It takes quite a lot to resist those, because they are, th- they're not unimportant, they're just not important enough.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it feels like, um, more is more, but as the phrase goes in this context, less is more. You, I- I've observed that in my life anyway. If you, if you wanna be successful in business, then focusing on one as opposed to having three startups is much more, much better. But p- some people will brag about how many businesses they run or how many things they do as if they believe that that makes them more, more valuable.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They'll, they'll brag about how many friends they have as opposed to the quality of them. And it tends to be the case that that phrase less is more is, is true in the sense of...... focusing on less things gives you much more meaning and depth in life, and that's ultimately what's, what matters.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah. And actually, I think it's probably the way to accomplish more things as well, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
100%.
- OBOliver Burkeman
It's, it's, um... So, one thing that I've found, I, I can't talk on the level of businesses launched, but only on the level of, uh, you know, articles and books written, is the degree to which I can do things sequentially and train myself to do one big thing at a time and wait till it's finished before you move on to the next one. It takes a lot... It takes this kind of guts to do it, because it feels better to have a finger in every pie at once. But to the extent that I can do that, to that extent I get more of those things done.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Um, because you make most of them wait. You focus on one, you do it, and then it's finished, and then you bring the next one in, and you do that. Um, it's so tempting to sort of dissipate your energies, because I think it makes you feel... We're back to the same idea, right? It makes you feel limitless. It makes you feel like you can wrap your arms around the whole world. It stops people, in the case of my work, it stops people pestering you because, like, "Where's that thing you said you'd do?" And it's very nice to live in that world of, um, of, of sort of multitasking and multi-projects, but it's not the most effective way to get the things done.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I'm struggling with that, I think, for sure. A- and I think, I think as well, when you've got, um, when you've got more opportunities, like, I get a lot of, a lot of people sending me a lot of things to do these days, a lot of things that I could do.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It becomes an even greater and more important skill to master. So, the amount of like... We had one day last week where they're like, "Every journalist across these multiple newspapers wants to speak to you about this. I made this donation."
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And there's part of me that goes, "Oh, yeah, that's... You know, I'll do all of these TV things that day," but then, of course, it comes at the cost of something else. And we, and we never really focus on the cost, right? It seems like-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that's kind of the curse I have in my mind sometimes, is I'm too focused on the benefit of doing the thing as if, you know, which is, uh, basically the premise of your book, that like, as if my time was unlimited.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... uh, you know, it's like, I was... I remember reading about this thing, which has, has weirdly stayed in my mind for many years, this idea that they believe humans can only juggle a certain amount of balls because of the physics of a ball going up and then the speed in which one could possibly move, so they think it's 14. And nobody has been able to break the world record ever.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Huh. Is that the record? Right, right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Of the 14 balls. No one's ever been able to juggle more than 14 balls.
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs) That's fascinating.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And, and that record has, has held because of the physics of the balls going up-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- 41:20 – 48:55
The water melon problem
- OBOliver Burkeman
... what I'd really like to do today is, uh, spend an hour putting, watching people put rubber bands around a watermelon. So it's just really the, the question of distraction, the question of how we steward our attention. And again, if you want a break in the middle of the day and someone's doing some stunt involving a watermelon, fine. (laughs) Right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- OBOliver Burkeman
The- but, but just bringing consciousness to that fact that when we pay attention to things, we are paying, very literally, with little chunks of our, of our life.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Have you found any practical ways to make yourself less distracted by such compelling videos? (laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs) There's really two parts to this, I think. One is, especially in the modern era, right? One is the source of the distraction. So definitely, like, I don't have social media on my phone. I do that on a, I do that on a laptop exclusively. Um, I've, I've sort of- have a sort of ever-shifting and never, never perfectly observed set of personal rules about, like, when I will turn to my email, and when I will turn to the internet, and when I will be- try to be sort of offline and focused on, on writing and thinking. But the other side of it, I think, is, is the distractibility, not just the sort of- not the things that are reaching out to grab our attention, but the fact that we kind of go along willingly with this stuff. And again, you know, this is just my one thesis, but I think the reason (laughs) that we're doing that is because it's much more comfortable than focusing on hard stuff. Focusing on hard stuff is, is, is, is unpleasant sometimes, because it brings us into contact with our limitations, and then distraction is much nicer, uh, thing to do, uh, with that time, because it doesn't. So really, a big part of this for me, and it's been definitely a slow, gradual thing, it's not a sort of, uh, one clever trick or something, is just to expect a certain amount of discomfort in things that matter, right? Just to sort of- just to expect that writing... I keep using this example 'cause it's personal to me, but like, that it's d- like, it feels difficult. Uh, Cal Newport, the- who wrote the book Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, who is very good on this, has this argument that like, what people call writer's block, that's just the feeling of writing, right? 'Cause it's a hard thing to do, and sometimes you might get into flow, great. But most of the time, it's probably gonna be a question of, like, it's like a little bit hard. And the analogy that people always use is with weightlifting, right? I mean, you don't expect... If it's w- you don't expect that to feel non, non-uncomfortable. Not that I have great experience of it, but like-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
... you don't... There are certain areas where things- where sort of growth involves discomfort, and we're (laughs) okay with that. And then there are other areas, often involving cognitive activities and where, where we- we're somehow deeply offended that it feels a bit difficult to do it. But no, it does. The other thing that I always think is extraordinarily difficult is really listening to (laughs) another person, right? It never really gets super easy, that, I think, especially in relationships, right? To sort of- to really concentrate on what someone is saying and not just to be thinking, "Oh, but then when, when they're finished, this is what (laughs) I'm gonna say." It's- it takes effort. And if your, if, if, if your response to that s- feeling of effort is like, "I can't feel effort, it must be easy," then it's gonna be much more tempting to just be like, checking your phone when you should be listening or something. So, just a bit of a willingness to experience mild discomfort. I think it's kind of a superpower.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, uh, and obviously, uh, th- there's a lot of social narratives that kind of point to it as being a failure. Like, you're right, y- even the phrase writer's block.
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
The, uh, the word block doesn't feel like, (laughs) very natural. It feels like there's something that must be heard in the clicks.
- OBOliver Burkeman
That you've got a disorder, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, yeah, it's like a disease. And a lot- it's so funny, 'cause you said at the start of this, some of these new inventions are really holding us back, like words and voc- vocabulary.
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Like, there's so many of them. Even- I talk a lot about i- in my book, the, the idea of finding your passion.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's so many, like, things, um, hidden within that phrase. First, you have to go in search of it-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... because of the word find.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So people go, they go o- off in search of this thing that they think they can find. It alludes to the fact that it's singular.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
'Cause the word passion is singular. So, I'm looking for a Easter egg somewhere-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... which I need to go in search and find, and if I don't find it, then I'm a failure. And much of the, the messages I get in my DMs, as I've said before, are kids that ha- are feeling inadequate and like they're a failure because they haven't found their passion.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
When if you just say, "Well, maybe, maybe it's not something that you have to go in search of necessarily, and maybe there's more than one."
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yep.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It can be a really liberating thing, and the- I think words generally are really constrained, and they cause people a ton of p- like, "Are you in love?"
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
My mum comes home, I'm, you know, I'm dating someone, she goes, "Is it love?"
- 48:55 – 50:53
Why self analysis is so important
- OBOliver Burkeman
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. I, I, I might get this quite wrong, but when, when you're talking about, see, cognitive behavioral therapy, and in fact, we can achieve a form of which may be better than cognitive behavioral therapy, of that therapy with, like, self-analysis in various ways. And for me, this podcast and the diary that I had to keep originally when I, when I first started-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... to do it, and also this obligation I have to make content for-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... the world, has been one of the greatest forms of, like, therapy I've ever encountered. Um, and I, I always, I think it's, like, one of the unappreciated ways to arrive at self-awareness, overcome your own bullshit, and yeah, which is, which is having to write-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... having to think, and having to try and find the truth in your own experience.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Can you relate to that?
- OBOliver Burkeman
No, totally. And I, for me, I mean, there's lots of research about how writing down your personal problems, for example, is incredibly... Like journaling, it, it works and it's proven to work. Um, it's not necessarily because you come up with solutions, although that can happen, it's because you end up, you sort of have to take this third-person stance on your own mental contents, and you have to do that for sure if you're trying to package it in some form that other people can, um, can benefit from or can understand. So, writing for an audience is, is absolutely an example of that. Um, there's something incredibly powerful in seeing your issues, your interests, whatever, from the perspective of another person. I think it's related to that thing about how so often in life, you know, our friends can see what, what we need to do or what, what's needed in our lives a bit more clearly than, than we can, 'cause you sort of, um, uh, you can't see the wood from the, for, for the trees inside your own head. But, but they can be like, "No, very obviously you need to do this and then this."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
So, so it's a little bit of that, uh, of that effect as well.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And how you can always give better advice than you (laughs) live by.
- OBOliver Burkeman
No, absolutely. Tell me about it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- 50:53 – 57:15
Why do we purse ambition over happiness
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, the consequences of having this highly efficient, uh, productivity-focused life, you see it in people. You were talking earlier about the, the great innovators of the world that managed to focus on a set of priorities, but when you ask these people if they're happy, like Elon Musk, if he's happy, no- and nobody thinks Elon Musk is happy.
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
No. And I think he said in the Rogan interview that you wouldn't like to be me, you wouldn't like to be in my head.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, but we still seem to pursue that over what we think will make us happy any... Well, what, where, what, what will clearly make us happy anyway.
- OBOliver Burkeman
I think that, uh, all of us have something inside us that we're sort of here, this doesn't sound too supernatural, that we're sort of here to express and to, to put out into the world. I think the... It, it gets complicated because some people, I don't wanna accuse Elon Musk of this, but, uh, I think it's probably very often true of certain, kind of, very driven people. It, it, it's not just that they're sort of trying to bring their gift into the world. It, it's an odd and not necessarily helpful way of trying to sort out certain, like, psychological issues they have. So, they feel that they have to achieve a certain amount because they were not, um, you know, given sufficient unconditional love by their parents, so they need it from the world. Or, or they feel that, um, yeah, they need to justify their existence in, in some way, um, and then it gets hard to know when to stop, it gets hard to tell the difference between success and things that are truly bringing you happiness. But at the same time, right, you don't want to... It's important to, to not suggest, I think, that the, that the ideal is to be for everyone, is to be so completely chilled out that all you would want to do is lie on a hammock on a, on a beach and sort of not create things in, in one way or another. That might be appropriate for, for some people. But there is this fear when I talk about this stuff and write about this stuff of like, "Oh, wouldn't it lead you to just think, well, why do anything?" You know, w- wouldn't, wouldn't it all just lead us to be sort of nihilists in that way? Um, uh, and I don't think so for that reason, but I also think, uh, like, let's cross that bridge when we come to it. We- we're already, we're all so driven and so sort of, um, trying to get more and more and more done, but there's not a huge risk yet of us becoming so zen about all these things that we (laughs) kind of stop achieving entirely.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm. I, I, I pondered that a lot in my life, um, this idea that, 'cause you, one of the things you said earlier was maybe I'm okay. This kind of realization-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that maybe I am already enough.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Maybe none of these goals are gonna increase my value. Maybe even if I become a multimillionaire, Steve Bartlett is just gonna be worth one Steve Bartlett still.
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, I had the, I had, I pondered that for... when I became a, a millionaire, right? When I, when I, when my company listed on the stock market, and I thought, "Well, this doesn't feel any different." In fact, the anticlimax makes me feel pretty bad.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
The expectation that I was gonna feel lo- you know, like I was more worthy, that, the, uh, the anticlimax of that has made, had made me feel worse. And then, asking myself the question, "Well, if I am already enough, then what's the point in striving for more?" And I, uh, my conclusive, my conclusion on all of this ponderance was that realizing that I'm enough is actually the foundation for, like, real ambition. And, and the minute-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... when I was, when I was insecure enough to believe that money or a Lamborghini might make me more, I was striving for things that weren't my real ambitions, they were s- social ambitions.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And the minute you realize you're enough and that Lamborghini isn't gonna do it, then you start re- replanning your ambitions and go, "Do you know what I actually love doing is piano-"
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"... and hanging out with my niece."
- OBOliver Burkeman
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So that, that feeling that, that I am enough, um, is the foundation for real ambition.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Totally. Yeah, no, I think that's a great-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... that's such a good way of putting it. I mean, I, the way I've sometimes thought about this is like, sort of ambition and achievement and creation, they don't have to be the thing you're doing, the thing that you need to do in order to get somewhere. They can be the thing you do just to express-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... the fact that it's great to be here, and you-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... they're great to have these skills and these opportunities. Um, I'm not religious, but there is a, a, this idea in Christianity that I keep running up against now, because people contact me and say, "Have you thought about this?" Because it's clearly related, this notion of, this notion of, uh, grace, that, that, like, you don't, you can't justify yourself by your works in the world, right? You can't sort of achieve salvation by what you do. But you also don't, in this model anyway, you don't need to achieve it either, 'cause you're already justified in the eyes of God, if you're a religious person. And so, the reason that you do things like this, from... The reason that you then do stuff in the world, is, is again, it's just like, yeah, it's, it's for the, it's an act of, like, glorification or worship, right? Or for, as we were saying, like, just expressing the fact that it's great to be able to do these things, and, like, "Hey, you could never have been born." You know? You, so it's not a reason to not do things. It's that, it's that you're not doing them to try to justify yourself-
- 57:15 – 1:04:50
We’re addicted to the speed of life
- OBOliver Burkeman
- SBSteven Bartlett
In your book, you say that we're addicted to the speed of life. Is that true? And why is it an addiction?
- OBOliver Burkeman
I'm, I'm talking there about the ex- sort of acceleration of the culture, the fact that everything, you know, m- m- moves so fast that we're able to do so many things so much more quickly, travel, communicate, uh, cook food, you know, than we, than we once could, and how, and why that... Like, it's a, if you stop and think about it, it's really weird that all that technology and all that acceleration has not left us feeling, um, more relaxed and chilled out, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
'Cause it saves time. Um, the world that has 747s in it and microwaves in it and the internet in it ought, by rights, to feel much calmer, because it's, all this time is saved. But of course it doesn't have that effect. Like, it has had, has had effect on nobody. Um, it makes everybody feel more impatient and rushed. Um, and I think the, the reason that the, the frame of addiction makes sense, I'm drawing on the work of a therapist called Stephanie Brown, who's, who was herself an alcoholic, got sober with AA, then started being a therapist to, in Silicon Valley, to various people in that sort of first dot-com boom, around sort of like 2000s. And, and seeing in them this trait in their addiction to urge- what she called their addiction to urgency, their addiction to speed, that reminded her very much of, of her youthful experiences as an alcoholic. Namely that you're sort of, life speeds up, you feel overwhelmed, you think that going faster has got to be the solution, right? If you go even faster, then you can cope with the all, this rush of incoming information, incoming opportunities, whatever it is. Um, so you go faster, but then you find that actually that's just increased the, the speed of everything, and now you need to go faster still, and it's a sort of, it's a spiral, and you crash.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- OBOliver Burkeman
There's controversy about talking about addiction, whether it's, uh, should be kept as a sort of strictly kind of medical idea. But, I think that's really... It resonates with me, 'cause I feel like i- it's very tempting in this, in this world that feels like there's so much stuff to stay on top of, and it moves at such a tempo.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- OBOliver Burkeman
There is this notion that, like, the only solution is for you to go even faster then it, to be able to encompass all of that. And this is, this is not going to work, uh, because you're never going to be able to... You know, there's an infinite supply, right? There's an effectively infinite number of emails you could receive, um, demands your boss could make, uh, opportunities you could pursue, businesses you could start, whatever. So getting faster and going through an infinite supply, you don't, you don't get to the end of that, because it's infinite. So, Stephanie Brown's advice to her clients, and I think it's, it's, it's very useful is that all of us who are sort of moving at this speed need to experiment a little bit with like what it feels like to just slow down to the speed that things take, and say, "You know what? I'm, I'm, if I'm gonna read this novel, and it takes my time, and it takes s- I need to look, read slowly and focus, I'm just gonna like..." Yeah, it's not gonna feel great at first, right? Because we are wired for racing through things. And it doesn't feel great at first, but, but it is a path to a much deeper kind of engagement with the world. O- one of the things I do in the book is I, I write about, um, this exercise that I did that, uh, uh, is recommended by an art historian at Harvard University, who I went to interview, who she has all her students choose a painting and go and look at it for three hours-... like, sit on, sit on a little bench, whatever, and just look at that painting for three hours. Take notes if you want, but you're not allowed to get up (laughs) . And she knows, it's like, it's ins- it's completely insane for almost anybody today to envisage doing something like that for, for three hours. But that's why she (laughs) , that's why she suggests it. And, you know, for the first hour it's incredibly uncomfortable, because you're not in charge anymore. You can't race through the day in the way that you were accustomed to doing, but it is so useful, because getting through that discomfort to what lies on the other side is, is so empowering. I think patience is really a kind of a superpower in the modern, in the modern world. And in the context of a painting, what happens is, you literally see things in the painting that you haven't seen in the first 45 minutes. I mean, it's, it's bizarre. In the context of work, creative work, business, I think it's more just that, like, when everyone is racing as fast as they are today, there's actually real power in being able to resist that and let things take the time they take, and think about something for a few more days if that's what it takes. Like, you actually can have more success that way, as well as feel less like a headless chicken.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is there a role of impatience, though? Is there a role somewhere in life for impatience?
- OBOliver Burkeman
It depends how you define it, right? So, in the book, I'm talking about impatience as, as wanting things to go faster than you can have them go.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- OBOliver Burkeman
So then I'd say, like, no, there's never any ... Even if you're sort of, um, driving somebody to the hospital because they're going into labor or something, right ?I mean, it's like, you should do that really fast, you should be urgent, you should, you should pri- prioritize that, and you should, you know, go as, you should drive as fast as is practical. But even then, it's probably not worth feeling frustrated that you're stuck in traffic or something, right? I mean, it's ... So, if impatience is that kind of frustration at the fact that you have limited control over how fast the world goes, how fast something happens, then no. I mean, it's, it's just wild, right? We now are much more impatient. Like, if a webpage takes five seconds to load, like, you can feel it. It's ridiculous.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
But if somebody says, "Yeah, I'll put that stuff in the mail and you'll get it in three days," you're like, "That's fine." Right? It's, it's-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Speak for yourself.
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs) Okay. All right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The mail? (laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
I'm sure, yeah, with ... Those of us who still use-
- SBSteven Bartlett
WhatsApp me. (laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah. Right? But, like, that ... The, the, the faster things get, the more offensive it is when they still only take a few seconds, like, when there's a few seconds delay. Um, if we're using the word in another way, to mean having a sort of hunger for things to change in your life or change in society, you know, you're not, not willing to sort of sit around and be a, be a doormat while things, uh, when you could change things, then sure. Uh, I think that's a different kind of impatience, and I'm sure it has a role (paper rustling) .
- SBSteven Bartlett
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- 1:04:50 – 1:08:10
Embracing small changes
- SBSteven Bartlett
. In your book, you talk about embracing radical incrementalism. What does that mean for you?
- OBOliver Burkeman
This is the idea that there are contexts where, um, really being willing to make progress on the basis of little and often, right? Kind of gradual progress to do a tiny bit at a time, and not kind of binging (laughs) on the things you're trying to achieve, can be really powerful. Um, again, I'm sorry to keep coming back to writing as an example, but the, the work that I'm drawing on there from a, a psychologist called Robert Beuss, who studied, um, academics who write, and figured, trying to figure out, like, who are the ones who actually get a ton of papers published and a ton of books written, and who are the ones who get mired in, um, like, procrastination and paralysis? And he found that the, the really productive people in that sphere were the ones who made writing a, um, a modest part of their daily life, right? It occupied, like, a couple of hours maybe, as opposed to the ones who made it into this huge thing that then became very intimidating and they got all sorts of, like, psychodramas going on with it. Because it was something they were willing to sort of do for a little bit, leave aside, come back to. And I think this applies to, especially applies to anything that is like brain work, but I think it applies to pretty much all, all kinds of endeavor, right? There's often a huge benefit in being willing to say, "Well, I'm gonna work on this for a tiny amount of time today, and I'm going to stop, even if I'm on a roll," right? "When my time is up, I'm gonna stop. And then I'm gonna come back." It makes it something that you can sustain day, after day, after day. S- if you do the opposite of incrementalism, right? If you give this, if you give this sort of absolutely center stage in your life, then if it goes well, great, but if it doesn't go well, it becomes this kind of huge, intimidating, uh, thing. And I've found that, you know, if I'm working on a book, say, really sort of almost embarrassingly small workdays on it, regularly done, day after day after day-... so much more productive, like, in terms of the actual output. Um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about deadlines, though? Because when I wrote my book, I think this dead- the deadline of having to send it to the publisher just hung over me and was, like, forcing me to, "Okay, Steve, today you have to write 3, you know, 3,000 words."
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah. I think deadlines have their role, right? And I, you know, I would have got nowhere without deadlines in newspapers, because they sort of kept, they sort of helped me sort of bust through perfectionism and stuff-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... because it was just literally, you know. It's, I did these things on a, I would write these kind of features for The Guardian where I had to, like, um, the- the idea came to me or was given to me at, uh, like, 10:30 in the morning. At 5:00 PM, they needed a two-and-a-half-thousand-word researched article. You'd just be like, "Okay, I've just got to do it." But, um, in a way, I'm sort of training myself out of that now, and I think that to- to make, i- i- i- it isn't a, it's perfectly okay and it's fine, but- but it, but it isn't sustainable. I think that, you know, the- the to really over the long haul be able to do something like, like writing, I've found, requires that I have, uh, acquired this ability for sort of dogged persistence rather than, you know, cruising to the, to the deadline.
- 1:08:10 – 1:14:20
Embracing our irrelevance
- OBOliver Burkeman
Um-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Another topic that people hate talking about, or that at least it seems to make people really uncomfortable, and I, sometimes I just bring up the conversation because I like to see, I find the f- the- the com-
- OBOliver Burkeman
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
I find the reaction to be really-
- OBOliver Burkeman
What's coming? (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Well, we'll never know. Um, I find the reaction to be really fascinating is this idea which you talk about, which is that we need to embrace our, like, relative irrelevance-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Oh, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in the world.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And when I say this to people, you can see it sometimes shattering something in them, the idea that they don't matter.
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
In the grand scheme of the universe-
- OBOliver Burkeman
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... they really don't matter. What, like, why is, what is the upside of embracing my own irrelevance, this idea that... And do I matter, Oliver?
- OBOliver Burkeman
Depends what you mean by matter.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do I matter in the s- in the grand scheme of the universe?
- OBOliver Burkeman
I don't really think any of us, I think, I mean, I think, I mean, what I'm s- what I want to say about this is if you adopt a s- cosmic timescale, right? If you look at the history of, like, the cosmos or even just the planet, like, no human life, uh, or even anything that is done in a human life, you know, almost nothing will outlive us. And the things that do outlive us, like, you know, people inventing great scientific breakthroughs or something, uh, e- even then, the- the period these have been relevant, if you look at the cosmos, is still like a tiny blink of an eye. Um, so I think there is a sort of inbuilt bias that most of us have, not- not just the ones who are megalomaniacs, but almost all of us, to- to think sort of, uh, subliminally of history as having led up to, like, our bit of history, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
And then to think of the decisions that we take and the things that we're doing as fundamentally the most important things that are going on in that bit of history. And that, on some level, we probably have to, right? Just to sort of sure, to- to be able to, like, get up in the morning. You, it's not, you can't think of yourself as this kind of tiny pinprick of light in the middle of eons of darkness of the cosmos from the Big Bang to the, you know, to- to- to when the- the universe ends or whatever. But actually, you can really get bogged down in that. You can really be like, well, you can spend a long time mired in indecision about things because you've built the stakes up in your head to an enormous degree. You can really get sort of depressed about whether you can really have an impact on things, because it has to be something that lives for millennia after you're gone or something. And when you realize how little most of it's going to matter quite soon, I, uh, some people do go down that, into, like, despair and horror.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
But, but I think that is a reason to be like, "Why not take the risk?" Like, "Why not do the bold things?" It's like the stakes are a lot lower than you thought. The universe doesn't really care. Um, you don't need to worry about whether you're fulfilling your purpose that the universe had laid down for you, because there kind of isn't one. And that's actually a, it's liberating, as I keep saying. You know, it's a reason to, it's a reason to sort of experimentally do the things that seem to you like the- the- the- the coolest things to do. Then what you can do is you can, you can use a definition of mattering according to which so much that we do matters, right? Because I think it's difficult for people to remember that, like, I don't know, I don't want to use a definition of a meaningful life that rules out some very mundane things, like caring for a sick relative, cooking nutritious meals for your kids, making your neighborhood a slightly more beautiful place to live in. Like, we don't want a definition of the meaning of li- of meaningful life that says none of those things are meaningful, surely. Um, and so, yeah, I can imagine that it's an interesting issue for sort of people who, people who look up to you specifically, for example, thinking that, thinking that it's actually like they've got to emulate you in order-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- OBOliver Burkeman
... to be doing something meaningful, rather than be inspired by you, which is a different, which is a different point, right? Because actually very, very everyday mundane things can be meaningful, and it's quite possible that the most fulfilled people on the planet are precisely the ones you never hear from, because they're doing low-profile things. And then, you know, I have this theory. Uh, maybe it's an in- maybe it's insulting to you, this theory, but I have this theory that, like, the more of a public profile someone has (laughs) , and I have a modest one, so it applies to me too, but, like, that's probably like, to that degree, is like they're screwed up in some way because-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
... they have, they have some problem with not being ordinary.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Indeep fand that.
- OBOliver Burkeman
And (laughs) .
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm not sure what to do. (laughs)
- OBOliver Burkeman
And then, you know, the Hollywood A-list, those people are probably the most successful.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sex stars. (laughs)
Episode duration: 1:20:09
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