The Dark Side Of Being A Perfectionist - Oliver Burkeman

1. 0:00 – 7:12

   Why We’re Obsessed With Productivity

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Why do you think that so many of us have such an obsession with being productive?

   2. OBOliver Burkeman0:07

      Wow. These, these kind of causal questions I always feel like you can answer on so many levels, right? So this could be an ar- this could be answer about the Protestant work ethic, about sort of Anglo-American culture and the religious idea that to try to get on the right side of God you have to spend your life being very industrious. Could be like a capitalism, uh, that is a capitalism argument, but it could be a sort of late capitalism argument about how we feel that so intensely today. It could be psychotherapeutic, about how so many of us are raised with some kind of sense that we need to prove ourselves, that we're gonna be, that we're, that we get love from the world for, through our accomplishments instead of just being ourselves. Um, and, you know, then there's kind of more positive and less, uh, less pessimistic accounts, like, it, it, we live in times when it's possible for all sorts of reasons for, to, for relatively, you know, ordinary people to do exciting and interesting and meaningful things that, you know, in a very different era they might not have been able to. So it's, it's cool to try to figure out how to make sure that happens.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:15

      I think about all of those things all the time. The Protestant work ethic was something I was intimately familiar with, especially in my 20s. Uh, I, I even used to feel guilty if something had gone well but I hadn't suffered enough-

   4. OBOliver Burkeman1:29

      Right. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson1:30

      ... in the achievement of it.

   6. OBOliver Burkeman1:31

      Yeah, yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:31

      Which is a particularly malignant version of what we're talking about.

   8. OBOliver Burkeman1:36

      Yeah, totally. That, um, that way in which it is easier, it's actually easier to ex- to have it be hard, i- in a, in a sort of upside-down way, and that for lots of us, I, I expect in this respect we are similar, me and you and plenty of people, uh, in the audience. Um, it actually feels kind of strange or, or dangerous or subversive or something to, to wonder if something could actually be quite, quite easy. Um, I read a, there was a comment to a New York Times piece that, that, well, the comment went viral, r- um, on social media, which doesn't often happen, where, um, uh, a woman was, was referring to this concept, uh, that she'd come to call, um, uh, maximum economy of ass.

   9. CWChris Williamson2:26

      Huh.

   10. OBOliver Burkeman2:26

       About how, um, actually it, often it's the right thing to do to half-ass things, that's where the, that's where the idea comes from, right? The idea that you should always be spending as much ass as possible in the, in the completion of a task. It just makes no sense, right? It doesn't, it's not how... it's not how it should work. There should be no shame in the idea that if something comes easily to you, it should feel easy to do, and then you save your-

   11. CWChris Williamson2:49

       Mm.

   12. OBOliver Burkeman2:49

       ... your effort and self-discipline for the things that don't come easy.

   13. CWChris Williamson2:53

       Yeah, that's a very good point. It's so strange. I, I, I wonder how much of it is, is that. I, I wonder how much of it, again, you hit on another one of my favorites, this sort of weird value exchange that lots of us have with the world, that if only I make myself sufficiently useful and valuable, then I will be accepted. I remember, I, I, this is total sort of bro science reflective stuff, but I think in my 20s what I tried to do was I made myself needed to people. I was useful. I was a very useful intermediary. Which wasn't the same as being wanted, but functionally it ended up being the same. And maybe I could have been, but because all I was trying to do was get to being wanted through being needed, uh, I kind of begged the question, and no- I wasn't ever able to connect with people on a, on a deeper level in any case, because of course all of the relationships or many of the relationships I had were transactional, because that was the frame that I'd set them in.

   14. OBOliver Burkeman3:50

       Yeah. Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson3:51

       Um, and I mean, whatever, existentially, uh, psychologically, this is the same way that we relate, a lot of us relate to the world. If only I can be sufficiently accomplished, then I will be wanted and, and safe and secure and, and desired by the people around me. I will be accepted, and, and I j- if I just reach this particular level of status or wealth or usefulness or acclaim or wisdom or intellect or academic achievement or career goal or whatever it might be, then ah...

   16. OBOliver Burkeman4:19

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson4:20

       ... there we are.

   18. OBOliver Burkeman4:21

       Uh, no, totally. That's so well put. And of course I can, I can almost hear, like, a certain kind of commentator critic from, from the left basically saying like, "Yeah, that's because we live in a world that makes you feel like you're gonna fall off the bottom of the ladder of society unless you do this," right? So there are these kind of real circumstantial pressures to act that way. But what's so striking is that people internalize it. They collaborate with it. They do it long after.

   19. CWChris Williamson4:49

       It's self-generated.

   20. OBOliver Burkeman4:50

       Yeah. It-

   21. CWChris Williamson4:50

       I'm my own tyrant here as well.

   22. OBOliver Burkeman4:52

       No, absolutely. And they do it long after and when they're not themselves in a position where that's necessary. And so you end up with this absurd situation where, that we have, where, you know, the, the ranks of people doing really well for themselves in terms of status, upper ranks of corporate life and, and, and other areas of the world are dominated by, uh, what, what's been called insecure overachievers, right? People who are driven, but driven by a deep sense of inadequacy and are not having any fun even though they've supposedly won this, um, this very, uh-

   23. CWChris Williamson5:29

       (laughs)

   24. OBOliver Burkeman5:29

       ... competitive race.

   25. CWChris Williamson5:31

       Yeah. It's, it's very bizarre. I've spent a lot of time, es- especially since moving to America, Austin's a hotbed for people coming through. I was at a dinner a couple of nights ago where Elon Musk was there. So you know, I'm floating around people that are at the top of totem poles that other people seem to think are important or whatever, and maybe everyone thinks is important, I don't know. Um, but (laughs) i- in my experience, it's, if you look at those people as they rise up through this infinite ladder...... you're selecting for people, I think on average, that are more miserable than the average person. I think that the higher you get up, what you're selecting for are the pathologies and compulsions and drives that have caused someone to get there.

   26. OBOliver Burkeman6:18

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson6:18

       Uh, so again, it's kind of begging the que- like, the, the, the effect is happening before the cause, right?

   28. OBOliver Burkeman6:24

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson6:24

       Or like, the cause is what's driving people up to the top of that.

   30. OBOliver Burkeman6:27

       Yeah, no, that makes total sense, and it reminds me in a slightly different context, 'cause here you're talking about, I think, uh, money and status and, and, uh, and things like that, but also just in terms of the old-fashioned kind of fame, right? Hollywood movie celebrity. It, it's... I think it's fairly obvious to most of us, if you look closely, that celebrities are those people who have a... who lack something that non-celebrities have, right? Which is a (laughs) ability to not need that kind of-
2. 7:12 – 17:21

   Humans Crave Control Over Their Lives

   1. OBOliver Burkeman7:12

   2. CWChris Williamson7:12

      Yeah. Uh, one of my friends, Alex, says people look to high achievers to try and find something that they have that the normal person doesn't, but they've got it the wrong way round. The people who are the high achievers are lacking something everyone else does have, which is an off button.

   3. OBOliver Burkeman7:26

      (laughs) Right, yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson7:28

      And I think that's true, and I, I, I see it, I see it in myself. I'm going through quite a big sort of personal transformation at the moment, uh, trying to feel feelings, trying to sort of focus on emotion and working out why... What are these, where are these motivations coming from within me, like, really getting sort of deep down to the core of this. Uh, and the more and more that I see it, it, it, it appears to me like... Well, first off, one of the reasons that I wanted to bring you back on is I've been loving The Imperfectionist, which is your newsletter that everyone should go and subscribe to.

   5. OBOliver Burkeman7:56

      Oh, thank you.

   6. CWChris Williamson7:56

      And secondly, it seems like much of your work is basically pointing out the ironies and the paradoxes of control, and us trying to-

   7. OBOliver Burkeman8:06

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson8:06

      ... gain and regain control, and it seems to me that the relationship, the primary relationship, is between control and our emotions. Our emotional state is perturbed in some way-

   9. OBOliver Burkeman8:17

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson8:18

       ... and control, I don't know, like salves it somehow, kind of c- helps us to, to not-

   11. OBOliver Burkeman8:24

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson8:24

       ... feel feelings so much.

   13. OBOliver Burkeman8:27

       Yeah, that, that's so well... I think you've just summarized my entire field of interest-

   14. CWChris Williamson8:31

       We did it!

   15. OBOliver Burkeman8:31

       ... better than, better than I (laughs) managed yet to do. People are always asking me, like, to describe what I write about and stuff, and I, now I have a, now I have an answer. Um, I think that, um, yeah, I think this is r- exactly it, and there are so many different ways into this, but it's, it's essentially a kind of control that we... The, the control that we crave is a control that you don't get to have as a human being, ultimately, and that you wouldn't actually want if you achieved it, right? I mean, y- you can see this in such simple settings like, you know, if you... For me anyway, if I think back about sort of amazing highlights in my life to this point, or people I've met who I'm incredibly glad that I, that I met, um, in, in no cases can I sort of attribute that to, um, a plan that I made and carried out. It happened, you know, even though I've been obsessed with, like, scheduling and time boxing and trying to figure out how to run my life for years. It's, it's never as a result of those things that these, uh, encounters come. It's always, you know, in, in spite of them.

   16. CWChris Williamson9:41

       Mm-hmm.

   17. OBOliver Burkeman9:42

       Um, so even just something like that, the way that, you know, half the sort of funniest things that you'll talk about if you get together with old friends are when things went, in some sense, wrong, in, with some-

   18. CWChris Williamson9:53

       Mm-hmm.

   19. OBOliver Burkeman9:53

       ... with some plan that you had. There's that old quote, "Almost everything is either a good time or a good story," um, and that, that, that, that really sums it up. And there's, uh, there's a really interesting historical perspective here. We don't need to go into massive detail, but like, I was, um, I was reading a section in a book by a Zen teacher called John Tarrant, um, where he makes this really interesting point that like, in medieval times, you would not have fallen for the notion that this kind of control over your life (laughs) was possible, right?

   20. CWChris Williamson10:25

       Mm-hmm.

   21. OBOliver Burkeman10:25

       You'd be... Even if you were pretty powerful in medieval times, but especially if you weren't, you'd go through your life, and like, any day, there could be a plague or a marauding army or, um, you know, famine. Uh, you wouldn't have any understanding of the science of, of what brought these things about. You wouldn't have been able to predict them. You, you, you... If you'd, if you'd made your life conditional in the way that we do, and you said, like, "Well, I'm not gonna start building this cathedral until, um, until we've got all these threats out of the way and I feel like I'm in charge of things," then nothing would ever have been done. Um, so I do think there is this sense in which the modern world, like, tricks us, (laughs) basically, makes us feel like it must be possible, um, either through, you know, digital technology or psychological technologies, self-help and stuff, or something, it must be possible somehow to get this kind of handle on our lives. And then you set about trying to get the handle on your life instead of doing stuff, like-

   22. CWChris Williamson11:23

       Yeah, I (clears throat) , I think about that all the time, that basically, we... (gasps) At some point in the last 100 years, humans believed that we had complete control over the environment, and what that led to was a unrealistic expectation of certainty-

   23. OBOliver Burkeman11:44

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson11:44

       ... and a particular aversion to anything that looks like a perturbment of, of that.

   25. OBOliver Burkeman11:50

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CWChris Williamson11:50

       Uh, um, whereas, like you say, previously, like, "Hey, if you don't have germ theory, chop the leg off." Like, we... You know, what... Just, we... It's... I'm sure that people weren't happy about having their legs chopped off, but like, this is just what you do, like, do the-

   27. OBOliver Burkeman12:01

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson12:01

       ... bloodletting, get the leeches on me, like, whatever. Start the cathedral. Eh, eh, who was the guy that did... Is it Gaud- Gaudi? Is that the dude that did, uh, the, uh, Sagrada Familia in-... uh, Barcelona?

   29. OBOliver Burkeman12:14

       I believe that's the name of the Barcelona Cathedral, yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson12:16

       Yes. Uh, and that's still going. And he started that in, like, 1908, 1908 or something.
3. 17:21 – 23:47

   Strategies to Relinquish Control

   1. CWChris Williamson17:21

      so give us- Yep. ...give us some of the things that you do. Tension of control that we have in our lives. W- what are some of the, uh, practices or insights that you rely on most?

   2. OBOliver Burkeman17:31

      Well, again, so I'll just... I guess this starts by talking about a circumstantial change, but, um, but, uh, but becoming a parent will certainly, uh, is certainly one very powerful way of, um, making it clear to yourself that you don't really have, uh, very much control. And that, um... b- both that you can't sort of plan a day, um, and then have it unfold exactly as you want. Also, that you kind of are glad of that, at least most of the time. Not- not all the time, and maybe not in those first few months. Um, uh, and also that you don't really need it, right? 'Cause you find ways to kind of, um, you know, start the writing once the day clears up enough for you to get a couple of hours, rather than fixating on the notion that you always need to begin at 7:30 and work for...... um, three hours undisturbed, because that just might not be an option. So on the level of sort of practices for managing my life, I guess that has meant, (sighs) I mean, all sorts of things that, uh, th- that try to sort of lend some structure, but in a very, very flexible way.

   3. CWChris Williamson18:39

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   4. OBOliver Burkeman18:40

      So, um, I'm trying to think of something specific now, but, um, you know, I- I- I know it works for some people, but I've sort of largely moved away when it comes to just sort of planning a day of work, o- f- from any kind of, um, uh, sort of strict time blocking approach. Um, the- the challenge then obviously is to make sure that you don't just end up reacting to everything-

   5. CWChris Williamson19:03

      Yes.

   6. OBOliver Burkeman19:03

      ... and doing none of the intentional stuff. So I go through different phases with that. Sometimes it's a question of, um, uh, you know, th- three tasks that definitely will get done in the course of the day. Sometimes it's- s- just something like, "Well, I'm gonna spend three hour..." I- I- I wrote this newsletter ages ago where I sort of, uh, gave this, um, uh, whole name. And uh, you know, you've gotta- if you've come up with a rule or a technique, you've gotta- you've gotta have proper proprietary -

   7. CWChris Williamson19:30

      Meme first, explain later. That's the rule.

   8. OBOliver Burkeman19:33

      ... branding, right? (laughs) So, so I- I called this the 3-3-3 technique and I just said, "Look, something I find useful is to think about each day I'm gonna do like three hours, or try to do, about three hours on my main creative work, um, three different kind of maintenance activities including kind of, you know, working out, including email, things that just need to happen for me to keep the- the thing, m- myself (laughs) , uh, running well, and then three sort of random smaller tasks that have probably been, uh, hanging around for ages and- and really just need to be done." I- I think that- I don't care about the specific technique. I think what's really- what I've really come to appreciate, I'm not sure how to express this, but is this- is this idea that, um... I- I guess it's just the truism that little and often is a good way to address your tasks in life, but it's just this- it's just this notion that any practice that I can get into that fairly reliably means I'm going to do a very small amount of writing, but almost every day.

   9. CWChris Williamson20:42

      Mm-hmm.

   10. OBOliver Burkeman20:42

       Uh, uh, uh, anything that means I'm gonna do- am I gonna actually complete three of these, uh, urgent or important tasks instead of tell myself I'm gonna complete 12 of them. Anything that can lead to that sort of gradual compounding and accumulation is always better than- than anything else. You see, I think all productivity discussion just, um, sort of ends up tending back towards these kind of truisms, right? It's like, (laughs) l-

   11. CWChris Williamson21:09

       Yeah.

   12. OBOliver Burkeman21:09

       ... little and often.

   13. CWChris Williamson21:10

       Yep.

   14. OBOliver Burkeman21:10

       Uh, consistency is important but that's not the same as, like, uniformity. You- it's not a good con- approach to consistency to, um, to- to sort of, uh, beat yourself up.

   15. CWChris Williamson21:22

       Or this sort of formulaic rigidity.

   16. OBOliver Burkeman21:25

       Right. Being willing to see the whole thing as open-ended so that like next week you'll change your systems and that's fine, like just... Um, and then another thing that's made a big difference to me fairly recently is, uh, taking seriously that- that, uh, the question of, like, what- what I would like to do, what feel- what I feel like doing. It sou- sounds terribly indulgent. I still kind of cringe at the idea that I'm, uh, speaking this way. But it- it dawned on me a few years ago that it was really strange and perverse to, uh, approach a day of the kind of work that I do, um, with- with the idea that you couldn't, you weren't gonna allow yourself to harness the energy and the fuel of, like, what you felt like doing. Like, uh, you- you maybe can't-

   17. CWChris Williamson22:14

       What are you, some sort of, like- like v- like very strange per- productivity pervert? Are you supposed to whip yourself-

   18. OBOliver Burkeman22:21

       Right (laughs) .

   19. CWChris Williamson22:21

       ... into submission, walk on a bed of nails, and then y- you can do your work while you're doing that? You're not supposed to enjoy it. You- j- it's crazy.

   20. OBOliver Burkeman22:29

       Right, right, right. It's so odd and it's like you- you- you- you're supposed to use your money sensibly, you're supposed to use your focus sensibly. Like, you're not supposed to use your excitement-

   21. CWChris Williamson22:39

       Enjoyment. Yeah.

   22. OBOliver Burkeman22:39

       ... for what you do sensibly. It's very- it's very strange. Um, and, um, I've mentioned this so many times but I'll just very quickly say it again, I was really impacted by a blog post that, um, the meditation teacher Susan Piver wrote years and years ago, mainly really just by the title of the blog post which was Getting Things Done by Not Being Mean to Yourself, um, where she pointed out, I think brilliantly, how a certain kind of approach that people think of as, like, down to earth and non-woo-woo and just sort of like going for it, which is epitomized by that, you know, Chuck Close quote, um, uh, "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work," it very, very easily, at least in the- the wrong hands (laughs) like mine, um, turns into this kind of, uh, yeah, this kind of hard driving thing where no matter how you feel, you're gonna do the thing you said you were gonna do with that particular portion of time, even if it's just an incredibly inefficient way of getting it done, because, you know, it- it- it's just not what any part of you wants to be doing in that

4. 23:47 – 28:33

   Why You Need More Self-Compassion

   1. OBOliver Burkeman23:47

      moment.

   2. CWChris Williamson23:47

      There could be another time when you wanted to do that thing and at that time when you're trying to do that thing you could be doing something else, which means... Yeah, I- I don't disagree and I- the just show up and get to work thing, I'm intimately, intimately familiar with. I've been listening to a lot of Alain de Botton recently, again, as I try to feel feelings.

   3. OBOliver Burkeman24:06

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson24:06

      And, uh, he has this beautiful section where he talks about why people-... uh, cause themselves to suffer more than they need to. And he says, "You're not suffering because you need to, you're suffering because you've become uncharacteristically familiar with suffering." And it's like this sort of set point, uh-

   5. OBOliver Burkeman24:25

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson24:25

      ... and it's so true. And I had Matthew Hussey on the show, uh, dating coach, like w- probably one of the best dating coaches in the world. And, uh, he has this, it's... His new book is, is really, really great. It's basically a personal development book masquerading as dating book.

   7. OBOliver Burkeman24:39

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson24:40

      He's got this line about self-compassion, which I'm gonna read to you, "I struggle to believe I'm worthy of moments of joy and peace without first putting myself through a brutal schedule, monitoring my productivity levels down to the minute. Perhaps some people apply this 'earn your cookie' mindset in ways that lead to healthy achievements. Not me. Mine is a mutation whereby joy and self-compassion are regularly outlawed by an internal tyrant who decides when I've been flogged enough for one day. Just when I'm about to collapse, a voice inside says, 'Okay, give him half an hour of peace before bed, but make sure he knows what's start again bright and early in the morning.'" And you've got this-

   9. OBOliver Burkeman25:14

      So good.

   10. CWChris Williamson25:14

       ... idea of productivity debt, which is basically the same thing.

   11. OBOliver Burkeman25:18

       Yeah. No, absolutely. I think, yeah. That's so well-written. I don't just wanna skip onto my, uh-

   12. CWChris Williamson25:22

       It's phenomenal.

   13. OBOliver Burkeman25:23

       ... my thoughts, but it's the, but it's the same idea, right? Yeah, so that I'm talking about this sense that I think people have that you've got to... You wake up in the morning and you've basically got to put in a certain amount of output, otherwise you haven't really justified your existence on the planet.

   14. CWChris Williamson25:39

       (laughs)

   15. OBOliver Burkeman25:40

       Um, and the best you can do is, like, get back up to a zero balance, right? That's the, that's the, the, the best you can hope for. And of course if you're fortunate enough to be doing things with your work that are, you know, at least meant to be (laughs) enjoyable and interesting and exciting, then it's, i- in some ways it's worse, because then you get to like say to yourself, not only, like, "I've got to put in the work," but, "I've got to do things like realize my potential." Like, like these kind of, um, criteria that are utterly, um, opaque and l- you're never gonna be able to sit back and say, "Great, I realized my potential." Right? 'Cause that's just a completely open-ended, there's no ceiling, uh, to that. So you're gonna be able to keep driving yourself forever and ever. I think one thing that might be useful to, to mention here is that, um, a- on the, the general topic of feeling your feelings and self-compassion and all the rest of it is I think something else I realized a while ago now is that there is a really good way to navigate whether a piece of advice or a, a way of looking at the world is something that you might need, and that is basically if it makes you just cringe overwhelmingly and you don't wanna have anything to do with it because it's all that kind of... 'cause it seems too new agey or it seems-

   16. CWChris Williamson27:04

       Mm-hmm.

   17. OBOliver Burkeman27:04

       ... too, um, uh, you know, i- i- i- it's, it's, it's just not, i- i- it's just not the kinda thing you're, you're used to or you want to do. And that idea of, like, leaning into the cringe and saying like, (clears throat) "Maybe the fact that I find, uh," less so today, but maybe the fact that I have found talk of self-compassion so sort of, um, that I'm so allergic to it, maybe, maybe that says something interesting. (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson27:29

       Yeah.

   19. OBOliver Burkeman27:30

       Rather than that I should just sort of, uh, leave it aside. So I think that's important to say, 'cause otherwise, you know, definitely, uh, uh, especially self-help books and things like, they don't tend to be marketed at the people who won't buy them because they are in denial of their need for the thing, right?

   20. CWChris Williamson27:49

       Yes. They're written in the language and framed from the perspective and offer solutions in the way that the people who will buy that book will be prepared to take that book.

   21. OBOliver Burkeman27:59

       Right.

   22. CWChris Williamson27:59

       It's not actually going to be harsh truths, it's not actually going to be uncomfortable insights, because if it was sufficiently uncomfortable, no one would buy it, or at least no one that it's aimed at.

   23. OBOliver Burkeman28:09

       Right. Yeah. Right, right, exactly. And just to sort of name the elephant in the room, there's a huge sort of male/female part of this, right? There's a certain kind of, uh, emotion-focused self-help book that's just completely aimed at women, and a certain kind of, like, you know, get to work and kick life in the ass kind of book that is completely aimed at the male readership. And it's probably the people who've got aim down-

   24. CWChris Williamson28:29

       They should be reading each other's books.

   25. OBOliver Burkeman28:31

       ... who should be reading the other book, yeah, right.

   26. CWChris Williamson28:32

       (laughs)

5. 28:33 – 34:37

   The Source of Our Inner Tyrants

   1. CWChris Williamson28:33

      Why do you think it's so hard to cut ourselves some slack? Like, that, i- i- is it a fear that if we do it we're not going to be, we're not going to be as effective? Is it the fact that we've just got this internal tyrant inside of us, those that have high demands? Is it this require for validation? Or is there, is there something more fundamental happening when it comes to cutting ourselves some slack?

   2. OBOliver Burkeman28:56

      I mean, I think it's all of the above. I think one aspect of it that I notice in myself, and I think other people as well, is there's this very strange sort of, um, issue with self-trust. There's this very strange way in which, um, I feel like I can trust myself in the moment, and that's why I have to do all this hard stuff to, you know, so that future me will thank me. I have a whole sort of, um, thesis brewing about how we should stop being so kind to our future selves.

   3. CWChris Williamson29:28

      Hmm.

   4. OBOliver Burkeman29:29

      Um, but, uh, come to that in a minute maybe. But, but, um, it, it's like there's some, there's some kind of worry that if I didn't focus on something or if I let myself relax now, it might all completely unspool somehow. And, like, six months from now, I just have completely forgotten about all the, all the, my priorities in life. And it's, and it's, uh, and that fuels the refusal to give yourself some slack. It also fuels just worry, right? If you're just a worrier like I certainly have been and to some extent still am, in the mechanism of worrying about stuff is some notion that, like, if you didn't, you might never remember it again or something.

   5. CWChris Williamson30:11

      Yep.

   6. OBOliver Burkeman30:11

      So, I have done literally things as absurd and basic as put a note in my calendar two months in the future to say, like-... start worrying about this topic again.

   7. CWChris Williamson30:22

      Oh, scheduling worrying time is the new hot thing.

   8. OBOliver Burkeman30:24

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson30:25

      One of my friend, one of my friends schedule every Sunday for 30 minutes, that's when he's allowed to worry about stuff.

   10. OBOliver Burkeman30:29

       Hey, I love it. I love it. So yeah, yeah, you put these kind of buffers in and you say, "Well, okay, I don't need to worry that I'm gonna completely forget about this aspect of my life." Which, by the way, I never was going to, but that is what is in- implicit in that kind of hard, uh, attitude. Then I can relax on that topic and, you know, get on with something else. It, uh, I do think there is this really odd notion we, we often have about ourselves that if we, if we gave ourselves an inch, we'd take a mile, and it would all be-

   11. CWChris Williamson31:01

       Mm-hmm.

   12. OBOliver Burkeman31:02

       ... a disaster. Which is so strange when you think about it, because right now, I trust myself to do stuff. So I can assume, can't I, that the me in a few weeks time will be, uh, basically as, as capable.

   13. CWChris Williamson31:17

       Yeah, I have this really beautiful frame I stole from, uh, the same guy I quoted earlier. He was talking about how people commit crimes in order to become wealthy, and he said, "Do not sacrifice the thing you want for the thing which is supposed to get it." And he was talking about how people sacrifice freedom in order to be able to achieve money, so that they won't have s- when they have sufficient money, they can then have more freedom.

   14. OBOliver Burkeman31:39

       Right.

   15. CWChris Williamson31:39

       And I realized that happiness and success is a better example. So I took, stole his idea and made it better, I think. And I said, uh, "We presume the reason that we chase success is that hopefully when we have sufficient success, we will finally allow ourselves to be happy, but in the process of becoming successful, we make ourselves miserable. So we sacrifice the thing we want, which is happiness-"

   16. OBOliver Burkeman32:02

       Right.

   17. CWChris Williamson32:02

       "... for the thing which is supposed to get the thing we want, which is success." And like, if, if this was some sort of simultaneous equation, which my, has fallen out of my brain since I went to school, um, I'm, I'm sure that you could cross off on both sides of the-

   18. OBOliver Burkeman32:15

       Right, cancel. (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson32:16

       ... the equal sign.

   20. OBOliver Burkeman32:16

       Yeah, right. Right.

   21. CWChris Williamson32:17

       You could just get rid of success-

   22. OBOliver Burkeman32:18

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson32:18

       ... and you would probably be left with happiness somehow.

   24. OBOliver Burkeman32:21

       Yeah. Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson32:22

       Um, I, I, I think about that all the time. I think about that all the time. What are we doing to ... What are the unnecessary miseries that I'm putting myself through in order to achieve a thing to create the state that I'm denying myself right now?

   26. OBOliver Burkeman32:35

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson32:35

       And, you know, the, you're right. This fear that, okay, well, if I take my foot off the gas, then what sort of, uh, zen blissed out state will I be in?

   28. OBOliver Burkeman32:46

       Yeah. Right.

   29. CWChris Williamson32:46

       And, you know, there's practical implications. People need to still be able to turn up to work and do all the rest of the stuff. But, like, do you really think you're not gonna turn up to work? Like, and if your drive diminishes, but your happiness increases, what have you lost?

   30. OBOliver Burkeman32:58

       Right.
6. 34:37 – 39:27

   Recognising High-Quality Interruptions

   1. CWChris Williamson34:37

      what's that idea that you ha- is it like a useful interruptions or enjoyable interruptions or something? What's that term?

   2. OBOliver Burkeman34:45

      I don't know about the term. I have written about this, I'm trying to write a bit more about it at the moment. Um, just this really interesting point that I, I guess, you know, becoming a, a pro-

   3. CWChris Williamson34:54

      High-quality interruptions. That's it. High-quality interruptions.

   4. OBOliver Burkeman34:58

      Interesting. I don't know, I'm not sure that's mine.

   5. CWChris Williamson35:00

      It is.

   6. OBOliver Burkeman35:00

      Maybe it is.

   7. CWChris Williamson35:01

      It is.

   8. OBOliver Burkeman35:01

      I'll take credit for it. All right.

   9. CWChris Williamson35:02

      It's, you took it from, uh, it was something to do with, uh, Bruce Tift. It was downstream from Bruce Tift stuff. Anyway, take it-

   10. OBOliver Burkeman35:09

       Oh, right, yes. Well, I-

   11. CWChris Williamson35:10

       ... take it. It's a, it's a, it's a habit.

   12. OBOliver Burkeman35:12

       I'll take it, but I also, Bruce Tift is brilliant and I've probably taken many things from him. I hope I've attributed most of them. Um, I mean, one thing that, um, really struck me when I was going through my sort of very control-oriented approach to time management and trying to sort of schedule the day exactly and all the rest of it is that although this seems like a good thing to do at the time, it seems like it's a, the way to, um, focus on what you want to focus on. One of the things it does is it ends up defining many more things as interruptions than otherwise might, and making it worse when, um, you get interrupted than if you hadn't had this very sort of rigid plan. So, uh, you know, the, the example I gave, and it's funny 'cause it's like could happen at any second now, is that I don't want to... I, you know, I've got work I need to do, and sometimes that means that I'm not spending time with my son as I might like to do if I didn't have the work, whatever. But if I have a system for getting through that work that defines it as a big problem-

   13. CWChris Williamson36:18

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   14. OBOliver Burkeman36:18

       ... if he comes into the room after he gets back from school and wants to tell me about his day at school, like, something's gone wrong with my...... with my planning system there, right? If it's in, and this doesn't only apply to parents. This is like- if, if your system for organizing your day makes it more likely that, um, an interruption, uh, is painful-

   15. CWChris Williamson36:39

       Yes.

   16. OBOliver Burkeman36:39

       ... then, then, then it's not necessarily a good thing. Also really influenced by, there's a great book by a Dutch Zen monk called, um, Time Surfing, which I've, he's called Paul Lumans. And I've, uh, uh, written a bit about this. He's got a, a, a lovely sort of Zen approach to time management that basically is incredibly intuitive, uh, very much based around not, uh, sort of making and trying to stick to plans. But one of his piece of advice is, um, to give what he calls them drop-ins, not, um, interruptions, to sort of cover the gamut of welcome and welcome .

   17. CWChris Williamson37:13

       Uh, well, so much of this is what, what is the story that you tell yourself when a distraction occurs-

   18. OBOliver Burkeman37:18

       Right.

   19. CWChris Williamson37:18

       ... that pulls you away from the thing that-

   20. OBOliver Burkeman37:21

       Right.

   21. CWChris Williamson37:21

       ... you decided was the thing that you were supposed to do?

   22. OBOliver Burkeman37:25

       Right.

   23. CWChris Williamson37:25

       And you're also deciding to tell yourself a story about what this thing that isn't a thing you were supposed to do means about you and about your day.

   24. OBOliver Burkeman37:32

       Right.

   25. CWChris Williamson37:32

       And again, like, that's an awesome example too, too. You can use a son. I don't have a son yet, but I live near a park. My friends know where I live. Sometimes they knock on my door and say, "Yo, I'm gonna take the dog for a walk on the park." If I have a system whereby one of my friends with a dog suggests a 12-minute walk, and that is something I should castigate myself for-

   26. OBOliver Burkeman37:54

       Right.

   27. CWChris Williamson37:55

       ... I have a problem with my system.

   28. OBOliver Burkeman37:57

       Yeah, right, right.

   29. CWChris Williamson37:57

       The problem is not my friend and their dog.

   30. OBOliver Burkeman37:59

       Which is not the same as saying that you should definitely go on the dog walk, right? But, but, but if you've caused that to be more disruptive on an emotional level than it, than it needs to be, then, then that sort of, yeah, comes from you. Lumans makes this argument that you should, once you have been interrupted, whether it's welcome or not, uh, and I think he would probably include internal interruptions here, like-
7. 39:27 – 48:56

   Getting Rid of Fear as a Motivation

   1. OBOliver Burkeman39:27

   2. CWChris Williamson39:27

      I realized that that internal tyrant that Matthew talks about, um, I think comes, at least for me, you might, and lots of people listening I think might resonate with this. It's kind of like a, a fear of fragility about ourselves that our ability to make things happen occurs on such a knife edge that we need this complex system of levers and pulleys and frameworks in order to get ourselves to do this thing because of what I think is a, a fundamental unconfidence in our ability to do things without that. And then that's how we get from, "I must work hard to achieve a thing," to, "I must suffer." Because it's very-

   3. OBOliver Burkeman40:09

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson40:09

      ... you know, if you work super hard, you suffer. But then you bypass the working hard bit and just go to the suffering bit, which is me running the nightclubs-

   5. OBOliver Burkeman40:16

      (laughs) Yes. If time.

   6. CWChris Williamson40:16

      ... and being super, super successful event, and it sold out, and everything was great, but I didn't feel like I suffered, so I, I, I, I didn't think that it was success. Uh, and you, you sort of bypass that middle section.

   7. OBOliver Burkeman40:28

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson40:28

      And, um, it's a dangerous, it's a dangerous-

   9. OBOliver Burkeman40:30

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson40:30

       ... dangerous position to get into. And again, how much of this is, here is an emotional state that I feel. It's, I have a little bit of fear about the future. Maybe I'm uncertain about what's gonna happen with this work project I'm on with. Well, okay, what would happen if you were less afraid about your capacity to complete this thing?

   11. OBOliver Burkeman40:49

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson40:49

       Like, because-

   13. OBOliver Burkeman40:50

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson40:50

       ... fear is absolutely a motivator to do it. You know, ev- everyone that, like me, handed in their university assessments on the morning having just pulled an all ni- all-nighter knows.

   15. OBOliver Burkeman41:00

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson41:00

       But also, like, given that we now have much longer time horizons for the stuff that we're working on, like maybe there's an easier way to get there. Maybe you can swim downstream as opposed to upstream .

   17. OBOliver Burkeman41:10

       Yeah. No, I think, I think that's really well, I think that's really well put. I think that, um, uh, that idea that we, that, that we think we need all this, um, driving, otherwise, that's the only, you know, that's the only base on which we could do it. It's related also to another idea that I do associate with Bruce Tift, who we just mentioned, um, that although I guess it's quite a old psychoanalytic thought really. The idea that a lot of us go through life thinking that there are certain kinds of emotions or experiences that were we to experience them, it would sort of annihilate us in some way. It would be like a fate worse than death. So for some people this is humiliation or-

   18. CWChris Williamson41:54

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   19. OBOliver Burkeman41:55

       ... some people it's failure or just mediocrity, um, being abandoned. The opposite of being abandoned, being sort of, uh, emotionally overwhelmed by people. There's something that you feel like it will be a total catastrophe, and so you've got to direct all your energies to making sure that you work and live in a way that that doesn't happen.

   20. CWChris Williamson42:12

       Mm-hmm.

   21. OBOliver Burkeman42:13

       Um, and of course, it wouldn't actually annihilate you. There aren't emotions you can feel that would, uh, kill you. And we know that intellectually. Um, and, uh, uh, Donald Winnicott, the, the English psychoanalyst from years ago had this wonderful insight. This phrase said that, that, uh, "The catastrophe you..."... fear will happen has already happened. And that, um, you know, people who structure their lives around the idea that they must not be allowed to feel failure because then people would withdraw love from them or something like, uh, it's 'cause that happened to them in their childhood, right?

   22. CWChris Williamson42:50

       Of course. Of course.

   23. OBOliver Burkeman42:50

       I mean, um, it, uh, so, so on the one hand, understandable that they're on edge about it, but on the other hand, proves that it didn't kill them, right? Because here they are. So I think there's a really sort of interesting... Th- this, it, it's so ridiculous in a way, right? To be so fragile or to feel so fragile, to think you're so fragile, and for that f- sense of fragility to be associated, I think, more often with people who, in their public bearings, are not like, you know, vulnerable seeming. They're like-

   24. CWChris Williamson43:22

       Yeah, look at how competent they are. They're getting things done.

   25. OBOliver Burkeman43:24

       Right.

   26. CWChris Williamson43:24

       They're getting more done than y- t- ten n- normal humans put together.

   27. OBOliver Burkeman43:29

       Right.

   28. CWChris Williamson43:29

       Yeah. I, I learned about... I've been pretty obsessed with this myth that life's duties will one day be out of the way, and then you can kind of start doing the thing-

   29. OBOliver Burkeman43:40

       Right.

   30. CWChris Williamson43:40

       ... that you like. And I know you've been kind of obsessed with this too.
8. 48:56 – 53:44

   The Benefit of External Accountability

   1. OBOliver Burkeman48:56

   2. CWChris Williamson48:56

      I have a exactly symmetrical problem with the gym. So, I've trained in the gym for 16, 17 years now, I've spent an awful lot of time in there. Uh, I have trained very hard on my own for a decade and a bit. And in the last three, two or three years, I got towards sort of my early 30s, I just couldn't really push myself to where I wanted to on my own anymore.

   3. OBOliver Burkeman49:27

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson49:27

      And I was like, "This is weird." Wh- I c- I've never had a problem with it before, I've always had motivation to go and- get up and go to the gym. And, uh, it- for me one of the things that works very well is external accountability, physical external accountability. Not just, you know, an app or something, it's like a person-

   5. OBOliver Burkeman49:44

      Right.

   6. CWChris Williamson49:44

      ... that's there. There's my, um, toe-curling fear of looking silly socially can be weaponized against myself to get myself to do things that I kind of want to do but I might put it off if I don't, so I just got a coach.

   7. OBOliver Burkeman49:57

      Yep.

   8. CWChris Williamson49:57

      So I train-

   9. OBOliver Burkeman49:58

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson49:58

       ... uh, three times a week with a PT, and my love for the gym has now reignited. I'm-

   11. OBOliver Burkeman50:03

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CWChris Williamson50:03

       ... making fantastic gains in terms of strength and all of the other things that I wanted to do, and it doesn't feel like a heavy lift at all to me.

   13. OBOliver Burkeman50:12

       Right.

   14. CWChris Williamson50:12

       It feels like-

   15. OBOliver Burkeman50:12

       Great.

   16. CWChris Williamson50:13

       ... I- I- I get up, me and Nick have a chat, uh, in between sets he's logging stuff, he's making sure that I'm doing the things I said I was going to do appropriately, and that's the thing. And when it comes to, uh, writing as well, I've got this book project that I'm working on too, and my solution for that is, all right, I'm gonna get a writing partner. I'm gonna pay a writing partner to sit on Zoom with me every day that I'm going to write, and I can't not turn up. And if they're looking-

   17. OBOliver Burkeman50:38

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson50:38

       ... at the document, I can't. They're like, "What are you doing? Why are you not writing in the document?"

   19. OBOliver Burkeman50:41

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson50:41

       It's just leveraging what, you know-

   21. OBOliver Burkeman50:43

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson50:43

       ... a particular pathology of mine, uh, that-

   23. OBOliver Burkeman50:45

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson50:45

       ... again, that may, that may evaporate, that e-

   25. OBOliver Burkeman50:48

       Yeah. Right, right, right.

   26. CWChris Williamson50:48

       ... requirement of social... Okay, so this is a fuel which is very specific at this very particular part of time. I didn't need it previously to go to the gym, but I do need it now. And maybe-

   27. OBOliver Burkeman50:56

       Right.

   28. CWChris Williamson50:56

       ... that's going to be spent in 10 years' time and I can't use that-

   29. OBOliver Burkeman50:58

       Right.

   30. CWChris Williamson50:58

       ... fuel anymore and I'll need another, another solution.
9. 53:44 – 1:02:24

   Accepting that Life is Messy

   1. CWChris Williamson53:44

      some of the best insights are th- shower thoughts, right?

   2. OBOliver Burkeman53:46

      Right.

   3. CWChris Williamson53:46

      You can buy... I have in my house in the UK a waterproof pencil and pad of paper that you can... it's sort of got the suction cup and you stick it on the, on the shower thing. Uh, it's supposed to be for love notes, it's supposed to be so that you and your partner can leave each other, like-

   4. OBOliver Burkeman54:01

      Notes in the shower.

   5. CWChris Williamson54:01

      ... cute, cute, uh, notes in the shower. Sadly, when I was in the UK, I was living with two other hairy ba- arsed flokes, um, so we'd just write abu- abuse (laughs) to each other-

   6. OBOliver Burkeman54:11

      Of course. Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson54:11

      ... and mean, mean comments.

   8. OBOliver Burkeman54:12

      Right.

   9. CWChris Williamson54:13

      Um, uh, but yeah.

   10. OBOliver Burkeman54:14

       That's its own kind... That's its own kind of affection.

   11. CWChris Williamson54:16

       That... Uh, yeah. They're correct. We were in a relationship. It was a throuple. And, um, it was... It, it, it's so interesting to think about that, like, unnecessary suffering. Again, you know, we just castigate ourselves. Here I am, whipping myself in the hot sun as the... You know, I'm... wh- why am I doing this work? It's in service of God, or it's in service of, like, the productivity or the suffering or something like that.

   12. OBOliver Burkeman54:39

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson54:39

       And, um, again, to come back to, uh, two people I've been reading an awful lot of recently, yourself and Alain de Botton, I think this, a kind of frank acceptance of...... the fallibility of us, the messiness of our thoughts, the fact that things are fleeting, that we will believe one thing one day, that we're uncertain about stuff. It's- it's so- it is very refreshing, I think. It's very refreshing to hear someone not- not pedestalize their uncertainty, uh, as like a- a humble brag.

   14. OBOliver Burkeman55:12

       Right.

   15. CWChris Williamson55:13

       But just accurately depict the fact that this is the human experience, and the human experience is kind of messy and we really, really don't know.

   16. OBOliver Burkeman55:21

       Right.

   17. CWChris Williamson55:21

       And all of us are kind of uncertain. And maybe there's not, maybe there's some people out there that aren't uncertain, but this isn't for them, right? This is-

   18. OBOliver Burkeman55:27

       Right, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that takes another thing as a writer certainly, or as any kind of, uh, sort of content creator I imagine, that you have to sort of be willing to say, like, "This is for who it's for."

   19. CWChris Williamson55:36

       Yes.

   20. OBOliver Burkeman55:36

       And, uh, and not for other people. I think that, um, no, that's such a good point, and it's- and it- and it's really, uh, important to say, I think, as well, that none of that is a recipe for living a more mediocre life or just being passive or... None of this is about saying, like, "Well, it would be nice if we could do great things, but instead we just have to be a bundle of- of nerves." It's like-

   21. CWChris Williamson55:58

       (laughs)

   22. OBOliver Burkeman55:58

       ... all this process of, uh, in my limited experience anyway, all of this process of coming more and more to face the reality of how things are, is the path to doing the most sort of outwardly impressive or, you know, interesting things that you can do in life. Maybe it's not true for everybody, but for me there's no- there's no, um, contradiction between, like, that desire to be productive in some meaningful way and that desire to sort of face the flaws and imperfections.

   23. CWChris Williamson56:28

       Yes. I think the same for me as well. You had this quote, which I fell in love with, that says, "There are plenty of people who extend far too much indulgence, self-pity, and cheap forgiveness to themselves. Just spend five minutes on Twitter if you don't agree. But the good news is that if you're worried about turning into one of them, it's pretty much guaranteed that you won't."

   24. OBOliver Burkeman56:49

       Right. Yes.

   25. CWChris Williamson56:50

       And that's what you're talking about. It's like, look-

   26. OBOliver Burkeman56:51

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson56:52

       ... for the people who this is for, that there will be... Probably not in my audience, they're like a- like unreasonably reasonable, excessively introspective group of- group of people. Um, but i- if someone stumbles across this video and they're like, "What are they talking about? What do you mean?"

   28. OBOliver Burkeman57:06

       Right. Right.

   29. CWChris Williamson57:06

       They probably take, like, an obsession with productivity. "I don't know what you mean, like, I just do-"

   30. OBOliver Burkeman57:09

       Right.
10. 1:02:24 – 1:08:12

    Oliver’s Work With the BBC

    1. CWChris Williamson1:02:24

       Uh, talk to me about this thing that you're doing with the BBC. Uh, first off, you were very gracious in- in pieing off my compliment about your book. But it seems like, I'm gonna guess, you had an outsized impact in terms of positioning yourself from doing that book because Sam Harris has sort of brought you in now as- as some Zen teacher of time management-

    2. OBOliver Burkeman1:02:49

       It's funny, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:02:49

       ... uh, to be used on his app, and, uh, BBC are now using you-

    4. OBOliver Burkeman1:02:53

       Yep, yep.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:02:53

       ... for- for this sort of thing. And there's kind of this, I think, front end of the anti-productivity productivity movement. Cal Newport's kind of been a part of that, but Slow Productivity, his new one-

    6. OBOliver Burkeman1:03:02

       Yep.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:03:02

       ... is very much sort of swimming in the wake of all of this. Um, so yeah, what- what are you doing with the BBC thing, and what's the f- the fallout? What's the blast radius of 4,000 Weeks been like?

    8. OBOliver Burkeman1:03:13

       It's been just so sort of weird in a brilliant way. But, like, it is so, you know, right back to the topics we began talking about, it is so nothing that I've been able to control or anything that has followed a plan. You are just sort of, um... you just sort of increase the circumference of your- of who's hearing your message, I guess, and then it sort of s- it turns out that there are some really interesting and... people on that circumference or people with big audiences and all the rest of it. So, yeah, it's been... i- it's been quite strange, really. Uh, the- the stuff for the Waking Up app has been really fun to do, um, because that sort of o- short audio talk, um, is, uh, is just a form that I love. That's perfect, right, for- for- for me, and that just happened to coincide with their wanting to broaden out beyond. I don't give meditation advice on the Waking Up app. I would not be the right person to do that at all, uh, but to sort of broaden out, uh, other kind of verticals about life and time and productivity and creativity and- and all the rest of that stuff. Um, the BBC course is for a platform called BBC Maestro, which, um, you can either buy individual courses on or- or a subscription, uh, and then have access to- to all of them, uh, including (laughs) some people vastly more, uh, higher profile and famous than- than me. Uh, there's a, there's a course on, um, thriller writing or, uh, uh, fiction writing with, um, Lee Child. Um, there's, uh, I think there's a cookery thing involving Marco Pierre White, I think? I'm- I don't want to start telling you people who are on this platform who aren't on it, (laughs) but there's like a kind of extraordinary, uh, celebrity roster and then me as well. Um, and, uh, that was- that was, again, really fun. It was a different operation because obviously it's video as well, so we were in this, um, extremely fancy property in Cheshire for a few days filming with, uh, multiple cameras. I know you know all about filming-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:05:26

       High production value stuff.

    10. OBOliver Burkeman1:05:28

        ... uh, with multiple cameras.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:05:28

        I like it. I- t- hey, I- I think it's co- if you were to... W- what's that place? What's that super rich place that everyone go... Old Liege, was it there? Bet it was.

    12. OBOliver Burkeman1:05:36

        Uh, no. Sort of... I'm try- I'm trying to remember the location. I don't think it actually was, but I don't think the, um, I don't think the area it was in was necessarily, uh, super fancy, but the... just the property was, uh-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:05:47

        Hmm. Hmm.

    14. OBOliver Burkeman1:05:47

        ... which is where it all happened, was sort of, uh, seemed quite amazing. And like, yeah, it had this-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:50

        What do people learn? What do you... What is, what is the, what is the course? What are you teaching?

    16. OBOliver Burkeman1:05:54

        Uh, it- it- it's this s- the same material. They call it time management, but it's really time management as a finite human being, right? It's really embracing your limitations and trying to sort of, uh, g- f- find a way to be productive and creative and sane in the context of time that doesn't involve pretending that it's possible to do absolutely everything, that doesn't therefore end up sort of, you know, eating up all your time trying to stay constantly on top of your email when you should be making real time for the things that- that move the needle. So it's... I'm trying to sort of... uh, I mean, and this is what I do in other things as well, right? I'm really trying to stress that this kind of hyper, ultra sort of realistic (laughs) approach to the fact that our time is limited and that our control over time and how it- how it unfolds is limited as well, that really facing up to that is the path towards, you know, actually making progress on things, beating procrastination, um, making time first for the things that you actually want to make progress on. Um, rather than that it's some sort of admission of defeat and that you've got to keep chasing this next thing. So it's interesting. In the context of a course, I'm really conscious of the fact that I think people can misuse these kinds of courses to kind of, um, procrastinate some more, right, and design their perfect time management system when they should be doing stuff. So it's almost a course aimed at sort of getting people to-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:07:21

        Stop watching the course.

    18. OBOliver Burkeman1:07:22

        ... uh, you know, stop watching the course and-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:07:23

        (laughs)

    20. OBOliver Burkeman1:07:24

        ... go and do things. You're too young, but there was a TV show when I was a kid called Why Don't You Turn Off The Television Set And Go And Do Something Less Boring Instead, and it's basically... that's the-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:07:34

        Wow.

    22. OBOliver Burkeman1:07:35

        ... that's the, um, that's the idea, right? We've got to take this productivity material and, uh, sort of-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:07:42

        Crucify it and burn it on the...

    24. OBOliver Burkeman1:07:45

        ... use it. Use it to, use it to cause people to do a sort of bait and switch to get people to actually do things, yeah.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:07:48

        Yeah. Uh, a couple of friends in internet marketing have a tagline where they say, uh, "Sell people what they want, teach them what they need."

    26. OBOliver Burkeman1:07:56

        Right.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:07:57

        So you can bring them in. It's perfectly ethical to bring somebody into the door thinking that they're going to learn to do time management and then kick them out of the building-

    28. OBOliver Burkeman1:08:04

        (laughs)

    29. CWChris Williamson1:08:05

        ... saying, "Right, now just go- go and live life. Stop- stop worrying about how much fucking time we're going to be on you."

    30. OBOliver Burkeman1:08:07

        See, my point is, that will be good time management in the highest sense as well.
11. 1:08:12 – 1:08:44

    Where to Find Oliver

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:12

       it is. Oliver Burkeman, ladies and gentlemen. Oliver, I adore your work, I adore your writing, I love your energy. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with all the things you're doing?

    2. OBOliver Burkeman1:08:20

       Uh, just oliverburkeman.com is where stuff about my books and where to sign up for the newsletter. That's, uh, that's the main place, really.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:08:28

       Helia, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate.

    4. OBOliver Burkeman1:08:30

       Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:08:31

       (upbeat music) What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, you will love my full-length podcast with Dr. Andrew Huberman, which is available right here. Go on, tap it.

Episode duration: 1:08:44