BITESIZE | How to Enjoy Your Life More (Without Getting Everything Done) | Oliver Burkeman #642

0:00Today's Bite Size episode is sponsored by The Way. I have tried so many meditation apps over the years, but I've never come across one as good or as effective as The Way. I find it a fantastic way to start off each day and it has really helped me feel calmer, relaxed and more present. In fact, I love this app so much that I recently decided to invest in the company and join them in their mission to get more people meditating. Meditation has been shown to have all kinds of benefits, reducing stress, increasing calm, improving focus, and over time has even been shown to result in positive structural changes in the brain in areas linked to memory, focus, and emotional regulation.

0:48but of course you only get those benefits if you actually do it and that's one of the main reasons I love The Way so much it makes it really easy to establish a meditation practice that sticks The Way are offering my podcast listeners an incredible 30 free meditation sessions to get you started with your practice to take advantage all you have to do is go to thewayapp.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 580 of the podcast with journalist and author the brilliant Oliver Berkman.

1:37Many of us feel under constant pressure to optimize every moment, to become more efficient, more productive, and somehow more worthy. In this clip, Oliver shares why the belief that life will finally feel easier once we clear our to-do list is such a persistent illusion, and why we don't need to wait for life to feel calm or under control before we start living with more intention. In your new book, you talk about the kind of life that you would like to be living. And you describe it as calm and focused, energetic and meaningfully productive and connected to others as opposed to anxious, isolated and overwhelmed.

2:25I think that's the kind of life, Oliver, that many people would also like to lead. So my question is, why do so many people struggle to lead that kind of life? And secondly, how are you getting on in your quest to do so?

2:42Oliver Burkeman:Great questions. Yeah, I mean, I think there are so many reasons why it's hard to live that kind of life, right? Reasons to do with the society that we live in, reasons to do with the ways we were parented and the messages we give ourselves. I think the reason I really want to focus in on, and that relates to your second question, is there's a problem with seeing that as something that you're striving towards. something that's off in the future, and that you're going to work really, really hard, and then eventually that's going to be your life. There's a big sort of mistake involved in that approach, as opposed to seeing it as something that you can actually claim for yourself right here in the moment.

3:22Oliver Burkeman:And of course, that doesn't get away from the fact that there's like too much to do and too many emails, and the economic system that we live in exerts all sorts of pressures. But there's something really important, I think, about the idea that we can actually enter into that way of being right here, at least to some degree, instead of seeing it as this thing that we're constantly chasing on the horizon. So yeah, to the extent that I have succeeded in living a life like this, which is definitely only partial, is because I've found ways to sort of step into it now instead of sort of reinforcing this notion that it's always in the future, that I've always got to do more until I can get to it.

4:07Yeah, it's interesting. Through the lens of health, I think about what you just said in the context of weight loss. And something I've realized over my career is for people who are looking for sustainable weight loss, for whatever reason that might be, too often it's put off into the future. When I lose weight and get to this weight, I'm going to be happy. and go on holiday here and do this or do that hobby, whatever it might be. And I found it much more helpful for people to say, no, no, why don't you do those things now? And then I think you'll find that the weight loss, obviously you have to do some things, are going to come quite nicely as almost like a second order effect of that rather than the other way around.

4:55Totally.

4:56Oliver Burkeman:I can totally see how that will work in weight loss. I think of it in the context of like overwhelm, right? I have a huge tendency, I'm letting go of it to a large extent, but I have this huge tendency to say, okay, I want my life to be calm and peaceful. It feels incredibly overwhelming, overwhelmed with demands and obligations and emails and everything. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to really, really buckle down and power through and spend much more time on all the overwhelming stuff and actually have a less peaceful life and a busier life and a more stressed life because I'm going to get through it to this alleged vista of peace and calm on the other side.

5:32Oliver Burkeman:And I think where that connects to what you were saying is, if instead you can see how you show up in the day today as some form of expression of the life that you want to live, not a perfect one, it's never going to be a perfect one, but if you can sort of, if you say like, okay, I want to get to this point where I've lost enough weight that I can enjoy myself. So what if I took that focus on what I want to enjoy now? and I think it time and again yeah people find that what happens then is like you then you're living you're living the life you want to live and so it's exciting and fun to get better at living that life and to lose more weight and to be more calm and to handle more of the demands without sort of spinning off into overwhelm yeah there's also a compassion to yourself in living this way I know you do talk about one of the chapters and you also acknowledge how self-compassion can be a difficult term for British people yes to get to get our heads around right but through the lens of weight loss it you know often people want to beat themselves up deprive themselves restrict themselves until they've reached the goal of a set weight so that then they're gonna start you know treating themselves in the right way and it doesn't work like that all you're doing then right is yeah you're reinforcing this notion that you're bad exactly you need fixing you can't really fully participate in life until you have uh achieved that fixing.

6:54Oliver Burkeman:And I mean, I had such struggle with this idea of self-compassion, because as you say, there's something about it that invites me to think I'm being told that I have to see myself as super, super special and much more deserving of love and cuddles than anyone. None of that. The thing that really made the change for me was when I came across this idea from a philosopher called Ido Landau, who talks about the reverse golden rule. So not treat other people as you would like to be treated yourself the famous golden rule but don't treat yourself worse than you would treat other people and i think that is that was such a moment for me when i realized that i sort of went through my days often sort of berating myself internally in ways i would just never like i would just never dream of doing that to well anyone a friend a person i met in a like day-to-day business context it would be utterly outrageous to be that that horrible so all i was asking of myself, even if it gets labeled self-compassion and triggers all sorts of cringe responses from Brits, like all I was asking of myself was equal treatment that I would already perfectly, that I was already perfectly good at giving to other people.

8:01In your answer to my first question, you said it doesn't mean that there's not going to be too many things to do or too many emails. And it's kind of interesting that really landed and kind of has been worrying in my brain since then. So my question is, is that really true? Are there always going to be too many things to do in too many emails? Or perhaps could it be the way that we're framing those things to do and those emails? The answer is yes.

8:32Oliver Burkeman:Right. It's totally a question of perspective. And I think this is something that I've tried to find ways to articulate lots of times in my writing. It's like you have an incredibly finite capacity for doing things because you are a human. And you have so much time on the planet and so many hours in the day and so much attention and energy. And so the amount of things that feel like they need doing is basically infinite, right? There's no reason why your brain can't feel that your obligations to your family, the ambitions you have for your job, whatever it might be, that just keeps on expanding.

9:09Oliver Burkeman:whereas your finite capacity really, really doesn't. And so, yeah, from that perspective, there's always too much to do. But because there's always too much to do and there's no way around it, that is kind of another way of saying that there isn't too much to do because this is not a war that you can win as a finite human being. So there's a quote that I really like that says, I'm going to mangle it, but says something like, The problem is not that we don't have enough time to do the things we need to do. It's that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have. And of course, this is a lot harder for some people than others, right?

9:49Oliver Burkeman:You can absolutely feel like you have to do an impossible amount just to keep a roof over your head. And that's a very real and acute feeling. But actually, nobody can do an impossible amount. And so in the end, all you can ever really do with the time in your life is a handful of the things that you might feel you wanted to do with them. And when you see how totally inescapable that is, I think it's really liberating. I think it's like, oh, it's not because I'm a loser that I haven't figured out how to do all these things. It's not because I haven't found the right productivity system. It's because you don't get to do all the things.

10:24Oliver Burkeman:and so there'd been a lot of a lot of the history of sort of um time management advice is like if you follow my system and you really try hard then you're going to get to the point where you can do everything that needs doing and then there was a bit of a rebellion that came in the in the form of saying like well this is all rubbish anyway stop working for the man rebel like just chill out which i don't even necessarily object to but it's not what a lot of people want to do or can do and so I think it was time for someone to say look you can be productive and ambitious and you can do you can make a difference in the world what you can't do is get your arms around an infinite number of potential demands obligations ambitions and there's a sort of a there's a moment there where you can I went through it myself and I hope that the book has led people through it as well where you can sort of just sort of relax into reality.

11:21Oliver Burkeman:I've compared it in a couple of places to that feeling like you're out in the street and you haven't brought the right waterproofs and it starts raining and for a while you sort of like keep trying to find ways almost unconsciously to keep the water off you and the rain gets heavier and heavier and eventually you're just like okay, I'm going to get wet. It's like, okay, I'm going to be finite in this ocean of infinite possibilities. And it's fine. And it's fine, right? Yes. The problem is when you resist it. Exactly. There is nothing wrong. I don't want it, I don't want it. I didn't get the right clothes.

11:50That's where the stress comes. And then you're just soaking wet. Okay. Yeah. That's life. I would agree. I think the idea that you can't do everything, I think it particularly resonates now because of the world in which we live. The amount of information we get exposed to on social media, we see all these incredible things that we could be doing and that some of your friends will be doing, right? But you've only got 24 hours in a day. And it's funny, as I've been reading Meditations for Mortals over the last couple of days, I thought maybe one of the reasons why... There's an exercise that I call Write Your Own Happy Ending that I wrote about in my book on happiness.

12:30And it really had a profound impact on me. I wonder if I could put it to you, actually, because I think it really embraces limitation and what matters at its heart. So there's two parts of the exercise. Part one is fast forward to the future. Imagine you're on your deathbed and look back on your life and imagine, you know, what are three things you will want to have done or spent your time on? We probably know what a lot of these things are because people have written books about the regrets of the dying and what people actually do say on their deathbed. But for us individually, we can imagine.

13:08So for me, for example, last time I did this exercise was I want to have spent quality time with my friends and family. I want to have had time to pursue my own passions and I will thirdly want to have done something that improves the lives of other people so that's part one then you go to part two which is you come back to the present moment and you come up with three what I call happiness habits so these are three things that I can try and commit to each week that will pretty much guarantee I get the happy ending I've just defined that I want. So how that worked for me was, you know, I would specify how many undistracted meals with my wife and kids I want a week.

13:51And I think the current one is five.

13:53Oliver Burkeman:Okay. It might be different for someone else, but for me, it's a nice thing. If I can have five undistracted meals with it and the kids, but I'm not thinking about work. If I keep doing that week after week, come my deathbeds, I will have ticked off number one. If I get a chance to go for a long run each week or play my guitar and write a song and have a sing, I will know that at the end of my life, I will have found time for my passions. And the third one was, if I release an episode a week of this podcast, I know I'm going to be doing something to improve the lives of others. Listen, why it's been so helpful for me is because it embraces this concept that your to-do list is never done.

14:33There's always more you could be doing. But if I just do those three things each week, I'm winning at life. And I have to just let go of the other stuff. And it's not there as a stick to beat me with. If I have a busy week where I'm traveling and I don't get to do them, it's just a nice gentle reminder. Hey, you only had one meal with Ben and the kids last week. don't let that become a pattern where you're doing that for a second week or a third week so what do you think of that do you think that speaks to some of the ideas in your book no i

15:03Oliver Burkeman:think it really does i think one of the other thing i one of the other things i love about that is that it sort of takes um these goals that you have and brings them forward from the future into like well the goal is in doing these things in the present um now i'm not saying that i and some people whose minds work like mine wouldn't then be able to turn that into a stick to beat themselves with it's like oh my god have i done the five have i done the five whatever and i think you know it's not a the the amount of the proportion of the week that that might take i mean a podcast probably takes a lot of your week but like that's actually a relatively small number of the hours that you're awake and that's very good too because there's a strong tendency i think in a lot of sort of goal setting life visioning approaches to try to account for every minute of the day and then you get very depressed and frustrated because you realize that an extraordinary amount of the day just seems to go in like just the just just living just like getting dressed and like you know whatever just just stuff that doesn't fulfill you and so i think if you can take that alternative approach that says here are a few sort of pinpoints in the course of a week that would express that long-term uh goal i think that's that's fantastic yeah i mean you write about it beautifully in your introduction into Meditations for Mortals, when you give up the unwinnable struggle to do everything, that's when you can start pouring your finite time and attention into a handful of things that truly counts.

16:31That's life, isn't it? A handful of things that truly matter. I think it has to be.

16:36Oliver Burkeman:Yeah. And I think that the problem is not that that's the way it is. The problem is just always that we are tormented by the thought that it should be more and it should be more. One of the ways you can think about that, that I've found very helpful is sort of seasonally, right? The fact that you're giving things up for now to focus on these few things doesn't mean you're giving them up for forever, right? So maybe in your focus on these three things, there's something that you don't get to do. Maybe you don't get to indulge your passion for some other activity or, you know, something like that.

17:08Oliver Burkeman:But you can always like, this is for now this is for now exactly exactly you know it's not like when i'm 60 i'm gonna beat myself right you said you were gonna do that right put it down in uh 2023 on your list you're not doing it now in 2043 whatever all you can ever do is make a decision no absolutely and it means that you're approaching the reality of you know it's awful for any of us with kids at home to think about one day your kids will be out in the world and you won't get so many meals in the course of a week. And that's fine too, because that'll be that season. So instead of trying to optimize everything, you focus on what you have now and how that can give meaning to what you're doing right now.

17:47This idea of embracing our limitations. Yes, I think it helps us be calmer, less anxious, enjoy our lives more, which I think is one of these core messages that you talk about. but it kind of also applies i think to other genres as well i think it it helps with creativity as i've become a creator over the last years and right i'm like those those limitations that we impose on ourselves and frankly life imposes on us that's what leads to creativity that's what leads to a meaningful life you know acknowledging that you can't do everything yeah gives you the license to go, yeah, so what do I want to do?

18:30Oliver Burkeman:Yeah. No, I think it's true. I think it's worth doing just as a thought experiment that philosophers have debated this, right? But like, if you were actually going to live forever, I think very possibly it would be terrible, right? It would be the question, because the question, like, what should I do with my day would always be like, doesn't matter, right? There's always more days. And there's something about the fact that we are in these limited situations that gives value to the choices that we make. I've written before about the joy of missing out, right? It's this sense that it matters more.

19:02Oliver Burkeman:If you're staying home for bedtime with your kids, it matters more to know that you, in principle, could have been somewhere else and you chose not to be somewhere else. That gives it value. And then the other thing that just on my mind, when you talked about creativity, there is I'm always at pains to try to emphasize. I think this way of embracing the truth about your finitude is completely consistent with being very ambitious for your life. I think I am. And I think occasionally I've run into people who've sort of misunderstood and thought what I'm saying is like, you can't do very much, like just settle for mediocrity.

19:37Oliver Burkeman:Like there's no point trying to reach the heights because we're all just too limited. And it's like, no, no, no, it's the exact opposite. It's like, it is by acknowledging like the reality of our limitations that that's how you can then focus your life for the most meaningful ambitions that you're capable of. Is that because though, you acknowledge that I can't do everything. I'm a finite human with a set amount of years on this planet. So therefore, I'm going to choose very intentionally and carefully what it is that's truly important to me. So is it that you're doing less better? It is, but again, there's also a danger there, right?

20:19Oliver Burkeman:There's a danger which is like this becomes incredibly high stress. It's like, oh my goodness, time is precious. I've got to make the right choices. And it'd be terrible if I made the wrong choices. And I've got to like watch myself like a hawk every minute of the day to make sure I'm doing really cool and important things. I went through a phase of thinking that. But where I have sort of ended up is actually, no, it's a bigger relief than that, right? If you really sort of feel your way in to this limited situation, you get to cut yourself an immense amount of slack because you get to say okay like the fact that something is important or that somebody wants me to do it or that it will please my parents or that it will be morally good that can't be enough to mean i've got to find time to do it because i'm just too limited for that and something sort of falls away and into that space you can say well okay almost any choices that i make as long as they're you know If I make them honestly and being in touch with myself, they're going to be meaningful things to do.

21:23Oliver Burkeman:I don't need to sort of go through life double-checking and being incredibly sort of putting a lot of pressure on myself to make sure that I'm doing exactly the right things or extraordinary things or anything like that. It's like, no, once I really feel where I am, you know, helping a handful of people in your life matters. Cooking a nutritious meal for your kids matters. It's great. Some people change the world in huge ways and invent extraordinary inventions and have sweeping effects on humanity for the better. But that can't be the standard that you have to reach to live a meaningful life.

22:01Oliver Burkeman:So I find, I don't know if I'm expressing this properly, but it sort of imbues more things with mattering, I think, to live in this way that's truer to our real situation. so for that person who is listening to us right now and feels that actually their life is out of control they feel close to burnt out they feel anxious given everything you've written about what are your final words of wisdom to that individual

22:41Oliver Burkeman:I mean first of all it is just to say that this is the most sort of fundamental universal human experience especially these days I hope that I can persuade the person in that situation at least not to make things worse by telling themselves that they shouldn't be feeling that way that it's a sort of personal failure of discipline or character or not having found the right methods yet that have left them feeling that way no this is a very very very understandable and forgivable response to just the sheer fact of being human especially today but then i suppose it would be to suggest that this kind of set of awful feelings in a sense it's a portal to something right in a sense it's a it's an invitation to something very powerful and i keep quoting everywhere the zen master giu kennett who used to say that her approach to teaching zen students was not to lighten the burden of the student but to make it so heavy that he or she would put it down and i just love this which is why i repeat it endlessly but you can sort of see can't you I think in like yes the attempt to do it all is going to make you feel incredibly anxious and overwhelmed yes the demands that are made on us and the things that feel like they're essential we have to do them will leave us feeling wiped out like it's not just true it's like so true but that is not a war that any of us is ever going to win and it's in that realization that sort of relaxing into that situation that you can then I hope begin to feel the first glimmers of a different kind of energy, which is like, okay, that's the way it is.

24:30Oliver Burkeman:So what would be something I could do with the next 20 minutes that would be one good way to spend 20 minutes of my life on the planet? Yeah, absolutely love it. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday. Thank you.