[Mindful Working Series #1] You’ll Never Get It All Done, And That’s Okay - Oliver Burkeman

0:03Hunter Clarke-Fields:You are listening to the Mindful Mama podcast episode number 557 and today we're talking about you'll never get it all done and that's okay with Oliver Burkeman.

0:18Hunter Clarke-Fields:Welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clark-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training, and I'm the author of the international bestseller Raising Good Humans, Raising Good Humans Every Day, and the Raising Good Humans It's a guided journal.

0:57Hunter Clarke-Fields:Do you ever feel like your value is measured by how much you can get done? Yes, I've been there. And we're going to talk about this idea of self-worth and productivity. And I'm going to be talking to Oliver Berkman. He's the New York Times bestselling author of 4 ,000 Weeks, Time Management for Mortals, and the newly released Meditations for Mortals, Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. I think you're going to get a lot out of this. He's a really smart guy, so cool, and we're going to talk about the freedom that comes from embracing limitations. So I think no matter where you are, you're going to get something out of this.

1:37Hunter Clarke-Fields:So join me at the table as I talk to Oliver Berkman.

1:45Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hi, it's Hunter Clark Fields, author of Raising Good Humans. If you've ever thought, I wish I could help other parents the way I've been helped, this is for you. The mindful parenting teacher certification program is now open for enrollment. You'll deepen your mindfulness, learn to lead powerful parenting groups, and join a supportive, heart-centered community. Are you ready to make a difference? I only take a very limited number of people into this program, so apply now. Visit mindfulparentingcourse.com slash teach. Oliver, thank you so much for coming on the Mindful Mama podcast.

2:18Oliver Burkeman:It's a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

2:20Hunter Clarke-Fields:I'm excited to talk to you. I'm really, really enjoying Meditations for Mortals, by the way, which is one of Oliver Berkman's great books. And it kind of confronts the fantasy of endless time. Like, we think we have all this time. Can you share with Drew to explore this in 4 ,000 weeks and now a little bit more in Meditations for Mortals?

2:41Oliver Burkeman:Yeah. I mean, I think everything I'm doing in my writing is some kind of self-therapy in public really so it was always i'm with you there it was always grappling with the things that were an issue for for me i i was going to say whether i realized it or not but i think i have realized that most of most of my career today maybe at the very beginning i i didn't um and so for me there was always you know i spent a lot of time as a sort of young adult, I guess, living with this fantasy that I was just around the corner from figuring out how to make work and life function properly together, how to do all the things that I both wanted to do and felt obliged to do.

3:30Oliver Burkeman:And, you know, whether it was just I was going to find the perfect productivity system or I was going to summon previously unknown reserves of self-discipline or something was going to make that difference. And fortunately for me, one of the things I got to do in that time was to write newspaper columns for The Guardian in the UK, exploring some of these ideas. And that's very useful, because if you test out a lot of these systems and techniques as part of one's job, you get to the point where you realise, oh, maybe if I've tried a hundred of these and none of them have brought about this paradise of total control.

4:13Oliver Burkeman:Maybe there's something wrong with the question that I'm asking here, as it were, I guess. So that was sort of the beginning of my starting to think that maybe there was an alternative to desperately trying to get on top of everything. And that's what the books are about on some level.

4:33Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah. Here at the Mindful Mama podcast, we have an audience of parents who are feeling endlessly overwhelmed and want to get all the things done. And I think there's this sense of, who am I if I'm not getting all the things done, right? There's a sense of worthiness that is in question. Maybe if you're leaving things unfinished or you aren't efficient or you can't get all your things done, is that something you were confronting?

5:07Oliver Burkeman:Yeah, I think self-worth is right at the heart of this. I mean, first of all, we have to say and absolutely grant that people are in radically different situations. And some people really do have to do a lot more stuff just to stay afloat than other people. Absolutely. But there is this kind of near universal thing whereby you sort of feel that just in order to kind of fully justify your existence on the planet, you have to do an amount of things that is essentially impossible for anybody to do. And that doesn't go away just because you might be a more affluent person than someone else or you might have more help than someone else, whatever it is, right?

5:51Oliver Burkeman:It's like there's some sort of dynamic, we can talk about if you want, that means that you always end up feeling that you're at the edge of your capacities, no matter what sort of changes you make to your life. and i think that's a really deeply human thing i think it's all to do with our discomfort at being limited i think it's definitely made worse by the sort of culture and economy that we exist in now and i think a lot of this is just made a lot more vivid through through parenthood um i always feel like the we've got a son who's eight i always feel like becoming a father it wasn't quite right to say that it is just a completely an experience completely unlike anything else it's more that it takes all sorts of things that are true for everybody including non-parents and just makes them so vividly unignorable starting obviously with the the sudden disappearance of two-thirds of your discretionary time at minimum right but But all sorts of other things as well, all sorts of other questions about whether we find value in the moment or in the future and how we interact with other people and how our plans interact with reality.

7:12Oliver Burkeman:Like they're all just made so vivid by that, by parenthood.

7:18Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, I think so. I think back to when the girls were little and I had a lot less time and how actually much more efficient I was with my time. I feel like I've given myself permission to have rest and ease because I know that's good for me. And I know that's good for me as a parent, as a person and the way I show up and things. Now I'm getting a little lazy, though. I like my rest and ease too much. And I'm feeling like maybe I should feel a little more of the angst of getting things done that I used to feel.

7:55Oliver Burkeman:It's funny, isn't it? It's like you lose in both directions, especially in a culture like the one we live in. There's this sort of vague sense that there's something else you should be doing. And, you know, this is a move I often make in my writing, but I think the answer is not to try to sort of reassure yourself and say, oh, no, no, no, don't worry about it. But say, like, yeah, actually, there are lots of other things that in some sense you should be doing. But as finite humans, we have to choose. and you know i don't know your life maybe you could be in that category of people for whom it really is time to dial down the rest a little bit i don't think that's true for many people and i doubt that it's true right i think you know the the um overwhelmingly we we persuade ourselves that uh rest is the first thing to go and we set our sort of basic standards for productivity so high that it just distorts all our all our judgments about these things but yeah like anything one chooses to do or decides to do with an hour of life there's another million things you're not doing and like i've one of the things i feel quite strongly about is that sort of feeling more into that truth rather than trying not to think about it is actually really liberating and grounding and all sorts of things it doesn't need to be avoided with horror

9:19Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, like you're saying that we have to accept that there's never the right answer, right? And we're never going to get everything done. And you're talking about accepting our limitations a lot in meditations for mortals. Was this something that was hard for you to do? And how did you come to that?

9:39Oliver Burkeman:Yeah, I mean, and I'm still a work in progress, right? But I think on some level, it is the thing that we're all trying, we're all grappling with. For some people, it manifests very straightforwardly to do with quantities of things and of time. So that's the sort of productivity piece of this. People feel like they ought to be finding a way to do many more things with a given hour or a given day. And then for other people, it's more about a feeling of control, the sense that they need to either make sure things go the way they want them to go, or for people-pleasers, it's to make sure everyone's feeling the way you want them to be feeling.

10:20Oliver Burkeman:And there's so many different manifestations of this, but I think it's quite useful to see them all as different kinds of confrontation with our limits.

10:36Oliver Burkeman:the sort of limitations that we experience as humans and yeah no totally this has been my in one way or another you know feeling like i ought to be doing more feeling like uh there's all sorts of ambitions that i have that don't that that are incommensurate with each other uh feeling that i ought to be spending 100 of my time my waking time with my son but i also want to spend and need to be spending lots at work and enjoy spending it at work and you know how do you make these numbers add up and i think ultimately it's really important to see that you don't but the starting point here is that uh you know everything is trade-offs everything is is sacrifices doesn't mean you can't make better or worse decisions but it does sort of free you from that idea that there's a right answer that like you just haven't been able to figure out yet because you're a loser, right?

11:34Oliver Burkeman:It's like, no, there is no right answer here. And, you know, I think that's a really powerful place to begin because then it means that all your job can ever be is to sort of feel your way intuitively navigating among these different potential meaningful uses of your time.

11:57Hunter Clarke-Fields:Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break. emotional regulation is a huge topic in mindful parenting for obvious reasons we want to have a more peaceful home we want our kids to not be dysregulated we want ourselves to not be dysregulated we want to be able to stay grounded in the chaos and one of the things we talk about very rarely on the podcast when it comes to dysregulation is sleep and our sleep quality we know that sleep affects the whole house a child's nighttime breathing and a parent's sleep quality can really shape the tone of the next morning. When kids sleep poorly, the whole family can feel it.

12:37Hunter Clarke-Fields:One of the things that can affect kids sleep is mouth. A simple option for kids and adults is muzzle sleep. Muzzle is a small, low-tech habit that can fit naturally into your bedtime routine. What is it? Muzzle sleep makes comfortable mouth tape for kids and adults that is designed to gently support lip closure and encourage nasal breathing during sleep. The whole thing is built around a very simple idea that better nighttime breathing can be supported with a practical low effort bedtime habit that really fits into family life. So if you are worried about your kid's sleep, or maybe you have a partner that snores, this is such a simple low tech way to help this problem.

13:19Hunter Clarke-Fields:And it's all super clean, BPA, forever chemical free, made in the USA. say. Go to muzzlesleep.com and use the code mindfulmama for 10 % off. That's muzzlesleep.com promo code mindfulmama. You say that time management is not really about efficiency, but meaning, and I guess I can, the way I can really wrap my head around that is that, you know, there's nothing that, you know, I'm not going down to the creek to get water. I am not carting the wool to make my clothing anymore. Like there's all of the things for my existence in some ways are optional, right? Like it's not like I have to go get the water.

14:05Hunter Clarke-Fields:I have to harvest the food, right? I'm not, I don't, all of these essential things for life are things that I can do later. I can order in or I can, but you know what I mean? There's a lot of different options for a lot of us these days. And the work we do for a lot of us is on a screen. I'm not like building the wall to keep my sheep in. And so I think there is this sense of like, we have to kind of put the meaning in what we're doing. We have to kind of seize it and kind of put it there because it's not inherently essential, all the things we do in some ways.

14:54Oliver Burkeman:Yeah, that's a really interesting way of thinking about it. I agree, I think. And I think the way I might come at that, it's the same point, it's a different angle, I suppose, is just to say some of the dilemmas that we feel about or the ways we beat ourselves up about not doing things are you know on some level horrible phrase but anyway first world problems right they are things where if all you are trying to do is like stay alive and not catch the plague and um you know make sure your little hut is protected when the next um marauding army comes into town and like On some level, that is obviously life for people today as well in some places.

15:45Oliver Burkeman:But if that's not your life, that's the moment at which you start to really face these dilemmas. It's not because you start to have this kind of level of freedom. Like, I could do this and I could do that.

15:59Hunter Clarke-Fields:And then maybe feeling like if you're protecting your heart from the marauding armies, when it's time to rest, you just rest. You have no problem with it, right?

16:08Oliver Burkeman:Right. Absolutely. Yes, exactly. you collapse in exhaustion and you sleep and you don't say to yourself well first of all i've got to make sure everything's really tidy because i can't let myself relax until until that's happened and you know it's an interesting parallel i don't know if you agree with this but i think that there is a parallel between that sort of absolute necessity driven um experience of people living in to some extent less luxury or less less less modern convenience than than than we do there's some parallel between that and the experience of having a newborn baby because you know obviously this experience is significantly more acutely true for mothers than for fathers but even as a father like suddenly it's just necessity for like a good chunk of weeks or months suddenly it's just like nobody cares about my schedule for how the day was going to unfold right things need to be done.

17:09Oliver Burkeman:Things need to be responded to. The baby awakes when the baby awakes. The baby needs feeding when it needs feeding. And, you know, obviously one approach to parenting is focused on getting the baby swiftly onto a clock-based schedule as soon as possible. But for at least a short period there, you're in that kind of, you know, we've got to keep this little thing alive.

17:33Hunter Clarke-Fields:And you're just responding to the essential circumstances.

17:38Oliver Burkeman:and again i don't want to like sort of soft soap this too much but i think that in my memory and i've talked to other people about this like there is something about that even when it's kind of hair raising and anxiety inducing that is something like relaxing um even while yes and hugely exhausting right but but but something is not present a certain kind of mental suffering is not present in that time because you're just like okay it's what i'm doing and and yeah and if the other time that that has come up in my life is when a close friend or somebody's going through some kind of crisis right and maybe it's your job to maybe it's your job to be uh shoulder for them to cry on or maybe it's your job to just like i don't know go do the grocery shopping while someone else is their shoulder to cry on.

18:31Oliver Burkeman:But like, yeah, there's no question about what you should be doing. And there is something liberating about not having those questions, even when the thing that's happening is kind of not fun.

18:43Hunter Clarke-Fields:That's interesting. Bringing that up in that context makes me think about how for a lot of moms, the feeling of just, you know, I talk a lot about like making yourself and your mental health and well-being a priority so that you can show up, you know, the whole, the oxygen mask. And people have resistance to this and people have resistance to this in a lot of different ways. You know, culturally we're taught, you know, especially mothers are taught about to self-sacrifice and that's sort of the highest good. But I wonder if part of it is there's such clarity that you have like in that newborn phase when everything is about just this child.

19:28Hunter Clarke-Fields:And then it's slowly, you know, slowly we have to slip into balance of life where, you know, where I'm getting my needs met and you're getting your needs met. And we're balancing this all out. But it's the messy middle. Yeah. The middle path is so messy and there isn't that clarity of the extreme. And maybe I wonder if some people in some ways yearn for that clarity.

19:55Oliver Burkeman:Yeah, that sounds like a great point to me. It feels like I shouldn't claim I fully know what it's like to be the mother of a newborn, right? But I think that there's a still-happening separation between the two beings on some level in that sort of fourth trimester period. and um the the problem there if there's a problem is not that you're not taking time for yourself away from that the problem is societies that pressure need create a pressure for people to go back to work immediately or something like that right i mean but uh yeah i could there is something there is something simple and good and absorbing about just having no no choice in in things sometimes and then yeah yeah then the the addition of some modicum of autonomy which of course is important for the kid as well right you know so it doesn't uh that there should be some distinction between my interests and your interests you know this is a good thing but it's a harder struggle.

21:08Hunter Clarke-Fields:So we're taught how to push forward all the time, kind of outside of these times of extremes. We're taught to just push forward all the time. We're taught to get things done. I kind of think that maybe it goes back to industrialization. We're taught to just go and go and do. But we're not actually taught how to stop. And so, of course, we have this resistance to stopping. We have this resistance to ease. How do we get to be able to stop? How do we get to that place in our hearts and our minds where it feels meaningful to stop and pause without having everything on the to-do list done?

21:50Oliver Burkeman:That's a great question. And I think if there was a really neat answer to it, I would have written it and it would have been very popular and lucrative. um i think a couple a couple of things spring to mind i mean first of all this is definitely an ongoing practice it's not a one-shot deal at all but one aspect of this is the i would say is the perspective shift that i'm tracking through my books which is that when you become a little bit more convinced that it is impossible to get everything done in the sense that you're expecting that's actually very liberating when it comes to giving yourself permission to rest because it becomes clearer and clearer that if you wait for everything to be done you will be waiting you know forever and a day that is never happening because and so you sort of shift from thinking that you've got to sort of um you know you've got like a bucket of of of things that you've got to empty before you do it and to thinking like all you're doing is you're just in this ocean of infinite possibilities and demands and obligations and tasks and you've done you sort of to learn to swim in it right you do some and and then you stop for a while and i think it can it can really help to see that rest has to be in the midst of a long to-do list if rest is going to happen at all.

23:22Oliver Burkeman:And then, you know, this is the idea, obviously, in the Judeo-Christian traditions of Sabbath, and other religions too, no doubt, that the reason that you stop on a Friday night or a Saturday night is not because you've done everything, but just because it's Friday night or Saturday night, and that's when you stop for a day.

23:46Oliver Burkeman:And that is such a sort of important and interesting thought to me, that religions for centuries have realized that if you say you're going to rest when everything is done, you're never going to rest. There's a great book called The Sabbath World, I think, by Judith Shulovitz, where she talks about the sort of famously incredibly detailed restrictions of the sort of Orthodox Jewish Sabbath. as um like being not to sort of be oppressive and tyrannical over over the person um who's resting for that day but just because like it's so tempting to work and to do things we're so basically set up to exert ourselves that you need to sort of take away every single um possible uh outlet with a rule that says no no you can't do that either you can't do that either because it's not it doesn't come naturally to us um and at least it's sort of comforting to realize that maybe it hasn't come naturally to us for millennia rather than that it's just a purely uh