OLIVER BURKEMAN: Trading Control for Peace

28:34And we're always trying to get that little extra edge that allow us to accomplish more or do more or finally get in control. But anything you want to say about that idea? I mean, I am actually, as it sometimes surprises people, like I'm not against the idea of optimization or more broadly efficiency, right? I mean, if there are ways that your practices and your workflow and all the rest of it can be done just as well in much less time or whatever, that's a good thing. I think the trap that we all fall into, people who find this kind of stuff appealing anyway, is to imagine that that is the pathway to sanity and peace of mind and finally not feeling overwhelmed and finally being in the driver's seat of our lives.

29:22And I firmly don't believe that. The way to live a meaningful life is to do some stuff today that brings that sense of meaning into your life. If you're also at the same time, you know, tweaking the systems to make them run more smoothly, great. but I think the the big sort of it's almost like a religious feeling right this idea that our souls are going to be saved by optimization that we're going to get to some point where we're at sort of escape velocity from being human all these just I'm just using spinning off random metaphors but but the so you know an example of this that comes up for me all the time is that sometimes people are like do you use any time management techniques like or do you just sort of and I'm and I'm always like, oh, I totally do, but in a very different way than I once did, right?

30:08So if you're using the Pomodoro technique, to pick unfairly, pick a random example, right? If you're using that technique because you think that if you finally embed it and really get good at it and give it six months, then there's not going to be any problems in your life and you're going to go through the day and it's all just going to be exactly as planned and you're not going to have to say no to anybody and you're not going to have to give up on any dreams in order to pursue others, that's a problem. But if you sort of ease up and don't grip so hard to that idea, and you go through a little bit of something like I have gone through, where I've come to see that like, that's all about living in the future.

30:45And ultimately, we have to live in the present. Once you're back located in the present and feeling a little bit more authentically what it's like to be a limited human, by all means, then structure your day using the Pomodoro technique. That's like another tool in your cupboard. Absolutely great. Nothing wrong with these tools. It's the way we think they're going to rescue us that is the issue. It is almost like there's a salvific component to it. It's like a secularized religion in a way. If we do all these things, then we get some kind of pot of gold at the end. And I think it's oversold. Kind of moving a little bit maybe from the philosophical to something a little more practical.

31:24I was struck by, I think it's in the first chapter of 4 ,000 Weeks. You talk about distraction a lot. And you talk about how kind of what's really going on behind our impulse to distraction. You know, I think a lot of productivity methodologies are aimed at sort of like, again, I'm putting my hands out to hold the levy to keep the water from overtaking me, which we've never lived in a time when there were more distractions all around us, whether it's from our phone or looking out the window where people knocking on our door or our inbox. You know, they're just everywhere, not to mention our own mind.

32:02But I thought your perspective on what's really happening with distractions was very counterintuitive, but felt very true to me. Can you talk about what's driving our impulse to chase distractions? And then, like, what do we do with that? I certainly don't reject that whole sort of a lot of the discourse about distraction. And I don't want what I'm about to say to kind of let certain attention miners, you know, off the hook, right? There are lots of people out there making a lot of money from distracting us. That's a real thing. It's a real issue. I think Jonathan Haight's work about smartphone use and kids and teens is incredibly on point and important.

32:40At the same time, I think that if you really get quiet and think about what's happening inside you when you sort of stop focusing on an important piece of writing in order to doom scroll, or you can't quite bring yourself to focus on a conversation with your spouse that's quite difficult but important and you're sort of half looking at your phone or something there's also something that we're trying to avoid that we're running towards the distraction to not have to feel and I think that it is always some kind of lack of control that we're trying to avoid right it's an exposure to emotional to emotions we don't want to feel it's thinking about I'm working on a pick my own example right you know I'm working on a chapter I don't know if I can figure it out, if I can convey it properly, if it's going to be well received, if I'm going to finish it in time for the deadline.

33:32These are difficult emotions. And it's actually much nicer to go and distract myself into something that feels like those limitations don't apply. Even ironically, when the content that I'm consuming is like about how the world is ending, which is a very strange irony. But anyway, often it isn't as well, right? It's like, It's going to be fun stuff. And I think why that's so important is that firstly, it adjusts our expectations about how much success we can expect to have from apps that block social media and stuff. Absolutely use them, but that is dealing with one problem. It's not dealing with the fact that whenever we encounter our limitations in the course of work or relationships or anything, we suddenly feel like, oh, I want to get away from this situation.

34:18I have really found I don't know that this doesn't sound like a killer technique but I it's the one that's worked for me I've really found that just sort of knowing about this and expecting discomfort from things that matter to me whether that is you know a piece of work or a aspect of relationships or parenting just knowing that it's going to feel sometimes uncomfortable because it's bringing me to my edge and my limitations that makes a huge huge difference because of course it doesn't kill you to feel those feelings in 99 % of cases we're not talking about being flooded with incredibly difficult to handle kinds of emotions we're just talking about like the slight bothersomeness of not being able to figure out how to write a paragraph or something And you really can hang out with that feeling when you remember that it's normal and natural.

35:15Yeah. In the US and maybe in Great Britain, I don't know, there's been an explosion of anxiety. Everybody and their brother and their sister are medicated, trying to deal with this. And I've always, I guess up until now, I've seen this as mostly the sort of the fruit of trauma that's been unresolved in the past. But I'm also just wondering, as I'm hearing you talk, if this is a result of our view of productivity, we kind of get frantic because we can never get it all done. You know, and yet we want to do it, we say. But have you thought about the relationship between our views of productivity and stress?

35:56Yeah, I mean, and I'm definitely like by nature or whatever upbringing, an anxious person. And so on some level, I feel like, yeah, I feel like everything I'm trying to do in my writing on some level is to kind of like find a way through to a way of living that is simultaneously much less anxious and more peaceful. Yeah. But also allows me to be ambitious and want to create things and want to do things. Right. Because I think a lot of our, as I've said before, we were talking before, you know, a lot of our productivity is is the result of anxiety. And I would like to live a productive life for other reasons, I suppose.

36:32is what I'm saying. And there's that wonderful quote from Alec Wilkinson that I mentioned in the new book that most successful people are just a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity. I think that's the phrase. I read that line on the plane and I was like, okay, put that on a t-shirt, put that on my t-shirt. But like, so I, in a way, my big manifesto is like I think you don't have to choose between that and being a slacker and not doing anything with your life I I think there's a way and I think I more and more although not perfectly sort of live this this way I think there is a way of getting free of the anxiety and doing plenty of things that really matter but I think you're absolutely right whether it's that our anxiety as an epidemic is bound up with our ideas about productivity, or whether it's because of our anxiety that we struggle so hard to try to be productive, like where those causal arrows go, we could debate.

37:31But I mean, I think it's, it's absolutely all part of the same thing. And, you know, on some level, there's a kind of anxiety, maybe, that is appropriate to like realizing the truth about the human situation. But there's another kind, which is like, why haven't I escaped it yet and that's the sort of neurotic kind that I think really really gets us down like why haven't I got into total control why are there other people who seem to be doing better than me why haven't I achieved total financial security yet like all of that is a kind of like the thought behind all of that is like why haven't I figured out a way not to be a finite human living in a perpetually uncertain state.

38:14Whereas actually, the more we can just be like, oh yeah, that's what life is, then the more we can say like, yeah, that is a little scary in certain ways. But also, let's get on with some cool things at the same time. Well, I think that what you said a couple of minutes ago about just learning to tolerate the discomfort. You know, I was listening to a podcast, I can't remember the guest name, but on Andrew Huberman's podcast about addiction and I'm fascinated by that topic. And the physician who is the addiction expert or specialist was talking about how really most recovery is about learning discomfort tolerance, that when you're able to tolerate discomfort, you don't have to take the off ramps so often, you know, to whatever your compulsion of choices.

39:02And when you were talking about distraction, I was thinking about that because in my own life, you know, I've talked many times in the show about how I previously had a really debilitating fear of public speaking. And I went through a whole process of basically self-guided exposure therapy was functionally what I was doing. I, my first keynote was in front of 800 people. So, you know, maybe, maybe not the best way to do it, but it certainly worked for me. It was really was very curative, but I was speaking last October and I was driving to the event, it was local. And I started to feel kind of those butterflies in my stomach, you know, and just kind of that, like my heart started beating a little faster.

39:42I could tell my palms were sweaty. I wasn't breathing as deeply. And I just said to myself, oh, I'm just having those physical sensations in my body. That's just because I'm getting ready to talk to people. Like it doesn't actually mean anything other than this is important. It just, these are just physical sensations. But I think that what happens is when we're unconscious, we don't expect it, like you said, when we're sort of like expecting we're going to go work on this chapter of our book or we're expecting we're going to go produce a big report for work, that we're not going to feel any of that stuff.

40:13When it happens, we kind of panic and we just like grab our phone or we grab our email or whatever, right? Yeah, no, that's great. And I think it also is another part of the stress there in those situations is the idea that this thing, in your case, the butterflies in the stomach, is something that we've sort of got to fix. Right, right. Why haven't we got to the stage where they aren't present yet? There's a psychotherapist, I don't know if you know his work, Bruce Tift, who talks a lot, very usefully for me as a reader of his, about the idea of sort of learning to accept the possibility that certain things we're trying to fix in ourselves might never go away.

40:50Not so that you sort of give up, but precisely so you do the opposite of giving up, right? You don't say my goal is to feel completely confident about speaking. And until that is the case, I haven't got there. I'm a loser and I'm not really doing it properly. But to say like, no, this is always going to be there and this is my thing and that's fine. And I can welcome that and I can move forward. You know, I don't want to make sort of tasteless comparisons between sort of productivity, addiction, anxiety with sort of substance abuse. And I don't, I'm not an expert on the latter, but there is a sort of echo here in the sort of whole sort of 12 step idea of.

41:24always being an alcoholic, but also being sober, right? There's a sort of sense in which you can say you're always going to be distractible or have a tendency to procrastination or lack confidence in certain contexts. And you're sort of bigger than that. You can sort of put one foot in front of the other alongside that tendency instead of first of all, having to fix it. So that's another example of this kind of defeat that actually is no defeat at all. Because once you've given up on that kind of curative fantasy, guess what? You get to live more, more meaningfully and more healthfully.

42:06You know, one thing you say in the book that's related to this is life is not a problem to solve. And when we think that it is a problem to solve, what are the negative consequences of that? Well, I mean, I guess it's the basic way of putting the negative consequences, like, because it isn't, you're never going to have achieved the solution. And so on some level, you're going to go through and through life feeling like you're not there yet. You haven't fixed the thing yet, because you haven't figured out how to feel like it's completely in full working order, and you're on top of everything. because that is an impossible goal but you believe it's possible like every day is like well i'm i'm still kind of not that good compared to the people who've who've got it worked out there's this quote i hope you don't mind me sharing there's a quote in the book from a zen late british zen master gie kennett and i've quoted a lot i'm afraid but because it still has this kind of ability to get underneath my skin she said that her way of teaching students was not to lighten the burden of the student, her Zen students, you saw that, not to lighten the burden of the student, but to make it so heavy that he or she would put it down.

43:23And I think this is an incredibly powerful metaphor for exactly what we're talking about here, right? You can try to get to the point where you feel like you are completely in control of life. You have lightened the burden you're carrying. All you will do is be constantly chasing this moment of finally getting rid of the burden. But you could understand that this is not what life is, that we have to show up now, despite not feeling ready, that we do have to be exposed to upsetting emotions, that we don't ever have a very strong sense of what the future holds. And you could put that whole burden down and be kind of free in your life now, instead of at some hypothetical future point that never quite arrives.

44:07I love that. Well, the beauty of that, I think, is that whenever we can normalize something like that, you know, I don't want to normalize everything because some things are not appropriate or aberrant or whatever, pathological, whatever. But I think, I know when I speak to CEOs, which I do quite a bit, you know, I admit that I struggle with anxiety or that I've often felt imposter syndrome. Right. You know, when you say that, all of a sudden people go, oh, I'm not alone. And that all by itself is, to use the word you used a moment ago, curative. because people realize, okay, I'm not alone. I'm not, there's not something broken in me.

44:43This is just part of the arena, part of competing in the arena. And kind of everybody feels this way. It's just nobody talks about it. That's right. Right. No, and it's great. And it puts you in those contexts in the role of, you know, this Jungian term, right? The wounded healer, right? It's like, who do you want to learn from? Do you want to learn from a coach or a consultant who has like, no experience of the of the crap like who hasn't struggled with any of these of course not like of course you don't want to of course that's no good it's like you know no disrespect to 22 year old trainee therapists but like that's a problem in a way isn't it to be a 22 year old trainee therapist you want slightly grizzled person he or she has sort of experienced what these problems are struggles with them to this day perhaps but has found really good sane productive ways to yeah Trouble with them.

45:32Yeah. My spiritual director is in her 60s, and she's a recovering addict of 26 years sober. Right. Drugs, alcohol. Right. She's just kind of crusty in all the best ways. And when she gives me advice or guidance, I'm like, yeah, this is literally battle-tested. Right, right. From your perspective, you might wish she hadn't, for her sake, she hadn't had to go through certain things. Sure. But from your perspective, you would not wish her to not have. Right. Thank God she has. That experience and those struggles. Yeah. All this is really important, but I'd like to know how you live your life on a practical level day to day.

46:12In this philosophy, you mean? Yeah, using this philosophy. Because, like, you know, I have a morning ritual that I am pretty observant of, though I don't beat myself up when I miss it. But do you have those kind of things, like things that set you up, I was going to say for productivity, productivity, but do you have things that you do on a regular basis? What's the day look like? Do you keep a to-do list? Absolutely. I have some things. I'll talk you through a few of them just briefly, completely. I think the really important thing to emphasize just as a preface is that they're constantly in flux.

46:44There are definitely some that have been with me for many, many years, but I think it's really important to say that they are in flux. That was a big revelation for me when I thought like, oh, I'm not going to find the perfect productivity system, But equally, I don't have to reject productivity systems. I can just, this can be my slightly eccentric hobby that I have, right? That I like experimenting with how I organize my time. And if something seems like a useful tool for this season of my life, I'm going to use it. So I was really freed up when I realized like, this would probably always evolve.

47:17Which is to say, nothing I say now might be true in six months time. But so the one that is really central to me in terms of a morning ritual is morning pages of a fairly, you know, this is a well-known thing, writing three sides of pre-written, just whatever's on my mind could be clearing out cobwebs, could be grappling with problems, could be planning projects, just totally setting no goal except the quantity. that is something that I've found really helpful to the extent that I would say I'm probably much easier to live with for example on the days that I get to do that than on the days that I don't so that I don't quite know what function that serves but it's a very important one for me and then in terms of I have a lot of freedom obviously you know writing stuff in once the in the bit of the day that is given over to work once I've taken my son to school or whatever that bit of a lot of autonomy over.

48:14And I try very, very hard to sort of really ring fence about three hours in the morning for making progress on the sort of core projects that I'm working on. And that is partly to do with defending against meetings and everything. But a big part of it is to do with defending against my own anxiety, which if given free rein, would just spend weeks trying to get on top of every other tiny little thing. so that this huge expanse of free time opened up at some point in the future, which like never happens. So for me, a really important practice is like, okay, spend a couple of hours working on this chapter or this book structure, whatever it is, even though I'm well aware that I also then will have to tend smaller things.

49:01So it's resisting that urge to clear the decks as I've put it in the past and do the thing that matters first. The other thing I think is really important is to find some way of limiting your work in progress, right? Some way of saying, these are the five things that are on my plate actively at the moment. And all the other ones are going to have to wait until there's a new slot on that list. There are so many different ways of doing that. Kanban systems and many, many things. That's not important. I don't think which one you choose necessarily, but just that idea of like, I really want to think that I'm active right now on like 25 projects, but that is BS, right?

49:45You know, it's, so I've got to make myself go through that process of like, which of the three or four that I'm, that I'm actually on right now. We are big fans here of Cal Newport's work. And that's one of the things that he talks about in his book, Slow Productivity, is the idea of limiting the number of things that you're working on. He actually, I think, says three in his methodology. And he has this idea of a push and a pull system that you need to pull new things in rather than sort of allow it like before you start something, rather than letting other people just kind of push them to you, you say like, well, I can get to that, you know, around here instead of just having all these things active, because otherwise you just have this, he calls it administrative overhead of managing the 25 things, not even to speak of actually working on them, which is such a great idea.

50:36No, absolutely. Cal is a big advocate as I understand him of sort of really actively negotiating your workflow. So talking to the other people you work with and being like, I'm not going to be able to do this until then. All right. And I think that's super important where I end up going just because it's my field of interest, I guess, is more to do with the sort of internal battle which is often to do with saying yeah maybe people are going to get impatient because I have to keep them waiting for something but if you're making them wait and it's a conscious process because you're prioritizing something else first and you're sort of allowing yourself to be comfortable with that fact and maybe you're dropping them an email to be polite absolutely you know um that's the really important a big part of it for me has always been like the willingness to sort of let that be the case, to let some things wait.

51:27I may just be slightly more sort of neurotic by nature than Cal, I don't know. It's a real spiritual discipline. I mean, I find that challenging because once again, we're back at accepting your limitations. When you put 25 projects on your list, you have the illusion, at least at the moment you do it, maybe not so much a month in, but you have the illusion that you can do 25 things at once and you can't, not well. Yeah. Holding all those in your mind produces its own sort of anxiety. Exactly. Yes, it really does. Yeah. We could get quite theological about this in the sense that it is on some level, a kind of hubristic attempt to kind of be God instead of to be really the most wholehearted, full human that you can be.

52:12Well, I feel like we could probably talk to you for hours more. I'm like, what we need is a whole day. So noted. This has been so fun. But we always ask our guests three questions. So it's not really honest to say it's a lightning round because they're kind of deep questions. But we ask the same questions every time. So are you game to dive in? Okay. So the first one is, what personally for you is the biggest obstacle in getting the double win right now, winning at work and succeeding in at life? Honestly, it is a psychological one. Could you guess? It's my natural tendency that I'm doing a lot to work through, but it's my natural tendency to think of these two domains as kind of zero sum and opposed.

52:54And that if I'm putting more time into work, then I'm being a bad parent. And if I'm giving lots of attention to my son and my family, then I'm letting work go. Obviously, to some extent, that's true, right? There's only so many hours in the day, but I found it much more helpful to sort of understand the values that underscore both of these and to realize that actually, you know, as long as you're showing up for them both over a slightly longer timescale, it is okay to have a sort of rhythmic alternation between those things and et cetera, et cetera. I could get really, let's not turn this into a long therapy session for me right now, I like the word rhythmic.

53:38Okay. Second question. How do you personally know when you're getting the double win? What are the indicators that you're kind of there where you want to be? I've had times in my life when there are ways of sort of more objective indicators to do with where I'm apportioning my time or the quality of relationships and things that are very important to me. I think the real answer is, it is a feeling of aliveness. I'm sorry to be so vague, but I think it is. But when this is working, each moment of life feels at least potentially, you know, absorbing and engrossing. I'm not trying to get through one set of things to get to another set of things.

54:19I don't mean that filing your taxes or cleaning the toilet suddenly becomes, you know enormously enjoyable activity but just that sense that it's fun to sit down and grapple with a piece of writing and then it's fun to go home and make some dinner or read to my son or it's that sense that like everything is potentially a source of interest and aliveness we get a lot of people that will say some version of peace yeah you know and i i think that all kind of gets to the same idea, which I think is beautiful. Yeah. Okay. Last question. What is one ritual or routine that you rely on to do what you do?

54:58So you spoke about the morning pages a little bit, but is there anything else that is kind of a ritual or routine for you? Morning pages is definitely the one I would have said if I hadn't just talked about it previously. I think that when things are going well, put it that way, I also have a kind of a checklist of quite boring work administrative tasks that I try to do every few days that sort of means that an awful lot of stuff that just kind of keeps my systems working gets done anyway. So whether that's to do with like finance tracking or it's to do with checking different, like, I don't know, what am I thinking of?

55:40Just sort of checking my calendar a couple of weeks, all these things that just keep the ship sailing nicely. Like if there's a list of two hours worth of this stuff that I can just pretty robotically go through to keep all the everything tied up, I find that this helps. Yeah. Again, kind of boring. I like that idea of badging it all together. You know, you just sort of get in that headspace and you go. That's great. Well, it also ensures that the small things stay small. Yeah. And you can do those. Yeah. And they don't become a big crisis. True. Yeah. Yeah. Oliver, thank you so much for this conversation.

56:14I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Me too. Me too. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

56:28Okay. So what were some of your key takeaways? Well, first of all, I just love that conversation. I like his demeanor. I do too. He's very humble. Very humble. Thoughtful. Very transparent. parent, this is a topic, this idea of accepting limitations or really in his world, embracing them is something I've thought a lot about over the last couple of years. Maybe it's just getting older. Maybe it's having so many kids, which bring with it a lot of limitations. But the idea that when we fight those limitations, we actually create more suffering for ourselves and more frustration and actually less productivity, I think is profound.

57:06The people that I tend to enjoy being around the most are people who have accepted limitations. Yeah. Because I think there's fundamentally a level of peace there that sort of psychological, maybe intangible fighting with everything all the time is lessened. And so they're able to be more at peace. And consequently, that creates sort of a contagion of peace in the best way that helps other people relax. One of the things that I kept thinking about while he was talking is that what we want in our life is more peace. But we try to get it through control. Control does not equal peace. But we tell ourselves that.

57:52We think if I can just get in more control of fill in the blank, then I will experience peace. You know, so often on this show, like I said, at the end of our conversation, when we ask people, how do you know when you've gotten the double win, they say some version of peace. You know, my wife's okay. My kids are okay. My husband's okay. I just feel like I can really relax. You know, whatever. They say something that is a synonym for peace. And it just really struck me in that conversation how often I and we, as humans, pursue greater control as a mechanism for peace. And I think that that's a fool's errand.

58:28Well, it is because in those moments when you're not in control, you sort of, by definition, don't feel peace. And frankly, not being in control. And I'm not talking about being out of control. Yeah, that's a good point. Those aren't the two opposites. That's right. But not being in control, which is a lot of life. I mean, probably 80, 90 % of life is you're not in control. Right. Now, the trick is that we don't want to deny people or deny ourselves our own agency to make an influence. But I think this is a profound thing. And I don't know if you thought about this when we were talking. I almost asked him about it, but I knew it would take us down a rabbit hole.

59:09And that is, I think there's a sense in which AI and longevity science, longevity science, two things that I'm very interested in, also create this sort of mindset that's a denial of our limitations. Yes. Because with AI and the promise of AI, you know, suddenly we can be in more control, we think. And, you know, we can do things faster, easier. We can do more things than we've ever done. We can get all our questions answered. Get all our questions answered. Exactly. And longevity, I think a lot of that science is for real, for sure. But a lot of it, especially in the extreme ends of it, I've read some extreme stuff.

59:51Yeah. Where people - Like escape velocity kind of ideas of like - Yeah. Science is going to progress fast enough that we'll continue to live forever. I just read a guy this week, somebody we both know, who said, if you can live another five years - Yeah. You probably won't die. And I thought, I think that's a way of kind of denying our mortality. Yeah. And I think that the fact that we do have mortality actually kind of serves us. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's like it drives a lot of action. You know, we think we're not going to live forever. So if I'm going to make a connection, like I was talking to this friend of ours, and he recently reunited with his father.

1:00:30And part of that was realizing that, you know, he's losing runway. And if he doesn't do that, and his father had abandoned him when he was really young, that, I mean, it's a really good thing. and it's been a beautiful, flourishing relationship. But if he thought he had forever, he might have not done it. Yeah. I mentioned during the show that I was just in Chicago this last weekend. I was doing some medical treatment for my kids and we ended up staying downtown. I kind of misjudged the distance. Staying downtown, but then had to drive about 35 minutes, 40 minutes to the place where the medical procedures were happening.

1:01:07And so I was Ubering, you know, cause I thought I'm in Chicago. I don't want to drive in Chicago. Like I'll just Uber. So what that meant is I have a lot of time to sit there and look out the window. Well, what I realized on the second day, so we're driving the same route. It's funny what you don't see the first time and what you do see after subsequent days, I saw this huge cemetery and I'm talking like it had to have been half a mile long, you know, like it obviously acres and acres, you know, we're driving. I'm like, wow, we're still driving. Wow. There's still, wow. You know, I was just like, it just kept going.

1:01:36And I was thinking somehow philosophically, and I thought nobody remembers who those people are. Nobody is coming to visit those graves. Like you could kind of tell the new ones and maybe they had like some little plasticky flowers, you know, that like family members, grandchildren or children had left, friends. But then like the old ones, I mean, they're basically just grass on the top. Like no one was doing anything. And I thought on the one hand, that's kind of sad. You know, like after about a couple of generations, nobody's going to, after your grandchildren are gone, like they're not, no one's going to remember you.

1:02:09Right. And then I thought that's actually an important thing to keep in mind, though maybe unpleasant. Because anything you're doing to be remembered is an absolute waste of your time. Yep. It's vanity. Like that's not going to matter. It's ultimately like who you are to one or two other people and what kind of an impact you're able to make, what kind of person you are. But anything about status or accomplishment in the sense of for its own sake is worse than worthless in the end, especially if you compromise the things that really matter on the path to them. And I think that's part of what, you know, Oliver's coming from a different faith perspective than we are.

1:02:50But I do think that there is a powerful effect of considering your own mortality and considering what are you going to give your life to? because if it has anything to do with recognition, it's just worthless. It's worthless. You know, one of the best books I've ever read is that book, I think you've read it too, by Atul Gawande called Being Mortal. Yeah. It's really a helpful perspective on our mortality. Well, we could continue to talk about this for some time, but again, the books are 4 ,000 weeks time management for mortals and meditations for mortals, four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts.

1:03:28And they're both available at better bookstores everywhere.