Ep. 41. OLIVER BURKEMAN: Trading Control for Peace

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

Oliver: [00:00:00] What there isn’t is any system or philosophy or approach or sports nutrition drink that is going to enable you to sort of win the battle with human limitation. Right? That’s a given and now we figure out how to flourish. In absolutely fantastic and wonderfully meaningful and interesting and lucrative ways within those limitations.

Michael: Hi, I am Michael Hyatt.

Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller,

Michael: and you’re listening to The Double Wind Show. Guys, we’re excited to bring with you a conversation that we just had with Oliver Berkman. He’s the author of two really powerful books, 4,000 Weeks, time Management for Mortals, and in his most recent book, meditations for Mortals, four Weeks to embrace your Limitations and Make Time for what counts.

He’s a former columnist for The Guardian, where he wrote, and I love the title of this, this Column Will Change Your Life.

Megan: That’s a great title.

Michael: That’s a great title. He’s the author of the two books I [00:01:00] mentioned. By the way, both of these international bestsellers. He emphasizes that facing life’s limitations is the key to greater freedom and satisfaction.

He’s now a much sought after speaker writer on productivity, time and meaning. The thing I loved about him the most, he’s a self-professed, productivity geek, and maybe that’s a little bit in the past because he really reveals some things about productivity that are, I don’t know, really resonate with me as true.

Megan: Yeah. But like countercultural, like he’s gonna challenge thinking very.

Michael: He definitely is. Currently, he writes an email newsletter called the Imper Perfectionist, which automatically resonates with me. But without further ado, here’s our conversation with Oliver.

Welcome to the

Oliver: show. Oliver. Thanks very much for inviting me.

Megan: We are so excited to have this conversation. As I was telling you before we got started, when our team heard that we were gonna have the [00:02:00] opportunity to talk with you, they got very excited because in particular, your book 4,000 Weeks is a huge fan favorite over here at Full Focus.

So our team loves this. It has been the topic of many conversations, and I think that’s because there’s a lot of alignment with what you talk about and kind of how we think about productivity. Which is a lot about simplicity and we’ll get all into that here shortly. Can’t wait. But I wanna sort of rewind the clock to begin with and I would love for you to tell us a little bit about your story, because I know that you were kind of a self-professed, productivity geek, and then now you would describe yourself as something of a recovering perfectionist.

And I’d love to know how you ended up going from productivity geek to recovering perfectionist. What is that story?

Oliver: Sure. Well, obviously there’s multiple levels and timescales. I won’t give you the sort of, uh, endless full life story going to it if you want. But I think the really important part of that is [00:03:00] I spent many years in my sort of early adulthood, I was often writing about this kind of stuff, right?

So I had this wonderful opportunity working for the Guardian newspaper to write this column where I gotta try out all these sorts of things, productivity techniques, time management philosophies, and all the rest of it. In hindsight, clearly I was just doing like therapy in public, right? I was trying to deal with this sense I had that I had to find some way to be able to do all the stuff I felt I had to do and, you know, realize my potential and meet all my obligations and answer all the emails and, and all the rest of it.

And it’s really interesting actually, when you get to sort of pursue a lot of avenues like that. Maybe a regular, you know, person who wasn’t working as a journalist, making a bigger contribution to the world in their job would only get to, you know, experiment with two or three of these. But if that’s one of the things that you’re doing for your job, you get to experiment with so many that eventually when this golden era of perfect control and optimization [00:04:00] fails to descend.

You start to think like, oh, maybe the problem is the quest I’m on here rather than that I just haven’t yet found the one system. Right. Yeah. Maybe, maybe there isn’t a system out there necessarily that’s gonna make me suddenly able to do everything or not have to make tough choices about time and, and all the rest of it.

And there’s very gradual process. But I do write in 4,000 weeks about this one sort of specific epiphany sitting on a park bench in Brooklyn where we lived at the time, on the way to my workspace, trying to figure out how I was gonna make all these deadlines work that week. I was even more anxious than usual about it all trying to figure out what combination of time management methods and self-discipline and all the rest of it was gonna get me to the end of what I felt I had to do that week.

And just being really struck by the realization of like, oh, it’s impossible, huh? What I’m trying to do this week is not something. I can do. And actually that felt like a, a weight being lifted from my [00:05:00] shoulders and caused me to start thinking in a different way about how you invest time and how you prioritize things and, and all the rest of it.

Because it became clear that I had been trying to do something that was sort of systematically never gonna happen.

Megan: It’s so funny that you say that because I was on a plane this weekend coming back from Chicago and I was reading meditations for Mortals, your Most recent book. And one of the things that really struck me is that there is this theme in your writing of both of these books that one, it’s kind of really bad news, you know, like based on what you thought, like, I have some really bad news for you.

But it turns out that in your kind of way of thinking about it, the bad news turns out to be the good news. And I’d love for you to dig into that a little bit because it’s very counterintuitive. But I found myself as I was reading, feeling that I, I breathed. More deeply. I kind of had this psychological exhale as I was [00:06:00] reading, as you were talking about this idea of impossibility that was surprising to me.

And I, I think that might be intentional on your part. So tell us more.

Oliver: Yeah. Um, that is the, that is the best response. Like, I’m so happy to hear that. That’s fantastic. Yeah. I think again and again, and I’ll give an example or two, but like in again and again, it seems where I end up in my writing about what it is to be human and to figure out how to do some meaningful things with your time.

There is this sort of defeat that you have to go through. There’s a sort of confrontation with reality that feels like. A defeat. You have to realize that what you had been trying to do was, was not something that you are, you are gonna be able to do. But, and this is crucial and I spend a lot of time on the second part of this, I think, you know, it’s the kind of defeat that is the prelude to something much better than what you were doing before, right?

It is the, it is the way to start making the biggest difference, moving the needle, living the things you dreamed of doing, right? All of that positive stuff I [00:07:00] think comes through going through this kind of defeat that is the confrontation with limitation. So in the new book, for example, just to pick the obvious example of like having too much stuff on your to-do list, I, I’m being very, very busy.

Just a very simple case. I talk about how like. The crucial step is to see how your situation is worse than you think because you and how liberating this can be. ’cause you think that the problem is it’s incredibly hard to get on top of your to-dos. You think that it’s gonna take a huge amount of effort, that you’re still looking for the perfect system, or you need to somehow find more self-discipline than you’ve ever shown at any point in your life to date, in order to finally make it work.

But it’s actually worse than you think. It’s not really difficult to get on top of everything that feels like it needs doing. It’s impossible to get on top of everything it feels like it needs doing because that is a, that is a effectively an infinite supply. There’s no reason to believe that just because something feels like it needs doing that you’ll have time to do it.

And that’s a classic example for me. [00:08:00] There are many others, but that’s a classic example for me of like, oh, when I see that it’s worse than I think that’s actually good news. Not only ’cause I get to relax, but it isn’t just the relaxation of, well screw it, then I’m gonna sit around and eat potato chips and.

Watch movies, right? It’s the relaxation of now I can just do the things that matter the most. I can stop waiting till I feel completely in control to sort of declare that my real life has finally begun and now that I can, now I can do it. No, it’s like, no, now I can just sort of dive in because I’m no longer trying to make all my actions feel like they are part of some process of eventually getting to total domination of my time and perfect optimization.

So it’s very proactive. I hope that is clear. Anyway,

Michael: and part of the issue is it seems like the goalpost keeps moving. So in other words, just when we think we’re caught up, we think of all these new things that Right, we could optimize or would, you know, enable us to fulfill our potential. [00:09:00] Yeah. And so it’s like if people that are relatively ambitious, their to-do list is always gonna weigh, exceed.

Reality.

Oliver: Right? Absolutely. And it’s so sort of absurd really to reflect on it. Right? One of the things I’ve written about, and I know you’ll have plenty of experience of anyway, is like if you get really good at answering emails at a really quick tempo, the main result of that is you’re gonna get many more emails.

So true. You get replies and you have to reply to those replies and this pattern recurs again and again. Firstly, yeah, you get really efficient at doing something naturally for all sorts of different reasons that the inputs to that system are gonna increase. So you’re gonna have more and more of that stuff to do.

And then also, yeah, with success, what happens when you get successful in your field is that a higher proportion of the things coming your way are things you really wanna say yes to. ’cause they’re like high quality opportunities. So saying no, the art of saying no just gets harder and [00:10:00] harder and harder through life if your life is going well.

You know, it’s a ridiculous irony. So we have to eventually realize that the answer isn’t gonna come. Through building the system. That means we don’t have to say no, it’s gonna be through,

Megan: yeah.

Oliver: Through being more honest about the finite situation we’re in.

Michael: I haven’t even told you this.

Megan: Oh, great. This is my favorite part of the show.

When I get a revelation that’s new,

Michael: I created a screensaver that’s literally on all my computers right now, Uhhuh. And it says default to

Megan: no. Ooh.

Michael: Because I, I default to, yes.

Oliver: Yeah.

Michael: For all the reasons you just shared. You know, there’s the fear of missing out, the fear of disappointing other people. You know, all those things play on us.

But one of the things I wanted to ask was, what are some of the cultural mindsets that make this so difficult? Because I believe all this stuff intellectually. Hmm. And this is therapy in public, but I often find myself backsliding kind of into this notion that, yeah, I wanna be compassionate towards others.

You can’t do it all. You need to identify the few essential things and stay focused on that, and [00:11:00] that’s enough. But when it comes to me mm-hmm. I think, well, I’m the exception. I can have that big list. Yeah. You know, and carve away at it. Then it’s just like I have to go through the whole thing again of, no, this is impossible.

Oliver: At least as far as I know, like this is just an endless work in progress. Right. And, and it’s partly a, a result of it working in a way that this happens. Right. You, if you continue to find it hard to say no, that’s at least in part because more things are coming your way that are more painful to say no to.

Mm-hmm. Why is this the case? I think there are so many different, it’s, it’s overdetermined as they say. There are so many different, um, strands here. There is a lot to do with the, the sort of modern socioeconomic culture that we live in and the messages that sends about needing to keep doing more, more, more, more, more to stay on top of, of everything.

There’s a whole sort of psychological strand about how many of us are kind of raised to believe that we’ve got to kind of earn our right to be here. I mean, this [00:12:00] idea that I keep coming back to in the book and elsewhere that. People resonate with so much this psychological concept of the insecure, overachiever, the person who’s doing loads and is getting all sorts of success as a result, but on some level is doing it because they feel like they would not be valid as a human being if they didn’t do it.

And that kind of insecurity can drive a lot of, um, great accomplishments, but it’s just a kind of a miserable way to live. I think some of our religious traditions, not all of them, but some of them give, give rise to this sort of deficit feeling that you’ve gotta keep doing it, keep earning, keep earning.

And right at the bottom of it all, there’s this sort of, you know, fact of the human condition, right? Every time you decline something or miss out on something or fail to pursue an avenue that could have led to something great, which all which you have to do in order to do anything meaningful with a finite life.

But every time you do that, on some level, you are being confronted again with this ridiculous. [00:13:00] Thing that it is to be a human, which is to be capable of imagining basically an infinite amount of things and possibilities and eventualities, but, but obviously ultimately being a sort of finite material animal and having to choose only some of them.

I don’t think we like being reminded of that state. I think on some level it’s to do with mortality, you know? Mm,

Megan: mm-hmm.

Oliver: Freud was right. Well, about some things.

Megan: Yeah. You don’t use this language that I remember anyway in either of the books, but the idea of radical acceptance feels like kind of what you’re talking about, you know?

I mean, there’s, there is just like, it is radical to say, yeah, we are finite. You know? I feel like in a way most of the productivity systems, life philosophies, whatever, that are sort of commercially available are all about, I. In a lot of ways, trying to convince us that there are no limitations. You know, that the limitations are only in [00:14:00] our head, that on the other side of our brain is this expansive, unlimited potential that we can tap into.

But I, I think one of my takeaways in reading your books is that radical acceptance brings so much peace and an opportunity for more meaning and purpose. But how do we come to a place of peace of radically accepting our limitations? You know? ’cause it’s one thing, like you said, dad, it’s one thing to know intellectually, yeah, I only have 4,000 weeks, or I don’t, you know, whatever.

Like I have a, I have this finite amount of time, but in my day to day when I am confronted with having to say no, or the fact that I’m never gonna get that whole thing done or, or whatever. Mm-hmm. How do I come to that place of peace? Do you think,

Oliver: I mean, I think you’re absolutely right that radical acceptance is a way.

To talk about it. And I think that it’s useful because it, it makes you see, and I, this has certainly been a big thing for me, how [00:15:00] much active energy we put into avoiding reality in life, right? It’s not just that you fail to take account of limitations, it’s that you sort of really put a lot of effort into not feeling limited because it’s painful to make those choices, to turn things down, to pursue some goals instead of other goals.

And so the criticism I would make of a certainly a, a big chunk of conventional time management productivity advice is that it’s basically enabling that denial, that avoidance. It’s saying like, now with this philosophy or system or technique, now you can get to that place. And of course you never get there.

It’s always a little bit in the.

Get to that place, I mean, of acceptance. It is definitely a sort of absolutely ongoing, for me anyway, sort of un unfolding process. I don’t wanna just sort of give a sales pitch for the new book, but that was something I was very specifically thinking of in structuring the book, which is designed [00:16:00] to be like four weeks of short daily chapters.

I can’t force anyone to read it on a daily basis, but that’s the kind of the kind of basic idea. And what I really wanted to do was to not turn this into one of these books where you either get a big perspective shift and then you just fades or there’s a whole set of things you could put into practice, like systems and techniques, but you just kind of don’t get round to it ’cause you don’t right now and busy.

So I’m really trying in the way that book is written to keep guiding people through this little just gentle versions of this. Perspective shift. And that is what I have found in my own life, is the way to sort of embed it. You write about it in your journal over and over again. You read little chapters in a book that is about it over and over again.

And what you find each time you make some sort of little incremental act in that direction is you get feedback, right? You say no to somebody in a polite kind way and they don’t scream and shout at you like the sort of unconscious [00:17:00] idea you have. They are okay with it and maybe even happy that you took the time to decline it in such a nice sense.

Or you, you sort of choose between two things that both feel like they absolutely have to have your attention today and you give your attention to one of them and you therefore neglect the other one and the sky doesn’t fall in. You know? So if you keep doing this in these tiny ways, which is part of what I’m trying to lead people through in the book, I think that’s the way I’ve always been able to.

It’s seeing that it’s safe to do so basically and not

Megan: just safe. That’s a great point,

Oliver: but useful.

Michael: It seems like that’s essential because again, the, the cultural pressure to kind of get sucked into that traditional time management philosophy is ever present, and so if we don’t have some mechanism of reminding ourself, we just kind of slip into the matrix and forget what’s reality.

Oliver: No, absolutely. It’s so culturally reinforced, but also just reinforced by sort of the natural tendencies [00:18:00] of not wanting to think about slightly painful things. I mean, I think a really good question here as well to come at it from the other side is like for somebody to look at their current way of doing things and to ask that question, you know, and how’s that working out for you?

One thing that I found again and again when I was really in this place of sort of chasing perfect control and optimization and all the rest of it was like. I totally missed deadlines. I totally didn’t get back to people. I totally let things slide. I mean, very often if you take that people pleasing approach, you’ll get worse at that stuff.

’cause you won’t give people a straight answer to their questions. You’ll keep them hanging on while you’re indecisive. And I’m still, I feel guilty making it sound like I’m completely over this now ’cause I really don’t think I am. But like one way of sort of selling this perspective I’m talking about is to say, as I do believe that all these good things that will come out of it.

But the other way of saying it is like, well, what have you got to lose? Because almost everybody who is trying to sort of [00:19:00] optimize themselves into absolute control, you know, they’re not succeeding. Life is miserable and they’re letting people down all over the place. So it’s like, well try this instead.

What’s the downside?

Michael: There’s kind of this social media aspect to this. You know, everybody puts on their best face, their best false front when it comes to Instagram or Facebook or whatever. You think to yourself, if you’re steeped in that environment, you think, well, but there are people that have a system and it seems to be working.

Yeah. And what I fail to realize is those people are usually selling something and if they were honest, it’s probably not fully working for them.

Oliver: Right. They’re selling something or they’re just trying to make themselves feel like they’re trying to make it real in their own lives by promoting it, or they’re just telling you about the good days.

And, you know, I I, in my own writing and newsletters and stuff, I try to be very honest about this. ’cause I, on some level I am giving advice, but I also don’t wanna pretend that [00:20:00] I have, you know, reach perfect enlightenment and, and, and, uh, I’m completely serene and never get irritated. It’s more that there are techniques that embody these kinds of perspectives we talk about here that are good techniques and that have worked for me and it’s constantly in flux.

But there are, but there are techniques. What there isn’t is any system or philosophy or approach or sports nutrition drink that is going to enable you to sort of win the battle with human limitation. Right? That’s a given and now we figure out how to flourish in absolutely fantastic and wonderfully meaningful and interesting and lucrative ways within those limitations rather than running away from them a whole.

Those,

Megan: there’s something that I think is attractive about what you’re saying ’cause it’s like you’re going with the way life naturally works [00:21:00] with the way Yeah. Being a human works and I think a lot of times what it can feel like with these systems that are over-engineered. You know, somebody’s elaborate morning routine, somebody’s, you know, system for tracking their time during the day, or scheduling or whatever.

It’s like we’re actually trying to, to work against being human and we’re going upstream, you know, against the current of how life normally wants to work. And that’s a lot of effort. It really is exhausting. It’s like, in my mind I envision it, like I have my two hands stretched out in front of me and I’m trying to hold the levy with my hands to keep the, keep it from breaking and all the water, you know, rushing over me.

Michael: Yeah.

Megan: And I, I think like that just sounds one futile, but two exhausting, you know? And I think that like, it’s just, it’s not gonna happen. There are are different kinds of people. There are people who feel like no matter what they, they try, they’re never gonna get it together. And so they just sort of give up and they fly by the seat of their pants.

I think there are other people. [00:22:00] Probably this is a lot of the people that are listening to this conversation or watching this conversation today who are given to rigidity, you know, they’re given to trying to like sort of white knuckle their way through, through practices and disciplines and methodologies and systems and other things to sort of engineer the uncertainty out of their life to engineer the, the chaos out of their life at any level.

Because like kind of the subconscious belief is, if I can do that, then it will all work out.

Michael: Yeah.

Megan: But how does that approach the rigid approach actually sabotage our efforts to make a meaningful contribution or have a life of purpose?

Oliver: It’s a very good question. And so well put, because that, that whole, I’m one of those people historically, right?

Yeah. I’m one of the people who’s looking for the rules that it’s like this sort of cosmic deal or like if I could find the rules, I would promise to obey them in every respect and in return. I wouldn’t quite have [00:23:00] to go to the effort of living right. Or I wouldn’t have to like suffer the, the pain and disappointment of living.

I’d just get to sort of, I’d just be in cruise control after that. And you know, I think there’s all, a big chunk of the new book is about the different ways in which that kind of way of life backfires and lots of different ways of, of getting at it. One that’s spring into my mind now is that there’s a real loss of sort of liveliness, at least in my experience, that is encountered by, in this way.

So this is a very common experience that I had earlier in my. Life where, you know, I’d follow some practice or some protocol that involved coming up with a vision for where I wanted to be in a few years time, and that bit would be great. Then I’d try to turn it into kind of all the action steps that I had to take between now and then.

So I effectively created a huge instruct list of instructions that I had to follow for the next goodness knows how long, and within about a day or two, that would just be like totally lifeless. Uh, it would seem like a chore. I would deeply resent the jerk who [00:24:00] was telling me to do all this stuff, even though that was me from two days ago.

Right. There’s an absence of like, there’s something important. I’m not suggesting that we can all just float through life with note or that note or that planning and goals are bad. That’s a whole separate question, but like there’s something about the uncertainty of the situation, about responding to the moment about doing what you feel like doing.

There’s something about all of that that is. Good. That is not bad. And that if your whole system is designed to sort of crush whatever mood you are in today and make yourself do the thing that you’ve decided a week ago you were gonna do today, if that’s all it is, there’s something in that that is really not responsive to like who we are.

You are taking like the energy of like, oh, that would be fun to do. And instead of harnessing it, you’re like squashing it. Hmm. So I mean, when you were talking just before about holding back the levy or whatever, I, my understanding you were basically encapsulating Taoism, right? So I think this is a, there are lots of different traditions that all [00:25:00] come to these ideas, but that idea that if you can, there’s a way of going with the flow that is actually more constructive and productive as well as more peaceful and and meaningful, I think is a really important piece of all this.

As I say, I think there are lots of other ways to talk about what goes wrong with those sort of brittle. Life changing.

Megan: Oh, brittles a good word. Systems, but easily is a good word. Easily broken.

Oliver: Yeah.

Megan: You know, I, I have several children with special needs, and I think the greatest gift of being a parent with kids with special needs is that your plans are constantly upended.

You know, because you have this crisis or they have this thing that comes up, or you need to go see this doctor. And it, it never fits nicely into like, the time off you had already had planned or whatever was on the schedule, right? You’re constantly having to adjust. And that was really difficult for me at the beginning because I, I liked feeling in control, and I think one of the gifts of sort of [00:26:00] having that constant disruption in my life has been that over time I’ve gone from being far more rigid to much more flexible, and then realizing there’s a freedom in that, that like I.

You know, for most of us, I know some of you listening are trauma surgeons in the er and like you literally are saving lives. But for most of us listening, we’re not saving lives. Our work is important, but it’s not life and death, literally. Mm-hmm. And what I’ve found is that most things actually can be adjusted or disrupted without a ton of consequence.

You know, even the things you think can’t. And that’s actually, it’s very humbling in a way because I think we like to think that, oh, I have to do all these things, you know, and there’s no way out of them. But it’s also that the humility of realizing that is freeing, I think.

Oliver: No, that’s so well put. And I can completely see that.

I mean, I think, just to bounce off it a bit, it makes me wanna say as well that one of the problems [00:27:00] of succeeding in getting some control over your life is that it sort of naturally lends itself to this idea that you are on track to get to full control. And that’s when. Real life is gonna happen. That’s when you’re gonna launch the biggest projects.

That’s when you’re gonna allow yourself to feel happy and the more sort of uncertain stuff. I can’t speak to parenting children with special needs, but the more uncertain stuff that is happening all the time in your life, the more you begin to realize, like, if I’m gonna have a joyful life, it’s gonna have to be kind of in the middle of this.

Michael: Yeah. Right.

Oliver: If I’m going to launch this business, venture it, I better not wait till I feel completely ready to do it, because that’s a kind of perfection that is never coming. If I’m, if I want to learn to meditate, I like, I’d be far better advised to just like try and do it 10 minutes today instead of spend another six months sort of reading up on every and every part of it.

And so a lot of the time what we’re trying to do is come up with systems and methods to get [00:28:00] into control, which inherently sort of postpones the moment of truth and it really is a kind of a leap of faith instead to be like. You gotta just like do the thing for 10 minutes today if you can.

Michael: Yeah. You know, you talk about this idea related to this about sort of how high achievers always have this need for self-op optimization.

Megan: Mm

Michael: mm And so I look for you now, now

Megan: you’re getting personal.

Michael: I know. Asking for a friend,

Megan: asking for a friend.

Michael: Asking a friend. But it’s, it is particularly true of our audience. You know, we’re always us tweaking and us, and we’re always trying to get that little extra edge. Yeah. You know, that allow us to accomplish more or do more, or finally get in control.

But anything you wanna say about that idea?

Oliver: I mean, I am actually the sometimes surprises people, like I’m not against the idea of optimization or more broadly efficiency. Right. I mean, if there are ways that I. Your practices and your [00:29:00] workflow and all the rest of it can be done just as well in much less time or whatever.

You know, that’s a good thing. I think the trap that we all fall into, people who have this kind of 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. Right?

And 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 are 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 gonna be saved by. Optimization that we’re gonna get to some point where we’re at sort of escape velocity from

Michael: uhhuh

Oliver: 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 [00:30:00] sometimes people are like, but 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? So if you are, if you’re using the Pomodoro technique to pick unfairly, pick a random example, right? If you’re using that technique, ’cause you think that if you finally embed it and really get good at it and give it six months, then like there’s not gonna be any problems in your life.

And you’re gonna have go through the day and it’s all just gonna be exactly as planned. And you’re not, not gonna have anybody, and you’re not give up on any dreams in order to pursue others. That’s a problem. But if you sort of ease up. 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 and ultimately we have to live in the present.

Once you are 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. [00:31:00] Absolutely great. Nothing wrong with these tools, it’s the way we think they’re gonna rescue us.

That is the, the issue.

Megan: It, it’s almost like there’s a Salvi component to it. It’s like a secularized religion in a way. Like 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.

I 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 levee to keep the water.

Yeah. From overtaking me, which we’ve never lived in a time when there like we’re more distractions all around us, right. Whether it’s from our phone or looking out the window where people knocking on our door or our inbox. You know, they’re [00:32:00] just everywhere. Not to mention our our own mind, but 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?

Oliver: I certainly don’t reject that whole sort of a lot of the discourse about distraction and I, and I don’t know 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 hates work about, um, smartphone use and kids and teens is incredibly on point and important at 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 [00:33:00] 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 wanna feel. It’s thinking about, I’m working on a.

Pick my own example, right? You know, I’m working on a chapter. I dunno if I can figure it out, if I can convey it properly, if it’s gonna be well received, um, if I’m gonna finish it in time for the deadline. These are difficult emotions and, um, it’s actually much nicer to go and, um, 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, the world is ending, which is a very strange, um, irony. But anyway, it often, it isn’t as well, right? It’s like it’s gonna just be fun stuff. And I think why that’s so important is that firstly it adjust our expectations about how much [00:34:00] success we can expect to have from apps that block social media and stuff.

Absolutely use them. But like 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, this situation. I have really found, I, I dunno that this.

Doesn’t sound like a killer technique, but I, it’s the one that’s worked for me. I 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.

Michael: Yeah. Because

Oliver: 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 [00:35:00] 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, um, you really can hang out with that, that feeling when you remember that it’s normal and natural.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: In the us. 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. Mm-hmm. You know? And yet we wanna do it. We say, but have you thought about the relationship between our views of productivity and stress?

Oliver: Yeah, I mean, and I’m definitely like by [00:36:00] nature or whatever, upbringing, an anxious person.

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.

Michael: Yeah.

Oliver: But also. Allows me to be ambitious and to want to create things and want to do things right?

Yes. Because I think a lot of our, as I’ve said before, and 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 is, is why I’m saying. And there’s that wonderful quote from Alec Wilkinson that I mentioned in the new book that, um, most successful people are just a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity.

I think that’s the phrase. I,

Megan: I read that line on the plane and I was like, okay, ding, ding, put that on a t-shirt, put that on my t-shirt.

Oliver: But like, so I, in a way, my big manifesto is like, I think you don’t have to choose between that [00:37:00] and being a slacker and not doing anything with your life. I, 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.

But 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 [00:38:00] 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. Whereas 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.

Megan: 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’s name, but on Andrew Berman’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 [00:39:00] often, you know, to whatever your compulsion of choice is. And 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, wow, 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 being a little faster.

I 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 ’cause I’m getting ready to talk to people. Like it doesn’t actually mean anything other than this is important. It just. These are [00:40:00] 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, when we’re sort of like expecting we’re gonna go work on this chapter of our book, or we’re expecting we’re gonna go produce a big report for work, that we’re not gonna feel any of that stuff. When it happens, we kind of panic and we just like grab our phone or we grab our email or whatever.

Right.

Oliver: Yeah, no, that’s, so that’s great. And I think it, 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, is something that we’ve sort of got to fix. Right? And like, right. Why haven’t we got to the stage where they aren’t present yet?

There’s a psychotherapist, I dunno if you know his work, Bruce Tif, 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. Not 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 [00:41:00] that is the case, yeah, I haven’t got there, I’m a loser and I not really doing it properly, but to say like, no, this is always gonna 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 wanna make sort of tasteless comparisons between sort of productivity, addiction and anxiety with sort of substance abuse. And I don’t, I’m not an expert on the, the latter, but there is a sort of echo here in the sort of whole sort of 12 step idea of

Michael: mm-hmm

Oliver: Always being an alcoholic, but also being sober, right?

Mm-hmm. 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, yeah. Put one foot in front of the other alongside that tendency instead of, first of all, having to fix it.

So that, 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 or whatever.[00:42:00]

Michael: You 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?

Oliver: Well, I mean, I, I, I guess it’s the, the, the basic way of putting the negative consequences, like, because it isn’t, you’re never gonna have achieved the solution, and so on some level, you’re gonna go through and through life feeling like you’re not there yet and 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 am, 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, I hope you don’t mind me sharing. There’s a [00:43:00] quote in the book from a zen late British Zen Master Jew Kennet, and I’ve, I quoted a lot, I’m afraid, but ’cause 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 about not to lighten the burden of the student, but to make it so heavy that he or she would put it down.

Michael: Mm.

Oliver: And 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’ll 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 [00:44:00] free in your life now instead of at some hypothetical future point that never quite arrives.

Megan: I love that.

Michael: Well, the beauty of that, I think, is that whenever we can normalize. Something like that. You know, I don’t wanna normalize everything ’cause some things are not appropriate or average path or whatever.

Path. Yeah. Pathological, whatever. But I think I, I don’t wanna 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. Mm-hmm. And then 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. Right. This is just part of the arena, part of competing in the arena and kind of, everybody feels this way,

Megan: it’s just, nobody talks about it.

Michael: That’s right.

Oliver: 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? Yes. It’s like, who do you want to learn from? [00:45:00] 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 wanna, of course that’s no good. It’s like, you know, no disrespect to 22-year-old trainee therapist, 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

Megan: Yeah.

Oliver: Struggle with them. Yeah.

Megan: My spiritual director is in her sixties and she is a recovering addict of 26 years sober.

Right. Drugs, alcohol. Right. She’s just kind of crusty in like all the best ways and I like when she gives me advice or guidance, I’m like, yeah, this is literally battle tested.

Oliver: Right, right. For 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, like you would not wish her to [00:46:00] not have.

Megan: Right. Thank God she has that experience.

Oliver: Struggles.

Megan: Yeah. Right.

Michael: All, all this is really important. But I’d like to know how you live your life on a practical level, day to day.

Megan: In this philosophy you mean? Or, yeah,

Michael: using this philosophy. ’cause 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.

Mm-hmm. But do you have those kind of things, like things that set you up, I was gonna say for productivity, but do you have things that you do on a regular basis? What’s, what’s the day look like? Do you keep a to-do list?

Oliver: No, I and I, 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 like they’re constantly in flux. There 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 gonna find the perfect productivity system, but equally, I don’t have to reject productivity systems.

I [00:47:00] can just. This can be my slightly eccentric hobby that I have, right? That I like, uh, 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 gonna use it. So I was really freed up when I realized like this would probably always evolve, which 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 mm-hmm. You know, this is a well-known thing. Writing three sides of free, written, just whatever’s on my mind could be clearing out cobwebs, could be grappling with problems, could be planning. Project, 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 [00:48:00] for me. And then in terms of, I have a lot of freedom, obviously, you know, writing stuff, uh, uh, in once the, in the bit of the days that is given over to work, once I’ve taken my son to school or whatever.

That bit of, I have a lot of autonomy over and 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 Reign 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 [00:49:00] to tend smaller things. So it’s resisting that urge to clear the decks as I’ve put it in the past and do the 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 gonna have to wait until I. There’s a new slot. Love that.

Michael: On that

Oliver: list, there are so many different ways of doing that.

Kanban systems and many, many things. That’s, 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. You know, it’s, it’s, so I’ve gotta make myself go through that process of like, which are the three or four that I’m, that I’m actually on right now?

Megan: We are big fans here of Cal Newport’s work. Yeah. And that’s one of the things that he talks about in his book, slow [00:50:00] Productivity, is the idea of limiting the number of things that you’re working on. He actually, I think, says three, um, 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.

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 a lot, not even to speak of actually working on them, which is such a great idea.

Oliver: No, absolutely. Call is a big advocate, as I understand him, of sort of really actively negotiating your workflow.

Yes. So talking to the other people you work with and being like, I’m not gonna be able to do this until then. All right. Mm-hmm. You know, and I think that’s super important. Where I end up going, just ’cause 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 [00:51:00] going to get impatient because I have to keep them waiting for something.

But if you are 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 are 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.

Yeah. That, to, to let some things wait. I may just be slightly more sort of neurotic by nature than cow. I dunno.

Megan: It’s a real spiritual discipline. I mean, I, 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.

And maybe not so much a month in, but you have the illusion that you could do 25 things at once and you can’t Yeah.

Michael: Not well. Yeah. Holding all those in your mind produces its own sort of

Megan: anxiety. Exactly. Yes, it really does.

Oliver: Yeah. We could get quite theological about [00:52:00] this in the sense that it is on some level, a kind of hubristic attempt to kind of yes.

Be God instead of to be really the most wholehearted full human. You can be, can be.

Megan: Well 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. Um, but we always ask our guests three questions, so it’s not really honest to say it’s a lightning round ’cause they’re kind of deep questions, but, um, but we ask the same questions every time.

So are you game to I’ll do my

Michael: best

Megan: 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 at life?

Oliver: Honestly, it, it, 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 Oh yeah.

And that if I, if I’m putting more time into work, then I’m being a bad parent. And if I’m giving lots of [00:53:00] 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 are showing up for them, both over a slightly longer timescale, it, it is okay to, to have a sort of rhythmic, uh, alternation between, 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, but that’s the, that’s the issue. I like the

Michael: word rhythmic. Okay. Second question. How do you personally know when you’re getting the double win? You know, what’s, what are the indicators that you’re kind of there where you want to be?

Oliver: I’ve had times in my life when it, there are ways of sort of more objective indicators to do with where I’m apportioning my time and or the quality of relationships and [00:54:00] things that are very important to me. I think the real answer is I. 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. I 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.

Megan: We get a lot of people that will say some version of peace.

Oliver: Yeah.

Megan: You know, and I, I think that all kind of gets to the same idea, which I think is

Michael: beautiful.

Megan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, last question. What is one ritual or routine that you rely on to do what you do? So you spoke about the morning [00:55:00] pages a little bit, but is there anything else that is. Kind of a ritual or routine for you?

Oliver: Morning pages is definitely the one I would’ve 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 sort of, that I, 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? Just sort of, uh, checking my calendar a couple of weeks, like all these things that just keep up, 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, this helps.

Megan: Yeah. Lately,

Oliver: again, boring. I like that idea. Badging

Megan: it [00:56:00] altogether. Yeah. You know, you just sort of get in that head space and, and you go, yeah. That’s great.

Michael: Well, it also ensures that the small things stay small.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And you can do those. Yeah.

And, and that they don’t become a big crisis.

Megan: True.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Oliver, thank you so much for this conversation. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. Me too.

Oliver: Me too. Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

Michael: Okay, so what were some of your key takeaways? Hmm.

Megan: Well, first of all, I just love that conversation.

Michael: I like his demeanor. I do too. He’s very hu, very humble,

Megan: very humble,

Michael: thoughtful,

Megan: very transparent. This is a topic, this idea of accepting limitations or really in his world, embracing them is something I’ve thought a lot about.

Mm-hmm. Over the last couple 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 this limitations, we [00:57:00] actually create more suffering for ourselves and more frustration. Mm-hmm. And actually less productivity, I think is profound.

The people that I tend to enjoy being around the most are people who have accepted limitations.

Michael: Yeah.

Megan: 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.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Megan: Control does not equal peace, but we tell ourselves that. We 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 [00:58:00] 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. Mm-hmm. 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 mm-hmm.

A synonym for peace. And it just, it 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.

Michael: Well 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 outta control.

Megan: Yeah, that’s a good point. Those aren’t the two opposites. They’re not. That’s

Michael: right. But not being in control, which is a lot of life.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Michael: I mean, probably 80, 90% of life is you’re not in control right now. The trick is that we don’t wanna deny people or deny ourselves our own [00:59:00] agency.

Mm-hmm. 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’d take us down a rabbit hole. And 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.

Megan: Yes.

Michael: 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.

Megan: We can get all our questions answered,

Michael: 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 where people

Megan: like escape velocity kind of ideas of like, yeah, science is gonna progress fast enough that we’ll continue to live forever. Well, I just,

Michael: I just read a guy [01:00:00] this week, somebody we both know who said, if you can live another five years, you probably won’t die.

And I thought, I think that’s a way of kind of denying our mortality.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: And I think that the fact that we do have mortality actually kinda serves us. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. I mean, it’s like if you, it drives a lot of action. Mm-hmm. You know, we think we’re not gonna live forever. So if I’m gonna make a connection, like I was talking to this friend of ours and he recently reunited with his father and part of that was realizing that, you know, he’s losing runway and if he doesn’t do that mm-hmm.

And his father had abandoned him when he was really young. That, I mean, it was 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.

Megan: Yeah. Uh, I mentioned during the show that I was just in Chicago this last weekend. Yeah. I was doing some medical treatment for my kids and we ended up staying downtown.

I kind of misjudged the [01:01:00] distance staying downtown, but then had to drive about 35 minutes, 40 minutes to the place where the medical procedures were happening. And so I was Ubering, you know, ’cause I thought, I’m in Chicago, I don’t wanna drive in Chicago. Like I’ll just Uber. So what that meant is I had 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? Wow. Like, it obviously didn’t Acres and acres.

Acres and acres. You know, we, I’m driving, I’m like, wow, we’re still drive. Wow. There’s still, wow. You know, it’s just like, it just kept going. And 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. [01:02:00] And I, I thought on the one hand that’s kind of sad, you know, like after about a, a couple of generations nobody’s good after your grandchildren are gone. Like they’re not, no one’s gonna remember you.

Michael: Right.

Megan: And then I thought that’s actually. An important thing to keep in mind though, may be unpleasant because anything you are doing to be remembered

Michael: is vanity is an

Megan: absolute waste of your time.

Michael: Yep.

Megan: 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, what kind of an impact you’re able to, 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, I think that’s part of what, you know, Oliver’s coming from a different faith perspective than we are, but I, 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.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Megan: Because if it [01:03:00] has anything to do with recognition, it’s just worthless.

Michael: It’s worthless. You know, one of the best books I’ve ever read is that. Book, I think you read it too, by Atul Gawande.

Megan: Mm-hmm.

Michael: Called Being Mortal.

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: 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, and they’re both available at better bookstores everywhere.