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Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
How To Stop Feeling Overwhelmed with Oliver Burkeman (re-release) #536
01:46:25
The average person has 4,000 weeks on earth. It doesn’t sound like much does it? You’re probably doing mental arithmetic right now trying to work out how many weeks you might have left.
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- [00:00]
A
What is definitely true about the amount of time that you'll get is that it will be finite rather than limitless. We are finite creatures existing in this world of infinite inputs and opportunities, so there's always going to be this mismatch. Limited time means you have to make tough choices. You have to not do things that would matter.
- [00:21]
B
Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. The average person has about 4,000 weeks on planet Earth. Now that doesn't sound like much, does it? You're probably doing mental arithmetic right now, trying to work out how many weeks you may have left. But if that sounds like a pessimistic start to this podcast, fear not. My guest today is Oliver Berkman, journalist and author whose latest book is 4000 time management for Mortals. And in this conversation he shares a positive philosophy that can help us all overcome the overwhelm, make better choices, and build a meaningful relationship with time. We begin by talking about our concept of time and how we falsely believe it's something that we can control. We often think of time as infinite and don't realize how distraction that modern day temptation, is robbing it from us. Or maybe we do know that time is finite, says Oliver, but we just feel overwhelmed by all the things we have to do or want to do. So how do we go about fitting them all in? The truth, Oliver says, is that we won't. Many of the productivity hacks we learn are a delusion. Time management does not mean becoming more productive. It means deciding what to neglect. And once we realize we can never fit everything in, we get the freedom to prioritize. I understand that thinking about our limited lifespan may sound bleak, but Oliver is convinced that imposing limits like this can help us live a more fulfilled and less stressed life. We're more likely to use time mindfully or be more creative when we know it's finite. I absolutely love talking with Oliver, and I'm pretty sure his words are going to give you plenty to reflect on in your own life. In a world of demands, distractions, and endless to do lists, listening to this conversation might be the most useful time management tool of all. I hope you enjoy listening. And now my conversation with Oliver Berkman. Your latest book, 4000 Weeks, makes you think. My calculation based upon what you're writing about is that I have around 1700-1800 weeks left on planet Earth. But then this morning I also calculated it in terms of holidays. So I thought if I take one really nice holiday a year, then I potentially only got 35 or 36 holidays left. What was your hope when you came up with this concept of 4000 weeks? Is that something that you found to be scary for people or quite enlightening and, I guess, liberating?
- [03:24]
A
I mean, I think it is scary at first, right? Especially that figure, which is a little bit less than the average human lifespan. I blatantly chose 4000 because it's a round number. And of course, nobody knows they're going to get that much. They might get significantly more. They might tragically get a lot less. So it's sort of illustrative rather than any kind of fact. What is definitely true about the amount of time that you'll get is that it will be finite rather than limitless. And that's really the. It sounds obvious, but I don't think we live properly in the acknowledgment of what that really means. So, yeah, at first it's stressful because you're like, okay, either I'm going to really despairing about this or I've got to really strenuously try to make the most of every day in a way that actually is not very relaxing at all, but kind of awful. What I'm trying to guide people towards is that once you sort of really, truly accept this fact of being finite, it is actually really liberating. And it is a relief for as long as you are responding to this idea of having a limited amount of time with stress, like, oh, my God, I've got to try to get a huge amount out of my life because there's so little of it. You still haven't quite taken on board the implication of it, which is like, no, we're all in the same boat. There will always be too much to do. There will always be more ambitions that you can think of than that you could ever put into practice. Always be more obligations you can feel from the society or from your family or whatever than you could ever fulfill. And that's really relaxing because then it's like, oh, okay, I don't have to try to do this impossible thing with my life. I can just focus on doing something really meaningful and possible.
- [05:12]
B
I think you're right. I think it really is liberating. One of the ideas that deeply, deeply resonated with me in the book that's actually helped me make some big life decisions over the past few months is this idea that, yes, we have to get good at saying no to things. But I thought your argument took it one step further because there's this kind of, I guess, underlying Premise that we have to get good at saying no because some things actually are just the wrong things. So actually let's not even bring them into our life in the first place. But you go one step further and go, actually, no, it's not just about saying no to things that you don't want to do and don't nourish you. You've actually also got to say no to things that you do want to do.
- [05:57]
A
Yeah, totally. Because, I mean, which is mind blowing, actually.
- [06:01]
B
It really is.
- [06:02]
A
Yeah. No, I mean, it has been for me as well. Right. Because I think in the background of all the stuff you hear all the time about how important it is to say no, there's this implication, as you say, you could just, if you did that you could just say no to all the things that are kind of tedious chores, all the things that don't quite work for you, and then your life would just be exactly, properly fitted to the. Like, the time you would have would be exactly fitted to all the things that really matter in your life and you'd live this sort of perfect match. But there's no reason to assume that the sort of field of things that matter or that feel like they matter is only going to be big enough to fill the time you've got rather than exceeding it. Right. I think there's always going to be more things that feel like they matter because the world is full of like, you know, countless opportunities and countless people suffering who need our help and countless good causes and, you know, countless interesting places to visit. All of these. There's just. There's just an endless amount. So why on earth would you ever expect that you could fit all of the ones that you cared about into your life? But we do, like, I mean, we do expect that sort of chronically. I think that is actually another of these examples of something that is really liberating because you can see that you don't have to fight to somehow make time for everything that matters, that that's kind of a futile quest. You just have to make time for some things that matter and let it go, that it's not going to be everything.
- [07:32]
B
Because otherwise, I guess, you go on that nice holiday. I don't know, let's take a mythical destination like the Maldives or Bali, right? But then you could arrive back to wherever you live and, and see online that someone's posted a gorgeous sunrise photo in Mexico. So you were in Bali or the Maldives, but you weren't in Mexico. So therefore, oh man, I need to see that sunrise in Mexico. At some points there's always a sense that actually, yeah, this is great, but I could be doing something more. Do you feel that the age of the Internet and I guess social media, the fact that we're being exposed to so much possibility now, that appears to be infinite possibility. So we always feel that our life is somehow a bit mundane because we're not doing all these incredible things that we could be doing.
- [08:28]
A
Totally. I mean, a lot of these places to visit and things to do have always existed, but now you're sort of relentlessly exposed to them. Algorithms find specifically the ones you are going to want to really do and sort of constantly bombard you with just those ones. So, yeah, we are in a situation completely unprecedented in terms of letting us see and sort of feel the pain of not being able to do. I mean, another good example, we talk about beautiful holidays, vacations, that's a great example. But kind of good causes is another one too. Right. I mean, if you're the kind of compassionately minded person who sits on social media and wants to sort of help people in the world who are suffering, you're seeing more instances of that and hearing about more instances of that than the greatest saints in history ever were ever exposed to. And it's great if you can do something about one or two of them, but the idea that you could ever sort of get your arms around all that, we're just not designed to be capable of it.
- [09:27]
B
Yeah. In my book on happiness, I wrote a chapter on eliminating choice, that in a world of infinite choice, more choice is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, we've got to get good at choosing when that choice actually matters. And I see a similar theme to that throughout your book. This idea that you can't actually care about everything, you can't put your attention there the world at the moment. Many people are getting really, really affected in their day to day life by what they're being exposed to in the news. And there was a gorgeous bit in your book where you really mentioned that actually, yes, there can be all kinds of adversity going on and problems which you may be being exposed to in the news, but you may choose to actually go and care for an elderly relative, or you may choose to go and actually care and do something good in the world in a different way that doesn't actually address that problem. I thought that was really quite an interesting way of looking at it.
- [10:19]
A
Well, I, I feel very strongly about this because I really do think that there's this great temptation, especially when we spend so much of a day immersed in social media or just news in other forms, you come to sort of identify with that global level of things. And you come to think of wars and the climate and things as. And they are incredibly important, and the climate perhaps most important of all. But you come to think of that as being the only level on which you can have a meaningful effect, when in many ways it's the only level on which us as individuals can have almost no effect in many contexts. You can give money, you can live more ethically. Absolutely. But it's almost like we're deliberately exposing ourselves most to that level of life at which our impact can be the smallest. And then you end up sort of devaluing all these other things that are completely like ought to be part of the definition of spending your life meaningfully caring for relatives, doing something to help make your little neighborhood more beautiful, instead of only thinking on this sort of cosmic scale and global scale. Not because those global causes are not as important as we thought they were. I think they are that important. It's just that if the way you respond to that is suddenly thinking that you have got to sort of get your arms around it all, then that's just not going to help anyway, right?
- [11:46]
B
Yeah. Not only does it not help, it actually then impacts your life and your circle of influence. Because if you're that affected by it, it's very hard to be present in your life. It's very hard for that not to affect the quality of your work, the quality of your relationships, your ability to parents, as well as you might want to. And actually there's so much in the world that we actually can't do anything about. And again, I think there's a freedom in just acknowledging that. That's the big theme I keep getting in your book is this idea that there are limits. There are limits to what we can do with our time. There are limits to what we can care about. And this idea that these ideas and these concepts are limitless is actually part of the problem.
- [12:26]
A
Right. We are finite creatures existing in this world of infinite inputs and opportunities and suffering and all the rest of it. So there's always going to be this mismatch. And I think what we spend a lot of our lives doing without realizing it, is trying to get over that fundamental mathematical fact. And we've talked a lot about leisure and we've talked about doing good and compassionate activities. But the most obvious one for most people on a day to day basis I think is just work. Right. The volume of emails, the Volume of things that the boss is asking you to do or that you want to do in your work. There's no reason why any of that should have any upper limit. And yet there's a very, very clear upper limit to how much you can do in a day's work and how many emails you can answer and how many demands you can meet.
- [13:10]
B
Email's an interesting one, isn't it? Because, again, if we think back to communication, maybe 20 years ago, maybe 30 years ago, a lot of the way we got communication or received it was the letterbox in the morning, right? The mail would come once a day, and any important documentation or anything you had to look at would be in that. Sure, you might get some phone calls at work, potentially, but it wasn't like a constant stream. It's, you know, email is this. It's like the Postman's coming, like, 24 hours a day. Literally 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You know, even on Christmas Day, you're getting promotional emails from, like, Amazon or whoever else to sell you stuff. Right. So there's no kind of switch off from that. And I mean, before we get into emails, I think what's really interesting to me is how you came into writing about time and our relationship to time, because from the research I've done, it appears that you were keen to learn all these productivity tools and actually get better at managing your time and getting the most. Squeezing the most out of every ounce of time. You know, tell me a little bit about that journey. And at what point did you realize, actually, I'm playing the wrong game here? Like, this is actually futile?
- [14:24]
A
Yeah, it took a long time to get it through my thick skull, apparently. But one of the things I did was I wrote this column for the Guardian for years, a weekly column on psychology, where one of the things I did was to test out a lot of these kinds of techniques. And that was really useful and interesting, and I'm really glad I had the opportunity. But it was also a little bit enabling of my worst side, in a way. Right here I was thinking that I was one day going to find the perfect set of productivity techniques and time management techniques that was going to make me capable of doing everything and not have to say no to anything and not have to worry that I was letting anybody down and all of this. And then I had this job where I could justify trying out another 50 new techniques and getting hold of another 20 books or courses on the topic because it was for work. And actually, that was really Useful. In the end, you sort of get to a point where you're thinking, well, okay, this is like the hundredth way I've tried to structure my to do list or organize my day, and it isn't bringing me the thing that I'm trying to get out of it. So maybe, as you say, maybe I'm playing the wrong game here. Rather than that I just haven't found the right technique. And it's not that these techniques are all rubbish. It's that if you come at them with what I think a lot of people come at them with, including me then, which is this desire to somehow feel totally on top of time and on top of your life and not to have to make difficult decisions about time anymore because you can just handle everything and really feeling secure about your role in your work and time and all the rest of it. If you think you're going to get that out of them, you're going to fail. Because what that is ultimately, deep down, I think is a desire to not be limited by time in the way that we all are as humans. It's a desire to avoid the fact that, yeah, limited time means you have to make tough choices. You have to not do things that would matter in order to do other things. You have to neglect certain potential friendships you could be nurturing in order to focus on some other relationships in your life. You just have to. Because we're just finite and we, and especially me back then, I think, think that a lot of this productivity, time management stuff and other kinds of personal development advice, we think that they're like a back door to get around that and that just leads to stressed because they're not.
- [16:44]
B
Yeah, it's really beautifully pop. I'm drawn to this line in your book. Towards the start of the book. The more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty and frustrating life gets. I mean, I think that kind of says it all.
- [17:10]
A
Yeah. Thank you. Yes, I hope so. I mean, there's a flip side to it, right? Which is that when you. Then what that implies is that when you can ease up on that desire for control and for this kind of unrealistic control, that's when you really do step into a kind of real agency. That's when you can do meaningful and joyful and cool things with your life. Right. So it's not just a matter of this thing you're trying to do is impossible. Give up, live life in Despair, because there's no point. It's like, no, that's the bit that if you can drop that or at least somewhat drop that sort of constant, worried, anxious attempt to bring the world under your control so you can feel okay about it, if you can let go of that, that's when you can really plunge into life and do stuff that counts. And that matters to you because you're no longer wasting all your time and attention on that pointless quest.
- [18:02]
B
Constraints in life, I've come to realize more and more are actually very freeing and liberating and actually can actually, I guess, foster a lot of creativity. As you were describing the impact of that sentence, I was drawn to this interview. I heard in the 90s. I don't know if you enjoyed the band Crowded House. I very much did in the 90s. One of my favorite bands back then. And I remember Neil Finn, the singer and songwriter in the band. I remember once in an interview he said, yes, there are infinite instruments and musical themes and ideas we could bring in for any song. But we've decided that we're only gonna put on the album what the four of us are able to play. And you know, some of them could play multiple instruments, they could play that in the studio, but they weren't gonna bring in additional session musicians with their expertise to put in a saxophone solo here or put something else in here. You know, that was what, about 30 years ago when I heard that interview? But it always stayed with me because as a musician myself, I've always been tempted to try and actually bring in lots of other stuff. Oh, no, we could get that. We could get that. Oh, wouldn't it be great to have a sax solo here or whatever in anything you're recording or creating? And I always think back to that. Go, no, the constraints bring the creativity. He beautifully articulated how. Actually, no, the fact that it's only us four means we have to be more creative, we have to figure out solutions. I see kind of quite a similar theme here. Once we put the limits on our time and know actually time is limited within that constraint, I think we can flourish and I guess be more creative.
- [19:36]
A
I totally, totally agree. And I think in creativity it's often a matter of bringing in those constraints like you're talking about there. And then sometimes in our daily time, it's just a matter of seeing that the constraints are there in a sort of non negotiable way, whether we like it or not. And I think, yes, I think when we do the opposite to that, which is either try to Sort of get over all constraints or to behave as if there aren't any constraints. It can feel it's the more comfortable path at first sometimes, but it's. It leads nowhere. Good. Because it is so out of touch with reality that that's when you're going to apportion your time wrongly because you're going to think, well, first of all, I'll answer 100 emails before I get around to what really matters to me today. Well, that's because you think you've got more time than you have. If you understood that you didn't, you might switch those two things around. Spend the first part of the day on the thing that you cared about the most. That's just one example. But it's just a way of acting that respects the constraints that you're already in. And I don't know if you want to talk about like distraction at some point because it's a topic that slightly obsesses me. I think a lot of the of what we're doing, when we sort of bounce away from our important work or difficult conversations or whatever it is, into just scrolling down the phone, just escaping into the world of cyberspace, it is because it feels there like there are no constraints. It is because it feels like you're just sort of floating through this easy world of limitless, godlike power. But we'll know, you know, after a day spent doing that, instead of the thing that you knew you meant to do. Like, it's not the way to get a purchase on life. It's not a way to like make a difference in a way that can.
- [21:12]
B
And maybe that's the appeal. Maybe because we don't recognize there are limitations in our life. And so therefore we don't acknowledge it, we don't accept it. Maybe that's why scrolling and disappearing down rabbit holes online feels so good. Because in that moment there does appear to be infinite possibility.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And maybe we sen a kind of slight disconnect that in our real life, the offline worlds, there are limitations, but online there doesn't appear to be any.
- [21:43]
A
No, I think that's exactly that phenomenology. The feeling of being online is absolutely that, one of limitlessness. It's like I can find out what's going on 5,000 miles away right now. I can be anyone that I want to be on an anonymous social media platform. All these different ways in which you do get to be limitless. And then I think, yeah, in some ways it makes it harder to then write the chapter you were trying to Write or have the conversation with a romantic partner, that is important, but that might leave you feeling emotionally vulnerable. All these ways in which we come up against our limits, day to day life, it's way more fun to just forget that. And I think we're all totally susceptible to that. Have been since the ancient world. That's not new. What's new is that we have a big structure of attention based corporations waiting for us to grab us the moment that that urge arises. So it's a problematic combo given that.
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B
Time is limited and we can't do everything that we might want to do in life. Are you a fan of bucket lists?
- [22:50]
A
Depends what you mean, right? Depends how you relate to a bucket list. If a bucket list is something you've got to get through, then no, I'm not a fan of it. If it's a list of. If it's like a menu of things that you might do, great. That kind of list for those sort of things is fantastic. I think the problem with bucket lists, it's basically the same problem as an overfilled email inbox or an incredibly long list of like housework, chores you've got to do. It feels like it isn't the same problem because it's a list of fun stuff instead of like onerous weighty stuff. But the same problem arises that we're exposed to far more opportunities for things that feel like we want to do them than we'll get to do. And it's almost harder to spot in the case of hedonistic type things because again, on some level all of us are sort of annoyed by having various duties we don't want to have to fulfill. But you think of things like that as like, okay, the world is my oyster. But I call that in the book, I call that existential overwhelm because it's still overwhelm. It's just overwhelm that comes from being alive in the world that we have today, wanting to be limitless in the way that we do want, and then constantly coming up against the fact that you are limited. So yeah, the person who's retired and has tons of money and is using it all to travel the world, they will have a better time than the person who has to spend all day doing tedious chores they didn't want to do. But they'll still have this gnawing basic problem of feeling overwhelmed if they believe that they are ever going to sort of like get their arms around everything that the world has to offer, see all the places that matter, have all the fun that there is to be had. It's like it's beyond us and it's stressful to pursue it because it's beyond us.
- [24:37]
B
It really is. I mean, you've quoted the Tao Te Ching on several occasions in the book. There's a phrase, certainly in the translation I have, where it says, knowing what is enough is true wealth. I kind of feel that really fits your entire book, really, this idea that knowing what is enough. Because when we always want more, we think, oh, when I go on that holiday, or when that happens, or when I get to Inbox zero. I believe you did at some points. Oh, yes. Well, maybe let's go into email, because I think email is the source of a lot of overwhelm for people. And I do think that a lot of the productivity advice makes us feel that, oh, there is a way to master this and get on top. So I'm a black belt at email. Actually, reading your story with that has made me feel a lot better because I'm pretty rubbish at email and I'm okay with that. And I've decided I don't want to get good at it. There are other things in my life I would like to get good at, but getting good at email is just not one of them. So maybe you could expand a little bit on getting to Inbox zero, maybe explain what that is for people who aren't aware. And then also, what did that teach you?
- [25:48]
A
Well, it's controversial what it is. People in this world of productivity geekery argue about what that means, but I'm working on the assumption that it means something like the idea that the sort of default state of your email inbox should be empty. And so at least every so often, and arguably every day, you should be going through it, answering what you need to answer, dealing with what you need to deal with, deleting what you need to delete. It shouldn't be mounting up in this way that is so familiar to so many people with 10,000 unread messages on the inbox indicator or whatever. The really important point to make, I think about what happened when I really tried to get on top of email is that when you get really good at getting through your email, what happens is that you get much more email, because firstly, you reply to people more at a quicker tempo, and so they get back to you at a quicker tempo with the replies to your replies and you're busy. That way you get a reputation as being responsive on email. So more people email you, whereas if you sort of fail to reply often, what happens is people find some other solution to the problem that they had. And it just really dramatizes this idea that the supply, the supply is infinite. Effectively your capacity to get through that supply of incoming emails, I mean, is very finite. And your attempt to get more efficient with processing that infinite supply won't get you to the end of it because it's infinite, but it will leave you more stressed and busy. And I think it's worth saying there are probably some people hearing this who are like, well, it's all very well for you or maybe for me to say, well, I don't want to get good at email. It's like somebody might say, well, I get my job, I get fired if I don't reply to all the emails I get. But the logic applies everywhere. I think that's the really important thing to try to zero in on, right? No matter what your position is or your job or your work, your time is finite. And if you are subjected in any part of that to an infinite supply of something and you make it your business to get through that, that will end up taking over your whole job. So I definitely sympathize with anyone who feels that they have to sort of keep it in box zero just as a basic precondition of their work. But then they and their employer, whoever is losing out on something else, they could be giving in that situation because it is not actually possible to contain these infinite supplies, these infinite inputs in the way that we think it ought to be. Or maybe you love email and you want to be someone who stays on top of all your email, make that decision, but don't imagine that you're deciding to keep it contained and that's fine. And then you can get on with what really matters. No, if you really focus on getting more and more efficient at an incoming supply of something that is actually limitless, then that will effectively take over your life. That's just how it works.
- [28:34]
B
I guess what you're talking about certainly to me is intentionality, about living an intentional life. Like understanding that we're making choices all the time and actually many of us are making choices that we don't even realize we're making.
- [28:47]
A
Right?
- [28:47]
B
Which I thought was really interesting. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It is a science driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important, especially at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. And all this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving that makes it really easy to fit into your life no matter how busy you feel. It's also really tasty as well. Now the scientific team behind NG1 includes experts from a broad range of fields including longevity, preventive medicine, genetics and biochemistry and I talk to them regularly and I'm really impressed with their commitment to making a top quality product. For listeners of my podcast, AG1 are giving a special exclusive offer. You can get a free one year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with your first order. These packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to give them a try, just go to drinkag1.com livemore just wanted to take a moment to tell you about my first ever UK Theatre tour taking place this March. So I've just finished two days rehearsing for the show with the entire tour team, the director, video tech, sound crew, tour manager and I'm even more excited for these live shows than I was when I first announced the tour. Now if you enjoy listening to my podcast, I think you are going to love coming to this tour. Don't think of it like a book tour. Think of it as an immersive, transformative, fun evening where you will walk away with a personalized blueprint of the things you need to work on in your own life. It's not just me on a stage talking to you. There will be lots of interactive moments and a few surprises. Now I know that many of you listen to this podcast to learn things that will help you thrive, but I also know that at times it can feel hard. On this tour you are going to be in a room with other people who are interested in the same things as you are, which will feel incredibly special and give you a massive boost. These events are going to be fun, inspirational, educational and hopefully will be the springboard you need to take action as we move out of winter and get into spring. There are 14 shows all around the UK. The two warm up dates in Wilmslow and the London Lyceum date has just sold out, so don't delay if you plan on picking up tickets. All details can be seen@doctor chatterjee.com events so get your friends together, make a night of it and I hope to see you in person in just a few weeks.
- [32:27]
A
Yeah, I think this is like this goes to the heart of it for me, because it's tempting to think that in a book like this or lots of other people writing on this kind of topic, that I'm saying, why don't you live a limited life? Like, why don't you decide to live in a way that is finite instead of limitless? And it's like, no, the point is, you already are doing every day, whether you like it or not, you already are making something like a choice to sacrifice all sorts of things in favor of other things that's already happening. The choice we have is whether to do that consciously or not. You are always choosing. It wouldn't be the case if you had eternal life, if you were limitless, if you were infinite, because then there'd always be more time to try everything and to do everything. But because we're not, because we're finite, every choice you make is a choice not to do something else with that little portion of your finite time. And I think the freedom that we can aspire to, we can't be free of that situation. But the freedom we can aspire to is the freedom of making those decisions consciously and seeing like, okay, I've decided that this matters more than this for today. And it's not because that other thing doesn't matter. It's because I've got to make a choice.
- [33:43]
B
At the start of the book, you talk about a lot of these productivity hacks and you talk about some of these books that we've been exposed to over the years, like Tim Ferriss's the Four Hour Work Week. And I've got to be honest, for me, when I first read the four hour work week, I don't know, 10 years ago, it was pretty life changing for me because at that time in my life, I had not come across something like that. And I mean, I think the title is just a super catchy title, but I don't think it's about working four hours a week. What I took from it was that, oh, time is a resource. It's a commodity that I can value as such. And I honestly think that was one of the first times in my life where I kind of saw time and suddenly started to measure it and value it, which I think was necessary for my progression to understand that. Actually, maybe I need to defend my time a bit better and maybe I need to think about how I use it or protect it or give it away, whatever that might be. But like with most messages, they're never perfect for everyone at every aspect of life. I think that works for me. Back then But I'm really fascinated by the argument making the book that even seeing time as a resource, as a commodity that we need to defend and protect, you're also making the case that even that is fundamentally problematic. And I think I agree with, I think I really agree with what you're saying. So I think for me, well, perhaps you could speak to that. But I guess for me that message that time is something I need to view differently absolutely worked for me 10 years ago. And now I feel that it's the next stage. It's like, okay, cool, now you're valuing time. Now actually maybe the way you're experiencing time and looking at time isn't that helpful.
- [35:34]
A
Yeah, I mean, I just think both of these things are true. I think there's tons of huge value in the four hour work week. I mean, one of the things that I think so interesting about the focus of that book is on the idea of not deferring the sort of joy that you want to have in your life until some point in the future when you're going to be ready to have it. That seems, I just agree with that completely. This idea of, I think he calls them mini retirements, right? This idea that how can you spend three weeks this year doing one of these things that you're mentally postponing to some time that might not even arrive in several decades. Time. No, do it now. I think that's absolutely bang on. I think that seeing time as a very precious resource is like one lens that really counts because the alternative is to act like you've got all the time in the world. And that is very dangerous. But yeah, as you say, there's this other lens which is like the whole notion of the sort of resource view of time. The idea that there's me and then there's some time that I have a little bit like some money that I have or some physical possessions that I have or something. It doesn't quite work and it leads us into some strange places because actually we don't have time in that sense. Right? You just get one moment at a time. You can't actually put time aside. You can't pause time, you can't decide to not spend the next minute of your life. You're just living it, you're just in it. It's a fairly involved argument at that point in the book. But I think the basic point here is just that if you try to take this attitude of making the best use of something, when in fact it's more like you just are a portion of time in some mysterious way. Right, let me see if I can convey this. It's like you're trying to get sort of on top of your own life. You're trying to be like the air traffic controller of things somehow. And that sort of alienates you from actually being here, right here in the moment of your life. Because everything, I mean, apart from anything else, everything becomes a question of, like, am I using this hour best for what? Is it some future goal to make the most money to achieve this outcome? I want to please somebody who I think needs to be pleased in my life. And if you're only asking about your time, am I using it in the right way for that future goal? It's almost impossible to find it truly meaningful and absorbing in the moment because those are just two different, fundamentally different lenses. Right. So in a way, you almost have to be willing to waste time. If what we mean by waste time is not be using it in an instrumental way in order to use it well. Which is a total weird paradox that I'm still trying to get my mind around.
- [38:16]
B
These are these big existential questions like, who are we? What does it mean to live a good life, a meaningful life? I love the idea that if you're constantly analyzing and seeing, am I using my time? Well, yeah, you're not in your life. You're outside of your life, looking in, which can have value from time to time. But if that's the kind of. If you're spending all of your waking hours like that every day, you're never in your life and actually experiencing it. There's a real theme. I find, as I read the book, that you do mention Buddhist philosophy at times. You mentioned Zen philosophy, and ultimately it's about presence, isn't it? It's about being present with your time, being in the moment, because what is time? But I love that argument in the book that you don't have time. It's not something you can own. You know, your life is time. Like, you can't have it and package it up and carry it around with you. It's kind of. Because what's happening as you're doing that is you're spending time.
- [39:18]
A
Yeah, yeah. No, it's really. It's quite sort of. No, it can really sort of bend your brain quite a bit. But, like, I mean, one way into this that I always think is interesting. Is anyone hearing this? Right? When you think about your time in that sort of abstracted way, you know, you think about questions like, when am I next going on holiday or have I got enough time to do this project by Friday afternoon, or am I free on Saturday morning? Whatever images come into your mind when you try to think about that. It might be calendars or it might be little yardsticks or anything. It's something to do with space. It's not time. And this is a point that philosophers have made in the past. It seems like we can only think about time in this abstracted way by turning into space. So you're always thinking about, like, oh, there's that day and there's that day, and in your mind there's sort of. There's some sort of thing in space. And I think what that is a clue to is that time in reality is not what we think it is, right? It isn't this thing that we have. It isn't this thing that sort of. We can control what's going to happen in this box of it here and in this box not there, which is all, again, these spatial metaphors. Actually, I think it makes more sense to think that we just are a stretch of time. We're so deeply in our time, we can try to make it objective by drawing calendars and thinking about timelines and all that stuff, but actually, what time really is for each of us is just like you living your life. I'm not sure that words can actually get to this, but maybe this helps a little bit.
- [41:08]
B
It's such an important point because time is life. How we spend our time, how we experience that defines our experience of life. It's the same thing, isn't it? It's absolutely the same thing. And I've often thought over the last years, what is time anyway? Certainly clock time. It's a human construct, right? In fact, as I've gone down the street, I no longer wear a watch because actually, and I get that we can't be constrained by the infinite possibility that there is no time. We have to meet people at a certain time. I don't wear a watch. I used to my entire life, from being a young kid. I used to love seeing what time it is. But then suddenly your experience of everything is defined by, well, how long have I got left? How long have I been doing this for? Which kind of takes you out off the experience. I know this sounds deeply philosophical, but I guess it is.
- [42:02]
A
There's a writer who. I quote in the book, David Cain, Canadian writer and blogger, whose work I really admire, who makes this point that when you think you have three hours to complete some project, or say, you've got to tidy the house and You've got half an hour to do it or something. You don't really have three hours or have half an hour. What you mean is you expect it. Your best guess in the present moment now is that nothing's going to get in your way until the three hours when the next thing's going to happen or you have to go and pick up your kids from school, whatever. And that's actually a really deep contrast, that notion of actually having time versus just saying, no, I expect it. I'm here in the present moment and I believe that things are going to unfold in this way in the future. But none of us have any control over the future like true control. And so because we want that control, because we want to be limitless in that sense as well, in the sense of being able to dictate what's going to be happening, that's just a constant recipe for anxiety because our desire to control the next moment is rubbing up against the absolute knowledge that actually you can't. So if you're a sort of chronic worrier about trains and travel related things, which I definitely have some experience of, you sit there in the present moment hoping that you're going to get to the station on time or hoping that the train's going to arrive on time. And it feels in that moment like once that thing happens and it's on time, you're going to be able to relax, but you're never going to be able to relax because then there's the next thing. Right. Then will the train arrive on time? Will there be a taxi? If you need to get a taxi.
- [43:37]
B
And you say in the present, you're not actually in the present moment.
- [43:41]
A
Exactly.
- [43:42]
B
Because you're planning for the future and when that happens and you're trying to.
- [43:46]
A
Sort of reach out to the present moment and exert some control over the next one, of course that's going to be a recipe for anxiety because that's not possible. And I think it's fine to plan, it's fine to say, here's how I'd like today to go, here's what, when I have some say in how today goes, I'm going to steer it in this direction rather than that direction. Fine. But this idea that you're like controlling the future from the present, again, it gets kind of deep, but I think we're all prone to it.
- [44:14]
B
Yeah, it is deep. But I think it's such an important, it's an important point for us all to consider. I wonder, you know, procrastination is something that many people struggle with.
- [44:26]
A
Oh, yes, me too.
- [44:28]
B
Yeah. And I wonder, what do you think is going on in procrastination? Do you think it's to do with this fact that we don't recognize the limitations of time? Therefore, we think there's infinite possibility, but there isn't. How do you see procrastination?
- [44:42]
A
I think there are lots of different flavors of procrastination. So there are people who are very afraid of failing. There are a few people who are very afraid of succeeding. There are people who have all sorts of other different psychodramas going on. We're all different and messed up in different ways. But the argument that I make that sort of brings all that or tries to bring all that together is that whenever you're procrastinating on something that matters to you, you are trying to avoid some kind of experience of encountering your limitations. If I'm procrastinating on writing a chapter of a book, the reason that I'm not, I mean, I care about that thing and I don't particularly care about what I'm doing instead, which is probably like, you know, scrolling or, you know, cleaning the kitchen when it doesn't really need cleaning as a displacement activity or something. So it seems at first weird that I would, like, want to procrastinate on the thing I care about rather than do the things I don't care about. But I think that's because. And again, I'll stick with this writing example just for a minute. For me to actually write a chapter is to risk that I don't have what it takes to write the chapter, or I don't have enough time to finish the thing on deadline, or that it won't be well received by people who I would like to receive it. Well, all these kind of ways in which I can't control the experience are brought up when I'm doing something that I care about. And that makes it very tempting to just not go there. And if you are, perfectionism is a big part of this. And I feel like certainly historically that was my problem to a T. The one way to feel totally in control of some project that you really care about in your life, and it is totally perfect, still is never to start it, because then you've got this beautiful mental image of this song you're going to write, or marriage you're going to have, or house you're going to find, or book you're going to write, and it's pristine. It doesn't need to. Nothing can go wrong with it as Long as it is completely unreal. And then the moment that it actually starts being created because you're doing something in the real world in one way or another, you're going to run up against the inevitability of imperfection and limit. It's going to be hard or it's going to be uncertain, or it's going to be a little bit less than the perfect image you'd had of it or something, and that's just baked in to bringing it into reality. So then I think it becomes very tempting for people to never quite get started on things because it feels nicer and more powerful in a way. If you feel more powerful while you haven't let it out into the world, it's a bogus kind of power because obviously you haven't done it.
- [47:24]
B
And you've also got that sense of control because it's still undone. So actually there's still that control. I could do it. I wanted to do it. I could do it. But, yeah, perfectionism is hugely problematic. I've also had those tendencies for much of my life. And I think I would say that that is largely or certainly in huge part a thing of the past. Like, I really feel I've let go of that in many ways, and it's been liberating. As we sit here recording, my fifth book came out about a week ago, right? Fifth book in five years.
- [48:00]
A
And I need to ask you about productivity.
- [48:07]
B
If someone had told me that six years ago, I'd have thought, no way. No way can I write five books in the next five years. But it's not just that. It's this idea that I've had a deadline to work to, and this idea that when that deadline is here, when the manuscript gets sent off to print, it will be as good as I could do at that moment. It doesn't mean the ideas stop. It doesn't mean, like, I know if I had two more months, the book would be different because the ideas don't just stop at that time. The limitation is there, and therefore it's just a snapshot in time of the best I could do around the idea at that time. And that's liberating because then when you are up against the deadline, it's like, well, hey, it's going to be good to go then. And it will be what? It will be perfection. It's never quite done right. I think that goes back to what you're talking about. The idea about time is that there are limits. There's no way to perfectly spend your day Maybe that's the myth that we're sold these days, which is why your book is such a welcome antidote to that. It's kind of like that doesn't exist. No one is spending the perfect day.
- [49:22]
A
Yeah, yeah. I think perfection, pretty much by definition, perfection doesn't exist in reality. And that is at the core of all of this. Right.
- [49:30]
B
So how come you're not a perfectionist anymore?
- [49:32]
A
Well, I don't know that I'm not a perfectionist, but I'm definitely in recovery to a significant extent. And I think that, you know lots of different parts of that puzzle. One is just, you know, something in me, deep in me, steered me into newspaper journalism first as a way of working in a very deadline driven environment like that will have a tendency to sort of slightly beat the perfectionism out of you because you'll get to whatever it was Monday, Tuesday morning, and you still haven't got a good idea for your weekly column. Well, then you have to use one of the bad ideas, of course. And what you learn after a while bears very little resemblance to the output anyway. Very often the bad ideas are the best columns. Very often the columns that I thought were least good were the ones that people seemed most excited by. You know, it's like, just don't know. I've got no idea. So you might as well just do it. That was part of it. And then writing this book in a different way, I think becoming a parent is an interesting part of this because then you're in this relationship where like, I mean, it's true of all relationships, but it's very obvious with small children that they're just going to keep. You can't press pause. Like they're just good. They're going to be a day older tomorrow and a day older after that and very swiftly. You know, you can prepare when you know a baby's coming, you can prepare to try to be sort of perfect in those first months or something. But as soon as you're then in it, it's just like it's all moving so fast. It's like. And you know, obviously there's not going to be any perfection here. Obviously it's just going to be constant improvisation and winging it. Yeah. Which we all are doing all the time. Anyway.
- [51:11]
B
It's part of the problem that we, we now live in a very individualistic society where we are told we can do anything we want. You write about the Digital Nomad and how that's a misnomer actually in terms of how we actually articulate that this idea, though, that we can be anything we want, we can master our schedules, our time, we can travel when we want, we want to work in a coffee shop, we can do all that. But by having no limits, it's actually problematic. And I love this idea that we potentially should be constrained by the limits of community and people around us in a way that we're not anymore. So maybe you could speak to that a little bit.
- [51:48]
A
Yeah, I think this is a really important part of it all. The way that certain kinds of tradition, including but not limited to religious traditions, one of the things they do is they impose some kind of temporal structure on life. So they make it that you do certain things at certain times, whether you like it or not. And if you are people who are religious and go to church or another place of worship on a regular basis will understand this notion. You don't just go when you really feel like it's. And the benefit of it is something more than that. But likewise, if you go to a band rehearsal or choir or you meet people to play a football match on a weekly basis or something, it only has the value it has because you've all decided that you're all going to be in the same place at the same time. It can't work otherwise. And yet at the same time, as we have all these very obvious examples staring us in the face of how you have to be synchronized, you have to give up a little bit of personal dictatorship over your schedule in order to get these benefits. At the same time, we have this cultural value that says, yeah, the goal here for everybody in their ideal world should be to be absolutely in control of their own schedules, to get up every morning like the dream would be, you get up every morning, you do exactly what you wanted at exactly whatever time you want. And I use the digital nomad in the book as an example of that. Right. That's sort of the epitome of this. This idea. I'm going to go and work from a beach wherever I. You know, it's all just going to be me in charge. And more honest people who've done that will tell you that one of the key characteristics of that life is that it gets quite lonely because you're not held in any of those kind of webs and you're not able to sort of participate in those kind of rhythms. Precisely. You sort of placed yourself outside of that in your pursuit of total freedom. So one of the things that I've really found in my own life in the last few years for sure, and this is partly to do with how becoming a parent binds you to other people's rhythms more closely. Rhythms of school, rhythms of after school things, rhythms of play dates. And you have to work with your spouse in a completely different way. All of this, again, it's true for everybody. It's just very clear for parents, I think, is that these are good things, these are benefits. They definitely frustrate me sometimes. It's not like I find them super enjoyable every day, all the time. But the alternative of just sort of drifting like one little atom through the world is not a preferable alternative. The sacrifice that I have to make of the part of myself that would love to just draw up a schedule at 8 o'clock in the morning where I just got to say everything that sacrifice is worth making for a fulfilling life.
- [54:34]
B
I hope that last section is empowering for many people listening or watching at the moment, Oliver. Because I think if you are, you know, if you have a busy family life and, you know, there's work and then there's, you've got to sort the kids out and, you know, and Saturday means swimming lessons or whatever is going on, it's tempting, isn't it, to think, oh, man, look at those guys who are just free and they can travel the world on their laptop. Or they've got nothing, right? Nothing. But I think what you said there, hopefully, is like, hey, listen, the grass. The grass is usually never greener on the other side, I realize, in life, right? But that comes at a cost. That's a cost to everything. That comes at a cost. You're doing it by yourself. You don't have this structure in this community. Like I even noticed. I've been a father now for over 11 years. I live with my wife and my two kids. And if they ever go away, let's say, I don't know, they're away for two nights somewhere, or I'm working and they've gone away to like, you know, my wife's parents or wherever, you know, initially. Yeah, it feels, oh, man, I've got. Oh, I could do this, I could do that, I could do whatever I want.
- [55:49]
A
And then you just sort of waste it. Yeah, you waste it. And then it's not that fun.
- [55:54]
B
It's not that fun. You're like, oh, like, I can't wait till they're back.
- [55:59]
A
Yes. No, I know that. I totally know that feeling. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
- [56:02]
B
And even that term, waste, right. I wrote that down before. I wanted to talk to you about this concept of wasting time. Because wasting time, I think is what we say in reference to what we think we should be doing with our time, which is maximizing every moment of it. And actually, some of the most pleasurable experiences when we actually, by society standard, are wasting time doing nothing, staring at the birds, because then we feel we're wasting time, that means we're wasting our lives and therefore, oh, we should be doing more. But actually, those little moments where you do waste time, well, that's kind of what life's about, isn't it?
- [56:41]
A
No, I think so. Language gets in the way here. Right. Cause wasting is a bad thing almost by definition. But actually, we've come to define using time well in a way that excludes lots and lots of really pleasurable and enjoyable and meaningful experiences. Again, I think where we use that word is we judge experiences that aren't leading somewhere. Right. So we think of a day being wasted if I haven't sort of made progress towards my various goals that are in the future. And that's important. I mean, you know, of course everyone has some kind of outcomes that they're working towards, but if you define every moment that doesn't add up towards those outcomes as wasted, then, yeah, you're going to miss the very substance of being alive. And yeah, no, totally. It always reminds me, I don't know if this is quite the right parallel, but it's almost this idea that once you stop focusing on where you're getting, you actually have a fuller experience. It always reminds me of my experience. And I feel like half the people I ever have this conversation with about doing a driving test, about half people I've ever discussed this with say that was only after they were absolutely convinced they'd failed because they screwed up in the first few minutes of their driving test that they were able to relax into their driving test and pass it and do really well. It's a very common experience with driving tests. And it's just this notion. I like it because it really speaks to this idea that sometimes you need to not be trying to make the most of an experience or to achieve certain outcome in order to just be most relaxedly in it. And then you find, as in the driving test case, that you also do accomplish things in those moments. So you're probably looking, watching the birds or the flowers, and you do get a really good idea for some piece of work that you've been stumped on, but only because you weren't really trying to do that.
- [58:30]
B
Tell me a little bit about your friend's apartment in New York, where the lift, I believe, stops on every floor between Friday evening and Saturday evening. I think I really, really liked that example because it speaks to something I've been thinking about in my life for a few years, which I'll go into in just a moment. But could you maybe paint the picture of the apartment block?
- [58:52]
A
Yeah. This is on the Lower east side, which is historically and traditionally a very Jewish part of Manhattan. And the Shabbat elevator is designed so that Jews who follow the Sabbath restrictions don't have to press a button in the elevator, because pressing a button to make an electrical connection is an example of lighting a fire, I think, is how the sort of scholarly, legalistic approach to this goes. And so in order to avoid that and allow people to get off at their floors and get on and to leave the building, the elevator has to stop at every single floor. Regardless. It does seem a little bit absurd, but it's almost, you know, a lot of these rules, both in Judaism, in Christianity and elsewhere, about sort of what you can't do on a day of rest, they kind of have to be absurd, at least to secular ears or at least to anybody, because if you only do the things that seem reasonable to you to bring yourself to rest, to end work, then you won't actually stop working. You'll be like, well, okay, maybe I should take a couple of hours, but it's reasonable for me to spend a couple of hours in my email inbox this afternoon as well. And so all the people and the traditions and the religions who have developed these different notions of Sabbaths or days of, they've all ended up with some combination of restrictions that almost seem a little bit too much, a little bit like overkill. Because it is so hard for us. We're so wired to just keep going and keep the flywheel spinning. So that's why I bring that up. It's like a very vivid example of like, okay, I'm going to have to wait every floor and stop and the door's going to open and they're going to close. And like, you know, if you live on the 25th floor of a high rise apartment building, it's a good time to develop some patience.
- [60:43]
B
They do feel absurd relative to what is the norm now with our secular mindset, with our individual mindset that we can do whatever we want whenever we want. I'm not following those restrictions. I'm not going to have someone tell me what I'm going to do on Sundays or Saturdays. But I've really been coming rounds over the last years that we need to all of Us self impose Sabbaths on our life. I think I shared this story once on the podcast before, but a friend of mine who I've only got so in the last few years, we once went round for, I think, Sunday lunch and I met her and her husband and the children and my family went, and they're a Jewish family and they've always followed the Sabbath. So between, you know, Friday evening and Saturday evening, I don't know the exact rules that were followed, but it would be family time. They would spend it together. I think family would come round potentially. They wouldn't answer the phone, they wouldn't go out and do things, school, clubs, all that kind of stuff. And I just thought, isn't that incredible because you can always fill up the time. I was actually literally chatting to my wife about this about three hours ago before you arrived, about a hobby that one of my kids can do at the weekends. And this would take place, I think every Sunday afternoon. And we were just sort of discussing the pros and cons. Yeah, there's loads of pros. But also I think we just need to be really careful because I love the idea of trying to introduce some sort of Sabbath into our weekend where as a general rule, I don't know whether it would be Saturday or Sunday, we're not going to do activities. Like maybe it's, we get your parents around every week at that time. Maybe we create an environment whereby. No, no, I'm not going to be looking at email on that day. We're not going to be doing. You know, I think it really speaks this idea that the central themes in your book, this idea that there's always something you could do and we can make an argument that, oh yeah, that will give these benefits and that will give that benefit, but there's a cost, there's a cost to all of those things. You know, families are disintegrating, there's not enough time for people to spend with their families. You know, certainly feel I've been guilty of that certainly with our wider family. What if every Sunday, for example, it's like, no, we're not doing stuff. We're either going for walks in nature or we're having family rounds or we're enjoying meals together. That actually self imposed restriction I think would yield so many benefits.
- [63:16]
A
I think you're right. And I mean, I feel like I.
- [63:19]
B
Haven'T done it yet.
- [63:20]
A
No, no, I was going to say I feel like my family is in a similar situation. Like sort of you toy with these things and you have kind of Big dreams about them. But then you have to sort of integrate them into the reality of existence. And I think a big part of that too is kind of expectations. One thing that I've really found in myself is that if I'm going to expect in the course of a day at the weekend to spend some really good quality time with my family and also do a couple of hours work because I need to, that is a recipe for just so much sort of the friction between those bothers me and causes me anxiety. All the rest of it. If it's just decided and agreed since long in advance that Saturday or Sunday is not going to be a day for work things, then broadly speaking, the work fits in to the rest of the time perfectly well enough. It takes the containers that it has. Work will always fill every container you give it.
- [64:15]
B
What's that law?
- [64:16]
A
Parkinson's Law. Work will expand to fill the time available for its completion. So the reverse of that, which by the way is one of the reverse of Parkinson's Law, is part of what the four hour work week gave us. Right. Work will also, to some extent at least contract to fill the space available if you give it less time. So if you have four hours to complete something, you'll probably do it in about four hours. And if you have eight, it'll take eight. And so maybe just don't give it those four hours at the weekend. Yeah, yeah.
- [64:47]
B
I do think a lot about this self imposed Sabbath. But again, this is why I think one of the big problems now is that to do that you have to swim against the current, right? Because let's say you live in a. I guess, let's say you're surrounded by a strong Jewish community and let's say everyone around you observes a Sabbath.
- [65:07]
A
Much easier to go along with that.
- [65:08]
B
Much easier.
- [65:09]
A
And actually there are downsides to this. Like it's impossible not to in some ways, in some contexts, in very sort of orthodox and conservative cultures, it becomes too little freedom. But yeah, I don't think that too little freedom in our temporal rhythms is most people's problem these days, at least outside of the work setting. They may have lots of very rigid rules they have to follow about when they work, but they don't have rigid rules to follow about resting.
- [65:32]
B
And I guess, look, I didn't grow up with that. So maybe I'm seeing this as this phenomenal thing that maybe people who've grown up with that find, or some people maybe find that restrictive and like the freedom of not having to do that. But this idea of Society dictating our behaviors. I think it's really interesting. I went to a wedding maybe 10 years ago. One of my mates was getting married in France. I think I flew out for the weekend and hired a car and drove. I can't remember where it was now, but I remember on the Sunday morning, driving back to get my flight, I kept driving through little villages and they were like ghost towns. All the shops were shut, people weren't out and about. And it was very much this kind of French way of life that. That was, you know, we're not shopping on a Sunday. We're just spending time together, you know, doing whatever we do. And even this idea of stopping for meals, that's a very French concept.
- [66:25]
A
They're doing certain things right.
- [66:27]
B
Yeah. And there's, you know, this thing called the French paradox. Why is it that the French can supposedly eat so many rich and delicious and tasty foods, yet not have the consequences associated with them? And there's all kinds of theories in terms of what the food is that they're consuming, but I think a big part is not only what they're eating, it's how they're eating. They're eating when their bodies are in rest and digest mode, not also trying to send emails and in that kind of stress state where you're just trying to shove that in.
- [66:57]
A
While I.
- [67:00]
B
Really think. And that's still there in France, I was interviewed by a French journalist a couple of years ago. At the end of the interview, I said, hey, can I just ask you, this is my mythical idea of France. Does it still go on? Is this really what's happening where people stop for lunch and they don't email at the same time as Eastern shows? Absolutely. The only place where it's starting to go is like in Paris. International companies, financial institutions and things.
- [67:22]
A
Yeah, right.
- [67:22]
B
That's where that culture starts to go. But apart from that, this is kind of. Do you know what I mean?
- [67:27]
A
Yeah. No. And it's reminding me. I mentioned it briefly in the book of this experience in Sweden, of the coffee breaks that they have in Swedish workplaces called the Fika, where at basically the same time every day, if you work for a company that has maybe 200 people in it, say 300 people, they will basically all stop at the same time and go to some communal part of the building and have tea and coffee and pastries at the same time in the afternoon and you don't have to do it. I'm sure that in plenty of businesses in Stockholm, people have meetings when they have meetings. That it was really striking that, that this rhythm was broadly followed by everybody. And it becomes this kind of way for companies to, for sort of chief executives to get to talk to everyone in the organization because the sort of hierarchies are suspended. It becomes this kind of rhythmic part of the day where everyone knows that it's an okay time to stop because there's no, you know, you're the weird one if you do keep grinding through instead of stopping. And it's just another example of one of these things where the, where there's a tradition that is holding people in place in a way that is actually freeing in the end that they submit to this limitation on their autonomy.
- [68:38]
B
I really enjoyed that chapter of the book. And when you spoke about Fika, there was also, you were talking about these ideas that actually part of the reason we enjoy weekends is because most people are also off at weekends. And I thought that was a really interesting concept. Again, coming down to this individualistic culture where we can do whatever we want. If I want to take a Tuesday off, I'm going to take a Tuesday off.
- [69:04]
A
There's this research, this fascinating research that shows that people in long term unemployment are much happier at weekends than in the weekday as well. Right? They are in the context of these studies. They have the same amount of time, they have too much time. They don't want to be unemployed. But the fact that, that the weekends is when everybody is off and there isn't that sort of sense of pressure that you should be doing something else. But there is also the possibility to spend time with the people you care about the most that transforms their experience. They have the same amount of time every day because they don't work. And I think retirees this applies to as well in certain contexts.
- [69:41]
B
I can imagine that I guess in the UK where we have bank holidays, obviously slightly extended weekends, but maybe they're so valuable these days because almost the traditional weekend has been eaten up into and eroded. So it actually semi doesn't exist half the time with people. But maybe a bank holiday weekend where there's three days in a row, so maybe the first day you just spent kind of still just catching up with the emails that you thought you couldn't finish. Then by the time you actually get into the second or third day, you're.
- [70:13]
A
Actually beginning to rest.
- [70:14]
B
Yeah, yeah. But this idea that you then you go around or into your local town or village or whatever and everyone also has the same kind of mood so you're not like out of step with what's going on around you. Which, again, is. I think one of these other problems about life these days is that we often. We're not quite in tune with what's going on around us because there are no set rules anymore. You know, I love this, the research on that. People who follow religious practices are happier. Not necessarily people who are religious. People who follow religious practices because, you know, community, getting together, be kind to other people. I don't know. There's something. There's something that we've really lost, haven't we? As we become more and more secular, as we become more and more apparently the masses of our destiny and in control of whatever we want, we've lost something very important.
- [71:07]
A
No, I think that's really true. There's that saying that tradition knows more than you do or knows better than you do. Right. I mean, these are acknowledging all the downsides and all the ways in which very important freedoms exist that didn't exist especially for different demographics of people and all the rest of it. There is such a thing as a tradition or a practice standing the test of time and having sort of embodied in it the fact that it's been a sort of live experiment for centuries about what people need in their lives. And it's extremely tempting for us, especially today, for various reasons, to assume that we must know better than that. And especially in these contexts where it does require some surrender of personal autonomy, it does require sort of a bit of discomfort or like, oh, do I actually have to do this meditation practice today? Even on the days that I don't want to do it or go to church? On the days even when I don't want to do it, it's like, well, yes, on some level, that's the point.
- [72:03]
B
I mean, community is one of the big secrets to Parkrun success. And as a family who very much engage with Parkrun, and it helps provide the framework to our weekend, really. Saturday mornings means rain or shine, my son and I will be going down to the local park. And if that was left to us, as it was in the lockdowns, when Parkrun didn't exist, it was left to us. And you know what? We never went running.
- [72:30]
A
Right, Right. It was a surprise. Yeah.
- [72:33]
B
It was a struggle. Like, I would try and sometimes persuade him, or maybe it was myself, I need persuading, but it didn't happen. But we haven't missed one in months because there's almost that constraint there. We know it's not a negotiable in our heads. You have to decide every, oh, shall I do this? Shall I do it. No, Saturday mornings are part run mornings. We will be there at this time and we know, barring some sort of injury or mishap, we will have both completed 5k in some form. And I think that's why Parkrun in secular societies, I feel that's one of the big strengths of Parkrun is it's giving us a sense of community and you get to know the people. And I mean, my son loves it. People say hi to him, they go, oh, nice run last week. See how good he feels. This is what we're missing. The sense of belonging, the sense of community. And your book, it's got so many wonderful ideas on time and our relationships to time and how we perceive time. But ultimately, if it's all down to us, it's going to be pretty tricky, isn't it? Because you need help from the world around you.
- [73:43]
A
Absolutely. And I think the park run is such a great example because in a way it does something very cunning. Right. Which is that you're sort of taking a very individualistic desire that people have, which is fitness, which often gets very heavily individualized in the way people think about it. And then it's like a bait and switch. Because actually, as you say, such a great benefit is the fact that it's communal, I think meditation. Sometimes people have this experience too. They sort of get into meditation because they want to focus better and do better in their work or be more self disciplined or something. And then they realize that they've suddenly started going on retreats, streets, and really enjoy the sense of communality that comes from those things. There's a sort of interesting dynamic goes on there when people come to something for individualistic reasons and then actually benefit for communal ones.
- [74:32]
B
Yeah. And I guess that's okay, right? Because we're all on a journey and we're all kind of approaching these things at different times. You mentioned your Guardian column, which is very well read all over the world. Your last column has proven to be quite iconic. I don't know how many times I've seen it being shared. It's really, really good. And I wonder actually when you started writing this book because actually some of the ideas in it. When is it from? Two years ago? Was it three?
- [74:59]
A
Yeah, the book was well advanced by the time I wrote that last column.
- [75:02]
B
Yeah.
- [75:03]
A
My mind was in the same place.
- [75:05]
B
Yeah, for sure. What was it called again? The final column?
- [75:07]
A
They called it Eight Secrets to a Fairly Fulfilled Life, which was. I don't deserve the credit for that. That was a great Guardian production. Person Coming up with that idea. But, yeah, I like that.
- [75:16]
B
A fairly fulfilled life. Do you have a fairly fulfilled life now?
- [75:20]
A
I think so, yeah. I think it's a great standard to aim for. But then again, it's sort of a constant work in progress. I mean, I sometimes think there's a risk. This stuff that I write and talk about that people ask whether I'm sort of calmer and less stressed about things now. And I think, like, I am. But it should be my wife who you're interviewing for that question, really, because I don't want to claim that I'm, you know, effortlessly easy to live with or something. I do think that. I mean, a big part of it. I mean, yes, I am in lots of ways, I'm just a calmer and more fulfilled person than I used to be. But a big part of it also is this thing about how quickly you can get back on the wagon. So it's not, I think, with this kind of ideas about time that I've spent a lot of time exploring, they don't make you into someone who never gets stressed about work or never procrastinates or something like that. But you, you see, oh, I'm doing that thing again. And you know why you're doing it, and you're sort of forgiving of yourself because the reason why you're doing it is a totally human, like, you know, desire to have more control than we can have. And then you can just be like, okay, all right, not going to do that anymore for today. I'm going to go back to a better way of being and, you know, back and forth, back and forth, two steps forward, one step back, or whatever, but that's fine.
- [76:36]
B
I think that awareness, I think, is a massive. The important step for all of us. Just because we might know something or write about something doesn't mean we can always apply it. But I think it does give us an awareness sometimes. I think your book will give people a huge awareness of why they make certain decisions, why certain things end up frustrating them. It doesn't mean that you can necessarily change it all straight away. But just being aware, you're like, oh, I get it. Oh, I'm doing that thing. Even this kind of. This whole idea of work life balance, right. A lot of people are. I know there will be people listening and watching right now at this minute who are struggling and think, at some point I'm going to. Yeah, at this point, work life balance is going to be nailed. But that's a myth, isn't it? Ever have one of those days when everything seems to go wrong and before you know it, you've slipped back into those habits you're trying so hard to avoid. Like sugar, doom scrolling and wine. When it comes to making changes in our lives that actually last, most people think the solution is to try harder. But this is simply not the case. In my new book, Make Change that Lasts, I reveal how exactly you can break free from the habits that hold you back. What many of us don't realize is that our behaviors follow our beliefs. So when you change your beliefs, and my book will show you how to do that, you'll spend less time having to think about your habits because they'll happen automatically. Make Change that Lasts, the number one Sunday Times bestseller is available to buy now all over the world as a paperback ebook and as an audiobook, which I am narrating. And if you've not got your copy yet, what are you waiting for?
- [78:42]
A
I think it is. I think that what work life balance sounds so lovely. What it tends to end up meaning in people's lives is that they feel the pressure to sort of be 100% perfect at work and 100% perfect in life outside work. And that starts to become impossible because, like 100% plus 100% is 200%. And so I think that kind of. It's an especially vicious kind of pressure because it comes wrapped in this notion of like, work life balance is just a lovely thing and actually struggling to achieve it is an awful thing to do because it is basically impossible. I think.
- [79:21]
B
I think so.
- [79:21]
A
And people are holding themselves under the guise of seeking more calm and balance in their lives. They're actually holding themselves to quite a cruel standard that they could maybe just ease up on a bit. And what would that look like? Well, it might, for example, look like a kind of a seasonal approach to imbalance. It might look like saying, if you're a young adult early in your career, there's something to be said first, going all in on your career for a while. If you are the parents of young children, you may have to do a certain amount of work, of course, but also go easy on yourself. And if you can find a way to sort of do the minimum required for a while, don't feel bad about that because you've got this very important thing going on in life outside work. Yeah. I mean, it's always this thing about not. Not making the difficulties of being human worse by adding in this standard that you hold yourself to that actually nobody could ever reach.
- [80:21]
B
I think it is liberating I know sometimes when I put out podcasts on a particular topic, a lot of the time it's health and wellbeing. I absolutely think your book is a health and wellbeing book as well. Interesting. I'll get to that in just a moment. But a lot of young parents, it's like, yeah, they contact me and say, I can't do that. This could be too hard at the moment, it's like, yeah, that's okay. It's almost like embracing that. Yeah. This is a time in your life where actually maybe you are going to be knackered and underslept and you can't move your body as much as you might want to or you might hear someone talk about on the podcast. It's like, actually, that's okay. Take that information and just park it and go. Yeah, at the moment, that ain't gonna fit for me. But in a few months, actually, when my child's a bit older or I have a bit of help or whatever, that may change again. And so I love that whole seasonal approach to it. I think that's very freeing.
- [81:20]
A
No, I think it is, and I hope it is. And I think that it's important to say about how to sort of receive the advice in a book like this, but also all the advice in all the context that you talk to people about and your own advice that you give people. Right. I think what really matters is often more the spirit in which it's offered than whether this specific technique needs to be integrated into your life tomorrow. And so, yeah, absolutely, there may be somebody with a certain approach to physical fitness who's got absolutely the right approach, but this specific set of workouts is not going to be something you're going to have time for right now. And so I hope that what I'm really zeroing in on in this book. Book is this specific spirit that says, okay, see what's real in terms of the amount of time you have and in terms of the limitations of control that you have over that time. Come back down to earth in terms of what you can reasonably ask of yourself. And then from that firm foundation, absolutely. Be incredibly ambitious for your work or incredibly ambitious for your family or whatever it is you want to do or don't be, if that's not your style, but just do it from this position of being in touch with reality and not endlessly berating yourself and beating yourself up for not being able to evade the terms and conditions of being human.
- [82:43]
B
In an interview I heard you on recently, you made the case that in Your mind, a lot of the happiest people and contented people on the planet are probably the people that we've never heard of, which I thought was really, really interesting. And I absolutely agree with you. I wonder if you could speak to that.
- [83:06]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's a slightly facetious point, but I think it is basically true. I mean, let's look at the extreme here. We don't think about Hollywood, where people are the most famous on the planet, as a place of wonderfully relaxed, psychological, full health. We tend to think that there's usually. I think that there is probably something, some deep hole you are filling inside if you are sufficiently motivated to struggle for that kind of global fame. Now, sometimes it can have positive effects. I think if you look at great presidents and leaders in history, they too often turn out to have been struggling with very deep psychological issues or issues in their childhood environment. And so it's not that it always goes wrong, but I do think that need for that level of fame, that sort of global, global thing, is very often motivated by some restless unease. And my theory, based on no research at all, is just that, like, lower down that grade. To anyone who has any kind of public profile, I think on some level pursuing a public profile is a sign. I don't mean to insult you here. I have a little one too. It's like that you need some kind of. So I'm talking about my own weird issues as well. But you need something that someone who is living completely insecurity doesn't need because they're actually at peace with that situation.
- [84:37]
B
I completely agree with you. I think many people feel, and I include myself in this. Absolutely. I've been very open in my latest book about. About some of the struggles I've had in my life and that need for external validation. And I think you're right. There's a lot of people who have huge amounts of fame and profile who are deeply, deeply unhappy. We see this time and time again. I think that the problem then comes those are the people we look up to for their advice. So that person who, you know, I don't know, founded the company that I don't even know the term, the stock market that sold publicly or whatever for like 10 million. We want their productivity tips. You think? Yeah, but maybe the cost of that level of success was a broken marriage and never seen their children or whatever. So we then apply the tips in our own life to get something that we don't actually want.
- [85:29]
A
I think that's such a good point. And I think, yeah, and the other place where this sort of rears its head greatly is on social media. Right. Because there you have this situation where everyone who does at all well on social media has a certain public profile. Right?
- [85:43]
B
Well, everyone's got a profile now.
- [85:44]
A
Right, exactly right. Maybe it's a few hundred followers, maybe it's millions of followers, but the saying that on the Internet everyone is famous for 15 people and it's like if you make a big song and dance on social media and you need validation in that way, you will have a few hundred, few thousand followers. You might go higher and yeah, somebody with zero followers is either a bot or maybe it's just fine not to have any followers. Maybe he's actually not seeking that kind of external validation.
- [86:15]
B
Yeah. In terms of people needing to make decisions or wanting help and advice. From Oliver Bertman, who wrote this column for Week after Week, Giving Advice to People. In your final article, point number two was when stumped by a life choice, choose enlargement over happiness, which I really, really liked. I thought that was a really nice way. Could you expand on what you meant by that? What does choose enlargement mean?
- [86:45]
A
Yeah, this comes from a Jungian psychologist, James Hollis, whose work I really, really admire and I've had the amazing luck to then get to get to meet and talk to. And he says, yeah, if you're facing a big choice, but I think you can use it in day to day context as well. Right. Instead of thinking or asking, what is this going to make me happy? What should I do that make me happiest? Yeah, ask what would enlarge you and what would diminish you? So what does this mean? I think for me, anyway, what it means is what we really want deep, deep down is growth. It isn't actually necessarily hedonism. Firstly, we're terrible at predicting what's going to make us happy. Right. That's just the oldest finding in social psychology is we think we want this and then we get it and this doesn't give us what we wanted. But also this question brings into focus the idea of whether happiness is quite the right word for what we should be shooting for anyway in life. Because there are lots of contexts where we're not actually having a happy time in that moment, but where looking back, we know that that was a really meaningful thing to do. And I think this question about enlargement, it really works to sort of connect you to your intuitions on that matter. So to give examples. Right. In relationships, in jobs, there are all sorts of difficulties that you encounter. All sorts of times that do not feel pleasurable and happy and fun. But some of them might be a sign that you're in a toxic relationship or a terrible job. Others are just kind of like part of getting better at living with a whole other adult or doing a challenging job to achieve something worthwhile. And that enlargement question can really help you filter between those two, because when you think about some difficulty you're undergoing in one of those domains, you know, if it's the kind of difficulty that is ultimately helping you grow as a person, it's not fun, but it's like, yeah, this is challenging me in good ways that I need to be challenged. And then I think you also know if it's just the kind that's making your soul shrivel inside, in which case, sure, do what you can to get out of that situation. And that's really important because otherwise you're just going to think to yourself, well, this is unpleasant, therefore it must be wrong for me. And I've had, you know, I've given this example before, but the one that. That it's just so vivid to me that I come back to it. I lived and worked in the US for a very long time. My wife's American. And there was a time very early in my time there when I had this sort of moment when I could have returned back to the UK or stayed out there. And for me, it was very clear when I pondered it in this way that the enlarging choice was to remain out in the US and to not sort of walk away from all the life that I was beginning to get embedded in there. But you could easily imagine somebody else who was living in another country where it was like, okay, now it's time to go home and face the music. Now it's like the enlarging choice here is to stop sort of messing around as an expat in another country and go and do the thing you said you wanted to do. Maybe this is not a very good example for other people. I don't know. But, like, it always speaks to me because it was clear to me then that it would have been the comfortable option to leave at that point, but not the enlarging option. And I think that's often staying with a situation. Not always, but often staying with the situation is the sort of more important challenge than leaving it.
- [90:10]
B
And I guess that's very individual to whoever's making that decision, isn't it? It's like it's impossible to say to someone else, that's an Enlarging choice that is not exactly.
- [90:19]
A
Exactly.
- [90:19]
B
I can't possibly know what that is for someone else. But when they ask themselves that question, I think they often have that instinct. If we allow ourselves to be quiet enough to actually tap into our instinct, which I think is another big problem these days.
- [90:34]
A
And it can work in the opposite way, right. Than the example I gave. So someone might have the idea that their job is to tough out like an abusive relationship or an exploitative work situation, that they might have been raised with the idea that their job is just to like stick with it, come what may. And when they ask this question, they might be like, no, this is having the opposite effect of growth on me. And that can then be an opportunity to. If your personality is of someone who does stay, if you're not a sort of commitment phobic person, but a sort of people pleasing person in that way, that might be the spur to actually make a big change to your life.
- [91:13]
B
In that final column, I also liked, I think point five, the future will never provide the reassurance you seek from. What's that about?
- [91:22]
A
This feels very personal to me. I feel like it's one of my big, weird psychological issues going back. But anyone who's a bit of a chronic warrior or a compulsive planner, and I historically would sort of count myself in those categories for sure, is basically trying to feel like they know that everything's going to be fine in some area and to do with the future show. And because you can't actually ever know because we are, as someone else put it, you know, we're vulnerable to events in every moment. Anything could happen. This is a horrible thought when you think about truly horrible things happening to people you truly love. Right. But it is true, in any moment anything could happen. And I think we're always trying to sort of defend against that psychologically. And one way we do that, one way a certain kind of person does that, is by like, like worrying and fretting and planning and trying to make sure that everything's lined up well and that it's all planned out properly and that you've left enough time to do this and that someone else has reassured you they're going to be. You'll never get that certainty. And the reason you'll never get it is because the future hasn't happened yet and because you don't know what's going to happen in the future. And so if you're constantly sort of your reach is always exceeding your grasp, right. Because you're constantly trying to Reach into the future from the present to be like, okay, can you just reassure me that this is going to be fine? And actually, no, you can't ever be reassured. You can definitely take actions that make better outcomes likelier than others. So definitely pursue good health and good diet and exercise is going to make a massive difference to the level of probability that you can assign to your being healthy at a later date. But you can't know. And that sort of desire to know, I think fuels a lot of anxiety that we don't actually need to feel. It is possible. Not easy. I don't do it flawlessly, but it is possible to sort of surrender to the fact that you're on this sort of whitewater rapids ride through time, that you don't get to control what's coming next. And you can adopt this attitude on my good days anyway, of curiosity about what's coming next. It's like, I wonder if my plans for today will bear any resemblance to how the day goes. Not I need my plans for today to bear a close resemblance to how the day is.
- [93:45]
B
Just shifting the perspective to curiosity makes all the difference. Because then it's not about whether you're right or wrong. It's about, oh, what a great opportunity to learn something and just find out what happens and why. I think your book is also, as well as I think will go down as a very important philosophical text, actually. I think some really quite profound ideas in there. I think it's also got health implications because a lot of what we see as doctors these days is related to our collective modern lifestyles. But it's not just about things like food choices or are we moving our bodies. It's actually a lot of this kind of stress and worry over trying to control time that's uncontrollable. So you're trying to meet this bar that, that you can never meet, that you'll have work, life balance, you'll have mastery over your email inbox. And actually the frustration when you don't have it a, it leads to a lot of poor lifestyle choices because that sense of frustration, that discomfort needs to be soothed in some way, whether it be with a tub of ice cream or biscuits or booze or you just can't sleep because you're chronically stressed and thinking and worrying about the future or fretting over the past. So actually really understanding our relationship to time, learning, as you say, to surrender and knowing that you can't control it, I actually think is very, very important for each and every single one of us. These days it's not just something that's philosophical. It's actually the fabric of our daily lives. And when we get it wrong, it impacts every moment in our life.
- [95:26]
A
Yeah, no, that's a really interesting point. The ways in which we, we try to sort of not feel this discomfort to dull the pain of those things. Yeah, absolutely. Specifically the point you just made about how they have impact on us physically because of the sort of narcotic ways that we choose to sort of. Absolutely. It's huge. Yeah, no, totally.
- [95:49]
B
I want to finish off by talking about keeping options open, I think, and I guess I'm passionate about this because I feel for much of my life I've not wanting to commit to certain things. Like I just want to keep my options open. What if I want to do something else that day, what I don't want to? Like, I'm not very good at committing to stuff in the future. In fact, if someone invites me or there's an opportunity two or three months in advance, I don't like it because I'm like, well, I may be busy, I may want to do something else this week. Do you know what I mean?
- [96:24]
A
Oh, join the club. Yeah, I know this very well.
- [96:26]
B
So this is, I guess I'm looking for some wisdom from you, I think, on the problems with keeping options open.
- [96:32]
A
Well, it's only wisdom, if it is wisdom at all, that comes from having been in exactly the same situation wanting to do that. I think that basically what happens when we insist on keeping our options open or refuse to commit to things is again, it's a form of feeling in more control than we really have. So like procrastination, if you don't launch into a project, in reality, you still get to feel in control of it. If you don't commit to relationships or to projects or to a career or to a place where you live or something, it feels like you're holding all the potential inside yourself. And at some later point you can find, when you feel like it, you will make that commitment, but not now. That again, is something that is actually false simply because of the fact that we are finite and that time just keeps elapsing whether we like it or not. So the example I give in the book, right, or one of the examples, if you decline to get into a long term relationship and instead you want to spend like 10 years dating people and playing the field, you might tell yourself as a commitment phobe that you were keeping your options open, but in fact you've just made a different kind of choice. About how to commit to that time. There's an upside which is that you don't have to encounter the difficulties or limitations of a long term relationship. And there's a downside which is you don't get to enjoy all the benefits of a committed long term relationship. And that might be the right decision for someone to take, but that time is still gone and you've decided to use those years that we will never get again in one way rather than another way. And it might be the right way for someone. I'm not saying everyone has to get married at 18 or something, but what we tend to tell ourselves is that it isn't really committing to something. We're telling ourselves that we're sort of holding back from, we're maintaining our position of power, but the sands of time are running out whether we like it or not. So you're just using up those years of your life in a different way. And the idea I'm trying to get at there is that you're always committing to things, it's just that you're sometimes committing unconsciously. So then it's not that some people might say then, well, that is not a commitment, but you are still sort of trade offs are present, whatever you're doing. And so if you decide to keep your options open about a career path by not sort of giving yourself fully to one thing, again, that might be right for some people that they want to sort of have a finger in multiple pies during their life. But don't pretend that you're not deciding to use up a bit of your life in that way, that you're somehow sort of real life hasn't begun yet and you're holding all the cards, no real life has begun and you've decided to do that with it.
- [99:18]
B
I guess before you know it, you never end up making a decision. You can always endlessly keep your options open. But you just got a load of.
- [99:26]
A
Options, as they say. Yes, exactly. You end up with nothing. And I think that's true. Right. So the problem is not that I'm against people having portfolio careers or something, but that if what you want in life and you think you do want is a family or to be very, very accomplished in one career, there's a terrible danger in telling yourself you don't need to get involved in it just yet because you're going to sort of keep all your options open. And then that goes on and on and on and on and on. And actually it turns out that you weren't keeping your options open. Really, you were just sort of, you were using up your time in a way that was not in tune with the thing you wanted to do.
- [100:03]
B
I think one of the downsides of trying to keep options open all the time certainly was something I felt in the past, is I caused myself such mental anguish and maybe I could. I know, but if I did that, then if I want to do this at that weekend, I can't do that, so I won't commit. And then I wouldn't even make a decision. I just keep trying to delay that decision. But you don't measure the fact that you're using up a considerable amount of mental energy and cognitive reserve day after day. You haven't made a decision, you're trying to postpone the decision so you have all the information at your fingertips so you can make the perfect decision. I guess it's a bit like a lot of people like to book their holiday early. They know in six months time at that week we're going holiday, the flights are booked, everything's booked. And I used to think, man, you've committed early. You know, what if there was a better option? I think actually you guys have got it right because actually you made the decision. There's no more cognitive energy. You know what's happening. Everyone around you knows what's happening. And there is a kind of freedom to that, isn't there?
- [101:01]
A
No, totally. And like I say in the book, there's this weird phenomenon where very often people who take decisions that they were sort of dreading feel absolutely sort of fine having made them, because like, it's done, it's over. All you can do is deal with the consequences of that choice. So buying a house, getting married, leaving a job, all sorts of things, they less frequently turn out to be stressful in the way that you were predicting. Because actually the stress was the not deciding one way or another.
- [101:33]
B
And again, coming back to time, we don't measure that, we don't account for that. I don't think. We just think, oh, if we end up making that right decision, it was worth it. But, well, how many evenings did you waste not being present to your life? Cause you were thinking about this. And again, there's certainly something I've been guilty of in the past. There's just so much I could keep talking to you about, Oliver. And given that there's no watch in the studio, I don't know the time, which is the way I like it. Which is why these conversations often end up being quite long. The podcast is called Feel Better Live More when we feel better, we get more out of our lives. At the end of this conversation, at the end of this podcast, what I often try and do is leave the audience with some actionable things to think about in their life. Many people these days are struggling. They feel a chronic state of overwhelm. They feel that they don't have enough time to get all the things done that they think they need to get done. And I wonder, with all your kind of years of writing and just wisdom from being immersed in this topic, do you have any kind of final thoughts or words to share with people?
- [102:40]
A
I mean, I think one way to think about this is just to sort of ask yourself how you might do today differently if you really knew and believed that you definitely weren't going to get all the things done that you were hoping to get done in the day. Might you, in that situation, make at least a little bit of time now, today, for something that you know you really care about, rather than telling yourself that that's coming down the pike, that you're going to get all this other stuff out of the way first and then you're going to have time for that? I've said in the past as a bit of a joke, but I think, I mean it, that the only sort of time management techniques worth its salt is like step one, choose something that you know matters to you. Step two, figure out when today or this week, you're going to give it at least like 20 minutes of your time. And then there is no step three because like, yes, some other things are not going to get done. And that was always the case. And only this time you will have spent some time nurturing that relationship that matters to you or starting to write that screenplay you've been thinking about for a decade or million other things. But I think people know more than they always necessarily realize. They know what matters to them. And it really ultimately is just a matter of making a little bit of time for those things here and now.
- [104:10]
B
I love that there's no step three. Brilliant way to end the conversation. Thanks for coming to the studio. Thank you for writing a truly wonderful book. 4,000 weeks. And I hope we get to do this again at some point.
- [104:22]
A
Thank you so much, Rongan. I've really enjoyed it.
- [104:29]
B
Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free@drchatterjee.com Friday 5 Now if you are new to my podcast, you you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world covering all kinds of different topics Happiness, food, stress, sleep, behaviour change and movement, weight loss and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks and as audiobooks which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciate it if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast podcast app and always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better, you live more.