The Art of Manliness - Time Management for Mortals

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now a lot

00:00:11.000 of ink has been spilled on time management and productivity hacking. I mean, you can

00:00:14.280 find endless tips on how to master your workflow, tame your inbox, slay your to-do list. Far

00:00:18.580 less examined, however, is the philosophy that underlies these strategies. My guest

00:00:22.440 says that when you do examine that philosophy, you find it doesn't actually align with lived

00:00:26.360 experience. His name is Oliver Berkman, and in his book 4,000 Weeks Time Management for

00:00:30.480 Mortals, he forwards a philosophy of time management that is more realistic and more humane. Today

00:00:35.380 on the show, Oliver makes the case for a kind of contrarian way to make the most of the 4,000

00:00:39.180 weeks of the average human lifespan, beginning with why he reached a point in his own life

00:00:42.620 where he realized that standard methods of productivity hacking were futile and just made

00:00:46.320 him feel busier and less happy. We then get into the fact that we'd like to do an infinite

00:00:49.900 number of things but are finite beings, and how this contrast creates an anxiety that

00:00:53.780 we attempt to soothe and deny through productivity techniques. We then discuss the problem of

00:00:57.680 treating time as a thing, a resource that's separate from the self, and how one antidote

00:01:01.600 to this mindset is to do things for pure enjoyment alone. Oliver explains why engaging in efficiency

00:01:06.420 for its own sake only creates more stuff to do, and why recognizing you can never clear the

00:01:10.560 decks of your daily tasks nor get everything done can actually help you focus on the things

00:01:14.080 that matter most. We enter a conversation with why really digging into a deep philosophy of time

00:01:18.020 by facing up to its stakes and engaging in what Oliver calls cosmic insignificance therapy

00:01:22.660 can allow you to live a bolder, more meaningful life. Also, I mentioned a poem during our conversation

00:01:27.340 that I decided to recite full at the end of the show, so be sure to listen to the end so you can

00:01:31.080 hear it. You can find a link to that poem in our show notes, which can be found at aom.is

00:01:35.220 slash 4,000 weeks.

00:01:43.640 All right. Oliver Berkman, welcome to the show.

00:01:46.780 Thank you very much for inviting me.

00:01:47.900 So you got a new book out. It's called 4,000 Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. And you take a deep

00:01:55.260 dive into philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, religion, to suss out a philosophy

00:02:03.260 of time management. I think it's a humane philosophy of time management. And you make the case in the

00:02:10.800 book at the beginning that our popular idea of time management that we have, like getting things done,

00:02:15.840 in block zero, being efficient, is that it's paradoxical because it allows us to get more

00:02:22.780 things done. I mean, these systems do work to help you do a lot more. But at the same time,

00:02:28.820 they cause us to feel busier and busier. When did you start noticing this paradox in your own life?

00:02:35.180 Well, I mean, for years, I wrote a column for the Guardian newspaper about psychology, productivity,

00:02:41.160 science of happiness, and all the rest of it. And one of the things I got to do there was indulge

00:02:45.920 my, at that point, lifelong interest in productivity systems, in sort of trying to find the technique

00:02:53.320 that would make me feel perfectly in control of everything so that I could handle anything that

00:02:59.320 might be thrown at me, you know, fulfill all the work ambitions I had while making plenty of time for

00:03:05.840 all the other things I wanted to do, and sort of never getting there, right? Because you're sort of

00:03:10.600 in this mode of constantly feeling like it's next week or next month or the next system that you

00:03:17.780 implement, or that you're going to wake up tomorrow with 10 times as much self-discipline

00:03:23.440 than you've ever demonstrated in your life before up to today. And so it's that sort of gradual process

00:03:30.180 of realizing that I wasn't going to get there that way. And that in the meantime, what happened was

00:03:37.680 I got busier. I mean, yeah, I did process more things. I did get more things done. But firstly,

00:03:44.780 I didn't get this kind of peace of mind, this sense of tranquility with respect to time.

00:03:49.840 And then secondly, they weren't necessarily the most important things. In fact, and I argue about,

00:03:54.200 I'll use in the book that, you know, there's a reason to believe that you're going to do more and more of

00:03:59.340 the least important things, the more you focus on just becoming more efficient and sort of productive

00:04:05.480 for its own sake. So that was a sort of slow realization. And then I talk also about having

00:04:11.680 this epiphany sitting on a park bench on a winter morning in Brooklyn, where I lived then, and just

00:04:18.020 sort of suddenly realizing like, oh, none of this is ever going to work. Like I'm never going to reach

00:04:23.220 this level of total control and, and sort of security with respect to time that I'm, that I'm

00:04:31.040 fighting for here. And how sort of liberating it was to see that I had been trying to do something that

00:04:37.460 is kind of, I think, inherently impossible for human beings to do.

00:04:42.240 And I've experienced the same thing you've experienced where I went through that. I think

00:04:45.100 every person, if you're like, if you're a modern human being living in liquid modernity,

00:04:50.160 hyper-individualistic, hyper-capitalist society, like that you, you go through a productivity phase.

00:04:55.740 I think everyone does that. It's a, it's a rite of passage at this point. And then, yeah,

00:04:59.300 you finally realize, man, none of this works. And so you're always looking for the next best thing.

00:05:03.920 And one of the cases you make in the book is that part of the problem that underlies all of

00:05:09.460 our frustrations with popular time management paradigms is that it causes us to think of ourselves

00:05:16.620 as limitless while ignoring the fact that we are finite beings. So how does thinking of ourselves

00:05:22.460 as limitless, how do you think that makes us miserable?

00:05:26.460 Great. Yeah, no, that's, that's exactly the sort of underlying thing I'm, I'm trying to get at.

00:05:31.480 I think that we are made deeply uncomfortable by all the ways in which we're limited, especially the

00:05:36.960 ways in which we're limited when it comes to time. We only have so much in a day. We only have so much

00:05:42.900 in a life. And we don't know how much that's going to be. We can only focus on one thing at a time.

00:05:48.100 And even more profoundly, I think we can't control, we can't be in control of how our time unfolds in

00:05:54.840 the way that we would like to be. In other words, you know, you, you launch into some creative project,

00:05:59.640 for example, you can't know it'll work out. You can't know you will not encounter insurmountable

00:06:05.280 obstacles. You can't know this all in advance. So we're sort of vulnerable in time in a way that I

00:06:11.180 think, and to time in a way that makes us really uncomfortable. And so we do what human beings

00:06:18.540 since the beginning of history have done when they feel uncomfortable about something, which is to

00:06:25.120 pursue methods of emotional avoidance, ways of not feeling the discomfort. And I think that time

00:06:32.300 management and productivity techniques, you know, used wrongly in the wrong spirit are absolutely an

00:06:37.840 example of this kind of emotional avoidance. They can fuel this illusion that you're en route to

00:06:46.160 this position of limitlessness, this kind of state of perfect optimization where you would never have

00:06:51.340 to make tough choices about what to spend your time on. You would never have to disappoint anybody who

00:06:56.200 might have any expectations of you. Any obligation you might feel or goal you might set, there'll be a way

00:07:03.360 to get that done too. Of course, it's never happening in the present moment because we are limited and

00:07:08.700 it's not actually possible, but you're sort of kept comfortable in a way by chasing this feeling that

00:07:16.420 it's going to happen and that you're almost there. And so I think, you know, all sorts of aspects of

00:07:22.840 human culture get drafted into this kind of emotional avoidance in many different domains, but productivity

00:07:28.700 culture is just one of them. And the one that I was particularly using, I guess, for many years for

00:07:36.780 just that kind of avoidance of the experience of reality, I guess.

00:07:42.880 And, you know, you go to philosophy a lot and as I was reading that section about this idea of

00:07:46.860 limitlessness and but we're finite beings, it reminded me of Kierkegaard. He said that was like the human

00:07:51.400 condition. We are the infinite and the finite combined in one. So, you know, humans have, unlike other

00:07:56.940 animals, humans have the capacity to think about eternity or forever. They can see lots of choices.

00:08:02.240 Animals, you know, they're not really thinking about too much. But the problem is, yeah, Kierkegaard

00:08:07.680 says that's the source of a lot of our anxiety or our angst. We want to do all this stuff, limitless,

00:08:12.980 but like we are finite beings. We have to figure out how to manage that paradox.

00:08:17.400 Right. That's exactly it. And I mean, you know, just to sort of bring Kierkegaard down to earth in a

00:08:24.100 sort of maybe disrespectful to Kierkegaard way, but yeah, it's like on the level of your daily

00:08:29.580 productivity, you can imagine an infinite number of things that you might want to do. You can feel

00:08:36.500 an infinite number of obligations or duties. You can, you know, set all sorts of visions for where you

00:08:43.860 want to be. And there's no limit to those things that happen in the, in the world of your consciousness,

00:08:47.500 but there's obviously very, very severe limits when it comes to your time, your stamina, all the rest

00:08:55.620 of it. And yeah, there's a sort of constant disconnect there. So I don't think that you can

00:09:00.700 ever really get away from that sort of anxious situation. I think that's something inherently

00:09:04.860 anxiety inducing about this. I think Kierkegaard said that too, but you can choose whether you're

00:09:11.260 going to try to sort of dull the pain completely and just end up wasting time as a result, or whether

00:09:17.420 you're going to make some effort to sort of lean in to that discomfort in the service of carrying out

00:09:23.740 some, some goals that, that you really care about. Yeah. I think what your book's trying to do is,

00:09:28.200 is trying to help readers embrace their finitude a bit more. Like don't discount the infinite,

00:09:34.700 but you have to like, you have to wrangle it a little bit and just realize you have, you have a limit

00:09:39.380 you have to work with. And I think what you're saying is a lot of time management techniques.

00:09:43.040 It encourages us to think that, oh, we can get more and more done as much as we want. We can

00:09:47.140 have it all. And you're saying, yeah, probably. Well, no, that's not going to happen.

00:09:51.720 Right. And I just want to sort of say something in defense of some of those techniques. I think a lot

00:09:55.140 of this is to do with the spirit in which you try to integrate them into your life. There are

00:10:00.380 certainly some time management gurus who are guilty of kind of promoting this notion that

00:10:04.760 full control and mastery over time in a way that humans, I think, can't have is, is on the cards.

00:10:14.000 But lots of these techniques are perfectly useful. If what, if all you're using them for is to kind

00:10:18.580 of organize your day a bit more, make slightly better choices between competing priorities.

00:10:24.100 The problem is that I think we, lots of us anyway, we sort of glom onto them as if we're going to

00:10:29.720 achieve some kind of salvation through them. And the salvation in question is actually, you know,

00:10:35.040 if it were real, it would involve somehow getting outside of reality, getting outside of the situation

00:10:40.540 in which we all inevitably are in.

00:10:43.700 And one of the things you do too, is you do some, some genealogy of our approach to time to figure

00:10:49.180 out what it is, like, how did we get this time management system or these systems in place,

00:10:53.680 this idea of time that makes us think we can control time. And you go back in history,

00:10:59.280 and this idea that we can manage time or control time is a relatively new idea. It's a, it's a very

00:11:06.580 modern idea. You go, if you go back to medieval serfs, they never would ever thought, they don't

00:11:12.100 want to cross their mind as time as a resource. Like, so how did, like, if you went back to your

00:11:16.400 great, great, great, whatever grandfather who was a serf in England, how do they think of time?

00:11:22.360 And how does that differ from how we think of time? And how did we get to where we are now?

00:11:26.100 I mean, yeah, I mean, it's not a straight linear story, because you certainly see

00:11:32.800 very modern ideas about time expressed in the ancient world. And on the other hand,

00:11:38.580 I think there are probably some indigenous cultures even today who have a very, an approach to time

00:11:44.280 that feels more like something that I'm talking about as belonging to pre-industrial

00:11:48.060 cultures. But it's just this whole incredibly basic idea that time is a thing. I mean, it's very

00:11:58.000 hard to express this. And in the book, I end up using this phrase, you know, thinking of time as

00:12:01.720 a thing, meaning as some kind of separate entity from yourself, not merely the medium in which your

00:12:09.580 life unfolds. But somehow, a resource to be maximized, or something you have to be careful

00:12:16.900 not to waste. I think whenever anybody today visualizes time in the context of work, say,

00:12:24.260 you know, do I have enough time to do these three things by Friday, you're thinking,

00:12:28.360 you're imagining a calendar or a yardstick or a clock face, this whole idea that time is this

00:12:34.380 objectified thing that you then have to deal with, or that can sort of hound you. None of that

00:12:40.940 would have arisen in the first place to a peasant in early medieval England. I think they would,

00:12:46.980 we've got some reason to believe from the historical record, they would have just,

00:12:53.640 they would have lived in what anthropologists call task orientation, right? This idea that the

00:12:57.940 rhythms of life just emerge from the things that you're doing in your life and in your work,

00:13:02.600 that it's not like you make a schedule, and you can decide where to slot things in. It's like the

00:13:07.940 cows need milking when they need milking. And the harvest needs harvesting when it's ready to be

00:13:13.400 harvested. And a productivity guru who arrived on a medieval farm and said, look, it's really useful to

00:13:20.220 batch your tasks. So why don't you do all the milking of the cows for the month today to get it out of

00:13:26.220 the way? Obviously, that's absolutely absurd. You're too yoked into nature and the rhythms of

00:13:32.000 reality to make that kind of decision, to have that kind of dictatorial control over time. And I think

00:13:39.740 most of us have some experience of this today. It's just not the norm anymore. Anyone who has been

00:13:45.440 the parent of a very small child, a newborn, I think, has experienced being in that world where

00:13:50.700 things just happen. The baby needs to be fed when it needs to be fed, and diapers need to be changed

00:13:55.800 when they need to be changed. It's not something you can ever hope, at least at the beginning,

00:13:59.400 to schedule. And I think that arises in lots of other contexts as well. So all I really wanted

00:14:03.800 to do here was to just say, hey, let's at least remember that our main way of relating to time

00:14:11.600 today is not the only option. It is historically contingent. It is something we can sort of hope

00:14:17.840 to get outside of at least for some hours of the day or some weeks of the year, which is not the same

00:14:23.920 as saying. I think we should live like medieval peasants because that is a terrible, terrible life 1.00

00:14:27.920 in pretty much every other respect.

00:14:30.320 And yeah, and this transition to thinking of time as a resource, like I said, it sort of went through

00:14:34.720 different cycles. Like monks were involved, then capitalism in 19th century where we shifted from

00:14:40.880 task-oriented work to you're going to work by the hour. And then now we're kind of stuck with that.

00:14:46.380 But what is it about thinking of time as a resource, right? As opposed to thinking of time as just being,

00:14:52.100 I don't know, not even like it's not something to be used. It just is. How does thinking of time

00:14:57.800 as a resource, how does that make us miserable, you think?

00:15:01.700 Well, I mean, firstly, caveat, I think it's probably essential to almost all the achievements

00:15:07.240 of the modern world. So I don't think it's something we can just get rid of. But I think

00:15:10.900 it does have this strong set of problems as well. And, you know, there are a number of different

00:15:17.560 ones, but the sort of fundamental one, I think, is just that this instrumental approach to time,

00:15:23.400 this idea that you are in a use relationship with time, and you're always on some level asking,

00:15:28.860 am I making the best use of my time? Or, you know, sometimes it's more in certain times in history

00:15:36.040 as well, you know, employers asking how to get the best use of time out of their employees,

00:15:39.780 whatever. It broadly has this effect of postponing the value of life, right? It makes everything you're

00:15:49.320 doing now valuable solely in terms of what it's leading up to. And it makes that, this is a thing

00:15:59.680 that makes it very, very difficult to sort of extract a sense of meaning from life in the present,

00:16:03.700 because you've always got, you know, an eye on the future to the moment when this is all going to

00:16:08.440 deliver or fail to deliver in some future accomplishment, which of course never happens

00:16:13.480 because the future remains in the future. Lots of other, you know, different ways in which it,

00:16:19.740 in which this causes problems. But I think it leads overall to the sense that you're in a kind of a

00:16:24.360 struggle with time, and you've got to try to subdue it somehow, got to try to get on top of it or out

00:16:31.300 front of it, whatever spatial metaphor you want to use. And the problem is that's always going to be

00:16:39.100 a recipe for a kind of never-ending anxiety and stress, because actually you're not really relating

00:16:48.080 to time, you're relating to a certain set of ideas about time. And the problem with declaring war on

00:16:53.800 time is that eventually time is always going to win that struggle. And it just sort of keeps going

00:17:02.540 on regardless, no matter what you do with it, if that makes sense.

00:17:06.180 No, that makes sense. And I really related this idea of, you know, treating time as a resource

00:17:10.420 causes you to make, treat time as an instrument. And because a lot of time management is all about

00:17:16.380 planning for the future. And I think if you've grown up in any Western country, you're kind of set on to

00:17:23.240 this. I mean, it's like in the culture, it just seeps into you. Like you go to, like the idea is

00:17:27.360 you, you got to get good grades in high school so you can get to a good college. And then you got to

00:17:32.760 get in a good college so you can get the good job. And then you got to get a good job so you can,

00:17:36.560 you know, be an attractive mate and get a good house. So it's, you're never, you're always doing

00:17:41.000 something for something else and you're never, and it just feels like, it's like a never-ending,

00:17:45.060 it's like the rat race. It's a never-ending conveyor belt. And it just makes you feel terrible.

00:17:49.200 And then you always reach that point. It's like, once you achieve all those things,

00:17:51.900 it's like, all right, what now? What do I do now? Like what, what happens now?

00:17:56.380 Yeah, completely. And of course we do need to do those things. I would be a complete hypocrite

00:18:00.540 if I claimed that I sort of, you know, don't live many swathes of my life with a strong focus on 0.87

00:18:08.100 the future and, and instrumentalizing the present moment. But there's two things. Firstly,

00:18:13.380 it doesn't need to be the sole focus that you take to any moment of experience, I don't think.

00:18:19.840 And secondly, it's very useful, I argue in the book, to try to make sure that there is something

00:18:25.560 in your life, some activity, some, some pastime that is just for itself alone, that, that is,

00:18:33.800 that, that resists that instrumentalization. You know, these are things we tend to think of as,

00:18:39.900 as hobbies, which is a sort of, in many, in many circles, I think is a sort of a slightly embarrassing,

00:18:45.860 cringe-making kind of idea to deliberately cultivate a hobby, which has no purpose other

00:18:52.160 than itself. But I think it's cringe-making because it's so antithetical to the, to the

00:18:57.160 prevailing message of the culture, right? Which is that nothing is valuable unless it is for some

00:19:02.060 future, some future purpose, preferably financial profit. So yeah, I think it's just something to pay

00:19:08.800 attention to and make sure you don't eliminate entirely from, from, from a life.

00:19:12.760 And what's sad and interesting is that we've even instrumentalized hobbies. And it used to be,

00:19:18.280 you could have a hobby and people like, oh yeah, you build model trains. That's fine. But now it's

00:19:22.100 like, well, if you're going to build model trains, you've got to like have a social media account

00:19:25.900 where you're a model trained influencer. It has to be a side hustle. You can't just,

00:19:31.100 you can't just have model trains just because you enjoy it.

00:19:34.400 Right. Yeah. Side hustles. Side hustles are cool. Hobbies are uncool.

00:19:37.940 And I think there's a reason for that. And so, you know, one, one way around that,

00:19:42.080 which I certainly do in my life is to, is to do some, find something that you enjoy that

00:19:46.480 you're not very good at. I really enjoy hammering out various sort of piano rock songs on the

00:19:53.120 keyboard that I have here, but I tell you, I'm not good at it. I would not, uh, I would

00:19:58.280 not perform for love or money. And I certainly wouldn't get any money for performing. That's

00:20:03.380 a useful thing in a way because there's no pressure there. There's no attempt to think

00:20:08.120 that I might one day instrumentalize it. And obviously what I do professionally writing

00:20:13.480 is absolutely different from that. It's really hard to not think about writing with one eye

00:20:18.460 to, well, is this going to be a huge success? Is this book going to sell a lot of copies?

00:20:22.120 I'm like, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So good to have something that you, that you suck 0.99

00:20:25.900 at, but that you find enjoyment in. 0.83

00:20:28.140 There's a word for this type of activity. It's a Greek word you threw in the book. I can't

00:20:31.000 remember it. It starts with an A. There's like, there's telos activities.

00:20:34.960 Yeah. This atelic activity, it's Greek in a sense. It's really, it's essentially coined

00:20:40.020 by a contemporary philosopher, Kieran Satia. But what he means, as I understand it, is an

00:20:44.440 activity that is not defined by its telos, atelic. It's just something you do for itself

00:20:50.200 alone. Hiking is the other example I talk about at length in the book. If you want to

00:20:54.560 get more efficient at hiking where, you know, you drive the car somewhere and then you walk

00:20:59.220 in a loop or you walk to a point and turn around again, the most efficient way to do

00:21:02.900 a hike is just not to go. Then you're back at the starting point immediately. So doing

00:21:08.120 that for some future purpose, you know, that's not a perfect point because maybe you get more

00:21:13.600 physically fit through hiking or you update your social media account with great pictures

00:21:17.600 from your hikes. But basically, hiking is a thing, is an atelic activity par excellence

00:21:22.780 really, because, you know, you just do it. You're not leading up to something. There's not going

00:21:26.960 to come a time when you say, I have completed all the hiking I planned to do in my life.

00:21:31.800 It just is, it resists all of those, all of those kind of pressures.

00:21:36.340 Yeah. So that's a way to rebel against our instrumental culture. Just do something because

00:21:40.540 you enjoy and that will bring you happiness. And it's like the happiness is the side effect.

00:21:45.460 That's another thing people can get into like, well, I read this study. If you have a hobby,

00:21:49.180 it will make me happier. And by being happier, I'll be more productive and blah, blah, blah.

00:21:52.960 You can't go down there. Just like, no, just play piano, because you like to hammer out

00:21:57.860 piano rock tunes. That's it. That's it.

00:22:00.400 Right, right. And yeah, that's just instrumentalization again, right? Chasing happiness.

00:22:04.480 I mean, you know, we're made to do this. I don't think that people should feel bad about this sort

00:22:09.380 of natural tendency towards achieving future goals. I just think consciousness of what's going on can be

00:22:16.880 really helpful because then it makes you like, nobody wants to spend their whole life

00:22:20.880 only waiting for the moment on their deathbed where they get to say like, oh, that was enjoyable

00:22:27.640 in hindsight, right? Nobody wants that. So once you see that that's part of what you're doing,

00:22:32.560 I think it becomes pretty natural to ease up on that focus a bit.

00:22:36.800 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:22:38.780 And now back to the show. Yeah. And you quote Richard Rohr a lot. We've had him in the podcast

00:22:46.400 and he has that idea is that, you know, there's a first half of your life where you're kind of doing

00:22:50.100 the instrumental stuff. Like you're trying to build a career, you're trying to do those things,

00:22:53.240 but he said at a certain point, and this can happen at any time in your, in the lifespan,

00:22:57.520 you've got to like move beyond that and kind of just enjoy life for what it is. And he says,

00:23:02.840 it's a, it's a hard process. It's not, doesn't something you can't force. It just kind of happens.

00:23:07.120 Yeah. I mean, you get this, this sort of idea. I love Richard Rohr's work. I think he is influenced

00:23:13.420 by Jung, right? And it is, and that's a Jungian notion as well, that there's a sort of first half

00:23:18.700 and a second half of adult life and that certain ways of being, perhaps even certain forms of

00:23:24.800 productivity geekhood are maybe appropriate to young adulthood up to a point, but then they're

00:23:30.600 going to sort of stop being the answer if they ever are the answer. And at that point,

00:23:36.140 you sort of do need to come up with a different way of thinking one that isn't entirely targeted on,

00:23:44.280 on where you're going. I mean, something people have said about this book in a sort of semi-critical

00:23:49.040 way, which I'm, I'm receptive to is that it's a sort of a bit of a midlife book, you know, whether I,

00:23:56.480 I'm not sure I could have written it if I was in my twenties. I've tried very hard not to make it

00:24:02.000 only appropriate to people in midlife. And I, and I don't think it is, but I think, you know,

00:24:06.440 there are certain things you, you come to see just by being around long enough that certain methods and

00:24:14.220 things you thought might work, like eventually that you, it's like, Oh, I'm never going to get to

00:24:19.300 this summit that is implied in, in all these techniques that I'm, that I'm pursuing. And if

00:24:24.460 I'm not going to get to it, maybe it's time to think about a different approach.

00:24:27.860 So let's go back to this idea of where you discovered the more efficient you got at doing

00:24:33.180 stuff. You felt like you're just, you started doing more stuff. And what's interesting, you know,

00:24:38.260 half a century ago, there was economists, I think Maynard Keyes made this predictions like, Oh,

00:24:42.060 we'd only be working a few hours a week because we'd be so productive and efficient, but people are

00:24:47.180 still working 40 hours a week or more. So what's going on there? Like, why is it that we're getting

00:24:51.880 more done than ever? We're more productive than ever, but we just feel like we have to work more

00:24:58.780 to do more. Yeah. It's completely extraordinary, especially the way now that, you know,

00:25:04.360 being incredibly successful in some professional sector is likely to leave you more busy than if

00:25:10.100 you weren't extremely successful. And you look at sort of almost the whole of history, the whole point

00:25:15.200 of being wealthy was so you could, you know, go hunting and have banquets or something, you know,

00:25:18.840 so you didn't have to didn't have to work all the time. And now that's sort of turned on its on its

00:25:23.280 head. There are a huge number of different factors here, macroeconomic, social, cultural issues. But I

00:25:30.080 think a very simple part of what we're talking about here is just that if you focus on making any system

00:25:38.080 such as, you know, your own personal productivity, any system more efficient, in the absence of some

00:25:44.220 other guiding value, just like efficiency for its own sake, then all else being equal, you're going

00:25:49.820 to end up being busier and busier on less meaningful stuff, because you just sort of create capacity that

00:26:00.300 is then naturally filled by the pressures of the world, the pressures of capitalism, pressures of

00:26:04.600 other people. You know, if you get really, really good at processing your email, as I know from bitter

00:26:09.140 experience, you just get lots more email, because you reply to things and generate replies to those

00:26:14.240 replies, and etc, etc. You know, there's this phrase, this saying, if you want to get something

00:26:19.360 done, ask a busy person, the idea, if you're really good at processing your work, you're going to get

00:26:24.540 more work, or take on more work. If you're a sort of independent person who gets to independently

00:26:28.940 employed person who gets to choose, you're still going to choose to do more and more and more.

00:26:32.260 And, you know, it's exactly like when they widen freeways to try to ease congestion by they add

00:26:39.980 another lane to freeway, and then it makes the that route more appealing to drivers. So more drivers

00:26:46.480 are incentivized to use it, and the congestion returns to what it was before you get this, this

00:26:52.340 sort of seems to work in all sorts of domains of life, this idea that just sort of becoming more

00:26:57.920 productive will, will invite further inputs into the system. And the other thing I found was that,

00:27:04.360 you know, they're less meaningful inputs, because they don't have to clear this hurdle. Someone

00:27:08.560 says to you, can you do this? And you don't think to yourself, well, what am I going to neglect in

00:27:13.380 favor of this? You think, oh, just through becoming more efficient, I'll be able to do it all. And so you

00:27:17.960 gradually end up taking on more and more and more things that you probably shouldn't take on until the 0.77

00:27:22.080 system is full of junk.

00:27:24.000 And how do you avoid that? Is it just a matter of having, like, in this instance, 0.98

00:27:27.920 having a telos, like having, like, this is, here's what I'm about. And if this task doesn't

00:27:32.820 fulfill that, what I'm about, then that it's not coming on?

00:27:36.920 I think that's a big part of it. Obviously, to the extent that this is a social and cultural wide

00:27:42.480 problem, it probably has to be addressed at a policy level too. But yeah, I think on a personal

00:27:47.500 level, you can just see that, you know, you can bring yourself to see that, that you are not,

00:27:54.100 like, to understand that you're just not going to get everything done. Like, you are in a situation

00:27:59.700 where systematically, it's going to feel like there's more that really matters than you have

00:28:04.620 the capacity to do. That this is built into the system. It's not because you're insufficiently

00:28:10.360 self-disciplined, or you haven't found the right techniques yet, or something like that. And in that

00:28:14.880 situation, once you sort of internalize that understanding, it's actually quite liberating,

00:28:20.440 because you can just sort of give up in a way. It's a certain kind of surrender or defeat,

00:28:25.660 you know, where you see that something you were trying to do was just impossible. But it's a

00:28:31.360 defeat that is the prelude to then being able to act with a much clearer head and more undiluted

00:28:37.400 energy and attention on a handful of things that matter, because you're no longer attempting to do

00:28:44.560 an impossible amount of things. You've sort of seen why it is that that is an impossible quest.

00:28:51.360 It frees you up to focus on more things that do matter. And I think, you know, very simple

00:28:57.220 strategies here include this, you know, I spent a lot of my time as a productivity geek,

00:29:04.240 you know, trying to clear the decks, trying to get to this situation where I would have dealt with all

00:29:08.000 the little stuff. And I would have then these notional expanses of focus and time.

00:29:14.700 And it took me a long time to see that actually, like, you can't clear the decks, because clearing

00:29:18.600 the decks generates more work, and more things come into the onto the decks. And we live in a world

00:29:22.620 of infinite stuff to come onto your decks anyway. So at the most, you can spend a couple of hours at

00:29:29.520 the end of the day clearing the decks, sure, but you just at some point have to spend the first few

00:29:34.320 hours on the thing you care about the most, even though the decks aren't clear. And that is anxiety

00:29:40.340 inducing. It's uncomfortable, but I think it's the only way.

00:29:43.540 Yeah, I think in one of your emails, you had this idea, instead of thinking of your to do list as a

00:29:47.860 bucket that you can empty, you just got to think of it as a river. It's just constantly, stuff's

00:29:52.240 constantly going to be flowing by and you just have to decide, is this what I'm going to spend my

00:29:56.920 time on the day or not? And maybe yes, but probably maybe you shouldn't be spending time on that.

00:30:01.900 And the thing is, that was always true anyway, right? It's not like you're suddenly deciding

00:30:06.260 to let a bunch of people down. The point is, this is baked into the situation. There's all

00:30:11.700 sorts of things that would have value if you did them that you're never going to do. So this is

00:30:15.460 about being conscious of that situation so that you get to call the shots about which of the things

00:30:21.160 you do do. Otherwise, in the words of workplace consultant Jim Benson, who I quote in the book,

00:30:25.880 you just become a limitless reservoir for other people's demands and expectations. Because if

00:30:32.000 you're not making the decision about what to neglect in a situation where something must be neglected by

00:30:37.760 definition, then somebody else is going to make that decision and they're going to make it in their

00:30:42.040 interests.

00:30:43.240 And related to this idea of increased efficiency just encourages more stuff to be done, because

00:30:50.700 that's what the system is designed for do. It's just getting stuff done. So it's going to

00:30:54.240 continually want more stuff to do, is this idea of increased convenience makes us feel miserable,

00:31:01.360 which is counterintuitive. You think, well, if things are more convenient, if I can get stuff sent

00:31:05.480 to my door directly from Amazon in a day, that should make my life easier. But you make this case,

00:31:10.900 yeah, maybe, but also maybe not.

00:31:14.540 Right. I mean, convenience is such a great example of the perils of efficiency pursued for its own sake,

00:31:20.320 because, yeah, I mean, I think in some sense, all the efficiencies of modern technology absolutely

00:31:26.620 have made life easier. The question is whether easier is always what we want when trying to build

00:31:32.740 the most valuable life. So, you know, a very simple example of that is, yeah, if you can,

00:31:39.880 there's a natural tendency, if you can watch movies streaming at home and get food delivered to your

00:31:46.560 door without ever speaking to a human being and do all the rest of this stuff, like that's easier

00:31:51.000 than, than going out, meeting people or phoning a restaurant, talking to a human being. It's easier,

00:31:58.020 but it sort of all adds up to something being taken out of, of life, which are these kind of rough edges

00:32:04.820 and textures where you do have to speak to people. And as a result, you sort of, it's actually quite,

00:32:09.760 it's important for your wellbeing to have a few conversations with human beings in the course of

00:32:14.420 your day. I also give the example of, you know, I'm in the UK right now, but for a long time I've

00:32:19.640 lived in the US with lots of family in the UK, always leaving it too late to send them a birthday

00:32:25.740 card on time. So I would end up using these online services where you put the card together with a

00:32:29.960 photo and a message, and then it prints it and mails it locally at the other end. And like everyone

00:32:35.840 involved in that process knows that that's not quite the same, like that I've used convenience there and

00:32:40.460 something is gone from the, from the transaction. That if I had gone to the effort of planning with

00:32:48.200 enough force, enough forethought to have enough time, you know, buy a card, write in it, mail it,

00:32:53.160 that would mean more to the recipient because actually something is lost in making that process

00:32:59.600 really smooth and, and, and easy. So, you know, again and again, there are many examples of this,

00:33:04.200 you know, I think, yeah, it makes life smoother, but do you want a smooth life? I mean,

00:33:09.080 to some extent you do, but maybe not a perfectly smooth one.

00:33:11.880 Well, yeah, the Silicon Valley people who come with these apps that make life convenient,

00:33:16.000 they call that those pain points friction and their whole goal is to eliminate friction.

00:33:20.500 And what you're saying is no, actually friction can be good because it allows you to talk to the,

00:33:25.340 the clerk and you might have a conversation that you need that. And it's, I mean, yeah,

00:33:30.120 I don't think you're a smooth life would be boring. So why, why eliminate it? Like why eliminate

00:33:35.900 friction? Right. And you're just sort of, also, you're just sort of handing the decision about

00:33:40.200 what kind of experiences you want in your life to a, other people in Silicon Valley designing this

00:33:48.760 technology and be your sort of lowest impulses in a way, right? The impulse to not put in the effort

00:33:56.940 to do something. And as philosophers since, you know, ancient times have understood that

00:34:03.320 following your impulse all the time is it is its own kind of enslavement in a way it's its own kind

00:34:08.640 of losing loss of autonomy. So yeah, just like if you can consciously integrate a few of these

00:34:15.360 technologies into your life, I don't certainly don't think people should like actively pursue only

00:34:19.980 inconvenience at all points, but like that it's just like handing the decision-making to

00:34:26.820 forces that do not have your best interests at heart.

00:34:30.100 So we've been talking kind of about small ways that you can embrace finitude. So you're,

00:34:34.500 you don't feel so angst ridden, but then you also talk about some, like, there's like a metacognition

00:34:39.520 things you can do to help you think about time differently and your relation to time differently.

00:34:45.320 If you do it and you meditate on it, if you do these sort of like, what do we call them? Mind,

00:34:50.660 I don't know, mind games, we'll call them mind games. It can help you think about your time

00:34:53.960 differently. You can actually be really free and you can just totally shift the paradigm.

00:34:57.100 And one, there's two things I want to talk about. First is Heidegger's concept of time. And there's

00:35:02.220 a reason why I saved Heidegger for last because this guy, it's hard to understand this guy,

00:35:06.220 but I know you're not gonna be able to like exactly explain what Heidegger meant. And maybe we don't

00:35:11.280 even know what Heidegger meant. But like, what's Heidegger's concept of time? And like,

00:35:16.260 how can that or like your interpretation of what he thinks of time? And how can that change? Or

00:35:21.520 how does that change your relation to time? Yeah, Heidegger is not easy. And I'm just going

00:35:26.680 to issue as I always do the caveat that I don't claim that my interpretation is canonical or that

00:35:31.620 somebody else wouldn't want to offer a very different one. But my understanding of what Heidegger

00:35:38.740 is saying is really something that points again to this idea that we were discussing in the context

00:35:43.980 of medieval peasants, this idea that time need not be seen and is perhaps not best seen as this

00:35:51.700 thing that is separate from us. That in a sense, our time and the fact that our time is finite,

00:35:58.120 it's not just like one of the traits that defines a human being. It is the fundamental one.

00:36:03.300 Before we can ask any question about what we should do with our lives or how we should do it,

00:36:08.920 we already find ourselves in this finite stretch of time, being born forward on the river of time.

00:36:17.660 Perhaps we could say, as I think he sort of means too, that we just sort of are this stretch of time.

00:36:23.280 It's so fundamental that there isn't really a separation. We just are a short stretch of time

00:36:27.680 being born forward towards death. We don't know when it's coming. Every choice we make is a choice

00:36:32.980 to not do other things, a million other things with that moment, that hour, that week. And that

00:36:40.220 there is a kind of choice that you have to make between doing all sorts of things to try to deny

00:36:47.340 this feeling and not confront it and feel like you're not in this situation of being born forward

00:36:54.260 towards death in a stretch of finite time or facing up to it, facing up to the anxiety that

00:37:00.740 that inevitably brings, but sort of taking seriously the stakes of your time and each moment of your

00:37:08.900 time and what you do with your time. And so I think that that's just a very useful shift to get into a

00:37:16.400 little bit. I certainly don't claim that I've sort of done it perfectly, but I do think that there is

00:37:22.100 something central to this idea of just seeing our situation for what it is and seeing how much effort

00:37:28.680 we put into denying that our situation is what it is. And it's not about, I don't think it's about

00:37:34.780 spending your life in this sort of horrified awareness of death. I don't think it's really

00:37:39.100 about death in that sense. I think it's just about one major consequence of the fact that we die,

00:37:45.620 which is that our time is finite and just sort of letting the implications of that

00:37:51.860 course through your veins a bit to the point where you stop acting and making decisions as if

00:37:59.540 you had all the time in the world. Not necessarily doing, you know, trying really hard to do extraordinary

00:38:07.040 things with every minute of the day, but just living in a sort of more authentic relationship to

00:38:11.720 where you actually are. This section reminded me for some reason, I haven't thought about this movie

00:38:17.880 in years, but have you seen Tombstone? I haven't, I'm afraid. Okay. It's a great movie. It's the best

00:38:24.420 movie about Wyatt Earp. The Wyatt Earp movie with Kevin Costner is really boring. I think so.

00:38:29.540 This one, Tombstone, it's a lot of fun. It's got Val Kilmer, Kurt Russell, and there's this scene,

00:38:34.700 you know, Val Kilmer plays Doc Holliday. He's about to die. And he asked Wyatt Earp, it's like,

00:38:39.760 what did you ever want? And then Wyatt Earp says, just to live a normal life.

00:38:45.060 And Doc Holliday said, there's no normal life, Wyatt. It's just life. Get on with it.

00:38:51.120 Yeah. So I think we had some Heidegger in Tombstone.

00:38:55.960 Yeah. No, I think there's a, yeah, I can see the connection. I must watch that movie.

00:39:00.640 Yeah. Or you can at least watch the scene. You can look it up on YouTube. So the final thing

00:39:04.860 you do is you talk about, it's like a mind, a meditation you have to do, it's called cosmic

00:39:10.120 insignificance therapy. How can this help us feel better about our time management or have a more

00:39:18.400 humane approach towards time management? I mean, this is my slightly facetious label for the process

00:39:25.040 of really putting some effort into imagining, understanding how tiny and insignificant,

00:39:32.380 yes, you are considered, not you personally, you know, how insignificant we are considered

00:39:38.020 in the sort of expanse of the history and the future of the cosmos. I think there's something

00:39:46.460 just at the first glance, incredibly freeing about understanding that the way you get sort

00:39:53.600 of paralyzed by the seeming significance of choices you make, it can be very relaxing right

00:40:00.480 away. And I think motivating to understand that, you know, a thousand years from now, a hundred

00:40:05.940 years from now, almost nothing you decide is going to matter in any way that can actually

00:40:12.060 be an invitation to just sort of take some risks and live boldly and do some things that you wanted

00:40:18.560 to do without being so anxious about their impact. I also think that it's a really useful way to

00:40:27.060 consider and reconsider the definition of a meaningful life that you're sort of implicitly

00:40:32.160 carrying with you when you assess your own life and try to build a meaningful life. The obvious

00:40:37.540 criticism of this approach, I get it, right, is that it's just like, well, if everything's so

00:40:41.780 point, if we're all so insignificant, why do anything? It's all pointless. But I just don't

00:40:46.420 think that that follows. I write in the book about the work of a philosopher, Ido Landau,

00:40:50.820 who points out that the person who says, well, nothing I do is going to have counted for anything

00:40:56.240 in a thousand years' time, or probably won't have, so why do anything? They are invoking,

00:41:02.520 whether they recognize it or not, a definition of a meaningful life that is set, where the bar is set

00:41:08.780 so high that they would have to be superhuman to meet it. They would have to manage to, if not be

00:41:16.220 superhuman, then at least reach the level of the kind of person who occurs once in several hundred

00:41:22.540 years, a Shakespeare or a Tolstoy or a Michelangelo. And that we should question whether we really want

00:41:29.860 to be going around with this kind of definition of what makes it worth doing things and what is

00:41:35.920 meaningful. We should consider that there are all sorts of kind of ordinary seeming things that

00:41:43.020 could absolutely count as the content of a meaningful life that, you know, do you really

00:41:49.540 want to say that working for an organization that makes your small neighborhood a little more

00:41:56.580 beautiful or a little friendlier, that that was pointless because it didn't affect the whole planet

00:42:01.720 forever, or that caring for an elderly relative who needs that at that point in their lives is kind

00:42:08.820 of pointless because, you know, the, it doesn't, you didn't put a dent in the universe. I think that

00:42:14.900 most of us intuitively know that we don't want that kind of definition of what counts as a meaningful

00:42:20.100 life. And we do want to remember that ordinary things can be, can be meaningful or, you know,

00:42:26.060 on the level, I think about this book, like if it affects a few people positively in my generation,

00:42:30.820 that's great. It should not be the measure of a book that you write that, um, in, uh, you know,

00:42:37.460 hundreds and hundreds of years time, people are celebrating it. Like that's just why adopt a level

00:42:43.840 of a definition of meaning that, uh, sort of systematically puts almost everything that we

00:42:48.800 do as humans on the wrong side of it. Well, Kierkegaard talks about that. He has that quote,

00:42:53.560 it's like the ambitious man whose slogan is either Caesar or nothing. Right. And then like,

00:42:58.200 he doesn't become Caesar and he just becomes, he just, he's in despair. He's like, well,

00:43:01.580 nothing matters. And like Kierkegaard is like, that's dumb. Like don't do that. That's, that's 1.00

00:43:05.980 stupid. Right. And yeah, and this, this, and this chapter reminded me, uh, my great grandfather 1.00

00:43:11.500 in his memoir at the end of it, he wrote this like in the fifties or sixties, he put the, at the end

00:43:15.900 of his memoir, a poem called, there is no indispensable man. I'll link to it, but it's, it's the same

00:43:21.220 sort of thing. It's like, you know, you come into this world, you might make a big splash,

00:43:26.240 but when you leave it, you're not going to leave much behind, but that's, that's okay.

00:43:30.240 Like it's, for some reason I find it ennobling. It's like, yeah, I'm going to take risks. I'm

00:43:33.820 going to do just find meaning in my mundane everyday life. That's, that's, that's, that's,

00:43:39.200 that's okay. It's probably the best we can do. Right. And I really don't think it's a

00:43:43.420 council of despair, right? I don't think it means that you have to have a less meaningful life.

00:43:47.740 I don't think it means you can't do extraordinary things that, or, you know, things that will lead

00:43:53.660 to achieving fame and fortune. I think that's all great. I just think that when you're considering,

00:43:59.900 you know, the ways you're spending your life, that it shouldn't be the, the criterion should

00:44:06.280 not be something sort of, that is kind of superhuman in, in that regard. If, if you do

00:44:13.720 something that counts and it gets you a lot of fame and fortune, great. I'm not against that at all,

00:44:18.060 but don't use that as let alone these kind of even bigger kind of cosmic level kinds of

00:44:25.000 definitions of meaning. Don't use all that to, to define what counts as meaningful, follow something

00:44:29.840 more human. And then, you know, if it's successful, maybe, maybe fame and fortune will follow.

00:44:36.420 And the idea is you can apply this to your to-do list. Like don't think you have to like have on

00:44:39.940 your bucket list, right? A New York times bestselling novel. If that happens great, but you know,

00:44:46.140 write the book that you've been wanting to write for a long time, even if it's crappy. And even if

00:44:51.020 no one ever reads it, just write the book. Right. Yeah. I mean, if it matters, it matters.

00:44:57.260 It shouldn't need to matter on a level that is sort of something that's entirely beyond human

00:45:01.660 control or your control. Right. Exactly. Well, Oliver, this has been a great conversation.

00:45:05.560 I've had a lot of fun. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:45:09.040 You can pick up the book anywhere you would expect to be able to pick up books. And then my

00:45:12.740 website is oliverberkman.com, where you can also subscribe to my email newsletter,

00:45:17.620 which I call The Imperfectionist. Fantastic. Well, Oliver Berkman,

00:45:20.320 thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. I've really enjoyed it.

00:45:23.660 So when I was talking to Oliver about cosmic insignificance therapy, I mentioned a poem

00:45:28.040 called There Is No Indispensable Man that my great-grandfather, William M. Hearst,

00:45:32.120 included at the very end of his memoirs that he published shortly before he died.

00:45:35.660 I also learned that General Dwight D. Eisenhower carried a copy of this poem in his pocket at all times.

00:45:39.760 I'm guessing it was his way of doing some cosmic insignificance therapy. So for your enjoyment

00:45:44.880 and meditation, here's the poem, There Is No Indispensable Man.

00:45:49.240 Sometime when you're feeling important, sometime when your ego's in bloom, sometime when you take

00:45:53.980 it for granted, you're the best qualified in the room. Sometime when you feel that you're going,

00:45:58.600 would leave an unfillable hole, just follow these simple instructions and see how they humble your

00:46:03.440 soul. Take a bucket and fill it with water. Put your hand in it up to the wrist. Pull it out and the

00:46:08.600 hole that's remaining is a measure of how much will be missed. You can splash all you wish when

00:46:13.180 you enter. You may stir up the water galore, but stop and you'll find that in no time, it looks quite

00:46:19.000 the same as before. The moral of this quaint example is to do just the best you can. Be proud of

00:46:24.600 yourself, but remember, there's no indispensable man. My yesterday was Oliver Berkman. He's the author

00:46:31.020 of the book, 4,000 Weeks. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more

00:46:35.000 information about his work at his website, oliverberkman.com. Also check out our show

00:46:38.420 notes at awim.is slash 4,000 Weeks, where you can find links to resources. We can delve deeper into

00:46:42.580 this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the A1 Podcast. Make sure to check out our

00:46:53.700 website at artofmanless.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:46:57.160 written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free

00:47:00.180 episodes of the A1 Podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com,

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00:47:34.640 you

The Art of Manliness - October 18, 2021

Time Management for Mortals

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