Time Management for Mortals
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
194.1504
Summary
In his new book, 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Berkman argues that a philosophy of time management that is more realistic and more humane is the best way to make the most of the average human lifespan. He explains why engaging in efficiency for its own sake only creates more stuff to do and why recognizing you can never clear the decks of your daily tasks nor get everything done can actually help you focus on the things that matter most.
Transcript
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
00:01:43.640
All right. Oliver Berkman, welcome to the show.
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
00:10:43.700
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
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
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
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
00:22:00.400
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
00:27:24.000
And how do you avoid that? Is it just a matter of having, like, in this instance,
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
00:30:43.240
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,
00:31:14.540
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
00:43:05.980
stupid. Right. And yeah, and this, this, and this chapter reminded me, uh, my great grandfather
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,
00:47:03.900
sign up, use code MANLYS at checkout for a free month trial. Once you're signed up,
00:47:07.060
download the Stitcher app in Android or iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of
00:47:10.560
the A1 Podcast. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us
00:47:14.120
a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you.
00:47:17.620
Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think will get something out
00:47:20.740
of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay,
00:47:23.900
reminding you to not only listen to the A1 Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.