Taking Risks, Time Management, and Leading a Productive Life, with Oliver Burkeman ｜ Ep. 285
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 44 minutes
Words per Minute
192.80814
Summary
If you are lucky, that s your average lifespan. When we put it into those terms, life feels pretty short. So how are you spending those precious weeks? Are you using your time wisely? Journalist and author of 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Berkman joins us today to advise on how to make the most of our finite time on this planet.
Transcript
00:00:08.560
Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
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Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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If you are lucky, that's your average lifespan.
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It seems like a good use of our time right now.
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all the things that you talk about in your book,
00:36:23.540
have chosen those difficulties and yet they are
00:36:27.200
absolutely crucial in the end right they're part of
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maturing they're part of they you you grow as a
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result of that kind of challenge so it's not even
00:36:38.700
relationships that flounder because one person just
00:36:44.500
themselves in any way whatsoever and there's sort
00:36:47.320
of no they're there in those in those relationships so
00:36:50.740
even some of the bad bits are good bits and we're just
00:36:53.300
totally not set up psychologically to to go in that
00:37:00.160
difficulties that are good for us um we don't like
00:37:08.920
relationship advice relate to our limited finite time
00:37:12.680
here on earth I'm still a bit surprised to hear that I
00:37:15.780
ever am giving relationship advice it seems so it seems
00:37:18.480
so strange but that's the only bit of relationship advice
00:37:21.260
that's true that is the only but I thought it was
00:37:23.320
interesting the um it relates to that because because all
00:37:29.380
of these things we're talking about only occur because we
00:37:33.580
have a short amount of time right if we had either
00:37:35.700
thousands of years of life or you know hypothetically
00:37:40.320
infinite lives um you would never that would be terrible
00:37:44.440
in certain ways I think but but you would never have to
00:37:47.620
face these decisions you you could you could like spend
00:37:50.180
a hundred years in one kind of relationship and
00:37:52.100
another hundred and another kind and another hundred
00:37:54.040
whatever you could pursue 12 different careers to a very
00:37:58.020
very high level so you wouldn't have to make the kind of
00:38:01.580
choices that we have to make those choices are imposed on
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us by by being finite and I think we do all we can to sort
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of pretend that we don't have to that we don't have to face
00:38:12.080
them but um so that's why it all links back to the to the
00:38:16.040
four thousand weeks if you weren't finite then very finite
00:38:18.940
well this is a this is fine another another piece that you write
00:38:23.720
about is uh understanding that the finite nature of life the
00:38:28.340
importance of saying no you know like Oprah says no is a
00:38:31.300
complete sentence although I have to tell you like your
00:38:33.420
thoughts you don't attack Oprah but you do attack some of
00:38:35.980
the healthy like the the lifestyle advice she gives in your
00:38:40.120
other piece your other book on happiness and I was like I
00:38:42.960
love this guy this is like you're so right in what you have
00:38:45.540
to say about happiness I want to get to that in a minute but
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anyway one of the good things that Oprah did say was um no is a
00:38:51.440
complete sentence I love that you don't have to explain it you
00:38:54.260
can just say no to it and you're one of the positions is if
00:38:58.200
you want to live a well-managed life right not not a life in
00:39:02.940
which you're constantly worried about the amount of things
00:39:05.440
that you've stuffed into your day and the amount of phone
00:39:07.160
calls that you fail to return is open up well a well-lived life
00:39:09.860
you have to learn how to say no not just to the things that you
00:39:14.820
don't want to do that you genuinely don't want to do because
00:39:17.880
a lot of people say yes to the stuff they don't want to do
00:39:19.740
because they feel bad but but even to the things you do want
00:39:23.720
to do explain that yeah and this I mean that that's almost a
00:39:29.680
quotation that I use verbatim from Elizabeth Gilbert in the
00:39:33.160
book because she makes this point so so well um we hear all this
00:39:38.060
stuff about having to say about how important it is to say no and
00:39:40.720
I think most people in the back of their minds what they
00:39:43.540
meet mean by that is if I got really good at saying no
00:39:46.420
maybe I could get rid of almost all the tedious stuff that I
00:39:50.040
wish there wasn't in my life and and then I'd have time for all
00:39:53.560
the stuff that counts but as Elizabeth Gilbert says you know
00:39:57.480
it's actually a lot harder than that you also have to say no
00:39:59.740
to a whole bunch of stuff that you do want to do and the reason is
00:40:02.360
just again you know there are far more things that would be
00:40:07.040
worthy uses of your time of my time than we'll ever have the
00:40:11.480
opportunity for um in the the short lives that we lead so
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there's just no reason why everything that feels like it
00:40:18.560
matters to me will magically be able to fit into um into the
00:40:24.040
time that I have so that necessarily right it's just math
00:40:27.080
you're gonna then have to um be saying no to some things that
00:40:31.720
would be perfectly good uses of your time because if you
00:40:34.620
don't you'll be chopping up your time into such tiny bits
00:40:37.920
between them that that you just won't um won't get any value
00:40:41.800
out of any of them I mean I find this really hard because I
00:40:45.780
just uh yeah I my upbringing is to really hate the idea that
00:40:50.760
someone is mad at me or disappointed at me and if someone
00:40:53.260
asks me to do something I have an overwhelming uh you know uh
00:40:58.780
impulse to just want to say yes so that they're so that they're happy and
00:41:03.780
I've had to get better at doing the the reverse because
00:41:08.080
the truth is that you're always disappointing somebody
00:41:11.540
even when you say yes to that person you're probably going to end up short
00:41:16.140
there's no option here which involves meeting every expectation that you or
00:41:21.720
other people can can put on you it's just again
00:41:24.260
it's off the table to begin with so it's all about setting priorities I
00:41:28.740
mean because you're you're gonna have to figure out all right
00:41:31.580
what am I gonna say no to that I don't that I don't want to do but I normally
00:41:35.500
would say yes to just because I owe that person one or I feel bad saying no to
00:41:38.840
that and then to go a layer deeper of like oh no I'd really love to do that
00:41:43.260
and then you think oh but if I do that I'm gonna miss
00:41:46.120
you know two more nights out of my house with my kids but like so
00:41:49.960
how do you figure that out you have your your top three priorities and
00:41:53.240
everything else falls by the wayside or you know what's the approach to to
00:41:57.520
figuring that out yeah for me it remains very intuitive I I can't really
00:42:04.240
do it in a sort of algorithmic way I I do have to just sort of think hang on is
00:42:08.420
this really one of those things that if I don't do it it'll just feel like
00:42:13.980
something radically missing from my life but there are these kind of
00:42:18.200
techniques um there's one I mentioned in the book which is attributed to
00:42:21.860
warren buffett but I'm pretty sure it didn't really come from warren buffett big
00:42:25.960
on no sort of uh yeah and what wise sayings just tend to get attributed to
00:42:31.140
warren buffett that's how it works on the internet but um this this practice which
00:42:36.920
allegedly comes from him uh is that you that you should list your top 25 goals in
00:42:43.980
life and and rank them from from one to 25 uh and then the top five of those he says those are
00:42:51.960
the those are the things you should focus all your time and energy on the next 20 the bottom 20 of
00:42:58.140
this 25 uh long list those are the ones you should avoid like the plague because they're actually
00:43:05.000
they're they're the middle priorities in life the things that really do call to you a bit
00:43:10.500
they're not the things that it's easy to ignore because you hate them and don't want anything to
00:43:13.920
do with them they're the ones that are important enough to you that they could eat into your time
00:43:18.880
and that you could give them a lot of time but not important enough to really justify using your
00:43:25.360
limited time so I don't know whether the literally doing it that way is is right for everyone but the
00:43:30.800
principle there seems really important it's like the problem here is not like certain acquaintances
00:43:37.340
you've got that you never want to spend any time with because you just naturally never spend any
00:43:41.140
time with them the problem is in the middle friendships that yeah they sort of got into a
00:43:45.940
groove and it's fine and you give them some time but maybe no neither person is getting much out of it
00:43:50.960
meanwhile every hour you give to that there's an hour you're not spending with your kids or your
00:43:56.300
closest friends same applies to work projects it's these things that are kind of like
00:44:00.500
yeah somewhat somewhat uh interesting and somewhat meaningful uh but are the dangerous ones
00:44:08.380
I like that I'm just gonna I'm just gonna short form everything in my life now top five
00:44:11.980
Abby's a top five never mind don't even bring it to me that's it's not a bad approach one of the
00:44:17.740
things top five or not I don't know you tell me because we are on these things all the time all the
00:44:23.720
time um and they're distracting they enhance our lives and they ruin our lives these iPhones and
00:44:30.500
devices and so on um I don't think I can step away from it I know that everybody says try that but
00:44:36.720
like you know I'm in the information business and this is how I communicate with my team they're all
00:44:40.700
over the country you know it's like not going on email and not reading the news is not an option for
00:44:46.100
me um but the time suck and the forces working against us to make it a time suck are very very
00:44:53.580
powerful yeah no absolutely and that's the distinction right it's not that you should
00:44:59.060
never give your attention to your smartphone or to various social media platforms or or email
00:45:05.860
whatever it's that the business model well one of the things is that the business model for a lot of
00:45:11.100
these um devices and platforms is precisely to keep you there as long as they can and to monitor
00:45:17.900
all your activity on them in such a way as to then through algorithms offer you more of the
00:45:23.280
stuff that's going to keep you there longer and I think that's a real problem and I'm actually kind
00:45:28.280
of I've I'm fairly in support of of certain kinds of you know regulatory things we probably should be
00:45:35.500
doing with regard to Silicon Valley but the bit that we forget and that I try to emphasize in the
00:45:39.920
book is like we give into that distraction willingly I think we we tell ourselves or at least people who
00:45:46.660
understand the attention economy and how it works tend to tell ourselves like I'm powerless because
00:45:51.080
my attention is being commandeered in this way and it is and that's a serious issue but when I get
00:45:58.280
distracted from my work to go and like scroll through my phone and waste half an hour instead it's it's not
00:46:03.880
like I was um unwillingly uh yanked away from the chapter I was trying to write it's that the chapter I was
00:46:12.420
trying to write was making me feel uncomfortable because I don't know if I can do it and it's bringing me up
00:46:17.700
against my limitations and all the rest of it and it's way more comfortable to just run away and just
00:46:23.420
scroll and and be um be distracted um the other example I give in the book right is that like if
00:46:31.360
you're if you're supposed to be having a kind of a serious conversation with your partner say and and
00:46:35.380
actually you're scrolling through your phone under the dinner table we say what's happening there is
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you're being distracted by your phone that's not what's happening the phone is where you're going
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for a more comfortable experience than a difficult conversation that leaves you feeling emotionally
00:46:51.700
vulnerable or something like that so I think it's really important to see that because um then when
00:46:58.560
you encounter that desire to distract yourself in the middle of something important um it's actually
00:47:03.760
easier to to resist that when you see like oh yeah this is that feeling that I know I get whenever I'm
00:47:09.380
working on something I really care about uh it's the desire to go and do something much much more
00:47:14.560
comfortable and low stakes instead you know it's not unlike the way they battle they tell you to
00:47:20.680
battle addiction right they say like if you're if anything's becoming too dominant in your life you
00:47:26.800
know it could be desserts it could be social media it could be alcohol could be whatever's pot um they say
00:47:34.220
you take that thing away try it for like a week take the thing out of your life and while you're
00:47:39.320
jonesing for like the twitter or the joint whatever the person's preference is you're supposed to be
00:47:46.580
paying attention to how you feel like what is it that's making you want it what are alternatives to
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having it how could you fill your life without it you know in a way that would assuage whatever need
00:47:59.040
you're feeling at the at the moment and I don't I don't think we look at social media that way enough
00:48:03.700
you know and even just talking to you right now I'm like well what if I didn't do that like I'm a
00:48:08.640
news person I get the newspapers I get a bunch of them delivered to me every day what if I just read
00:48:14.200
the newspaper like it's crazy like that's crazy just given the way we consume information and it's up to
00:48:21.300
the minute now you know with twitter and so on but that's not necessarily required for my job maybe
00:48:28.020
it's just maybe I'm trying to avoid some sort of a problem by going on there all the time just
00:48:32.140
putting it all together well yeah and like if we're going to talk about news journalism for a
00:48:37.360
moment I think there is going to be and already is you know some sort of real competitive edge to be
00:48:43.600
found in in a in one's ability to uh step back a little bit from that minute to minute to see the
00:48:51.620
bigger picture and to see the patterns that are happening and you can really like get to a point
00:48:55.980
in social media where you can't see the the the forest for the trees uh because of because of um
00:49:02.220
how that works and then yes just to the addiction point I mean I don't want to speak to substance
00:49:08.560
abuses when I say what I'm about to say because they can be serious in a different way but the
00:49:14.860
discomfort that you feel when you're jonesing for your phone or you know whatever it might be
00:49:20.380
we respond to that like it's really unpleasant and unbearable and so we just have no option but
00:49:27.160
to scuttle away back to the to the device or whatever it's not unbearable if you can if you
00:49:33.160
can show yourself a little bit of tough love and sort of and sort of uh bear it for five minutes it
00:49:39.040
doesn't kill you and you find very swiftly that it that it gets it it dissipates it attenuates it gets
00:49:46.980
easier to to deal with by the minute um so sometimes I think this is just a question of
00:49:53.180
learning to tolerate kind of minor discomfort it's so useful in life if you can just like
00:49:58.160
be okay with the fact that you feel a bit antsy or a bit anxious or a bit adrift learning to
00:50:04.880
tolerate minor discomfort wait I want to follow up on that but what you're saying right now it's
00:50:09.340
reminding me of um when I was young in my career and I was uh going on the O'Reilly factor first it was
00:50:14.920
once a week then it was a couple times a week and I used to spend a lot of time with Bill he was he
00:50:19.280
was back then a mentor to me and he used to have the nation captivated even the people who hated him
00:50:27.080
loved to listen to his opening talking points which were I would still love to listen I mean Bill for
00:50:33.940
all of his flaws and there are many the ability to deliver like a cogent synopsis of the news is not
00:50:39.860
on the list of flaws he was great at that and I asked him one time like how do you do it like what
00:50:45.840
are you what are you reading during the day what do you do and he said uh I read and I think Kelly
00:50:51.400
I think I don't have a blackberry I don't have a blueberry as I said I sit there and I think
00:50:56.620
and you know you could tell and as you were talking just now about how some of the people who
00:51:02.460
are most reflective aren't like constantly jonesing for the next tweet or whatever it made me think of
00:51:07.280
Matt Taibbi formerly of Rolling Stone now he's got his own Substack and he's totally brilliant
00:51:11.740
he's a great reporter um he's not somebody he's not like a prolific tweeter you know you don't see
00:51:17.020
a thought from him every two seconds on Twitter but he sends out these headlines on Substack that always
00:51:22.040
make me laugh or give me pause or and the latest one that I was thinking of was um his latest one is
00:51:27.440
entitled this is about what happened in Canada with Trudeau when boring people turn dangerous
00:51:33.140
Canada's insane power he's clever that way because he's reflective yes now the problem with all of
00:51:41.680
this is that it's siloing us right and everyone is kind of going to their specific newsletters their
00:51:45.960
specific websites and and they're they're getting their analysis and it's totally different to like
00:51:52.080
the other side's analysis but yeah it has this great benefit that it isn't just
00:51:56.380
it isn't it isn't just the sort of relentless um uh sort of ever tinier facts and facts that five
00:52:03.580
minutes later turn out not to be facts you know just like it's just I think you I think there's an
00:52:07.940
argument to be made that you're better informed uh when you sort of try to impose a slightly slower
00:52:13.100
timescale on yourself especially with respect to the news
00:52:16.100
so back to your point about sitting in the discomfort being okay with a little discomfort
00:52:27.620
getting ourselves used to that concept and by the way it's reminding me of um I like intermittent
00:52:32.660
fasting as a way of eating you know I don't eat after 8 p.m generally and before noon and I find that
00:52:37.900
to be very helpful for my for my well-being for my body for all the stuff um but one of the things
00:52:44.240
that help me with it because you do get hungry I mean that that 10 a.m to noon period is kind of
00:52:48.660
hangry um one of the pieces of advice I read was learn to be okay with hunger like we have been taught
00:52:56.840
that that feeling of hunger I mean I'm talking about in the first world country where we have
00:53:02.080
plenty of access to food um it doesn't have to be a bad thing like you can say oh there's a feeling
00:53:08.060
it's hunger anywho you know and you're kind of saying the same thing about discomfort
00:53:12.360
whatever whatever's causing it and you came up in your book when you were talking I think about
00:53:16.460
patience and there were a few things you need to keep in mind to have patience this section is for
00:53:23.280
my husband Doug uh and one of them was that right learning how to sit with that feeling right
00:53:31.060
absolutely I think patience is a super interesting thing even though it doesn't necessarily sound
00:53:37.540
like it's going to be super interesting because um I think impatience is one of the central ways in
00:53:44.740
which we try to kind of win this battle with time right we try to we try to make everything go at the
00:53:51.100
speed we think we need it to go in order to get to the end of the day and have done all the things
00:53:54.880
we're supposed to have done and so that's why it's so sort of enraging to people um sometimes kind
00:54:01.060
of homicidally enraging you know to be stuck in traffic or um even things like have you noticed
00:54:07.480
how how uh impatient it makes you to wait have to wait like six seconds for a website that's supposed
00:54:14.420
to load in 0.5 seconds you know these kind of tiny little delays and it's apparently it's fine if you
00:54:22.380
have to wait three days for something to come in the mail that's fine but if you have to wait six
00:54:26.340
seconds for it to load in a browser that that seems like really offensive somehow and I just
00:54:33.760
think there are so many activities in life enjoyable ones but also sort of professionally important ones
00:54:40.320
that um that just take the time they take basically and that you can't hurry beyond a certain point so
00:54:47.020
certain parts of the creative process or uh creating strategies for business lots and lots of reading
00:54:54.320
you can speed up your reading a little bit before you completely lose the experience of reading a
00:55:00.560
novel or a or a sort of uh deep book but not a lot and you just have to be like okay it's actually kind
00:55:08.220
of not up to me how how long this takes it's sort of up to the book if I'm if I'm gonna get the value
00:55:14.640
from this thing I have to sort of go with it and you know being in traffic it's certainly very much not
00:55:21.100
up to you how how fast the the traffic moves and there's something in the traffic case it's just
00:55:28.080
peace of mind because then you don't live your whole life in a kind of frenetic anxious rage but
00:55:33.460
in the case of reading thinking all the sort of knowledge work that so many of us do in one way or
00:55:38.340
another now there's like real benefits to having the willingness to to to let things take the time
00:55:44.480
they take you get better results I say anyway than than if you're always racing to get the thing
00:55:50.700
done as fast as you can so again yeah it's not pleasant and you know if you sit down with a
00:55:57.720
if you're a driven person racing through life millions of emails and you sit down with an hour
00:56:03.600
to read a novel even if you have that feel that you have that hour it won't feel nice at first it'll
00:56:09.160
feel uncomfortable trying to do things at that speed it'll feel like come on can I can I listen to
00:56:13.640
this at uh you know 2.5 speed and get through quicker and maybe sometimes you just can't it's
00:56:21.320
funny so my husband Doug doesn't have like he can easily sit down and read a novel and not not feel
00:56:26.140
the need to rush through etc but when it comes to problem solving you know if we have an argument and
00:56:32.020
he wants to make up has to happen right away I'm like step back I need my time or if he's waiting
00:56:38.500
on something let's say somebody leaves me a provocative voicemail like I've got something interesting
00:56:42.640
he's like call him back you know I'm like you know me I already explained how I am about the
00:56:47.300
calling back and all I'm like he's like what do you mean don't you want to know I'm like you know
00:56:53.040
like this thing wasn't on my phone two minutes ago and I was just fine and I'm equally fine now that
00:56:59.060
it's sitting on my phone okay eventually I will get back so we are just built totally differently that
00:57:03.740
way he like he would not be sitting in the in the discomfort well at all and for me there's
00:57:08.920
actually not even any discomfort it's just like I just got my list of priorities straight
00:57:14.040
yeah so I mean you mentioned relationship tensions but like parenting as well I think is another place
00:57:22.240
where this comes up if there is some if I think something is amiss with how things are going in
00:57:28.820
our family or how my son is being or something the temptation to just like reach for some completely
00:57:35.680
random solution and be like okay bedtime's going to be an hour earlier from now onwards okay um when
00:57:43.480
we're never going to have more than an hour screen time in the day from now onwards you know these kind
00:57:47.060
of radical solutions that that are not solutions because they're just my desire to have this feeling of
00:57:54.820
problem go away as fast as possible yes not want to like be in the problem they don't help I mean
00:58:02.740
actually what helps is being willing to sit in that and live in it for a while and then you know
00:58:08.260
real solutions tend to make themselves felt well you write about how when you were expecting your child
00:58:14.700
you I had the same experience you have two schools of people coming to you you know the school that's
00:58:20.040
like you know this book has got all the answers and it's about this rigid schedule that the baby has
00:58:24.860
to stay on otherwise the child's going to be completely unhappy and you know too dependent on you and
00:58:30.200
blah blah blah and then you get the other school that's coming to you with the no you have to do it the
00:58:34.340
more natural way and you know don't like let the baby eat when he wants and let him sleep when he wants
00:58:39.500
and blah blah blah blah and everyone's they think they've got it figured out you won't be surprised at this
00:58:44.960
point in our relationships in my relationship for me to reveal to you I was like yeah it's gonna work
00:58:50.000
out I don't know I'm not gonna read the books but I will say I had great advice because um you know
00:58:56.320
Steve Forbes I was at a book event of his when I was very pregnant with my first child and his wife
00:59:02.000
they have they have a lot of kids I think they have like six kids I can't remember how many but she
00:59:05.960
came over to me and this is the mother of all these children and she comes over and she goes I've got
00:59:09.740
one piece of advice for you she goes read nothing go on instinct I'm like that was amazing that was
00:59:16.720
the best piece of advice I got yeah I mean makes sense it's like yeah the everyone is convinced that
00:59:23.940
they have the way to make your feeling of discomfort which you say you didn't feel in this way so good
00:59:30.740
for you but I think many people do um to make it go away and um yeah so they have to offer what seems
00:59:38.960
like a clear solution to cling to what you find I think in parenting but especially but in lots of
00:59:44.600
realms if you really try to follow someone else's rules in that way just to get away from the
00:59:49.680
discomfort yeah it it turns what you're doing from an experience you're having into an attempt
00:59:57.100
you're making to to conform to this framework that you've been taught and it's like it's only really
01:00:04.680
a problem that your child sleeps x number of hours one night and a smaller number than x like it's
01:00:11.580
only really a huge problem if if if you've read some chart in a book that says it's supposed to be
01:00:15.900
two hours longer than that every single night you know and if you never read that chart you might be
01:00:21.420
you might be fine with that it's so true like that's so many times that when you look around you
01:00:25.280
think I'm really enjoying this moment and then there's a voice in the back of your head saying
01:00:29.500
oh but you should you should be getting the kids to bed or you should be making sure that they're
01:00:32.860
reading you should be making sure that it's like but you know what I'm really just enjoying this
01:00:36.620
stupid moment where we're not doing any of that we're just doing something totally mindless but
01:00:41.720
we're together and you know and so I don't is that an American thing you know like that that voice in
01:00:47.020
the back of the head that's always like do it do it do it or a British thing or just like a what is
01:00:51.480
that I feel like a lot of countries aren't this way I mean I think it's probably worse in the states
01:00:57.520
where I lived for a long time and it's pretty bad here in the UK uh I I definitely think it is a sort
01:01:03.120
of it's an Anglo-American thing it is everywhere on some level and it has to do with uh certain kind
01:01:10.440
of economic political factors but what it is at its root I think is this is this desire to feel that
01:01:18.040
you're that you're doing it right that you're sort of that you're measuring up that you're justifying
01:01:22.900
your existence that you're guaranteeing the future somehow um and yeah there are definitely
01:01:29.780
cultural uh differences there there are definitely cultures where it seems more like everyone's like
01:01:35.600
you basically when it comes to time instead of instead of like me yeah well we're gonna meet in
01:01:42.720
the middle at some point I need I need to torque it up slightly and you need to torque it down slightly
01:01:46.640
um yeah the the one of the main points that you raise in the book which I think is so great
01:01:52.160
it's so great I mean I personally refer to this as my own Paul Newman theory of life
01:01:57.560
but you call it cosmic insignificance therapy um and ultimately my my Paul Newman theory of life is
01:02:03.980
basically you can live your life perfectly which I I don't know he he seemed to like what do I know
01:02:10.100
from the outside he's gorgeous he married for love to another Hollywood movie star they had a list
01:02:15.460
careers they get to choose whatever movie they wanted to be in you know the the that's what every actor
01:02:19.780
dreams of they won awards they were beloved they weren't really that controversial they had a
01:02:24.660
great family children who loved them um they they made so much money they started a charity in which
01:02:29.480
they donated more hundreds of millions of dollars to charity you know like and it goes on you know
01:02:35.880
and died in an advanced age all of it I'm like it's it's amazing you know what happened to Paul Newman
01:02:40.180
he's still dead and buried in the ground you you can you can live the quote perfect life it ends the
01:02:48.800
same way for all of us it putting all these chips into the bank does not extend life it doesn't give you
01:02:56.160
extra chips that the rest of us losers don't have you know we're it's gonna end the same for everyone
01:03:02.500
whether you live it perfectly or not perfectly or you know the most product you're the most productive
01:03:07.280
person you're the least and that brings me calm that brings me serenity when I think about my life
01:03:14.100
like I don't have to I'm not living a perfect life and even if I did what would the reward be well
01:03:21.480
I don't know was he any happier with his Oscars than I am being with my kids no so it's like what
01:03:27.060
are you chasing right you figure out what makes you happy you chase that and then you don't chase
01:03:30.480
perfection you call it cosmic insignificance theory and for the reason I just stated this resonated with
01:03:36.920
me it's basically like you don't really matter I'll let you explain it yeah I know it doesn't
01:03:45.220
sound like it's going to be therapeutic does it at the beginning but I mean there's a number of
01:03:51.340
different reasons why I think it's really useful but one of them is just like I think that we
01:03:55.360
we we stress ourselves out um a lot of us anyway going through life with a real sense that like
01:04:02.640
every decision we make matters as if the future of the universe hung on it you know um
01:04:09.580
people hold back from doing things because they're terribly worried they might make the wrong decision
01:04:15.180
about what to do with their with their um with their time on the planet um they set they set a
01:04:23.280
definition of a meaningful life that what would count as using their time well that is so extraordinary
01:04:27.800
and so based on so much fame or wealth or something else that that the probabilities are just sort of
01:04:33.840
against them meeting that so you endlessly kind of uh stress yourself out and and and make it harder
01:04:41.300
to live a meaningful life if you stop and realize by contrast you know that 100 years from now almost
01:04:48.740
none of the decisions that you make on a day-to-day basis are going to matter at all I think that
01:04:54.660
is not a recipe for despair I think that's a recipe for um you know saying okay I might as well make
01:05:01.600
bold decisions might as well take some risks might as well uh do the thing I've always been telling
01:05:08.840
myself is what I want to do with my life might as well see if that works out because you get to like
01:05:13.720
take away this crazy high stakes notion that that basically the world's going to end if you get it
01:05:19.480
wrong um no the world is going to continue just fine uh and long after you're after you're gone so
01:05:27.180
I think that's one we can talk about more but I think that's one reason why it's just really useful
01:05:32.040
to see we all sort of bring a certain kind of grandiosity I think even the what those of us who
01:05:38.820
are not kind of megalomaniacs you know who are very sort of shy and retiring there's still a kind of
01:05:43.920
self-centeredness about it that that that adds to the stress you can sort of let go of that and say
01:05:50.880
it doesn't matter that much and so why not do something like exciting or cool or yeah it's going
01:05:57.060
to make a big difference right I I love this I I go to Stanford business school once a year and I speak
01:06:05.540
to the students there about reputation management and these kids have spent you know an entire semester
01:06:11.260
learning about this from you know corporate leaders and world leaders and how to manage
01:06:16.580
reputation and they're going to be tomorrow's world leaders and I I think the reason they want me to go
01:06:22.180
there is because my message is this is all bullshit you just wasted a semester of your lives there's no
01:06:30.360
such thing as reputation it's a mirage it's bullshit it counts for nothing it's this false creation
01:06:36.420
false idol and a false god that is totally and utterly meaningless and even if you get the nicest
01:06:41.980
things written in the New York Times about you when you die what does it matter if you didn't do the
01:06:48.120
things you wanted to do while you were here or as you said take the risks you wanted to take come what
01:06:53.780
may after taking them like what what does it matter if you led the perfect life right quote unquote but
01:06:59.740
didn't feel satisfied by it or have tons of regrets and looking back at your choices or weren't able to live
01:07:05.240
in the moment and enjoy the hand opening and closing with the baby as opposed to taking a selfie of it
01:07:10.060
and then tweeting it out with a cute caption you know what does it matter it's all a mirage
01:07:14.120
reputation is totally and utterly meaningless what what matters is your experiences yeah totally and
01:07:20.140
yeah absolutely and that really puts a point on it as well that like you fall into this idea that
01:07:27.260
you're working towards some moment of truth right that um that the reason to manage your reputation
01:07:33.260
to get to use this example which i think is really like resonates right why managing your reputation
01:07:40.500
it's it's got to be because you want to get to the end of this life having thought okay i kept my
01:07:46.180
reputation intact or it's because you're storing it all up for some moment when you're going to cash that
01:07:51.480
reputation out into um into some huge accomplishment and like these moments of truth
01:07:59.100
they basically never come and if you're constantly living for them uh you find yeah you don't you don't
01:08:06.380
live you don't you you're you're you're deferring the meaning of life off to the future and off to the
01:08:11.500
future and then eventually it's off to a future that where you're where you're not even alive anymore
01:08:15.980
the future's there but but you're not um so yeah i just think it's it's it's so it's so relaxing to just
01:08:24.360
think okay i i'm not i don't need to take myself as seriously as i take as i tend to take myself and
01:08:33.420
that you know basically basically doesn't matter what i do with my life and that is therefore a
01:08:40.280
reason to do something um exciting yeah swing for the fences you know or just whatever whatever
01:08:47.500
gravitational pull there is in your life of the thing that you really want to try but you don't want
01:08:52.600
to do or the thing you really want to say but you don't dare it's so gratifying to be on the side of
01:08:59.160
you know risk taking and just living a big bold life for whatever that means to you you know it could
01:09:05.980
be totally different things well i think that's another point worth making right in a culture that
01:09:11.660
is as dedicated to sort of fame and headline grabbing achievements and wealth as as ours is maybe the bold
01:09:19.460
thing to do is to be willing to live a life below the radar maybe it's to be focused on making your
01:09:27.480
neighborhood incredibly beautiful or the community you live in incredibly vibrant you know it could be
01:09:32.240
very mundane things and that could actually be the bold choice given that we live in this culture
01:09:36.600
that's so dedicated to you know grand gestures and and and celebrity no i i mean i talk to my stay-at-home
01:09:44.860
mom friends about it all the time because they still even in this day and age beat themselves up
01:09:49.820
about not being working moms outside of the house you know like i want my daughter to think i'm doing
01:09:55.740
this i want them to picture me and it's like why why right what what kind of a value judgment is that
01:10:02.440
you don't the societies put that on you you don't have to put that on yourself and you certainly don't
01:10:06.240
have to teach it to your daughter that mom doesn't matter as much if she doesn't have some big
01:10:10.340
high-powered job you know and the more you telegraph that to your child the more that will
01:10:14.640
be her imprint you know like why why lie about going to a meeting when you're really just going
01:10:20.180
out to say like own it you should say like mom made these great choices and this is what i love
01:10:24.620
about and this is some things maybe i don't love about it but like these are all the great reasons i
01:10:28.320
did it instead we allow society strangers whose values we know nothing about to drive us to live
01:10:35.320
our lives in a way we might not want to it's lunacy yeah yeah yeah and i think that approach
01:10:42.600
telegraphs to your kid if you do it right that telegraphs to your kid that they can choose
01:10:47.240
what they want to choose and that might be you know a big career absolutely right so it's to do
01:10:53.300
with the freedom to to go where your energy truly truly is i think and that means it takes boldness but
01:11:00.540
it doesn't necessarily result in in what we tend to think of as the high status
01:11:05.420
we've got to talk about happiness so you you wrote a book on it and it's the anti-oprah book
01:11:16.340
i'm sorry but it is if you watch any oprah you are tough she loves that book the secret which you take
01:11:24.480
some shots at she's all about like the positive thinking and the gratitude journal and all the
01:11:30.720
stuff and you're basically like if you've been trying all that and it hasn't worked there's a
01:11:35.940
reason yeah i feel like i want to defend myself against i having some uh being on some uh campaign
01:11:41.680
against oprah here i think um i think the reason that it is i i am the one against oprah the interesting
01:11:46.400
thing about oprah is i basically think she's she goes into so many different areas and tries and is so
01:11:51.940
open-minded and tries so many different things that you're going to get a whole lot of value
01:11:54.660
like you know uh work with eckhart tolle i think is really interesting stuff about yeah power of the
01:12:01.500
moment or so and then you're also going to get a whole lot of stuff that i that makes me really
01:12:05.060
angry and i think is stupid like um like the secret in the law of attraction anyway so you're
01:12:10.340
going to get it all read the secret but but it's basically what i gather is it's basically like
01:12:14.320
think about being successful think about being powerful think about being rich and then you will be
01:12:18.780
i'm going to get into so much trouble if i go off uh on this uh in this conversation into a rant
01:12:24.720
about about that specific book but yeah i think you basically got there you know um and you know
01:12:30.400
the kind of motivational seminar where you're supposed to where you can like people walk barefoot
01:12:34.620
across hot coals by just by thinking that uh that they're not going to burn their feet and then
01:12:39.780
sometimes they actually do burn their feet but anyway um the the the sort of main argument i'm trying
01:12:48.160
to make in that in that book is that yeah positive thinking which is the sort of ultimate american
01:12:54.280
credo of focus on the good stuff fill your mind with positive emotions set incredibly ambitious goals
01:13:01.500
believe you can do anything um believe that failure isn't an option uh all of this is a really
01:13:09.460
pretty disastrous way to try to actually bring happiness into your life and that and that being
01:13:15.320
open to the negative to uncertainty to failure to the to feelings of sadness you know instead of
01:13:22.840
constantly trying to stamp them out and seeing them as a huge problem if they arise uh is is a better
01:13:30.340
way so yeah this book led me to do things like i went to a motivational seminar in san antonio which
01:13:36.260
is like the i mean british people just can't that you can barely exist in that it was like being a
01:13:42.420
i was gonna make a crack about that but i'm glad you did it instead
01:13:45.280
i i tried to leap out of my chair shouting i'm so motivated as we were instructed to do
01:13:51.900
by the um by the by the leaders of that and i did my best
01:13:57.420
did they really have you do that um they did they did really have us do that and uh and i and i just
01:14:06.700
about did it i think i got up from my chair but just like oh my god and as the kids say today
01:14:11.180
oliver that's awkward af um so okay so instead what are we supposed to be doing thinking negative
01:14:17.160
thoughts i can't do it i'm not going to be successful that's not really exactly what you're
01:14:23.120
right no exactly that was one of the misinterpretations here especially when people realize i'm british
01:14:28.360
if they're american is like oh you just think we should think that mediocrity is uh is is is all
01:14:34.900
we're entitled to that we should just be sort of miserable as befits the population of a nation
01:14:42.440
where it rains almost every day but no i think the point is the point is to be it's really to be um
01:14:50.300
capable of experiencing those negative things when they come not being sort of not adopting a philosophy
01:14:59.700
of happiness that is sort of inherently allergic to all that that side of life and to seeing that
01:15:05.180
it's just an inevitable side of life so um you know an obvious example of this which is a little
01:15:12.860
which is pretty widespread now i think is is the idea that that failure is something that like you
01:15:20.980
certainly can't rule out from life and in fact you're going to be more exposed to the more you are
01:15:25.140
trying to do things that that count and that um and that bring you up against your edge and that if
01:15:31.320
you really want to try to eliminate the possibility of failure from life you're going to become very sort
01:15:35.960
of small in your in your goals and in your in your outlook um though there's a whole chunk in that book
01:15:43.640
about the philosophy of stoicism which which uh asks us to think about the ways in which actually
01:15:52.180
lots of negative events that happen to us we we don't need to think of them as as catastrophic we
01:15:59.060
can think of them as like negative sure yes and and actually if you if you're a positive thinker if
01:16:05.300
you can't handle a negative event you're much more likely to sort of fall off the wagon jump off the
01:16:11.440
deep end whatever and and go into catastrophizing mode when you can no longer keep your your veneer of
01:16:18.020
positivity so it's actually just a much more resilient way to to be i think to be sort of open
01:16:24.720
to this side of of life and not to be always insistent but like a negative emotion is a problem
01:16:32.140
somehow just because it you know the very fact that that arises is is some kind of symptom that
01:16:38.140
you're doing it wrong i like i love stoicism and that's very in vogue right now but i i had on ryan
01:16:44.180
holiday and i think i i am a natural stoic i don't know how much marcus and aurelius and i would have
01:16:49.480
in common but i like reading his stuff ryan sent me a book with his daily meditations and i i love
01:16:54.780
them all um it's reminding me of this is like the hour of my personal stories but um my husband and i
01:17:00.740
when we first got together first got married we didn't have kids yet we had two little dogs and we
01:17:05.960
woke up in the middle of the night and he said oh my god i said what and he said the one dog
01:17:10.800
crapped in the in our they were both in our bedroom in the in the like the dog bed and the
01:17:17.020
other one had completely covered herself in it and uh i look at him it's like two in the morning and i
01:17:22.060
remember saying i wish that weren't the news just just it's a great line we use it to each other all
01:17:30.040
the time now whenever something bad comes into our lives you don't have to wallow in its badness you
01:17:35.260
also don't have to make it positive in no world is this a positive it's just gee i wish that weren't
01:17:41.240
the news and then onward yeah no absolutely and i think that's that that difference between whether
01:17:47.860
something is your preference uh which clearly that an event like that is certainly not your your
01:17:54.560
preferred course of uh events versus whether it's like a huge problem that reality did not unfold that
01:18:02.060
night according to your preference is is a really useful distinction that makes you so much more sort
01:18:06.860
of resilient to the ordinary the ordinary setbacks well haven't you seen that during the pandemic i
01:18:12.600
know you've written about you know your your other book um and with respect to the pandemic but i think
01:18:18.060
this book we're talking about this is called the antidote from 2012 and the subtitle is happiness for
01:18:22.960
people who can't stand positive thinking i love it but that's it's had some bearing over the past two
01:18:29.680
years part of getting through this pandemic let's put aside for now personal loss i mean that's
01:18:35.320
something there's no shiny thinking on it but you know just dealing with the the shutdowns and the
01:18:41.720
change of life and the restrictions that we've had some of it has required a change in attitude like
01:18:48.140
how are you going to approach it are you going to lean into fear you're going to leave it lean into
01:18:51.340
sadness or are you going to try to lean into some of the good things that you're recognizing
01:18:55.780
with these changes around us i know you've written about that too yeah no i mean i think there are
01:19:01.620
these kind of strange ironic upsides that have come that have come out of the uh experience and also
01:19:09.460
just this you know just this reminder that um it it's very easy to think that we're living through
01:19:16.940
extremely uncertain times at the moment but but but i think when people have sort of had the chance to
01:19:23.340
reflect on that during the pandemic that's kind of not the point i think the truth is the future is
01:19:28.800
always completely uncertain you never know what is going to happen next day next week next month in
01:19:33.740
your life but an event like the pandemic brings us it makes it impossible to ignore and there's
01:19:39.660
something very edifying about that absolutely agree with you this is not something i would find easy
01:19:45.480
to say to someone who had you know lost close relatives but there is something beneficial about
01:19:53.740
seeing firstly that life is always completely uncertain this isn't actually an unusually uncertain
01:19:58.660
time because the future is always 100 uncertain it's the future and secondly that by and large um
01:20:06.540
we're a lot better at weathering that uncertainty than we think um we think we want to make plans and have
01:20:14.680
life go our way and then it turns out that we can basically cope and in fact often be very creative
01:20:20.320
and resourceful when when it doesn't go our way and the sort of flip side of that is if you look back
01:20:25.980
at your own life at all the things you you really love about your life people you met job opportunities
01:20:30.900
you had almost never do they emerge from the plans that you made they emerge from coincidences and
01:20:38.580
people you met you weren't expecting to meet and you know uh random encounters random random
01:20:44.200
opportunities that arose and that you were able to capitalize on so true so in both these directions
01:20:51.040
right i think you it enables us to sort of reconcile ourselves to how uncertain life is and and to thrive
01:20:59.240
more in in uncertain conditions which as i say i think are what conditions always are and that leads me
01:21:06.340
back full circle to why abby should not try to send me to the airport three hours in advance
01:21:12.100
she should not try to put me at the train station an hour in advance there is no reason to be doing
01:21:19.080
this and i'll tell you oliver i i'm up to it because my husband doug is her co-conspirator
01:21:23.320
they have the same approach they're like we're we're having a family trip and abby plans it for us
01:21:28.660
you know like i gotta be the airport at seven i'm like okay what do we have like an 8 30 flight
01:21:32.420
she's like no your flight's at 11 i'm like you're fired and she's like doug made me do it right but
01:21:41.540
you you were raised in a family like this and i know half of my listening audience right now is like
01:21:46.160
yes i agree with mk and the other half is like team abby so you were raised in the family that made
01:21:52.960
you do that and why do people do that because they do have a belief they can control the future
01:21:58.720
yes exactly there's an onion headline um which is uh dad suggests arriving at airport 14 hours early
01:22:07.680
or something like that i'm not getting it exactly right but and that really sort of resonates right
01:22:12.600
that that resonates with me yeah i think what people are doing when they engage in compulsive
01:22:17.420
planning and as i say i think i i know whereof i speak when it comes to to this approach um me too
01:22:24.480
by the way i mean you know i i i tease my parents both in the book and in life about it but it's
01:22:31.100
but it's in me as well probably but whatever yeah we i think we we think of that kind of planning as a
01:22:38.680
way to guarantee that things are going to go the way we we need them to go so you make these plans
01:22:44.920
you're trying to you're trying to nail down what's going to happen next week next week month months ahead
01:22:49.320
so that you can relax and be like okay things are going to go the way i need them to go
01:22:53.520
but you never ever get to that state of knowing that things are going to go the way you need to go
01:22:59.400
because it's built in to the nature of the future right that you that you can't know about it in the
01:23:05.460
present um sounds obvious but you know easy to forget so the truth is that no matter how many hours
01:23:12.560
early you arrive you how many hours you build in for your trip to the airport you can't actually be
01:23:17.980
certain that something won't get in the way um if you plan the next like six months of your life in
01:23:24.920
incredible detail you don't get to relax because then you suddenly realize there's another six
01:23:28.920
months after that that that you should probably be planning so we're always trying to get this kind
01:23:34.800
of reassurance from the future and the future never gives it to us and the people who have um
01:23:41.720
a healthier attitude towards time such as apparently you and me now to some extent you know now that
01:23:47.420
been through this being through this process is yeah is she said i don't like all of her
01:23:54.880
keep going this you you come to see that like all you're ever doing is just sort of surfing the
01:24:03.720
moment after moment after moment right you can tell yourself that you're being super super dutiful
01:24:10.220
about making sure there's lots of slack in the schedule but it won't stop something going wrong with
01:24:16.320
the with the plan so you it's actually all sort of by and large just wasted anxiety and effort she's
01:24:22.320
arguing over here that but you reduce you reduce the chances of something bad happening
01:24:26.760
um you do she's saying she's saying tell him you missed a flight literally i've been working with her
01:24:32.460
for 12 years every time i get to the airport with my lungs burning that's what i consider a win
01:24:37.460
i sit down on the plane with lungs burning that's i've done it right in all the thousands of
01:24:42.360
flights she's planned for me one time i missed it that's a win my system is working think of all
01:24:47.980
the hours i have saved myself not sitting in that seat go ahead oliver yeah you do reduce the
01:24:53.880
probability of something going wrong with that specific thing but as you point out um uh it's
01:24:59.700
funny arguing with someone i can't see by the way sorry um the on the the uh the uh the sacrifice you
01:25:09.960
is all the things you could have done with that with that time and and you will never actually
01:25:15.500
reach this perfect state of being totally relaxed that it is going to go fine because you will never
01:25:20.580
know you never know that you get to the airport on time until you've already got to the airport and
01:25:24.980
then it's too late who cares about how many hours you left um so so it's kind of a it's a way of seeking
01:25:30.800
reassurance i think all worry is like this right it's a way of somehow trying to feel like we've got a
01:25:37.060
handle on what's coming and you can uh get a certain amount of of predictive handle on the
01:25:46.160
future but you can never get that real security that that we compulsive planners crave well i know
01:25:52.940
you read about how your parents your parents want you and your wife to commit to your holiday plans
01:25:58.900
your christmas holiday plans in june they're coming to you in june that like i broke out in a rash just
01:26:04.580
reading that like i i can't stand making plans you have to do it i've learned by age 51 you have to do
01:26:11.440
it if you want to have any sort of a social life but i hate it if i could just be the person who's
01:26:16.760
like yeah friday night let's do something you know i would love it but now you can't because everybody
01:26:21.980
else around you's a planner they're all social calendars filled up you know i've realized you have
01:26:27.860
to do some committing but there's there's the other extreme of it's june and your parents want you
01:26:32.680
to commit to what days are you coming over the christmas break yeah now my my i think my dad is
01:26:38.100
uh my dad disputes the the details of this claim but i i say i can i've got the emails to prove it
01:26:43.800
um yeah right you there is there is this level of coordination that is required to to just sort of
01:26:49.680
make make life work and be nice if it wasn't but but it is it is required the problem with trying to
01:26:56.720
get all that all your ducks in a row as they say you know months in advance is that it doesn't get
01:27:01.660
you to the place of peace with respect to time because then there's like well why not why not what's
01:27:07.020
gonna happen the week after that the week after that the week after that um yeah you need to be able
01:27:11.760
to just on some level just relax into where you are right now instead of always trying to like
01:27:17.880
grasp the next bit of time to yourself which you can't do because it's yeah it's in the future
01:27:25.440
yeah and but i will say of course i have learned that there are you do have to my side has to come
01:27:31.760
over a little bit more to the middle if you want to have any sort of a life otherwise you're stuck
01:27:37.100
alone on saturday night you gotta make some advanced plans or like vacation you know that's another like
01:27:41.560
you gotta yeah if you don't book enough in advance you're gonna be paying an arm and a leg like
01:27:45.280
certain things you have to force yourself to do so you've got you've got tips in the book for
01:27:57.020
embracing your finitude and that that takes us back to the 4 000 hours you know we have a finite
01:28:02.760
time on this earth there it should be embraced it shouldn't be rejected it shouldn't be we don't
01:28:07.400
have to deny it in order to live a happy life um nor do we have to deny our pessimism or our cynicism
01:28:13.680
we can still be happy in fact we it's key to embrace those things um and let's just go through
01:28:19.020
a couple of them because i don't totally understand them all one is adopt a fixed volume approach to
01:28:25.520
productivity what does that mean this is just the general idea when it comes to sort of managing your
01:28:31.400
work day and obviously people have radically different amounts of control over how much they
01:28:35.560
can organize their work day but but thinking first in terms of portions of time and second about
01:28:42.140
tasks instead of the other way around so i'll explain what i mean by that if you um if you decide
01:28:50.180
that say you're going to you've got nine hours available for work or maybe you've got four hours
01:28:55.360
when you really think you're going to be able to do serious focused thinking work say and and that's
01:29:02.340
sort of a little box on your calendar time boxing is one is one of the techniques that embodies this
01:29:06.880
principle then once you see that amount of time you you can make some decisions about like okay
01:29:13.340
given that i can't do most things today what are the three or four things that are most important to put
01:29:17.780
into that box then maybe the box ends at 5 30 p.m 6 p.m whatever and you you get up and walk away and
01:29:24.080
you're on to the next stage of your life if you put tasks first in other words you get up in the morning
01:29:28.320
and think these are the 12 things that must be done uh regardless of the time i have they just
01:29:34.340
have to be done you find that you don't get through more than two or three of them the list gets longer
01:29:39.040
it's 20 items long by the end of the day um you're still at your desk at 11 30 at night trying to
01:29:45.140
trying to cross them off and over the long haul you actually get less done so the idea of fixed
01:29:51.240
volume approach is of saying like okay this is how much time i'm going to dedicate to this kind of
01:29:55.560
activity given that which things are most important to put into that box so it's just a way of
01:30:02.520
prioritizing that respects the fact that you are that there are so many hours in the day and that
01:30:07.840
there are probably for most people two three four roles that they want to um dedicate time for instead
01:30:14.360
of this endless commitment to fantasy that i'm somehow gonna first of all answer 500 emails and
01:30:21.060
spend several hours on this project and then apparently i'm also going to have enough time to do this
01:30:25.380
like 10 more things on my list well i like that because you know you in my case i want to be a
01:30:30.660
good mom i want to be present with my kids and my husband at the end of the day but there's always
01:30:35.060
more work i could be doing and so unless i put a cap on it it will never be capped it was actually one
01:30:41.380
of the things i hated about practicing law because they say the law is a jealous mistress and it really
01:30:46.780
is it's constantly there needing you wanting to be with you wanting to interrupt your time with your
01:30:52.720
spouse you know like the mistress is annoying and uh news is a little bit like that not as much so
01:30:58.940
i like that like sorry but it's over between us at 5 30 that's it yeah it's like how exactly that that
01:31:05.660
idea of like there'll always be more to do so how long today am i going to spend dipping into this
01:31:11.320
infinite pool of yeah of tasks right yeah i'm just i'm out of time yeah clearing the clearing the
01:31:17.700
infinite pool is not that's not going to happen yeah yeah now that this also relates to another
01:31:22.360
one of the tips and i like this which is i do have to-do lists like most people you know because
01:31:27.460
otherwise i'll just forget you stuff i got to take care of my kids my job and you're explain how it's
01:31:33.540
you say it's supposed to work it's supposed to be like you've got your to-do list but then you also
01:31:36.980
have your done list and the two must relate and interact in a useful way yeah two different points
01:31:46.220
about to-do lists in the book i'll focus yeah the done list is this idea that you should not only keep
01:31:50.960
a list of all the things you think you need to do that you haven't yet done but also keep a list that
01:31:56.280
gets longer during the day of the things you have done so that it's clearly displayed somewhere in
01:32:01.200
your on your desk in your organizer planner on your computer whatever this this like list of things
01:32:07.920
that is getting longer during the day i think so many of us kind of get up in the morning feeling
01:32:14.100
like we're sort of in productivity debt right that you've got to you've got to pay off this debt during
01:32:18.880
the day by by getting a certain amount of things done otherwise you're you don't really deserve to
01:32:23.900
you know your place on the in the plant on the planet or whatever and you can reverse that a bit
01:32:29.900
with a with a done list because um it helps you sort of see look you you could have done nothing
01:32:35.420
any day you could have stayed in bed right and instead you did this you did this you did this so
01:32:40.340
it it slightly sort of reframes that idea that you're always on the on the back foot and it helps
01:32:46.340
you sort of see and give some appreciation to um the things you you did do and then you know you can
01:32:54.380
get rid of that feeling where you get to the end of the day and you have no idea what it was
01:32:57.560
you did now maybe sometimes your done list will reveal that you spent it on the wrong things and
01:33:02.380
you can factor that into future behavior but it's really great to to just you can really surprise
01:33:10.680
yourself in a positive way that is i think just you know encouraging uh in a world of overwhelm uh it's
01:33:17.940
really good to be able to see uh how much you actually do manage to do on on many a day
01:33:23.420
and you also talk about how you you need to embrace boring and single purpose technology and
01:33:30.020
this takes me back to the iphone i like this you can make your iphone less attractive less appealing
01:33:36.760
less addictive uh in a in a couple of actually pretty simple ways what are they uh well the way i
01:33:43.780
really like is is this is the um function that allows you to turn it black and white so that it's
01:33:50.380
all grayscale and so there's no there's no colors on your phone at all um you have to go into wow
01:33:56.160
this is technical stuff you have to find it changes um on based on operating systems but on an iphone you
01:34:02.720
have to find the um the accessibility shortcuts in in settings because it's an accessibility
01:34:07.740
feature but you can you can do this play you can set it all right differentiate without color
01:34:15.680
maybe that's the one i don't know color filters off oh i don't know what this is i'm not sure i
01:34:23.140
have no idea but i'll play around because you want me to get rid of it slightly old iphone so it's
01:34:26.840
probably useful well it's not like i have mark zuckerberg here i mean he probably could tell me
01:34:30.880
but your point is figure it out and get rid of the color it's easy yeah you'll find it online for
01:34:34.840
your model of phone a way to uh turn it black and white and you can toggle this right it can be
01:34:39.980
on a button so that you can still take color photos when you want to make when you want to do that
01:34:44.720
but the rest of the time instantly it's quite bizarre how how much less appealing it becomes
01:34:51.120
to just pick up the phone and scroll through it's kind of embarrassing because it just shows that on
01:34:57.220
some level we're all just excited by bright colors you know it's like it's not it's not a very
01:35:02.560
intellectual uh way of way of dealing with life but it but it works yeah and then you know i think
01:35:10.080
the other part of that is just uh there is really no need to have a lot of
01:35:15.920
social media and other stuff on your phone even if you're an active user of those of those things
01:35:21.860
they can you can make a big sort of environmental intervention in how much you use those if you make
01:35:28.420
yourself use them on a laptop or a desktop computer even i have a very good friend whose name everyone
01:35:33.540
would know who's very big on twitter who told me what he what he now does because he you know he has
01:35:39.480
the problem that so many of us have is he just dictates a couple of tweets to his staff to post for
01:35:45.580
him because that way he can make his thoughts known but he doesn't get sucked into you know this
01:35:51.520
wasteland of time spent during the day yeah that's great if you've got the team to do that i think like
01:35:59.200
absolutely that's uh that's that's another way to sort of buffer yourself from those from those
01:36:04.960
dynamics and the thing about single purpose technology or boring technology um any kind of
01:36:12.760
device that that does a thing and it doesn't allow you to just scoot off to some other thing as soon as
01:36:21.260
you are feeling uncomfortable is really i think is great so i've got a i've got a kindle e-reader i've got
01:36:26.700
a tablet called a remarkable they're sort of less well known but both of these are tablets for
01:36:32.720
reading and in the case of the remarkable for writing they kind of can't do anything else with
01:36:38.060
them there is a web browser on the kindle it's difficult to use as long as you don't have one
01:36:42.060
of the fancy kindles that's got a really good web browser and that's great because it means when
01:36:46.740
you're reading a book um and you get that little sort of impatient feeling that now it would be time to
01:36:52.400
just sort of distract yourself with something meaningless you you can't do it and you don't
01:36:57.000
do it so you keep reading um yeah and so i'm a big fan of um of devices that only do one thing and
01:37:04.300
there are all too few of them around yeah i mean this this reminds me to of a discussion i had with
01:37:09.720
a technology expert who is telling us um don't let your kids start using message services that are
01:37:17.400
embedded in one of the social media apps like tiktok or snapchat because then it goes from being
01:37:25.900
just a pure message exchange to all the demons of the social media where they try to lure them
01:37:32.380
over to bad places or keep them on forever you know i was like that's actually a very good tip
01:37:37.020
that i don't think a lot of parents know okay here's the last one i wanted i want to mention with you
01:37:40.880
seek out novelty in the mundane i love that can you explain yeah i mean the context for this in the
01:37:52.220
book is that one of the many ways one of the sort of acutely awful ways in which our finite time
01:37:58.100
makes itself felt to us is that like as soon as you're older than about 25 the older you become
01:38:05.980
aware that time is speeding up the older that you get like a month seems to pass quicker when you're
01:38:12.540
in your 40s and when you're in your 20s and uh when you're in your 50s and when you're in your 30s so on
01:38:18.060
this is kind of really awful but uh because um not only do we not have very much time on the planet
01:38:24.820
but it seemed we seem to lose it faster the the older that we get and you know if you talk to people
01:38:30.540
in their sort of 70s 80s about this they will talk about whole years apparently just like flashing by
01:38:36.680
and there's a whole theory for why this happens uh and it has to do with how routinized our lives
01:38:43.500
tend to get after childhood and young adulthood and so people are often um advised that one way to sort
01:38:50.720
of push back against this is to fill your life with novel experiences go to exotic places all the time
01:38:55.620
how to do things you've never done before i think that's true but it's also pretty difficult for
01:39:00.080
anyone who's a parent or got a job or in a relation you know all these things require a certain amount
01:39:05.160
of routine and and sameness to be done well so there's a meditation teacher called shinzen young
01:39:12.780
who makes this brilliant point that the other way to sort of slow down time and feel like your life is
01:39:18.620
not um like speeding by instead of filling your life with uh exotic experiences is to sort of
01:39:27.360
discover a new level of exoticness in the things that you're already doing to find ways to like pay
01:39:33.720
more attention to where you are firstly because it's just more fulfilling in the moment but secondly
01:39:39.880
because it will have this effect of making your life feel kind of like more expansive and like it's
01:39:45.540
not like it's not sort of uh dribbling away faster and faster and faster so you know this could be
01:39:52.500
anything from taking a different route to work uh meditation is good for it journaling is good for
01:39:59.120
it but but lots of hobbies like photography spending time with kids almost in some way
01:40:05.820
obliges you to do it because you sort of have to try to see the world through a fresh set of eyes
01:40:11.080
um there are so many different ways of doing this but the governing idea is just you know look closer
01:40:18.520
at what you're already doing and in some ways uh that will often prove just as interesting and
01:40:25.440
and meaningful as doing something like radically strange or weird with your with your day it's so
01:40:32.740
true i love what you said about the kids it's just having my kids it's made me appreciate the mailbox
01:40:38.740
more it's like my kids especially when they were little it was like what do you mean you put up the
01:40:43.000
little flag and then somebody comes and they deliver it to any place in the world for just
01:40:47.300
sense like it's it is amazing now that you think about it and like they're talking to me about how
01:40:51.960
the telephone works how does the telephone work i'm like i have no idea it is a miracle i how do our
01:40:59.140
voices go i like i don't get it but they help you appreciate the wonder in things and i'll give you one
01:41:05.580
other example now there's a guy on twitter he's one of the forces for good on twitter and his name is
01:41:13.520
joseph massey and he's a poet and i started following him because he he does exactly what
01:41:19.540
you're talking about he tweets out pictures of leaves floating in a puddle or the shadows that
01:41:27.480
a building is casting on a city sidewalk or the sun hitting a post in a field just so and he's a poet
01:41:35.700
too so his tweets accompanying these images are always pithy and beautiful and conjure up the
01:41:42.620
simplicity of a thing that you probably walked by yourself that day without thinking about it much
01:41:47.580
so i love this guy and uh he sent me a note when he saw that i followed him thanking me and saying he
01:41:53.840
was a fan he listens to the podcast and i love that and um i because you know i'm so lame in responding
01:42:00.240
it took me a long time to respond oliver it was he sent me a note in july july 13th i responded august
01:42:07.040
5th i thought that's pretty good this august 5th yeah i know i didn't know him so i respond to joseph
01:42:12.400
massey and i write as follows keep in mind his name is joseph massey paul
01:42:17.400
i am bad at checking dms but a belated thank you for this and for putting beauty into my days you may be
01:42:28.680
the most thoughtful person on twitter which i realize is a low bar but still and then he writes
01:42:34.800
back you're gonna love this he writes back megan your note made my night thank you your work is
01:42:42.460
fearless and an inspiration and always great company i like the name paul you can call me paul
01:42:48.480
you can call me paul if you want normally i go by joseph it's all very catholic either way
01:42:56.580
love this guy if you want to follow him by the way it's j massey m-a-s-s-e-y poet uh that's at
01:43:07.380
j massey poet but to your point of appreciating the the novelty in the mundane the beauty in the mundane
01:43:14.640
both my experience of this guy on twitter and my exchanges with him as well allowed me to appreciate
01:43:20.340
that very thing yeah it was a lovely story yeah all right oliver well one of these days i'm going
01:43:26.820
to see you in person and you and abby you're going to hash it out it's going to be fun yeah right yeah
01:43:31.460
we'll sort we'll we'll resolve this matter that's right the next time uh it's been an absolute pleasure
01:43:37.180
thank you so much for all of your insights and expertise same here thank you so much for inviting me
01:43:42.220
take care go ahead and download the megan kelly show on apple pandora spotify and stitcher
01:43:48.140
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01:43:52.920
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01:43:58.420
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01:44:10.940
thanks for listening see you tomorrow thanks for listening to the megan kelly show no bs no agenda