Factually! with Adam Conover - How to Cure Perfectionism with Oliver Burkeman

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Like it or not, we all have our limits. But this world seems to want to make us feel guilty for not constantly trying to outdo ourselves—we’re made to feel like failures if we’re not always becoming more efficient, more optimized, more “together” versions of ourselves. To put it frankly, this sucks. Author and previous guest Oliver Burkeman has written a book on how the pursuit of optimization just drives us further away from the core of happiness: embracing ourselves as we truly are. This week, Adam and Oliver talk about how to relieve the pressures that society puts on us and how to find peace and freedom in self-acceptance. Find Oliver’s book, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, at factuallypod.com/books--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me again on the show. I'm so thrilled to have you here. I'm not going to lie to you guys. It's been a little bit of a rough couple weeks for me. It's been a little bit not feeling, you know, 10 out of 10 on the mood scale.

I have found myself over the past couple weeks dwelling a lot on my mistakes, things I wish I could have done better. errors I've made over the past few weeks, even the past few years. And that's a habit that I honestly have a lot more than I wish I did. And I think it comes out of who I am. You know, my career and my personality are really based on striving, on trying to improve myself, you know. I believe and I have made myself believe through constant effort that if I work hard, if I learn about the world around me, if I think hard enough to make the right decisions, if I make sure I know the right people who have the best information,

if I'm as thoughtful as possible, and I put the right systems in place, well, then I can bring myself and the world I inhabit closer to a state of perfection. I can make things better for me and for others, and that there's an optimal way to do that. And if I do not pursue the optimal path, it means that I have failed. If I fall off the path of perfection, it means that I am bad in some way.

Or at least that if I can stay on the path, it'll mean that I'm good and that that is worthy of praise. But, you know, here's a question. What if all that's total bullshit, right? What if it's actually impossible to perfect oneself? What if thinking that way is actually a recipe for permanent dissatisfaction and on we? What if I told you or what if we were able to get ourselves to believe that what matters isn't the state of perfection that maybe I can achieve in the future, but the life that I'm living right now?

What would that mean for how I think about and go about my life? It's a question I think about sometimes. and sometimes I wonder if I could ever actually internalize that philosophy. And if I were able to, would it give me some relief? Well, that perspective, or at least that question that I'm asking myself, is one that comes to me that I get from the wonderful books that are written by my guest today on the show. His name is Oliver Berkman.

And, you know, I think that in a time when the world has gone so wrong and so many of us are working so hard to make it better and to make ourselves better, it might be a good time to talk to a guy who can remind us of our limitations as people and how we benefit from working within them rather than fighting against them. I think you're going to really love this conversation. It's one of my favorites that I've had on the show in many, many months. Before we get to it, I want to remind you really quickly if you want to support the show, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every single one of these episodes ad-free. We'd love to have you there.

Now, Oliver Berkman is sort of an anti-self-help author. He writes books that, you know, they're sold in the airport bookshop, right, to those busy business travelers. But they're books that ask the question, what if all the other self-help books are bullshit and are making you unhappy? I have found his work really interesting, really useful, and at the very least, very liberating at the very liberating at the time that I am literally reading the words on the page.

So I hope you'll welcome him to the show with me. His most recent book is called, I have a copy right here. It's called Meditations for Mortals, four weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. Please welcome Oliver Bergman. Oliver, thank you so much for being on the show again. It's a huge pleasure. Thanks for having me back.

I think we had you on a few years ago. I read your book, 4,000 weeks, hours, weeks. Why do I always have that problem? Weeks, thank you. It's not that bad. Yeah. You don't have 4,000 hours to live. You have 4,000 weeks to live.

Different species. That book brought me so much relief. Since then, I've subscribed to your newsletter. Every time I get a newsletter from you, I'm like, banger, this guy has, somehow you're always addressing some existential problem I have in my life. And my big problem is, you know, I'm a try hard. I stress myself out. I'm like, if only I were to, you know, finally buckle down on X, Y, Z, then I would be able to be the person I want to be.

A lot of that is based around reading. I always want to read more. I have ADD. I want to read more and I want to write more. Those are my two things I really stress myself out about. And I do those things less than I do sort of everything else. And I was on the road. I was in, I don't remember what city because I don't still have the bookmark.

But you had a new book out. I picked up a copy or a book. And I was like, you know what? This is what I need to hear. this is going to solve my problem with trihardism. I need a little Oliver Berkman in my life. And then I brought the book home. And according to my dog here,

I got to page seven before I, before I finished it. You're like read one chapter a day, which is a wonderful thing. I didn't even make it through the first chapter on the first day. And I feel like what I want you to tell me is, is that okay? Tell me why, like,

Yeah. Is it all right to have not actually read the book about why it's okay to not try so hard? Yeah, I want to use that quote. I didn't even make it through the first chapter on a, as a blurb. I think that would be, yeah, that would be ideal. This is because of me. I was reading it going, I was reading the chapter going, this is perfect. This is exactly what I need to hear.

Oh, I'm hungry. I think, I mean, so first of all, the idea of this book, the subtitle is four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts. So the whole point, yeah, is this idea of a, I'm so sick of self-help books that kind of say, here's a huge system. And if you ever get a spare month to put them into practice, like it's going to be great. And so what I was trying to do here was say, what could you, could you do? Could I write something that people could sort of integrate right into the middle of their lives, right? So the fact that you've only read a few pages now is perfect because maybe you'll get to read a few more pages at another time.

and then hopefully one of these short little chapters each day for 28 days. So you sort of like get the, so that the perspective that I'm getting at, and I can talk more about that, kind of sinks into your skin in the middle of your life, right, rather than having to take time out to kind of change everything first. Because really, that's a big part of what I'm arguing against, this kind of idea that we need to sort our lives out, get completely on top of everything before we can start living them. Yes, the idea that once you actually get everything in order and you declutter your house and you got your calendar going and you've got your routines in order, then life will begin.

That's the perspective that you're fighting against. Right, absolutely. And it's also kind of, there's like a wider world perspective here as well, right? People also say, well, the times are just too unpredictable, so I better wait till the news headlines are less terrifying and depressing, you know, good luck with that. Or, you know, I've got to make sure that I'm on top of it, that I'm ahead of the game with AI, obvious example, but there are others. Before I can relax into my life, there's something important that I have to kind of get fully figured out and kind of dominate first. I think there are systematic reasons why that's never coming.

and in the meantime, that is a recipe for doing less and feeling worse as you do it. So, yeah, reversing that is really what I'm going for here. Right, because you do it. If you are striving for too much, you end up doing less and feeling worse because there's a goal so big that you can never reach it. In fact, it's almost a fictional, notional goal that is by definition unreachable. And therefore, why ever try for anything that you'll never be able to, get to it, sort of the defeat is woven into the beginning. And so you never even start. Yeah, right. I mean, and it's not just about choosing a more, like, low-balling it,

choosing a more mediocre goal or something. It's this fundamental difference, I think, between all the ways in which we spend our lives trying to feel more in control of things versus, like doing them, versus actually plunging in and doing stuff. Because actually there's there's an opposition here. If you go through your days with the priority to sort of feel like you're on top of things, you will sort of systematically fail to get around to things because in order to do the most exciting, interesting, fulfilling things in work, in relationships, in family life, anything, you kind of have to let go of control. You kind of have to just jump in and be willing to do it imperfectly, which is the origin of my idea of imperfectionism,

which is kind of the philosophy that, that as you will see, if you go get further through, runs through the book. Yeah, I think, is this from one of your recent newsletters because it's coming to mind?

And again, I've been, I've said on the show before, I've been, like, quote unquote, like trying to write a book proposal or trying to, like,

work on a writing project for a while now. And I keep thinking, oh, I want to be one of those people who, like, I spend two hours every day and I get up at the right time and I do the thing and I picture the type of person that I'll be.

And I feel like this came from your work or maybe it's me internalizing it and chewing it up. But like actually even trying to achieve that vision of myself is a distraction because the real thing I have to do is actually just sit in front of my fucking computer and type some words over and over again. And there's no future version of me for whom that will not be a struggle. like that'll always suck. And actually the only thing I ever have to do is open the laptop, open the document, and do some typing. There's no other work to ever be done. And that's a horrifying realization, but it's also the truth.

It's horrifying, but I would say in an important way, it's easier, right? And actually, yeah, you're right. There's quite a lot of stuff from the newsletters ended up in this book. So you've probably encountered more of it than you think. The whole problem with a lot of how we approach habit change and becoming this marvelous consistent person, as you say, we're sort of focused on becoming the kind of person who, as opposed to just doing things. And, and, you know, I really, I've been through this as well, completely, like, I've got this amazing image of myself as a completely consistent writer who

just chips away a few hundred words a day and it's never stressful to produce a book. And it's just never, ever goes like that. It always turns into this kind of helter-skelter tumultuous thing as the deadline approaches and then passes. So it's true that you can never get over that difficulty, that moment when you just have to do the thing. But it's actually a much easier thing to do, right, in a certain sense, because you're not creating this huge intimidating project of like I have to change the personality that I am.

It's just like I have to sit down for an hour and work on it today. It's not like I have to become someone who, is incredibly consistent at working out. It's like you have to go for a run or go to the gym today for 20 minutes, you know, and actually they're opposite to each other, right? Because actually you think to yourself, well, okay, I'm going to check out another book about fitness goals, I'm going to get the right equipment, I'm going to do this and that and it all ends up as being a barrier from just doing the thing. And again, I think that's because becoming the kind of person who feels kind of like you're getting in more control over your life,

right? You're becoming this kind of person who sits on a throne above reality and has it nailed. And when you actually do the thing, that's loosening your grip on control. That's being willing to do the action even at the expense of a feeling of security or control over it. Oh, wow. Okay, so this sort of cuts against the book itself, though, or I'm curious about this, because when I think about that feeling, okay, I want to become the sort of person who does the thing I want to do. Often my first step of that is to buy a book, right?

Because there's some book out there that says, you know, oh, I want to write a book. Okay. I'll go buy a book by a writing guru called How to Become a Writer. and then I'll buy the book. And the moment I purchase the book, I'm sitting in the bookstore, I'm imagining I'm going to read the book and it's going to transform me.

And on the other side, I'm going to be a writer. Oh, and that feels so good. And I go pay my $20. And honestly, $20, not too much to pay for that feeling. That's a really good feeling, you know, to experience that for like a day or half a day or whatever it is. And then I go home and I put the book on the shelf. And maybe I even read the book, right?

But probably what I don't do is, actually do the writing because that part feels bad, right? And so what the writer has sold to me is a good feeling that is unrelated to the thing I actually want to do. Right? No, totally. It's like, it's like, I want to eat good and they've sold me a bowl of ice cream instead of a salad. And how do you avoid falling into the same trap with your book? Well, it's a really interesting question. I mean, I'm not sure that it's possible to completely avoid falling into that trap if what you're going to do is write books. And obviously, on some level, I want to say, say the answer is you've got to buy this book, not any of those other books by other people,

right? You just got to buy this book, that's the whole point. But to be slightly less cynical and uncovincing than that, what I, in many ways, the structure and the format of this book is as important to me as the content, because I really did want to try to forestall that feeling, right? The idea is, don't read this whole book, internalize this, system for doing, for becoming a writer or whatever else. And, you know, it does not offering you that feeling. I'm not, I'm not offering you the feeling of getting on top of everything. If you pick up this book anyway, despite my not making that offer, you know, you read the chapter on decision making, maybe, I don't know, on the subway to work or something, it takes like

four minutes. Maybe the bits that resonate and hang around with you will actually make a concrete difference to how you take decisions over the course of the next 24 hours. And then there's a section on stuff we've been talking about, sections on sort of loosening your grip on control so as to get into acting on things. It's not that you're going to do that and then implement it. And if you haven't done that, you just read the book, then you've kind of failed in the way that you're talking about. It's just like, it's just a perspective shift that kind of sinks under your skin and maybe makes a difference. And I'm not just, you know, maybe it won't. But my experience, as a reader of the kinds of books that have made a difference to me,

is that that perspective shift that then changes how I naturally do things is way more effective than the whole kind of I am going to implement this step-by-step system for change. Hey, how much of your personal data do you think is online? You know, it's scary to hear, but it's probably a lot more than you think. our whole world is online, even if you think that your flesh and blood existence is not. All kinds of your personal data, including your email addresses, your phone numbers, the names of your relatives, all of it exists out there on the internet just waiting to be grabbed by anyone who is looking to exploit you.

And that is why I simply have to recommend delete me, a service I've been using for years and actually really believe in. Did you know that there are people out there who make a living off of treating your personal info. They're called data brokers, and they are serving up in all-you-can-eat buffet of names, addresses, and other personal info to anyone who is willing to cough up the cash. And if you want to take your name off the menu, you really need to check out, delete me. I use this service for years before they ever started sponsoring the show. I can vouch that it actually works. After I signed up, my information was removed from dozens of sites, and I started getting less spam calls, less prank

calls. I signed my entire family up for it because I wanted to protect them too. It really does work. And then I can unequivocally recommend it as just a basic way to protect your privacy. And here's how it works. They're teams of experts diligently hunt down your personal info from data broker sites. They remove it from those sites and they keep it gone, keeping you and your loved ones safe from all those bad actors. And you know, as the world gets more wired, there's been an uptick in online harassment, identity theft, and even real life stalking. all because of this easily accessible information. So why take the risk?

You, your family, and your loved ones deserve to feel safe from this kind of invasion of privacy. Check out, Delete Me, not just for your security, but for your friends and family too. And get this, you can get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joinDeletme.com slash Adam and use the promo code Adam at checkout.

That's joinedeletme.com slash Adam, promo code Adam. Folks, you know, nothing is scarier than trying something new, right? And I'm not talking about just trying a new food. there is nothing challenging about trying deep fried lasagna balls. Those go down easy. I'm talking about it really investing yourself in a project like launching a business. There's a load of work to do, and that's even before the emotional burden of wondering whether you've got all your eyes dotted and teas crossed. That's why it can be huge to have a tried and trusted partner like Shopify on your side to help.

Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States. from household names like Heinz and Momofuku to brands just getting started. Tackle all those important tasks in one place from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. Everything is all in one place,

making your life easier and your business operations smoother. And did I mention that iconic purple shop pay button that is used by millions of businesses around the world? It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the god dang planet. It also helps boost conversions, meaning less carts going abandoned and more sales for you.

So it's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash factually. Go to Shopify.com slash factually. That's Shopify.com slash factually. You know, car shopping shouldn't be a game of 20 questions. Is this the right price?

Am I making the right choice? Well, with Car Gurus, you don't have to question yourself. Car Gurus has the most inventory, transparent deal ratings, and real-time price drop alerts. Plus, with Carguroo's app, you can access dealership mode, which gives you everything you need to navigate the dealership with confidence. With Car gurus Discover, you can skip the filters and describe what you're looking for in your own words. Simply type what you want, and Car gurus Discover instantly surfaces real listings that match your exact needs. dealership mode on the Car Gurus app puts you in control. You can compare cars side by side, check pricing, and estimate your final cost so you can

navigate the dealership with confidence. It's no wonder Car Gurus is the number one most visited car shopping site, according to similar webs estimated traffic data. Buy or sell your next car today with Car Gurus at Car Gurus.com. Go to Cargooros.com to make sure your big deal is the best deal. that's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S dot com, car gurus.com. You know what?

I was about to ask you, because I'm sort of fascinated by self-help as a genre, right? Because we all know, like 95% of it is bullshit. Or, you know, or is maybe just makes you feel a little bit better, right? It's a Band-Aid on a deeper problem. But there are those books that really stuck with me, you know, that really changed my life. Alan Carr is the easy way to quit smoking. I don't know if you're familiar with this book.

changed my, not even just, it didn't even just help me quit smoking, changed how I think about like addiction overall in a really profound way. And literally it's a cliche, but like in my 20s, I read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's kind of a silly book in a lot of ways, but it taught me a lot of things that I, that I really used in my life. And, and I think what those books offered was a perspective shift. It was like, Alan Carr is sort of, and if anyone's trying to quit smoking, read this book,

he's not offering you a system and a bunch of tools. He's just sort of browbeating you with this very simple idea about addiction, which is you believe, you've been tricked into believing that you need cigarettes to feel happy. You're wrong. They've tricked you. The moment that you quit, you'll be happy.

Like, he's just trying to impress that upon you. And it's like 10 chapters of him just repeating himself in very bad prose. But like, if you read it and it gets into you and you actually can believe this one the insight, you might actually change your behavior on your own. And so maybe I see a commonality there that it's like just this sort of one fundamental shift you're trying to give people maybe. Does that track for you? Yeah, it does. I think I'm coming at it from like a whole lot of different

angles and some of them will click more than others, right? But it is basically the idea that like if perfection is your goal, if totally controlled personality change is your goal, you've already failed. It's off the table. Humans don't get to do it. that. And you can sort of relax, but, and I feel strongly about this too, it's the kind of relaxation that is associated with being able to then take action, right? It's not about just like give up and sit on the couch all day. So I think that idea that actually we free ourselves to act when we put down this heavy weight of trying to change in certain ways is that, yeah, that's the thing I'm saying again and again in different ways. Putting down the weight is such a

it's a phrase that's come to my mind a lot over the last couple years as being the thing I wish I could do. Let's talk about some of your specific, you know, instantiations of this idea. You talked about a moment ago, what was a decision making? That's something that I struggle with a lot. I was recently described by a friend as the most indecisive person she has ever met. And this really, really struck me. And I was like, I can't argue with that, but like you've ever met? And talk to anybody who knows me.

They'll be like, oh, my God. Like, I remember when he was trying to choose plates, like what dinner set to buy. That was a month and a half of stress. So what is your analysis of what makes decision making hard and how I can escape this? Okay. Well, I think the sort of one of the two points that I really focus on is just this notion. certainly not the first person to notice it, right? That you're sort of already always deciding anyway. You're deciding when you indecisively like procrastinate on using your time

in manner A or manner B, you're choosing to spend your time in manner C, which is being indecisive. If you sort of let everyone else's agendas take over yours and you ever push back and never say no to anything, but you are kind of deciding. that that's how you want to spend your time. So there is this kind of situation where for finite human beings, the perfect decision, the perfect sort of sitting on top of life, pressing pause on reality and making the perfect decision

is sort of already a lost cause. One way that this comes up that I think is very powerful is people often drive themselves crazy in life situations because they don't want to choose either, of the sets of downsides that come with something. I write in the book about a friend of mine who had this dilemma trying to figure out whether he should suggest separating from his spouse, which would cause all sorts of agony, or not suggest it, which would cause different sorts of agony.

And people spend months sort of unconsciously waiting for the decision that is no sort of agony. And there's this lovely quote from the therapist Sheldon Kopp, who says, you're free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences. And it was this kind of insight that my friend found really liberating because it's like, oh, I'm only deciding which problem to have. I'm only deciding which downside to shoulder. And you can translate that with a bit of effort even into like picking plates, right? It's like, well, you like these and you like those.

So there's a downside that comes with going for one and there's a downside that comes with going for the other. Stop trying to get to the no downside position and ask it. Instead, which of those downsides seems like the right downside to accept. It's all very pessimistic, but actually it isn't. That's what I'm constantly trying to persuade people off. Well, and I often find the hardest decisions are the ones that are equally bad, right? Like, it's like which is, you know, which is worse, the direct flight that you have to get up for at 4 a.m. Or the one with the layover, but you can get to the airport at noon, right?

Like, both suck. Both are going to be miserable. Choose your misery. And that can be a surprisingly hard decision to make, honestly, is just between two itineraries for that reason. But you said, in your answer, you used the word right. And right is often the hardest thing for me about making a decision. Because I imagine, I'm an atheist fundamentally. And yet I imagine a cosmic judge watching my decisions and not necessarily condemning me to hell,

but just sort of pointing at me and going like, ha ha, you made the wrong decision. There's somebody watching me. And when I go look outside of myself and say, you know, who is this and where is it coming from? It's really hard to isolate, you know, but I have a fear of not making the optimal decision, I think, sometimes. It's not moral.

It's more like which is the best in terms of efficacy, efficiency, and outcomes, and that I should be able to figure that out at every moment. Right, right. And this is a, yeah, I totally know the feeling. And I think that one of the, there are a number of sort of antidotes to that in terms of perspective shifts, but I think one of them, just to sort of reiterate this kind of liberating hopelessness that I hope I'm, hope I'm getting across here, is that in many, many cases, possibly all cases, like, you literally will never find out.

There's no way to ever find out whether that was the best decision. In the book, I refer to this another book by the poet David Orr, which is entirely about Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken, but All Americans study in high school, right? And it's about, and this two paths diverge in a yellow wood. The whole ethos, the way this poem has been kind of landed in the culture is that it's all about like, oh, you've got to choose. the unconventional route and then you'll have a better life. But there's a whole analysis of this poem where if you read it carefully, he's basically saying, you can never tell when you face a fork in the woods. You can never tell which one is going to lead you to the more interesting or in other ways better life. And you're never going to be able to tell even in hindsight,

because you didn't live the other life that would have led you through that other choice. And it's always the case that when something bad happens in your life, something, it could be preferable to something worse or vice versa. So it's like there is this kind of total unknowability that I think, again, maybe it's a personality thing. But I think that's pretty liberating because it means that all you can do is go with your gut, go with a hunch, go with what feels like the, the sort of growth-oriented or alive option in those kinds of cases.

But it can be hard to figure out what your gut actually wants, right? Like, I think something that I have a hard time with is identifying what it is I actually want and like pulling apart the thicket of like what other people are going to think of what the thing is. My sort of cultural scripts about what the right or wrong decisions to make are, my worry about some sort of overarching morality, my worry about outcomes and like actually just focusing on like what do I, you know, sometimes you're looking at a menu, right? And you're like, which actually sounds best to me? Am I adjusting my choice based on what other people are ordering?

Like, am I worried too much about health? What do I fucking want in this moment? And that is harder for me to identify than I often think it should be. And then sometimes when I do know what I want, I don't trust it. And I say, well, that's just what I want. That's stupid. You know, that means I shouldn't have it because, like, wanting is bad or something. Like, do you confront this ever? Yeah, it's so interesting because, like, at the deepest level, I, and it's taken me a long

journey of being a sort of neurotic uptight person, which I'm sure I, to some extent, still am to move past this. But, like, on some level, nothing is more important than, like, what you want. I've written in a newsletter about this idea of interestingness and how like navigating your life in the direction of the things you find interesting sounds so kind of, sounds so throwaway on some level or like a low bar for a life, but it's kind of, it's kind of everything in a way. I don't know that it'll help with menu choices, but this question I've mentioned that all the time because it means so

much to me from James Hollis, the Jungian psychotherapist who recommends asking a question like, will this choice that I'm contemplating if I go in this direction, will that enlarge me or diminish me? I really like that phrasing because it sort of connects you to something like the growth or generativity, the Jungians like to say, there's some sort of idea of going towards what has life in it, which for me often does cut through those kinds of dilemmas. Because there's a lot of things that are kind of fun, but you sort of know that they don't have any life in them. And by contrast, there's a lot of choices that are difficult and hard, but you know that

they're the one that it would be sort of growth-oriented to pursue. So I think that can be quite a good guide sometimes. That's really helpful to me. You know, if I can get really personal, if you don't mind, Oliver, for a moment. And I'm starting to talk about that on this show more. And I talk about it in my new hour of standup. You know, me and my ex split up a bit over a year ago. And part of the reason for both of us, you know, we're in our early 40s.

We decided not to have kids. We met when we were in our early 20s, you know. And we were both kind of like fundamentally, hey, there's a big wide world out there. You know what I mean? That's like worth, worth exploring in all of its, you know, in other relationships and living alone and being to having the chance to chart one's own course, right? And lately over the past couple months, I've been sort of plagued with the worry, oh, what if that was some cosmic mistake, right? What if the thing we were actually supposed to do was experience the pleasure of

something that you've talked about in some of your other writing very movingly, the pleasure of committing to one person, to want to a smaller life, to raising a family, to that sort of solidity, to being in one place rather than trying to be in every place, right? And I've been sort of like, ah, was that, was that incorrect, you know? And, but at the same time, that is what I wanted, right? That I didn't feel a strong pull in that direction. And it's still difficult to sort out, you know, what the, what the feeling of wanting is. but you're helping me return back to that initial sort of first movement of the foot that pulled us in that direction, right?

Yeah. Despite all the pain that came with it and the loss, right? We had to give up a lot in order to make that choice in order to follow that want. Yeah, no, it's really interesting and, you know, not just interesting, obviously. Painful, I'm sure. I think that I mean we're talking about regret

or potential regret in some ways here, aren't we? And I think that's another place where this kind of understanding of what it means to be a sort of finite human in a world of infinite mental possibilities is so important because it's sort of it's sort of baked in, right? A certain kind of poignancy or any

any path you take involves this kind of waving goodbye to other paths. And I think that the proper response to that is not to sort of try and pummel your brain until you think, until you finally believe that there's nothing negative about the choice that you make. But to sort of appreciate that there is going to be that sort of poignancy that something was lost. it doesn't mean it was the wrong decision. It means you're sort of experiencing it in a fuller way.

And for sure, there would have been anyone who gets to that point in a relationship, there's going to be lost if the other decision is the way that it goes. And I think we can sort of, this poignancy word is really important to me at the moment. There's a very specific kind of emotion. That's the best word I have for it. I'm not sure it's the right one. Right. that comes to do with like appreciating that like, yeah, that's what it is being,

being people who can only be in one place at one time and only pick one of a multitude of paths at any given, any given way. And who move forward whether or not we choose to or just born forward ceaselessly. Yeah, I was talking to a dear friend of mine last night and she about this feeling and she said, you know, is there something to enjoy in the longing or the feeling of loss? and you're right that you'll you'll have it no matter what like had we made the opposite choice right I would say you know what let's have the kid and let's really buckle down I would have gone like well then I never did have that moment of you know living alone in an apartment with no uh you know

no one tying me down and getting to you know and living this other life right I would have I would have mourned the life that I'm currently living had I chosen that life now I'm mourning the life that I didn't choose, right? Yeah. And so either way, you have no choice but to enjoy the poignancy of missing the thing that you didn't experience, right? Right. Or to commit, not commit in the sense of you commit to a relationship, but committing to

the real commitment, ultimately, as to where you are, right? It's like, so if that has involved deciding to stay in a relationship, then that's where you are. And if that is involved time to leave it, then, then it's, then. that's where you are. I always notice on like social media and in the in the discourse with a capital D there's always these kind of arguments between people have very strong feelings about whether other people should have children and um and and one of the things you you see sometimes is that um people who do have children uh certain kind of people not me I do have a kid but I

don't engage in this kind of obnoxiousness I hope like um looking down on on on on people who don't because they'll sort of never know what it's what it's like to become apparent. So they can't judge. And usually the implication is like it's, you know, life transformingly wonderful. So, so you're missing out. But of course, by becoming a parent, which I'm personally extremely glad that I did for me in my life, I'm missing out on the experience of being in my 40s and 50s without being a parent, right? Oliver, let me tell you. Nobody gets to not miss out.

Yeah, I'm doing a lot of shit. You'll never know. You know what I mean? There's a lot you'll never know that goes on that you can get up to. You know, when you're into your 40s, you've got your career going and you're like, well, now I can do whatever the fuck I like. You know, it's pretty wild. And it's dizzying and there's a lot of downsides to it as well. Nobody's not missing out.

There isn't some position you can get into by taking a specific set of choices that's like I got to experience everything. because actually, no, I did get to experience being an adult without a kid, an adult with a kid, but I didn't get to experience this phase of my life as a non-parent. That is close to me forever. Right. And like, let's say, you know, I'm a man. I'm lucky enough maybe in 20 years I have a kid, right? Well, I'll never have experienced being a young parent, right?

Being like a 30 year. I have friends who are doing that now and they're like, there's a certain, they love it, right? they're having a it's a it's a it's a it's a rollicking and profound and and you know sort of parenting by the seat of their pants kind of experience that I can tell I can tell that they love right and that I'm not having and you know what's funny is I went to uh uh I've returned this memory a lot um you know I maybe like eight months after the breakup I went to a um a party with a bunch of my friends in comedy and this was the party of all the people who got married and had kids, right? These are all my friends I started in comedy with. But now they're all 42 and all of their four year olds are running around, you know, and I'm feeling out of place because I'm, they all know about this breakup. And here I am showing up the party alone. And I'm like, I'm such a weirdo, right? And I sit down to next to one of my very good friends, really funny comic and we're chit chatting and he goes,

he goes, single guy, huh? And I'm like, yeah. And he goes, he goes, must be nice. And I was, and I was just like, thanks, man. You know, just like that little acknowledgement of like, hey, we're both doing different things. And I'm literally envying him how what a great time he's having with his kids in that moment, you know? Yeah, yeah. And those, and I had a couple other conversations with that on that same day where I was talking to other. Oh, yeah, I'm going to go to New York next month for a couple weeks. And my friend went, oh, wow, that sounds great.

I would love to go to New York for a couple weeks. You know, that sounds great. I wish I could find a way to internalize the message that you're talking about a little bit more, though, because something that I think anybody who knows me would tell you I'm plagued by. Sometimes I call it FOMO. I think it's more honestly, maybe I even coined this last time we spoke, is Ramo. It's not fear of missing out. It's regret after missing out. It's like, oh, I didn't go to the park.

Oh, and it looked so fun. I did something else. I wish I had done that thing, you know? And that crops up in me again and again. despite, I can talk to you. I could interview every single week, right? I could talk to you. I could reread your book every single week.

You can send out a newsletter every day and I can go, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I feel like I would still feel that way over and over again, even though we both agree, it's pointless and all I'm doing is tormenting myself. So how do you actually stop yourself from dwelling on that? Well, that's a challenging question to try to answer. I think, you know, firstly, I will not keep doing the sales pitch, but I do think that the sort of slow accumulation of these objectives that I've tried to go for in this book is a help with that. But also,

in my experience, not with exactly the same issue, I'm someone who worries in advance about regretting things later all the time, but never does actually regret them in hindsight, right? So we all have our own, we all have our own personal screw up. But I think that, But the real transition, and I do try to get at this in the book for sure, is away from thinking of this as something that has to be eradicated. You know, Carl Rogers, the humanist therapist, has this lovely famous phrase, the curious irony, or whatever it is, is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. there's a line from a psychotherapist called Bruce Tiff who talks about like

what would it be to think about this problem that you have and it might be something else or someone else right procrastination or social anxiety or something in your case it's this kind of regret about missing out and things what would it be like to just sort of to know that you were going to have some version of that for the whole of the rest of your life And I think, maybe not everyone agrees, but I think there's something very liberating about that, right? You can sort of be like, oh, okay, that's a part of my personality. So I can just sort of stop fiddling with that and get on with some more interesting things than trying to fix it. I think there's a real sort of that question of like, oh, what if I never change in this regard?

I've found personally, you know, I'm a historically very anxious person. and that's one of my things. And I've really found that that sort of just reflecting on that notion that, like, yeah, that's probably always going to be a way that I engage with the world on some level. The huge irony is that is actually a very, very anxiety-relieving thought. Yeah. The acceptance of limitation or the acceptance of discomfort allows you to then say, okay, well, what am I going to do anyway?

Right, yeah, exactly. There's a Zen master that I quote in the book, and I've quoted in lots of newsletters, Giu Kennett, who said that her philosophy of teaching Zen students was not to lighten the burden of the student, but to make it so heavy that he or she would put it down. And I think that is like an amazing, amazing articulation of this idea of like, yeah,

we're talking about being human and being the specific human that you've been conditioned and raised to be. And yeah, that's the way it is. And then, like, what could you do in that position when you weren't trying to escape it? Oh, because, again, putting it down is so much something that I wish I could do. Like, you know, that sense of relief, that's something I often find myself questing for, you know, when I feel like I'm relaxed as I was able to put it down for a second. or I watched my dad retire about six or seven years ago and I watched him like put something down when he

retired and and I was like jealous of that. I was like I can't wait to do that. But the idea of increasing the burden until you put it down or or feeling the weight of it. That's really kind of intoxicating. Do you also have in your work and please forgive me if I'm if I'm conflating you with another writer but the phrase like good news the disease is fatal like that kind of idea that like there's a disease of like yeah you're going to die it's fatal it's coming for you yeah I do I mean it's definitely not only my insight so you might be confusing me with other people as well I don't know but there's a quotation at the

beginning of 4,000 weeks that I use from Jocko Beck who was an American Zen teacher and she liked to say what makes it unbearable is your mistaken belief that it can be cured. This idea that our problem, this is a very Zen idea, I think, actually. This idea that our problem is thinking that there ought to be some escape hatch or thinking that there ought to be some solution. It's not that we haven't found the escape hatch or the solution.

That's the problem. It's the idea that we ought to have, that there ought to be one and that we haven't found it. And as soon as you sort of begin to let go of that, and just to stress, like, I let go of it in a moment and feel relief flood through my body, and then I need to do that again a few days later, right? I don't, I think that actually the idea that there's a set it and forget it solution is the same illusion that we're talking about here, right? So actually one of the aspects of the liberating hopelessness is the liberating hopelessness of ever finding a single technique that will eradicate the problem forever. But when I do feel into that, like nothing is more sanity bringing than that thought. Because then, yeah, all you can do is the next thing in the next moment that seems like the right thing to do in your life.

you know, rinse and repeat. You know what this brings to mind for me really perversely, but late last year, I got neurovirus, horrible. You know, I, as my ex put it, I double dragoned. I barfed and had diarrhea at the same time. Disgusting. And then I slept for, you know, 12 to 16 hours. And then I woke up and I just had, you know, I'm like,

okay, I'm going to be sick for a couple days because that's what happens with You're just like ill for four days before you can do anything. And that, I'm literally nostalgic for that period. I'm like, oh, that was great. I was nauseous. I was barely eating. I was just drinking pediolite and, you know, periodically throwing up. But all I was able to do, it was so overwhelming.

All I was able to do was lie on the couch and watch TV. And for a moment, I stopped striving and, you know, trying to get out of it, you know. I was like, all I can do is experience this. Maybe also part of the liberation of being on a flight, you know, being on a long flight. You're like, well, this is just going to suck for seven hours. And like, what do I do while it sucks? Guess I'll watch a movie. I'm not getting off the plane.

I'm not getting out of here, right? Yeah. The pleasure of, of guaranteed unhappiness or discomfort is. And yet, I mean, as you are implying, I think. but I think just to bring it out explicitly, that's only a somewhat more extreme version of the situation where we're always in, right? I mean, so like, yeah, there's only a few things you can do on a plane, but there's only a few more things that you can do on a day when you, you know, with a limited amount of time when you get up in the morning.

Right. We're all sort of limited by our bodies and our energy levels, even when we're, you know, and we're not so limited, as in the days immediately following a bug like that, right? So it's not to, you know, it's not to sort of gainsay that people have different levels of this, and it's part of some people and for others. But like, we are always ultimately in this kind of, we're sort of imprisoned by reality all the time. And it's funny how sometimes, when it's extreme, we get to sort of feel into the liberating aspect of that.

And other times, we have just enough options that we go over that threshold into thinking that we can do anything and everything and that you can add another eight things to your to do list today. And of course, you'll get through them. Because of course you'll find the stamina from somewhere. Like, no? Yeah. Right.

Do you think that the world of tech, the tech industry specifically, or all these new things that we have, do you think? that it somehow contributes to this feeling of limitlessness and this desire to not be bounded by reality because so much of, you know, tech products remove friction, right? I can, with my phone, I can, any kind of cuisine I could have here in 15 minutes, right? But as there's maybe that creates this fantasy that we can just endlessly remove friction from the world and just smooth everything over so that anybody can do anything. at any time and we never have any problems.

That's sometimes what I see when I look at, when you go see what the real like AI sickos are saying on X.com, that seems to be like the worldview that they have, you know? Yeah, no, totally. I think it's always been the case with a certain kind of technology, maybe digital technology. I think the internet, even just the internet, right? The phenomenology, the experience of being online is sort of

that you can go anywhere and do anything, that you're sort of a god in some way. You can find out what's happening thousands of miles away in real time. Something is not, some rule of the human condition doesn't apply. And then, yeah, I think it's, from what I've seen, that's just sort of supercharged with AI. And you read these accounts of people who've sort of had a, yeah, like a kind of out-of-body experience running multiple coding agents all through the night.

And getting to, I read somebody. a co-founder of Anthropic the other day in his newsletter saying that he feels that AI has made him feel sort of guilty or distracted when he's playing with his kid or his kids because there's capacity now that he has that he could be that he could be using for work. He could have more agents running things for him at that time than he than he is doing. So like that seems like a poor result from this kind of technology. So I think, yeah, everything that brings us closer and closer to that moment that it feels like we might be God, basically, it is, worsens the problem because we never actually,

we never actually become God. And so actually gets more and more frustrating that you can't, the frictionlessness of modern life makes it even more frustrating to run into like, you know, a line at the DMV because the bits that you can't control. I mean, you still like, you're, you're still an aging sack of meat that's limited in space of time. You still have to make sure that you're never more than 30 feet away from a hole with water that you can piss and poop in, right?

Like, and you'll never, like, Tim Cook can't escape that. like Dario O'Made Amade cannot cannot escape that but there's like sort of this fiction that we that we can Right and of course in the in the real sort of extreme transhumanist corner of that whole world

The idea is that actually we can because our bodies are not important and our minds can be uploaded and we can live and flourish in a sort of pure disembodied state but that's not I don't think that's actually living So we can talk about that if you want. Yeah, it's also not true.

It's like not literally true that your consciousness can be uploaded into because you are, in fact, a brain. This makes me so mad. It's just the, it's the software. You're not literally a software program that can be like, you know, run on a different piece of hardware the way you can play an NES game on a laptop, you know? Right. You are actually like a piece of meat and stuff that happens to the meat affects your consciousness. and like that's just you're talking about a different thing like you are we have this like desire to escape i i think it comes back to yeah this fundamental desire to pretend that we are not

limited in the ways that we are to like ignore the the disease ignore the the the the finiteness rather than embrace it right yeah yeah right because uploading of consciousness you make a great point, right? The uploading of consciousness onto chips is not only not yet possible, but if something that was worthy of that name ever were possible, it wouldn't be that you as a person had moved your location. It would be some other weird thing that had happened and left you behind. Well, when you try to upload your, here's what happens when you upload your consciousness,

right? Elon connects himself to the machine, right? It uploads him into the machine. and the machine goes, hello, I'm Elon. And then Elon sitting there with the thing strapped to his head is like, no, no, you're not, I'm Elon. Because he's still fucking trapped. There are many philosophy papers have been written on like what's going on there.

Yeah, and you know, I think I don't want to, I maybe don't want to push this point too far, but it does seem worth saying. I think that like one of the things that we are as embodied people, as embodied beings, is kind of feeling and emoting emotional beings. And I have had as much difficulty feeling into my emotions as the next repressed British male. So, you know, I come at this from a perspective of,

I don't come at this from starting off as a position of wonderfully kind of in touch with my feelings at all. But it does seem, so maybe that gives me the standing to say it does seem to me when you listen to a lot of these people, it's hard to believe that the people at the forefront of these movements are themselves, kind of in any meaningful sense, deeply in touch with that whole layer of embodiment. It doesn't seem that that's what's going on

in the psychologies of our leading AI light, put it that way. Yeah, they're not in touch with their bodies, with their emotions, with their humanity. they're not living in some way or they're not in touch with the problem of living. I'm curious about you, you mentioned Zen Buddhism a few times. I'm just curious about your, you know, relationship with Buddhism, how much of your work is inspired by it.

And, you know, I mean, you're writing in, it's very interesting because there is the sort of like business self-help Buddhism, you know, the headspace. com app, you know, part of, you know, meditate for a better life. And you're not quite doing that. Right. But you are writing these sort of anti-selfhelp books or these anti-optimization books. And you are, you do seem to me to be clearly, you said you're influenced by Buddhism to some degree. Just how do you situate yourself in that system and, and a tradition of thought? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think about it a lot. I mean, I think that the truth that I always come back to is, that my spiritual practice when it comes to writing these books is sort of journalism, right, or reporting.

I came up as a newspaper reporter and this basic idea and a specific kind of newspaper reporter to where I sort of had to be a really quick study and grab a whole load of different source materials at a rapid clip. Really the thing I do is I just in a very magpie-like way kind of sort of take in. a thing that I can find. And I think that I've sort of turned this to my advantage. People have said that they like the fact that I'll quote the great Zen founder Dogen on one page and then like Rod Stewart on the next page or whatever. So that sort of comic eclecticism is something that I've sort of leaned into. But it's just the result of saying like I've got these problems of my own that I want to try to solve. And like here are eight or nine. different morsels that seem like they could solve them. And in aggregate, it is true, I mean,

I'm sure I've got lots more to learn from other religious traditions yet, but in aggregate, it is true that that then does seem, you look at what you've got that way and you're like, oh, there's a lot of, especially Zen Buddhism here, Buddhism more generally, but I think that Zen perhaps because it is a tradition with a lot that generates a lot of really good writing. so it's very quotable. And also I think because it sort of appeals to overly left-brained people, analytical people, right?

It has this quality of saying not like, let's see if I'd articulate this. It's not like drop all your overthinking and just focus on this beautiful flower instead, right? It's more like, okay, let's take your overthinking and push it all the way and see exactly how far it goes until it kind of shudders and collapses.

And that's when I've had the kind of moments of great insight in my life. It's like, no, don't just like tell yourself you're not supposed to overthink. Just like follow that out to where it's leading and realize that it sort of ends in this impossibility. I always find that to be a more useful direction. The book is called Meditations for Mortals is, do you have a meditation practice? There's been some confusion over this and it's our fault. We should have called it something different. but I mean, I'm the, as I've said elsewhere, you know, the, when I'm calling this book Meditations

for Mortals, the, um, the historical figure who I'm incredibly arrogantly comparing myself to is not the Buddha, but Marcus Aurelius, right? It's arrogant either way. But his, um, his, the meditations of Marcus Aurelius are these kind of short pieces of writing to sort of reflect on and allow to absorb into your, into yourself. Um, that said, you know, I've already, said, like, you know, the Buddhist stuff is very central to me. And I've had a long history with meditation. And right now as we speak, I'm doing more of it. But an incredibly patchy, like from the point of view of any kind of discipline in terms of formal meditation, I've always found, people get into trouble saying something else is their meditation, right?

You can't really say drinking a few beers each night at the bar is my meditation or something. But I do genuinely believe that the way I engage with journaling and morning pages is actually kind of, it fulfills a lot of the functions of some meditation practice anyway. And then I find, yeah, for some reason, that is a central part of my life. For some reason, sitting on a cushion and following my breath, although it happens, never stick in the same way. Okay, so you've outed yourself as one of these artist's way freaks. Okay, I got... Exactly. I'm an artist way freak, yeah.

That's great. I also have a copy of that book I haven't read. I would get an endorsement from Julia Cameron, who knows. But that process of like putting what is in arising in my mind, whatever it is. And it's usually like me working through my problems rather than a beautiful passage I want to write in the book or something, right? But like putting the practice of sort of taking that mental content and putting it onto the page, I think I can defend the claim that there's something in the disidentification that is involved with that is that is in tune with meditation. Yeah.

I don't doubt it. And as you're talking about meditation and the meditation, even the phrase that I use meditation practice, I've meditated very spares. throughout my life, but I feel like I have a relationship with it for a number of reasons. A teacher I had in a high school who was very important to me was a Tara Vodan Buddhist, who had a meditation practice and really influenced my life. And I've often, you know, I've read different books, folks like Stephen Batchelor, people like that, who are very about meditation. But then, you know, myself, I'll meditate two days in a row and then like never again for three years.

and I think a lot of people have the relationship with meditation, again, where they go, well, once I become the sort of person who meditates every day, then I can have all of these wonderful insights Oliver is writing it, or that, you know, or that I read about in the book, in the Zen book or whatever other book it is. And I think even like a lot of, you know, Buddhist teachers who would advocate you to meditate would say, no, no, that's, you're fucking up, right? If you're thinking that you're putting that kind of pressure, the whole point of the meditation is to realize you don't need to do that in some way.

Yeah. No, I think, yeah, that's a, it's a really good point. And by the way, I have done a couple of sort of week-long retreats, and you do meet people in those settings who are deeply into meditation. And as far as I can tell, are in that trap of like they're powering through to get to the point where they're finally okay. And then so really there, the difference between them and those of us who are less disciplined meditators is just how much natural willpower we have, right?

It's nothing to do with reaching any great state of enlightenment. I think, yeah, I think this is another place where it is really useful to remember that the point is to do it in and of itself, just as the point is to write another hundred words of your novel or to go for a run or whatever, as opposed to sort of becoming the kind of person who, that's especially perverse in the meditation context, given you're sort of supposedly dismantling your self in some sense or seeing through yourself. So setting a lot of store by becoming the kind of person who meditates every day is a real, is a real sort of blind alley there.

And I find, you know, I find it even more with the journaling, but I do find that when I do it, the day tends to be a better day. That's like, I think that can be all that it needs, motivationally speaking, even if it is part of something that could take you to, you know much more interesting places than that yeah but i i think that uh this perspective though it gets frustrating when you know people do enter into meditation or enter into a self-help context or whatever because they they feel some pain they have some desire right they're like oh this will perhaps give me relief and then if you encounter like meditation

teacher who just keeps telling you, no, no, you actually, it'll actually never get any better. There's no escape. The thing you need to do is realize there's no escape. Yeah. You, you kind of go, well, that's where I was at before. Like, why did I even go on the retreat? Why did I even pick up the book, you know? Like, so what is the, what is the thing that one gets on the other side of this, of this insight? If it's like, yeah, what is it? Well, I'm not. a meditation teacher and I don't have anything even beginnings of the authority to sort of say in a specific context. I think your book itself almost has that paradox within it, right? Right. And I think that, yeah, what we're talking about here is that that same thing about acceptance, the relationship

between acceptance and change. I think that you're not in the same situation when you change your relationship to your thoughts and your feelings. And one way, one big change of those relationships is sort of, is what all those kind of meditation traditions are built around where you come to see them not as reinforcing a coherent identity, but as sort of just kind of empty processes that are, that make up the part of reality where you are, whatever. That's again, not my, not my terrain, but where that translates into what I'm doing, I think, is you can see things differently. I mean, yeah, it's a paradox and I'm not going to resolve it in language, I don't think, but you can relate differently to your stuff. And the nature of that relating differently

has this quality of like, oh, what if it never changes? Like, what if that's just a part of being human, and yet the consequence of that is to be less tormented by the stuff, right? It may be one way of looking at this is the distinction Buddhists to always make it between pain and suffering, right? Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. There's a form of struggling with the situation that you can let go of and that turns out to be the most important thing to do. But it's not the same as resigning yourself to the situation. It's not the same as saying, um, nothing's ever going to get better in my life. It's the, it's, um, it's a letting go of control over those processes in order to actually let processes, uh, happen and unfold. I don't know if I got anywhere close

to answering such a, no, you did. Great question. No, you absolutely did. Well, and it's a paradoxical question about a paradox, you know, of course, it's hard to, uh, we're, we're, we're, We are in kind of a Zen mode here where everything doubles back on itself. Do you feel that you, you know, you say, you have a moment of realizing this stuff and then you slip back into the quagmire a little bit? And yet you've written books about the insights that you're trying to relay. Presumably it must have helped to some degree. Do you feel that after, you know, a lot of time and thought about this stuff that you do have

some relief on average if you look back at yourself 30 years ago. Unquestionably. Yeah, no, absolutely. And it is the process, you know, for me, writing books is part of the process. I don't mean to imply that you can only internalize these insights through writing books about them. That would be a bit useless. But for me, you know, the dynamic has always been or has been for the last few books

anyway, that I get some sort of intellectual insight that kind of makes sense, but it's only intellectual. and the writing of the book is part of the process of kind of living, living into it more fully. And again, it's the same paradox, right? I decreasingly expect never to fall off the horse, but with the decrease in that expectation, if that sentence made any sense, I fall off the horse less and I get back on the horse more quickly, and the whole situation of being on or off the horse is just a lot more, you know, enjoyable and copable with and fluid.

And so I think the really important part about that, of course, is that the skill that you're training, if there is a skill being trained here, is the getting back on the horse, not the never falling off it. Okay. So this is such a great metaphor, and I'll translate it to my own world, which is people often ask, you know, about stand-up comedy, like, how do you deal with bombing? And what I tell them is, well, you know, after you go up enough times, you realize, well, you're going to bomb. It's going to happen.

And it feels bad. And then you do it again the next day anyway. And then eventually you don't fear it and you hopefully find the whole process pleasurable. And then if you really can internalize that, and I'm still only working my way there, if you really can internalize that, Then when you're on stage and you're trying to tell a joke and it doesn't work, you don't care. And you're truly comfortable with that. And then the audience is also comfortable with it because if they're watching you and they're watching a guy who is so worried about bombing that he's like riding a unicycle on a tightrope, right? And then they're afraid.

They're like, okay, he's doing all right right now. But what happens when something doesn't work, right? Yeah. But if they watch you say a joke bombs and then you're like, well, I didn't fucking work. You know, like, all right. That's okay. I'm on the next one.

Then they're relaxed. Right. It kind of becomes interesting for both parties. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you've seen more, but I have seen like, you know, once or twice in my life the kind of stand up where you're almost being beseeched to laugh implicitly by the, by the desperation or the neediness of the person on the stage. It's the worst thing ever.

But yeah. This is what it's like to watch media stand up. Yeah. Please, please. But, but yeah, people who are just deeply comfortable with the, whatever's happening make you comfortable as an audience member of all, really. Right. And that's when I'm around someone who makes me comfortable with life,

it's someone who's like, hey, whatever happens is like no big deal, you know. And there is that genre, isn't there, of comedy? I've been associated more with the Brits, but there is that genre of comedy that actually sort of isn't expecting to begin with to get a huge laugh every 30 seconds, that is something more to do with narrative storytelling or something. And like, as long as the person doing it is comfortable with the ebb and flow of that, it's great.

It's the opposite. Yeah, anyway, I shouldn't spin theories about stand-up comedy to you. No, please. I think everyone's, it's everyone's favorite topic and everyone has an experience with it. But the metaphor really works for me. It's that if we can have that same sort of ease and lightness towards our own lives, then it will become easier and lighter, you know. And if we can accept the inevitability of failure and the end of the show, right, then it can be a little. bit more fun, you know, like, hey, some fucking shit's going to happen and not all of it's going to be great, but, you know, we can, we can hang out and be in the middle of it together. I, I, I can't tell you how much I needed to have this conversation, Oliver, at this particular moment of my life. And I think,

you know, normally I have guests on every time they have a new book out, I think I'm going to have you on every time I'm experiencing, like, a moment of personal crisis. If that's okay with you, it would be, it would be my honor. Yes. Happy to do that. The name of the book here, again, I'm showing my personal copy, Meditations for Mortals, four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts. You can, of course, get a copy at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books. Where else can people buy the book, Oliver? And where can they find your, again, excellent and not too, not distressingly frequent newsletter?

It's not distressingly frequent, is it? I'm trying to finish a book at the moment, and I'm just not writing the newsletter. I hope nobody is too cross with me. My website is Oliver Bergman.com, and that's where you can sign up for the newsletter of the Imperfectionist, which by the time this comes out, I should be doing more frequently again. Oliver, I can't thank you enough for being here. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Well, thank you once again for listening to the show.

I hope you got as much out of that conversation as I did. And if you didn't, I hope that you're okay with that and that you will forgive your for having the limitations that all of us do as human beings. You know, sometimes we listen to podcast episodes and we can't take them in. And that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It just means you're living. Something like that. I don't know.

If you got something out of that or out of the interview itself, I hope you'll support the show at patreon.com slash Adam Con. Over five bucks a month, get you every episode of the show ad free for 15 bucks a month. I'll put your name in the credits of every single one of my video monologues. And I will often read your name at the end of the show. show, but unfortunately, as I did last week, I have accidentally bricked my phone and I can't access the Patreon website to read the names.

But you guys know who you are. You know what? I can remember some of the names. We got Aros Harmon supports the show. There's a fella named Hey, look a distraction. There's someone, I believe, who wrote thanks for the great show at the punchline in San Francisco. You can even use that field to write me a little message I'll read on that. the air.

We got so many fine folks who support the show. If you'd like to join them, once again, patreon.com. slash Adam Conover. I want to thank my producer, Sam Rowdman and Tony Wilson, everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening.

We'll see you next time on Factually. And be kind to yourself until then. That was a HeadGum podcast. Hi, I am Mandy Moore. Sterling K. Brown. And I'm Chris Sullivan. And we host the podcast. That was us now.

headgum. Each episode, we're going to go into a deep dive from our show, This Is Us. That's right. We're going to go episode by episode. We're also going to pepper in episodes with different guest stars and writers and casting directors. Are we going to cry? Yes. A little bit. Are we going to laugh? A lot. A whole lot. That's what I'm hoping, man. Listen to that was us on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify, new episodes every Tuesday.