Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #260 How To Stop Feeling Overwhelmed with Oliver Burkeman

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

The average person has 4,000 weeks on earth. It doesn’t sound like much does it? You’re probably doing mental arithmetic right now trying to work out how many weeks you might have left. But if that sounds like a pessimistic start to this podcast, fear not. My guest today is Oliver Burkeman, journalist and author, whose latest book is Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals. And in this conversation, he shares a positive philosophy that can help us all overcome the overwhelm, make better choices, and build a meaningful relationship with time.   We begin by talking about our concept of time and how we falsely believe it’s something we can control. We think of time as infinite and don’t realise how distraction – that modern-day temptation – is robbing it from us. Or maybe we do know time is finite, says Oliver, but we just feel overwhelmed by all the things we have to do or want to do. How will we fit them all in? The truth, he points out, is that we won’t. Many of the productivity hacks that we learn are a delusion. Time management doesn’t mean becoming more productive, it means deciding what to neglect. And once we realise we can never fit everything in, we get the freedom to prioritise. Thinking about our limited lifespan may sound bleak, but Oliver is convinced that imposing limits of knowledge like this can help us live a more fulfilled and less stressed life. We’re more likely to use time mindfully, or be more creative, when we know it’s finite.   I absolutely loved talking with Oliver and I think his words will give you plenty to reflect on. In a world of demands, distractions and endless to-do lists, this conversation might be the most useful time-management tool of all. This conversation is full of mind-blowing facts and insights but it’s also really empowering and contains simple, practical tips that all of us can use to improve our lives. I hope you enjoy listening. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.leafyard.com/livemore https://www.blublox.com/livemore https://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Order Dr Chatterjee's new book Happy Mind, Happy Life: UK version: https://amzn.to/304opgJ, US & Canada version: https://amzn.to/3DRxjgp Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3oAKmxi. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/260 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified health care provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

What is definitely true about the amount of time that you'll get is that it will be finite rather than limitless. We are finite creatures existing in this world of infinite inputs and opportunities, so there's always going to be this mismatch. Limited time means you have to make tough choices, you have to not do things that would matter. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. The average person has about 4,000 weeks on planet Earth. Now, that doesn't sound like much, does it? You're probably doing mental arithmetic right now, trying to work out how many weeks you may have left. But if that sounds like

a pessimistic start to this podcast, fear not. My guest today is Oliver Berkman, journalist and author whose latest book is 4,000 Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. And in this conversation, he shares a positive philosophy that can help us all overcome the overwhelm, make better choices, and build a meaningful relationship with time. We begin by talking about our concept of time and how we falsely believe it's something that we can control. We often think of time as infinite and don't realize how distraction, that modern day temptation, is robbing it from us. Or maybe we do know that time is finite, says Oliver, but we just feel overwhelmed by all the things we have to do or want to do. So how do we go about fitting them all in? The truth, Oliver says, is that we won't. Many of the productivity

hacks we learn are a delusion. Time management does not mean becoming more productive. It means deciding what to neglect. And once we realize we can never fit everything in, we get the freedom to prioritize. I understand that thinking about our limited lifespan may sound bleak, but Oliver is convinced that imposing limits like this can help us live a more fulfilled and less stressed life. We're more likely to use time mindfully or be more creative

when we know it's finite. I absolutely love talking with Oliver and I'm pretty sure his words are going to give you plenty to reflect on in your own life. In a world of demands, distractions and endless to-do lists, listening to this conversation might be the most useful time management tool of all. I hope you enjoy listening. And now, my conversation with Oliver Berkman. Your latest book, 4,000 Weeks, makes you think. My calculation, based upon what you're writing about, is that I have around 1,700 to 1,800 weeks left on planet Earth.

But then this morning I also calculated it in terms of holidays. So I thought, if I take one really nice holiday a year, that I potentially only got 35 or 36 holidays left. What was your hope when you came up with this concept of 4,000 weeks? Is that something that you found to be scary for people or quite enlightening and I guess liberating? I mean, I think it is scary at first, right? Especially that figure, which is a little bit less than the average human lifespan. I blatantly chose 4,000 because it's a round number, you know. And of course, you know, nobody knows they're going to get that much. They might get significantly more.

They might tragically get a lot less. So it's sort of illustrative rather than any kind of fact. What is definitely true about the amount of time that you'll get is that it will be finite rather than limitless. And that's really the, it sounds obvious, but I don't think we live properly in the acknowledgement of what that really means. So yeah, at first, it's stressful because you're like, okay, either I'm going to feel really despairing about this or I've got to really strenuously try to make the most of every day in a way that actually is not very relaxing at all, but kind of awful. What I'm trying to guide people towards is that once you sort of really truly accept this fact

of being finite, it is actually really liberating and it is a relief for as long as you are responding to this idea of having a limited amount of time with stress like oh my god i've got to try to get a huge amount out of my life because there's so little of it you still haven't quite taken on board the implication of it which is like no we're all in the same boat there will always be too much to do there will always be more ambitions that you can think of than that you could ever put into practice always be more obligations you can feel from the society or from your family or whatever than you could ever fulfill and that's really relaxing because then it's like oh okay i don't

have to try to do this impossible thing with my life. I can just focus on doing something really meaningful and possible. I think you're right. I think it really is liberating. One of the ideas that deeply, deeply resonated with me in the book that's actually helped me make some big life decisions over the past few months is this idea that, yes, we have to get good at saying no to things. But I thought your argument took it one step further because there's this kind of, I guess, underlying premise that we have to get good at saying no because some things actually are just the wrong things. So actually, let's not even bring them into our life in the first place. But you go one step further and go, actually, no, it's not just about saying no to things that you don't want to do and don't nourish you. You've actually also

got to say no to things that you do want to do. Yeah, totally. Because I mean... Which is mind blowing, actually. It really is. Yeah, no, I mean, it has been for me as well right because i think in the in the in the background of all the stuff you hear all the time about hand pointers to say no there's this implication as you say you could just if you did that you could just say no to all the things that are kind of tedious chores all the things that don't quite work for you and then your life would just be exactly properly fitted to the time you would have, would be exactly fitted to all the things that really matter in your life and you'd live this

perfect match. But there's no reason to assume that the field of things that matter or that feel like they matter is only going to be big enough to fill the time you've got rather than exceeding it, right? I think there's always going to be more things that feel like they matter because the world is full of like, you know, countless opportunities and countless people suffering who need our help and countless good causes and, you know, countless interesting places to visit. All of these, there's just an endless amount. So why on earth would you ever expect that you could fit all of the ones that you cared about into your life? But we do. Like, I mean, we do expect that sort of chronically. I think that is actually another of these examples of something that is really liberating because you can see that you

don't have to fight to somehow make time for everything that matters, that that's kind of a futile quest. You just have to make time for some things that matter and let it go, that it's not going to be everything. Because otherwise, I guess you go on that nice holiday. I don't know, let's take a mythical destination like the Maldives or Bali, right? But then you could arrive back to wherever you live and see online that someone's posted a gorgeous sunrise photo in Mexico, right? So you were in Bali or the Maldives, but you weren't in Mexico. So therefore, oh man, I need to see that sunrise in Mexico at some point. There's always a sense that actually, yeah, this is great, but I could be doing something more. Do you feel that the age of

the internet and I guess social media, the fact that we're being exposed to so much possibility now that appears to be infinite possibility. So we always feel that our life is somehow a bit mundane because we're not doing all these incredible things that we could be doing. Totally. I mean, a lot of these places to visit and things to do have always existed, but now you're sort of relentlessly exposed to them. Algorithms find specifically the ones you are going to want to really do and sort of constantly bombard you with just those ones. So yeah, we are in a situation that's completely unprecedented in terms of letting us see and sort of feel the pain of not being able to do. I mean, another good example, we talk about beautiful holidays, vacations, it's a great example, but

kind of good causes is another one too, right? I mean, if you're the kind of compassionately minded person who sits on social media and wants to sort of help people in the world who are suffering, you're seeing more instances of that and hearing about more instances of that than like the greatest saints in history ever were ever exposed to. And, you know, it's great if you can do something about one or two of them, but the idea that you could ever sort of get your arms around all that, we're just not designed to be capable of it. Yeah. In my book on happiness, I wrote a chapter on eliminating choice, that we in a world of infinite choice, more choice is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, we've got to get good at choosing when that choice actually matters. And I see a similar theme to that throughout your book, this idea that you can't actually care about everything. You can't put your attention there. The state of the world at the

moment, many people are getting really, really affected in their day-to-day life by what they're being exposed to in the news. And there was a gorgeous bit in your book where you really mentioned that actually, yes, there can be all kinds of adversity going on and problems, which you may be being exposed to in the news, but you may choose to actually go and care for an elderly relative, or you may choose to go and actually care and do something good in the world in a different way that doesn't actually address that problem. I thought that was really quite an interesting way of looking at it. Well, I just think, I feel very strongly about this because I really do think that there's this

great temptation, especially when we spend so much of a day immersed in social media or just news in other forms, you come to sort of identify with that global level of things. And you come to think of wars and the climate and things as, you know, and they are incredibly important and the climate perhaps most important of all. But you come to think of that as being the only level on which you can have a meaningful effect, when in many ways, it's the only level on which us as individuals can have almost no effect in many contexts. You can give money, you can live more ethically, absolutely. But it's almost like we're deliberately exposing ourselves most to that level of life at which our impact can be the smallest.

And then you end up sort of devaluing all these other things that are completely like ought to be part of the definition of spending your life meaningfully, right? Caring for relatives, doing something to help make your little neighborhood more beautiful instead of only thinking on this sort of cosmic scale and global scale. Not because those global causes are not as important as we thought they were. I think they are that important. It's just that if the way you respond to that is suddenly thinking that you have got to sort of get your arms around it all, then that's just not going to help anyway, right? Yeah, not only does it not help, it actually then impacts your life and your circle of influence.

Because if you're that affected by it, it's very hard to be present in your life. It's very hard for that not to affect the quality of your work, the quality of your relationships, your ability to parent as well as you might want to. And actually, there's so much in the world that we actually can't do anything about. And again, I think there's a freedom in just acknowledging that. That's the big theme I keep getting in your book is this idea that there are limits. There are limits to what we can do with our time. There are limits to what we can care about. And this idea that these ideas and these concepts are limitless is actually part of the problem. Right. We are finite creatures existing in this world of infinite inputs and opportunities and

suffering and all the rest of it. So there's always going to be this mismatch. And I think what we spend a lot of our lives doing without realizing it is trying to get over that fundamental mathematical fact. And we've talked a lot about leisure and we've talked about doing good and compassionate activities, but the most obvious one for most people on a day-to-day basis, I think, is just work, right? The volume of emails, the volume of things that the boss is asking you to do or that you want to do in your work. There's no reason why any of that should have any upper limit. And yet there's a very, very clear upper limit to how much you can do in a day's work and how many emails you can answer and how many demands you can meet.

Email's an interesting one, isn't it? Because again, if we think back to communication, maybe 20 years ago, maybe 30 years ago, a lot of the way we got communication or received it was the letterbox in the morning, right? The mail would come once a day and any important documentation or anything you had to look at would be in that. Sure, you might get some phone calls at work potentially, but it wasn't like a constant stream. It's, you know, email is this, it's like the postman's coming like 24 hours a day, literally 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You know, even on Christmas day, you're getting promotional emails from like Amazon or whoever else to sell you stuff, right? So there's no kind of switch off from that. And I mean, before we get into emails, I think what's

really interesting to me is how you came into writing about time and our relationship to time. Because from the research I've done, it appears that you were keen to learn all these productivity tools and actually get better at managing your time and getting the most, squeezing the most out of every ounce of time. You know, tell me a little bit about that journey. And at what point did you realize, actually, I'm playing the wrong game here. Like this is actually futile. Yeah, it took a long time to get it through my thick skull, apparently. But one of the things I did was I wrote this column for The Guardian for years,

a weekly column on psychology, where one of the things I did was to test out a lot of these kinds of techniques. And that was really useful and interesting. And I'm really glad I had the opportunity, but it was also a little bit enabling of my worst side in a way, right? Here I was thinking that i was

one day going to find the perfect set of productivity techniques and time management techniques that was going to like make me capable of doing everything and not have to say no to anything and not have to worry that i was letting anybody down and all of this and then i had this job where i could justify trying out like another 50 new techniques and getting hold of another 20 books or courses on the topic because it was for work. And actually that was really useful in the end, right? You sort of get to a point where you're thinking, well, okay, this is like the hundredth way I've tried to structure my to-do list or organize my day. And it isn't bringing me the thing that I'm trying to get out

of it. So maybe, as you say, maybe I'm playing the wrong game here rather than that I just haven't found the right technique. And it's not that these techniques are all rubbish. It's that if you come at them with what I think a lot of people come at them with, including me then, which is this desire to somehow feel totally on top of time and on top of your life and not to have to make difficult decisions about time anymore because you can just handle everything and really feeling secure about your role in your work and time and all the rest of it. If you think you're going to get that out of them, you're going to fail because what that is ultimately deep down, I think, is a desire to not be limited by time in the

way that we all are as humans. It's a desire to sort of avoid the fact that, yeah, limited time means you have to make tough choices. You have to not do things that would matter in order to do other things. You have to neglect certain potential friendships you could be nurturing in order to focus on some other relationships in your life you just have to because we're just finite and we and especially me back then i think think that a lot of this productivity time management stuff and other kinds of personal development advice we think that they're like a back door to get around that and and that just leads to more stress because they're not yeah it's really beautifully

pop i'm drawn to this line in your book towards the start of the book the more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human the more stressful empty and frustrating life gets. I mean, I think that kind of says it all. Yeah, thank you. Yes, I hope so. I mean, then there's a flip side to it, right? Which is that when you then, what that implies is that when you can ease up on that desire for control and for this kind of unrealistic control, that's when you really do step into a kind of real agency. That's when you can do meaningful and joyful and cool things with your life, right? So it's not just a matter of this thing you're trying to do is impossible, give up, live life

in despair because there's no point. It's like, no, that's the bit that if you can drop that, or at least somewhat drop that sort of constant, worried, anxious attempt to bring the world under your control so you can feel okay about it, if you can let go of that, that's when you can really plunge into life and do stuff that counts and that matters to you because you're no longer wasting all your time and attention on that pointless quest. Constraints in life, I've come to realise more and more are actually very freeing and liberating

and actually can actually, I guess, foster a lot of creativity. As you were describing the impact of that sentence, I was drawn to this interview I heard in the 90s. I don't know if you enjoyed the band Crowded House. I very much did in the 90s, one of my favourite bands back then. And I remember Neil Finn, the singer and songwriter in the band. I remember once in an

interview, he said, yes, there are infinite instruments and musical themes and ideas we could bring in for any song. But we've decided that we're only going to put on the album what the four of us are able to play. And, you know, some of them could play multiple instruments. They could play that in the studio, but they weren't going to bring in additional session musicians with their expertise to put in a saxophone solo here or put something else in here. You know, that was what about 30 years ago when I heard that interview, but it always stayed with me because as a musician myself, I've always been tempted to try and actually bring in lots of others. So, oh no, we could get that. We could get that. Or wouldn't it be great to have a sax solo here

or whatever in anything you're recording or creating? And I always think back to that and go, no, the constraints bring the creativity. He beautifully articulated how actually, no, the fact that it's only us four means we have to be more creative. We have to figure out solutions. I see kind of quite a

similar theme here. Once we put the limits on our time, and now actually time is limited, within that constraint, I think we can flourish and I guess be more creative. I totally, totally agree. And I think in creativity, it's often a matter of bringing in those constraints, like you're talking about there. And then sometimes in our daily time, it's just a matter of seeing that the constraints are there in a sort of non-negotiable way, whether we like it or not. And I think, yes, I think when we do the opposite to that, which is either try to sort of get over all constraints or to behave as if there aren't any constraints, it can feel it's the more comfortable path at first sometimes, but it leads nowhere good because it is so out of touch with reality that that's when you're going to apportion your time

wrongly because you're going to think, well, first of all, I'll answer a hundred emails before I get around to what really matters to me today. Well, if that's because you think you've got more time than you have, if you understood that you didn't, you might switch those two things around, spend the first part of the day on the thing that you cared about the most. That's just one example, but it's just a way of acting that respects the constraints that you're already in. And I don't know if you want to talk about distraction at some point, because it's a topic that slightly obsesses me. I think a lot of what we're doing when we sort of bounce away from our important work or difficult conversations or whatever it is into just

scrolling down the phone, escaping into the world of cyberspace. It is because it feels there, like there are no constraints. It is because it feels like you're just sort of floating through this easy world of limitless, like God-like power. But we all know, you know, after a day spent doing that instead of the thing that you knew you meant to do, it's not the way to get a purchase on life. It's not a way to make a difference in a way that Maybe that's the appeal. Maybe because we don't recognize there were limitations in our life, and so therefore we don't acknowledge it, we don accept it maybe that's why scrolling and disappearing

down rabbit holes online feels so good because in that moment there does appear to be infinite possibility yeah and maybe we sense a kind of slight disconnect that in our real life the offline worlds there are limitations but online that doesn't appear to be any no i think that's exactly that that phenomenology the feeling of being online is absolutely that one of limitlessness. It's like, you know, I can find out what's going on 5,000 miles away right now. I can be anyone that I want to be on an anonymous social media platform. All these different ways in which you do get to be limitless. And then I think, yeah, in some ways it makes it harder to then then write the chapter you were trying to write or have the conversation with

a romantic partner that is important, but that might leave you feeling emotionally vulnerable. All these ways in which we come up against our limits day-to-day life, it's way more fun to just forget that. I think we're all totally susceptible to that, have been since the ancient world. That's not new. What's new is that we have a big structure of attention-based corporations waiting for us to grab us the moment that that urge arises. So it's a problematic combo. Given that time is limited and we can't do everything that we might want to do in life, are you a fan of bucket lists? Depends what you mean, right? Depends how you relate to a bucket list. If a bucket list is something you've got to get through, then no, I'm not a fan of it. If it's a list of, if it's like a menu of things that you might do, great. That kind of list for

those sort of things is fantastic. I think the problem with bucket lists, it's basically the same problem as an overfilled email inbox or an incredibly long list of housework chores you've got to do. It feels like it isn't the same problem because it's a list of fun stuff instead of onerous, weighty stuff. But the same problem arises that we're exposed to far more opportunities for things that feel like we want to do them than we'll get to do. And it's almost harder to spot in the case of hedonistic type things. Because, again, you know, like on some level, all of us are sort of annoyed by having various duties we don't want to have to fulfill. But you think of things like that as like, okay, the world is my oyster. But I call it in the book, I call that like existential overwhelm,

because it's still overwhelm. It's just overwhelm that comes from being alive in the world that we have today, wanting to be limitless in the way that we do want, and then constantly coming up against the fact that you are limited. So yeah, the person who's retired and has tons of money and is using it all to travel the world, they will have a better time than the person who has to spend all day doing tedious chores they didn't want to do. But they'll still have this gnawing basic problem of feeling overwhelmed if they believe that they are ever going to sort of like get their arms around everything that the world has to offer see all the places that matter have all the fun that there is to be had it's like it's it's beyond us and it's stressful to

pursue it because it's beyond us it really is i mean you've quoted the dow to ching on several occasions in the book there's a phrase certainly in the translation i have where it says knowing what is enough is true wealth i kind of feel that really fits your entire book really this idea that you know knowing what is enough that's because because when we always want more we think oh when i go on that holiday or when that happens or when i get to inbox zero, as I believe you did at some point. Well, maybe let's go into email because I think email is the source of a lot of overwhelm for people. And I do think that a lot of the productivity advice makes us feel that, oh, there is a way to master this and get on top. So I'm a black belt at email.

Actually reading your story with that has made me feel a lot better because I'm pretty rubbish at email. And I'm okay with that. And I've decided I don't want to get good at it. There are other things in my life I would like to get good at, but getting good at email is just not one of them. So maybe you could expand a little bit on getting to inbox zero. Maybe explain what that is for people who aren't aware. And then also, you know, what did that teach you? Well, it's controversial what it is. People in this world of productivity geekery argue about what that means. But I'm working on the assumption that it means something like the idea that the sort of default state of your email inbox should be empty. And so at least every so often, and arguably every day, you should be

going through it, answering what you need to answer, dealing with what you need to deal with, deleting what you need to delete. It shouldn't be mounting up in this way that is so familiar to so many people with 10,000 unread messages on the inbox indicator or whatever. The really important point to make, I think about what happened when I really tried to get on top of email, is that when you get really good at getting through your email, what happens is that you get much more email because firstly, you reply to people more and at a quicker tempo. And so they get back to you at a quicker tempo with replies to your replies. And you're busier that way. You get a reputation as being responsive

on email. So more people email you. Whereas if you sort of fail to reply, often what happens is people find some other solution to the problem that they had. And it just really dramatizes this idea that the supply is infinite, effectively. Your capacity to get through that supply of incoming emails, I mean, is very finite. And your attempt to get more efficient with processing that infinite supply won't get you to the end of it because it's infinite, but it will leave you more stressed and busy. And I think it's worth saying, there are probably some people hearing this who are like, well, it's all very well for you, or maybe for me to say, well, I don't want to get good at email. It's like somebody might say, well, in my job, I get fired if I don't want to get good at email. It's like somebody might say, well,

like in my job, I get fired if I don't reply to all the emails I get. But the logic applies everywhere. I think that's a really important thing to try to zero in on, right? No matter what your position is or your job or your work, your time is finite. And if you are subjected in any part of that to an infinite supply of something and you make it your business to get through that, that will end up taking over your whole job. So I definitely sympathize with anyone who feels that they have to sort of keep it in box zero just as a basic precondition of their work. and their employer, whoever, is losing out on something else they could be giving in that situation because it is not actually possible to contain these infinite supplies, these infinite inputs in the way that we think it ought to be. Or maybe you love email and you want to be someone who stays on top of all your email. Make that decision, but don't imagine that you're deciding

to keep it contained and that's fine, and then you can get on with what really matters. No, if you really focus on getting more and more efficient at an incoming supply of something that is actually limitless, then that will effectively take over your life. That's just how it works. I guess what you're talking about, certainly to me, is intentionality, about living an intentional life, like understanding that we're making choices all the time. And actually, many of us are making choices that we don't even realise we're making. Right. Which I thought was really interesting. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health,

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live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Yeah, I think this is like, this is goes to the heart of it for me, because it's tempting to think that in a book like this, or lots of other people And it's like, no, the point is you already are doing every day, whether you like it or not, you already are making something like a choice to sacrifice all sorts of things in favor of other things. That's already happening. The choice we have is whether to do that consciously or not. You are always choosing. It wouldn't be the case if you had eternal life, if you were limitless, if you were infinite, you know, because then there'd always be more time to try everything and to do everything. But because we're not, because we're finite, every choice you make is a choice not to do

something else with that little portion of your finite time. And I think the freedom that we can aspire to, we can't be free of that situation, but the freedom we can aspire to is the freedom of making those decisions consciously and seeing like, okay, you know, I've decided that this matters more than this for today. And it's not because that other thing doesn't matter. It's because I've got to make a choice. At the start of the book, you talk about a lot of these productivity hacks. And you talk about some of these books that we've been exposed to over the years, like Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek. And I've got to be honest, for me, when I first read The 4-Hour Workweek, I don't know, 10 years ago, it was pretty life-changing for me. Because at that time in my life, I had not come across something like that.

And I mean, I think the title is just a super catchy title, but I don't think it's about working four hours a week. What I took from it was that, oh, time is a resource. It's a commodity that I can value as such. And I honestly think that was one of the first times in my life where I kind of saw time and suddenly started to measure it and value it, which I think was necessary for my progression to understand that actually, maybe I need to defend my time a bit better and maybe I need to think about how I use it or protect it or give it away, whatever that might be. But like with most messages, they're never perfect for everyone at every aspect of life. I think that works for me back then, but I'm really fascinated by the argument you make in the book that even seeing time as a resource, as a commodity that we need to defend and protect, you're also making the case that even that is fundamentally problematic.

And I think I agree. I think I really agree with what you're saying. So I think for me, well, perhaps you could speak to that. But I guess for me, that message that time is something I need to view differently, absolutely worked for me 10 years ago. And now I feel that it's the next stage. It's like, okay, cool. Now you're valuing time. Now actually, maybe the way you're experiencing time and looking at time isn't that helpful yeah i mean i just think both of these things are true i think there's i think there's tons of huge value in the four-hour work week i mean one of the things that i think so interesting about the focus of that book is is is on the idea of not deferring

the sort of joy that you want to have in your life until some point in the future when you're going to be ready to have it. I just agree with that completely. This idea of, I think he calls them mini retirements, right? This idea that like, how can you spend three weeks this year doing one of these things that you're mentally postponing to some time that might not even arrive in several decades time? No, do it now. I think that's absolutely bang on. not even arrive you know in several decades time no do it now i think that's absolutely bang on i think that seeing time as a very precious resource is like it's like one lens that that really counts because the alternative is to act like you've got all the time in the world yeah and that is very dangerous but yeah as you say there's this other lens which is like

the whole notion of the sort of resource view of time, the idea that there's me, and then there's some time that I have, a little bit like some money that I have, or some physical possessions that I have or something that it doesn't quite work. And it leads us into some strange places, because actually, you know, we don't have time in that sense, right? You don't, you just get one moment at a time. You can't actually put time aside. You can't pause time. You can't decide to not spend the next minute of your life. You're just living it. You're just in it. It's a fairly involved argument at that point in the book. But I think that the basic point here is just that if you try to take this attitude of making the best use of something,

when in fact, it's more like you just are a portion of time in some mysterious way right let me see if i can convey this it's like you're trying to get sort of on top of your own life you're trying to you're trying to be like the air traffic controller of things somehow and that sort of alienates you from actually being here right here in the moment of your life. Because everything, I mean, apart from anything else, everything becomes a question of like, am I using this hour best for, what is it, some future goal? To make the most money, to achieve this outcome I want, to please somebody who I think needs to be pleased in my life. and if you're only asking about your time am i using it in the right way for that future goal it's almost impossible yeah to find it truly meaningful and absorbing

in the moment because those are just two different fundamentally different lenses right so in a way you almost have to be willing to waste time if what we mean by waste time is is not be using it in an instrumental way in order to use it well, which is a total weird paradox that I'm still trying to get my mind around. These are these big existential questions like, who are we? What does it mean to live a good life, a meaningful life? I love the idea that if you're constantly analyzing and seeing, am I using my time well? Yeah, you're not in your life.

You're outside of your life looking in, which can have value from time to time. But if that's the kind of, if you're spending all of your waking hours like that every day, you're never in your life and actually experiencing it. There's a real theme. I find as I read the book, that you do mention Buddhist philosophy at times,

you mentioned zen philosophy and ultimately it's about presence isn't it it's about being present with your time being in the moment because what is time but i love the argument in the book that you don't have time it's not something you can own you know your life is time like you can't have it and package it up and carry it around with you it's kind of because what's happening as you're doing that as you're spending time yeah yeah no it's really it's quite sort of no it can really sort of bend your brain quite a bit but like i mean one way into this that i always think is interesting is anyone hearing this, right? When you think about your time in that sort of abstracted way, you think about questions like, when am I next going on holiday? Or have I got

enough time to do this project by Friday afternoon? Or am I free on Saturday morning? Whatever images come into your mind when you try to think about that, it might be calendars or it might be little yardsticks or anything, it's something to do with space. It's not time. This is a point that philosophers have made in the past. It seems like we can only think about time in this abstracted way by turning it into space. You're always thinking about, oh, there's that day and there's that day. And in your mind, there's some sort of thing in space. And I think what that is a clue to is that time in reality is not what we think it is, right? It isn't this thing that we have. It isn't this thing that sort of we It isn't this thing that we can control

what's going to happen in this box of it here and in this box not there, which is all, again, these spatial metaphors. Actually, I think it makes more sense to think that we just are a stretch of time. We're so deeply in our time. We can try to make it objective by drawing calendars and thinking about timelines and all that stuff. But actually, what time really is, for each of us, is just you living your life. I'm not sure that words can actually get to this, but maybe this helps a little bit. No, it's such an important point because time is life. this helps a little bit. No, it's such an important point because time is life. How we spend our time, how we experience that defines our experience of life, right? It's the same thing, isn't it?

It's absolutely the same thing. And like, I've often thought over the last years, you know, what is time anyway? Certainly clock time. It's a human construct, right? In fact, as I've gone down the street, I no longer wear a watch because actually, and I get that, you know, we can't be constrained by the infinite possibility that there is no time. You know, we have to meet people or do things at a certain time. I don't wear a watch. I used to my entire life from being a young kid. I used to love seeing what time it is. But then suddenly your experience of everything is defined by, well, how long have I got left? How long have I been doing this for? Which kind of takes you out of the experience. I know this sounds deeply philosophical, and I guess it is. There's a writer who I quote in the book, David Cain, a Canadian writer and blogger whose work

I really admire, who makes this point that when you think you have three hours to complete some project or say you've got to tidy the house and you've got half an hour to do something, you don't really have three hours or have half an hour. What you mean is you expect it. It means your best guess in the present moment now is that nothing's going to get in your way until the three hours when the next thing's going to happen or you have to go and pick up your kids from school, whatever. And that's actually a really deep contrast, that notion of actually having time versus just saying, no, I expect it. I'm here in the present moment and I believe that things are going to unfold in this way in the future. But none of us have any control over the future, like true control.

And so because we want that control, because we want to be limitless in that sense as well, in the sense of being able to dictate what's going to be happening, that's just a constant recipe for anxiety because our desire to control the next moment is rubbing up against the absolute knowledge that actually you can't. So if you're a sort of chronic worrier about trains and travel-related things, which I definitely have some experience of, you sit there in the present moment, like hoping that you're going to get to the station on time or hoping that the train's going to arrive on time. And it feels in that moment like once that thing happens and it's on time, you're going to be able to relax. But you're never going to be able to relax because then there's the next thing right then will the

train arrive on time will your neck will will will there be a taxi if you need to get a taxi and you say in the present you're not actually in the present because you're you're planning for the future oh and when that happens you're trying to like sort of reach out to the present moment and exert some control over the next one of course that's going to be a recipe for anxiety because that's not possible. And I think it's fine to plan, right? It's fine to say, here's how I'd like today to go. Here's what, when I have some say in how today goes, I'm going to steer it in this direction rather than that direction. Fine. But this idea that you're controlling the future from the present, again, it gets kind of deep, but I think we're all prone to it. Yeah, it is deep, but I think it's such an important point for us all to consider.

I wonder, procrastination is something that many people struggle with. Oh, yes. Me too. Yeah. And I wonder, what do you think is going on in procrastination? Do you think it's to do with this fact that we don't recognise the limitations of time, therefore, we think there's infinite possibility, but there isn't? You know, how do you see procrastination? I think there are lots of different flavours of procrastination. So there are people who are very afraid of failing. There are a few people who are very afraid of succeeding. There are people who have all sorts of other different psychodramas going on. We're all different and messed up in

different ways. But the argument that I make that sort of brings all that or tries to bring all that together is that whenever you're procrastinating on something that matters to you, you are trying to avoid some kind of experience of encountering your limitations. If I'm procrastinating on writing a chapter of a book, the reason that I'm not... I care about that thing and I don't particularly care about what I'm doing instead, which is probably like scrolling or cleaning the kitchen when it doesn't really need cleaning as a displacement activity or something. or cleaning the kitchen when it doesn't really need cleaning as a displacement activity or something. So it seems at first weird that I would want to procrastinate on the thing I care about rather than do the things I don't care about. But I think that's because, and again, I'll stick with this

writing example just for a minute, for me to actually write a chapter is to risk that I don't have what it takes to write the chapter, or I don't have enough time to finish the thing on deadline, or that it won't be well received by people who I would like to receive it well. All these kind of ways in which I can't control the experience are brought up when I'm doing something that I care about. And that makes it very tempting to just not go there. And if you are, perfectionism is a big part of this. And I feel like certainly historically, that was like my problem to a T. Like the one way to feel totally in control of some project that you really care about in your life and like it is totally perfect still

is never to start it, right? Because then you've got this beautiful mental image of this song you're going to write, or marriage you're going to have, or house you're going to find, or book you're going to write, and it's pristine. Nothing can go wrong with it as long as it is completely unreal. And then the moment that it actually starts being created because you're doing something in the real world, in one way or another, you're going to run up against the inevitability of imperfection and limit. It's going to be hard or it's going to be uncertain or it's going to be a little bit less than the perfect image you'd had of it or something. And that's just baked in to bringing it into reality. baked in to bringing it into reality. So then I think it becomes very tempting for people to never quite get started on things because it feels nicer and more powerful in a way. If you

feel more powerful while you haven't led it out into the world, it's a bogus kind of power because obviously you haven't done it. And you've also got that sense of control because it's still undone. So actually there's still that control. I could do yeah i wanted to do it i could do it but yeah perfectionism is hugely problematic i've also had those tendencies for much of my life and i i think i would say that that is largely or certainly in a huge in huge part i think of the past like i really feel i've let go of that in many ways and it's been liberating as we sit here recording you know my fifth book came out about a week ago right fifth book in five years and i need to ask you about productivity if someone had told me that six years ago, I'd have thought, no way.

No way can I write five books in the next five years. But it's not just that. It's this idea that I've had a deadline to work to. And this idea that when that deadline is here, when the manuscript gets sent off to print, it will be as good as I could do at that moment. It doesn't mean the ideas stop. It doesn't mean, like I know if I had two more months, the book will be different because the ideas don't just stop at that time. The limitation is there. And therefore, it's just a snapshot in time of the best I could do around the idea at that time. And that's liberating because then when you are up against the deadline, it's like, well, hey, it's going to be good to go then. And it will be what it will be. Perfection,

it's never quite done. I think that goes back to what you're talking about. The idea about time is that there are limits. There's no way to perfectly spend your day. Maybe that's the myth that we're sold these days, which is why your book is such a welcome antidote to that. It's kind of like, that doesn't exist. No one is spending the perfect day. Yeah. Yeah. I think perfection, pretty much by definition, perfection doesn't exist in reality. And that is at the core of all of this, right? So how come you're not a perfectionist anymore? Well, I don't know that I'm not a perfectionist, but I'm definitely in recovery to a significant extent. And I think that lots of different parts of that puzzle. One is just

something in me, deep in me, steered me into newspaper journalism first as a way of working in a very deadline driven environment like that will have a tendency to sort of slightly beat the perfectionism out of you, because, you know, you'll get to whatever it was, Monday, Tuesday morning, and you still haven't got a good idea for your weekly column. Well, then you have to use one of the bad ideas. Like, I mean, of course. And what you learn after a while is bears very little resemblance to the output anyway. Like very often the bad ideas are the best columns.

Very often the columns that I thought were least good were the ones that people seemed most excited by. You know, it's like, just don't know. I've got no idea. So you might as well just do it. That was part of it. And then writing this book in a different way, I think becoming a parent is an interesting part of this because then you're in this relationship where like i mean it's true of all relationships but it's very obvious

with small children they're just going to keep you can't press pause like they're just good they're going to be a day older tomorrow and a day older after that and and very swiftly you know you can prepare when you know a baby's coming, you can prepare to try to be sort of perfect in those first months or something. But as soon as you're then in it, it's just like, it's all moving so fast. Obviously, there's not going to be any perfection here. Obviously, it's just going to be constant improvisation and winging it, which we all are doing all the time anyway. It's part of the problem that we now live in a very individualistic society where we are told we can do anything we want. You write about the digital nomad and how that's a misnomer,

actually, in terms of how we actually articulate that. This idea though, that we can be anything we want. We can master our schedules, our time. We can travel when we want. We want to work in a coffee shop. We can do all that. But by having no limits, it's actually problematic. And I love this idea that we potentially should be constrained by the limits of community and people around us in a way that we're not anymore. So maybe you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah, I think this is a really important part of it all. The way that certain kinds of tradition, including but not limited to religious traditions, one of the things they do is they impose some kind of temporal structure on life. So they make it that you do certain things at certain times, whether you like it or not. And if you are, you know, people who are religious and go to

church or another place of worship on a regular basis will understand this notion, right? You don't just go when you really feel like it. And the benefit of it is something more than that. But likewise, you know, if you go to a band rehearsal or choir, or you meet people to play a football match on a weekly basis or something, like it only has the value it has because you've all decided that you're all going to be in the same place at the same time. It can't work otherwise. And yet at the same time, as we have all these very obvious examples staring us in the face of how you have to be synchronized, you have to give up a little bit of personal dictatorship over your schedule in order to get these benefits. At the same time, we have this cultural value that says, yeah, the goal here

for everybody in their ideal world should be to be absolutely in control of their own schedules, to get up every morning like the dream would be. You get up every morning, you do exactly what you want to do at exactly whatever time you want. And I use the digital nomad in the book as an example of that, right? That's sort of the epitome of this, this idea, I'm going to go and work from a beach wherever, you know, it's all just going to be me in charge. And more honest people who've done that will tell you that one of the key characteristics of that life is that it's quite lonely because you're not held in any of those kinds of webs and you're not able to sort of participate in those kinds of rhythms precisely. you sort of placed yourself outside of that in your pursuit of total freedom. So one of the things that I've really found in my own life in the last few years, for sure, and this is partly to do with how becoming a parent

binds you to other people's rhythms more closely, rhythms of school, rhythms of afterschool things, rhythms of playdates, and you have to work with your spouse in a completely different way all of this again it's true for everybody it's just very clear for parents i think is that these are good things like these are benefits to they i definitely have they definitely frustrate me sometimes it's not like i find them like super enjoyable every day all the time but the alternative of just sort of drifting like one little atom through the through the world is not is not a preferable alternative the sacrifice that i have to make of the part of myself that would love to just like draw up a schedule at eight o'clock in the morning where i just got to say everything like that sacrifice is worth

making for a fulfilling life yeah i hope that last section is empowering for many people listening or watching at the moment oliver because i think if you are you know if you're if you have a busy family life and you know there's work and then there's, you've got to sort the kids out and, you know, and Saturday means swimming lessons or whatever is going on. It's tempting, isn't it? To think, oh man, look at those guys who are just free and they can travel the world on their laptop, but they've got nothing. Yeah. Right. Nothing. But I think what you said there, hopefully it's like, hey, listen, the grass is usually never greener on the other side of real life than life. But that comes at a cost. That's a cost to everything. That comes at a cost. You're doing it by yourself. You don't have this

structure in this community. I even noticed, I've been a father now for over 11 years. I've lived with my wife and my two kids. And they ever go away let's say i don't know they're away for two nights somewhere while i'm working and they've gone away to like you know my wife's parents or wherever you know initially yeah it feels oh man i've got oh i could do this i could do that i could do whatever i want and then you just sort of waste it. Yeah, and you waste it. And then... It's not that fun. It's not that fun.

You're like, oh, like, I can't wait till they're back. Yes, no, I know that. I totally know that feeling. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And even that term waste, right? I wrote that down before. I want to talk about this concept of wasting time.

Because wasting time, I think, is what we say in reference to what we think we should be doing Because wasting time, I think, is what we say in reference to what we think we should be doing with our time, which is maximizing every moment of it. And actually, some of the most pleasurable experiences when we actually, by society's standard, are wasting time, doing nothing, staring at the birds. Because then we feel we're wasting time. That means we're wasting our lives. And therefore, oh, we should be doing more. But actually, those little moments where you do waste time, well, that's kind of what life's about, isn't it? No, I think so. Language gets in the way here, right? Because wasting is a bad thing almost

by definition. But actually, we've come to define using time well, in a way that excludes lots and lots of really pleasurable and enjoyable and meaningful experiences. Again, I think where we use that word is we judge experiences that aren't leading somewhere, right? So we think of a day being wasted if I haven't sort of made progress towards my various goals that are in the future. And that's important. I mean, you know, of course, everyone has some kind of outcomes that they're working towards. But if you define every moment that doesn't add up towards those outcomes as wasted, then yeah, you're going to miss the very substance of being alive. And yeah, no, totally. It always reminds me, I don't know if this is quite the right parallel, but

it's almost this idea that once you stop focusing on where you're getting you actually have a fuller experience it always reminds me of my experience and i feel like half the people i ever have this conversation with about doing a driving test where like about half people i've ever discussed this with say that it was only after they were absolutely convinced they failed because they screwed up in the first few minutes of their driving test that they were able to like relax into their driving test and pass it and do really well it's a very common experience for with driving tests and it's just this notion i like it because it really speaks to this idea that like sometimes you need to not be trying to make the most of an

experience or to achieve certain outcome in order to just like be most sort of relaxedly in it. And then you find, as in the driving test case, that you also do accomplish things in those moments. So like, you know, you're probably looking, watching the birds or the flowers or something. And you do get a really good idea for some piece of work that you've been like stumped on, right? But only because you weren't really trying to do that. Tell me a little bit about your friend's apartment in New York, where the lift, I believe, stops on every floor between Friday evening and Saturday evening. I think I really, really liked that example

because it speaks to something I've been thinking about in my life for a few years, which I'll go into in just a moment. But could you maybe paint the picture of the apartment block? Yeah, this is on the Lower East Side, which is historically and traditionally a very Jewish part of Manhattan. And the Shabbat elevator is designed so that Jews who follow the Sabbath restrictions don't have to press a button in the elevator because pressing a button to make an electrical connection is an example of lighting a fire, I think is how the sort of scholarly legalistic approach to this goes. And so in order to avoid that and allow people to get off at their floors and get on and to leave the building, the elevator has to stop at every single floor regardless. And it does seem a little

bit absurd, but it's almost, you know, a lot of these rules, both in Judaism and Christianity and elsewhere about sort of what you can't do on a day of rest. They kind of have to be absurd, at least to secular ears or at least to, you know, to anybody. Because if you only do the things that seem reasonable to you to bring yourself to rest, to end work, then you won't actually stop working. You'll be like, well, okay, maybe I should take a couple of hours, but it's reasonable for me to spend a couple of hours in my email inbox this afternoon as well. And so all the people and the traditions and the religions who have developed these different notions of Sabbaths or days of rest, they've all ended up with some combination of um restrictions that almost

seem a little bit uh too much a little bit like overkill because it is so hard for us we're so wired to just keep going and keep the flywheel um spinning so you know that's that's why i bring that up it's like a very vivid example of like, okay, I'm going to have to wait every floor and stop and the door's going to open and they're going to close. And like, you know, if you live on the 25th floor of a high-rise apartment building, it's a good time to develop some patience. They do feel absurd relative to what is the norm now. Right. With our secular mindset, with our individual mindset that we can do whatever we want, whenever we want. I'm not following those restrictions. I'm not going to

have someone tell me what I'm going to do on Sundays or Saturdays. But I've really been coming around over the last few years that we need to all of us self-impose Sabbaths on our life. I think I shared this story once on the podcast before, but a friend of mine who I've only got to know in the last few years, we once went round for, I think, Sunday lunch and I met her and her husband and the children and my family went and they're a Jewish family and they've always followed the Sabbath. So between Friday evening and Saturday evening, I don't know the exact rules that were followed, but it would be family time. They would spend it together. I think family would come around potentially. They wouldn't answer the phone.

They wouldn't go out and do things, school clubs, all that kind of stuff. And I just thought, isn't that incredible? Because you can always fill up the time. I was actually literally chatting to my wife about this about three hours ago, before you arrived, about a hobby that one of my kids can do at the weekends. And this would take place, I think, every Sunday afternoon. And we were just sort of discussing the pros and cons. Yeah, there's loads of pros. But also, I think we just need to be really careful because I love the idea of trying to introduce some sort of Sabbath into our weekend where as a general rule, I don't know whether it would be Saturday or Sunday, we're not going to do activities. Like maybe it's we get your parents around every week at that time. Maybe we create an

environment whereby, no, no, I'm not going to be looking at email on that day yeah we're not going to be doing you know i think it really speaks this idea that the central themes in your book this idea that there's always something you could do and we can make an argument oh yeah that will give these benefits and that will give that benefit but there's a cost there's a cost to all of those things you know yeah families are disintegrating there's not enough time for people to spend with their families you know i certainly feel i've been guilty of that certainly you know with our wider family what if every sunday for example so i know we're not doing stuff we're either going for walks in nature or we're having

family rounds or we're enjoying meals together. That actually self-imposed restriction, I think, would yield so many benefits. I think you're right. And I mean, I feel like... I haven't done it yet. No, no, I was going to say, I feel like my family is in a similar situation, like sort of you toy with these things and you have kind of big dreams about them, but then you have to sort of integrate them into the reality of existence. And I think a big part of that too is kind of expectations.

One thing that I've really found in myself is that like, if I'm going to expect in the course of a day at the weekend to spend some really good quality time with my family and also, you know, do a couple of hours work because I need to, that is a recipe for just so much sort of the friction between those, like bothers me and causes me anxiety and all the rest of it. If it's just decided and agreed since long in advance that Saturday or Sunday is not going to be a day for work things, then broadly speaking, the work fits in to the rest of the time

perfectly well enough. Like, I mean, it takes the containers that it has. Work will always fill every container you give it. What's that law? Parkinson's law. Parkinson's law, yeah. Work will expand to fill the time available for its completion. So the reverse of that, which, by the way, is one of the reverse of Parkinson's law,

is part of what the four-hour work week gave us, right? Work will also, to some extent at least contract to fill the space available if you give it less time so if you have four hours to complete something you'll you'll probably do it in about four hours and if you have eight it'll take eight and so maybe just don't give it those four hours at the weekend yeah yeah i i do think a lot about this self-imposed Sabbath. But again, this is why I think one of the big problems now is that to do that, you have to swim against the current, right? Because let's say you live in a, I guess, let's say you're surrounded by a strong Jewish community and let's say everyone around you observes a Sabbath.

It's much easier to go along with it. Much easier. And actually, you know, there are downsides to this. Like it's impossible not to in some ways, in some contexts, in very orthodox and conservative cultures, it becomes too little freedom. But yeah, I don't think that too little freedom in our temporal rhythms is most people's problem these days, at least outside of the work setting. They may have lots of very rigid rules they have to follow about when they work, but they don't have rigid rules to follow about resting.

And I guess, look, I didn't grow up with that. So maybe I'm seeing this as this phenomenal thing that, you know, maybe people who've grown up with that find, or some people maybe find that restrictive and like the freedom of not having to do that. But this idea of society dictating our behaviours, I think is, I think it's really interesting. You know, I went to a wedding like maybe 10 years ago. One of my mates was getting married in France. I think I flew out for the weekend and hired a car shut people weren't out and about and it was very much this kind of french way of life that that was you know we're not we're not shopping on a sunday we're just spending time together you know doing whatever we do and even this idea of stopping for meals that's a very french right yeah concept they have certain they're doing certain things right yeah and there's you know this thing called the french paradox why is it that the french can supposedly eat so many rich and delicious and tasty foods yet not have the

consequences associated with them and there's all kinds of theories in terms of you know what the food is that they're consuming but i think a big part is not only what they're eating it's how they're eating it's they're eating when their bodies are in rest and digest mode, not also trying to send emails and in that kind of stress state where you're just trying to shove that in while I... I really think... And that's still there in France. I was interviewed by a French journalist a couple of years ago. At the end of the interview, I said, hey, can I just ask you? This is my mythical idea of France. Does it still go on? Is this really what's happening where people stop for lunch and they don't email at the same time as Eastern shows? Absolutely.

The only place where it's starting to go is in Paris, international companies. Financial institutions and things. Yeah. That's where that culture starts to go. But apart from that, this is kind of... Do you know what I mean? Yeah, no. And it's reminding me, I mentioned it briefly in the book of this experience in Sweden, of the coffee breaks that they have in Swedish workplaces called the Fika, where at basically the same time every day, if you work for a company that has maybe 200 people in it, say, 300 people, they will basically all stop at the same time and go to some communal part of the building and have tea and coffee and pastries,

you know, at the same time in the afternoon. And you don't have to do it. I'm sure that in plenty of businesses in Stockholm, people have meetings when they have meetings. But it was really striking that this rhythm was broadly followed by everybody. And it becomes this kind of way for companies to, for sort of chief executives to get to talk to everyone in the organization because the sort of hierarchies are suspended. It becomes this kind of rhythmic part of the day where everyone knows that it's an okay time to stop because there's no, you know, you're the

weird one if you do keep grinding through instead of stopping. And it's just another example of one of these things where there's a tradition that is holding people in place in a way that is actually freeing in the end right that they submit to this limitation on their autonomy i really enjoyed that chat for the book and when you spoke about fika there was also you were talking about these ideas that actually part of the reason we enjoy weekends is because most people are also off at weekends right right i thought that was a really interesting concept again coming down to this individualistic culture where we can do whatever we want if i want to take a tuesday i'm gonna take a tuesday off there's this research this fascinating research that shows that people

in long-term unemployment are much happier at weekends than in the weekday as well, right? They don't, they're, you know, they are in the context of these studies, they have the same amount of time. They have too much time. They don't want to be unemployed. But the fact that the weekends is when everybody's off and there isn't that sort of sense of pressure that you should be doing something else, but there is also the possibility to spend time with the people you care about the most, you that transforms their experience they have the same amount of time every day because they don't work but actually um and i think retirees this applies to as well in certain contexts yeah i can i can imagine that i guess you know in the uk where we have bank holidays obviously it's not the extended weekends but and maybe they're so valuable these days because almost the traditional weekend has been eaten up

into and eroded so it actually semi doesn't exist half the time with people but maybe a bank holiday weekend where there's three days in a row so maybe the first day you just spent kind of still just catching up on the emails that you thought you couldn't finish and then by the time you actually get into the second or third day you're actually beginning to rest yeah yeah yeah but this idea that you then you go around or into your local town or village or whatever and everyone also has the same kind of mood so you're not like out of step with what's going on around you which again is i think one of these other problems about life these days is that we we often are we're not quite in tune with what's going on around us because there are no set rules anymore.

I love the research on that people who follow religious practices are happier. Not necessarily people who are religious, people who follow religious practices because community, getting together, be kind to other people. I don't know. There's something that we've really lost, haven't we, as we've become more and more secular, as we've become more and more, apparently, the masters of our destiny and in control of whatever we want. We've lost something very important. No, I think that's really true. There's that saying that tradition knows more than you do or knows better than you do, right? I mean, these are acknowledging all the downsides and all the ways in which very important freedoms exist that didn't exist, especially for different demographics of people and all the rest of it. There is such a thing as a tradition

or a practice standing the test of time and having sort of embodied in it the fact that it's been a sort of live experiment for centuries about what what people need in their lives and it's extremely tempting for us especially today for various reasons to assume that we must know better than that and you know especially in these contexts where it does require some surrender of of personal autonomy it does require sort of a bit of discomfort or like oh you know do i actually have to like do this meditation practice today even on the days that i don't want to do it or go to church on the days even when i don't want to do it it's like well yes on some level that's the point yeah i mean community is one of the big secrets to parkrun success you know and as a family who very much engage with parkrun and it

helps provide the framework to our weekend really you know saturday mornings means rain or shine my son and i will be going down to the local park yeah and if that was left to us as it was in the lockdowns yeah when parkrun didn't exist it was left to us and you know what we never went running right right yeah it was it was a running. It was a struggle. I would try and sometimes persuade him or maybe it was myself only persuading, but it didn't happen. But we haven't missed one in months because there's almost that constraint that we know it's not a negotiable in our heads. You have to decide, oh, shall I do this? Shall I do this? No, Saturday mornings are park run mornings.

We will be there at this time. And we know, barring some sort of injury or mishap, we will have both completed 5K in some form. And I think that's why park run in secular societies, I feel that's one of the big strengths of park run is it's giving us a sense of community yeah and you know you get to know the people and i mean my son loves it people say hi

to him they go oh nice run last week see how good he feels yeah this is what we're missing the sense of belonging the sense of community and you know your book it's got so many wonderful ideas on time and our relationship to time and how we perceive time. But ultimately, if it's all down to us, it's going to be pretty tricky, isn't it? Because you need help from the world around you. Absolutely. And I think the parkrun is such a great example because it, in a way, it does something very cunning, right? Which is that you're sort of taking a very individualistic desire that people have, which is fitness, which often gets very heavily individualized in the way people think about it. And then it's like a bait and switch because actually, as you say, such a great benefit is the fact that it's communal. I think meditation, sometimes people have this experience too they sort of get into meditation

because they want to focus better and do better in their work or be more self-disciplined or something and then they realize that they've suddenly like started going on retreats and really enjoy the sense of communality that comes from those things there's a sort of interesting dynamic goes on there when people come to something for individualistic reasons and then actually benefit for communal ones yeah and i guess I guess that's okay, right? Because we're all on a journey and we're all kind of approaching these things at different times. You mentioned your Guardian column, which is, you know, it was very well read all over the world. Your last column has proven to be quite iconic. I don't know how many times I've seen it being shared. It's really, really good.

And I wonder actually when you started writing this book, because actually some of the ideas in it, when is it from two years ago, was it three? Yeah, the book was well advanced by the time I wrote that last column. Yeah, because there's some very similar. Yeah, my mind was in the same place. Yeah, for sure. What was it called again, the final column? They called it Eight Secrets to a Fairly Fulfilled Life, which was, I don't deserve the credit for that that was a great guardian production person coming up with that idea but yeah i like that a fairly fulfilled life do you have a fairly fulfilled life now i think so yeah i think it's a great standard to aim for um but then again it's sort of a constant work in progress i mean i sometimes think there's a, the stuff that I write and talk about that

people ask whether I'm sort of calmer and less stressed about things now. And I think like I am, but it should be my wife who you're interviewing for that question, really, because I don't want to claim that I'm effortlessly easy to live with or something. I do think that, I mean, a big part of it, I mean i am i'm in lots of ways i'm just a calmer and more fulfilled person than i used to be but but a big part of it also is this thing about how how quickly you can get back on the wagon so it's not it's not i think with this kind of ideas about time that i've that i've spent a lot of time exploring they don't make you into someone who never gets stressed about work or never procrastinates, but, or something like that. But you, you see, oh, I'm doing that thing again. And you know

why you're doing it. And you're sort of forgiving of yourself because the reason why you're doing it is a totally human, like, you know, desire to have more control than we can have. And then you can just be like, okay, all right, I'm not going to do that anymore for today. I'm going to go back to the better way of being. And you know, back and forth back and forth two steps forward one step back or whatever but that's fine i think that awareness i think is a massively important step for all of us you know just because we might know something or write about something doesn't mean we can always apply it but i think it does give us an awareness sometimes i think your book will give people a huge awareness

of why they make certain decisions, why certain things end up frustrating them. Like it doesn't mean that you can necessarily change it all straight away, but just being aware, you're like, oh, I get it. Oh, I'm doing that thing. Even this kind of, this whole idea of work-life balance,

right? A lot of people are, I know there will be people listening and watching right now at this minute who are struggling and think at some point I'm going to, yeah, at this point, work-life balance is going to be nailed. But that's a myth, isn't it? Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the

architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health, and together, we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life. And I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour, and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now journaling is something that I've been recommending to my

patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits, and improve our relationships. There are, of course, many different ways to journal, and as with most things, it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three-question journal. to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published

in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three question journal, completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal, or click on the link in your podcast app. in your podcast app. I think it is. I think that what work-life balance sounds so lovely, what it tends to end up meaning in people's lives is that they feel the pressure to sort of be 100% perfect at work and 100% perfect in life outside work. That starts to become impossible because 100% plus 100% is 200%.

So I think that it's an especially vicious kind of pressure because it comes wrapped in this notion of work-life balance is just a lovely thing and actually struggling to achieve it is an awful thing to do because it is basically impossible, I think. And people are holding themselves under the guise of seeking more calm and balance in their lives. They're actually holding themselves to quite a cruel standard that they could maybe just ease up on a bit. And what would that look like? Well, it might, for example, look like a kind of a seasonal approach to imbalance. It might look like saying, if you're a young adult early in your career, something to be said for, you know, going all in on your career for a while.

If you are the parents of young children, you may have to do a certain amount of work, of course, but like also go easy on yourself. And if you can find a way to sort of do the minimum required for a while don't feel bad about that um because you've got this very important thing going on in in life outside work yeah i mean it's always this thing about not not making the difficulties of being human worse by adding in this standard that you hold yourself to that actually nobody could ever reach? I think it is liberating. I know sometimes when I put out podcasts on a particular topic, you know, a lot of the time it's health and well-being. I absolutely think your book is a health and well-being book as well, interestingly,

and I'll get to that in just a moment. But lot of young parents it's like like yeah you know they contact me say i can't do that this could be too hard you know at the moment it's like yeah that's okay it's almost like embracing that yeah this is a time in your life where actually maybe you are going to be knackered and underslept yeah and you can't move your body as much as you might want to or you might hear someone talk about on the podcast. It's like, actually, that's okay. Take that information and just park it and go, yeah, at the moment, that ain't going to fit for me. But in a few months, actually, when my child's a bit older, or I have a bit of help or whatever, that may change again. And so I love that whole seasonal approach to it. I think that's very freeing.

No, I think it is and I hope it is. And I think that it's important to say about how to sort of receive the advice in a book like this, but also all the advice in all the contexts that you talk to people about and your own advice that you give people, right? I think what really matters is often more the spirit in which it's offered than whether this specific technique needs to be integrated into your life tomorrow. And so, yeah, absolutely. There may be somebody with a certain approach to physical fitness who's got absolutely the right approach, but this specific set of workouts is not going to be something you're going to have time for right now. And so I hope that what I'm really zeroing in on in this book is this specific spirit that says like, okay, see what's real in

terms of the amount of time you have. And then in terms of the limitations of control that you have over that time, like come back down to earth in terms of what you can reasonably ask of yourself. And then from that like firm foundation absolutely be like incredibly ambitious for your work or incredibly ambitious for your family or whatever it is you want to do or don't be if that's not your style but just do it from this position of like being in touch with with reality and and not endlessly berating yourself and beating yourself up for not being able to sort of evade the terms and conditions of being human in an interview i heard you on recently you made the case that in your mind a lot of the happiest people and contented people on the planet

are probably the people that we've never heard of. Right. Which I thought was really, really interesting. And I absolutely agree with you. I wonder if you could speak to that. Yeah. I mean, it's a slightly facetious point, but I think it is basically true. I mean, let's look at the extreme here. We don't think about Hollywood where people are the most famous on the planet as a place of wonderfully relaxed, psychological, full health. We tend to think that there's usually, I think that there is probably something, some deep hole you are filling inside if you are sufficiently motivated to struggle for that kind of global fame. Now, sometimes it can have positive effects. I think if you look at great presidents

and leaders in history, they too often turn out to have been struggling with very deep psychological issues or issues in their childhood environment. And so it's not that it always goes wrong, but I do think that that need for that level of fame, that sort of global, global thing is very often motivated by some restless unease. And my theory, based on no research at all, is just that like lower down that grade to anyone who has any kind of public profile. I think on some level, pursuing a public profile is a sign. I don't mean to insult you here.

You know, I have a little one too. It's like that you need some kind of, so it's, I'm talking about my own weird issues as well, but like there's, that you need something that someone who is completely living completely in obscurity doesn't need because they're actually at peace with that situation. I completely agree with you. I think many people feel, and i include myself in this absolutely and i'd be very open in my latest book about some of the struggles i've had in my life and that need for external validation and i think you're right there's a lot of people who have huge amounts of fame and profile who are

deeply deeply unhappy we see this time and time again. I think that the problem then comes, those are the people we look up to for their advice. So that person who, you know, I don't know, founded the company that, I don't even know the term, the stock market, you know, that sold publicly or whatever for like 10 million, we want their productivity tips. You think, yeah, but maybe the cost of that level of success was a broken marriage and never seen their children or whatever. So we then apply the tips in our own life to get something that we don't actually want.

I think that's such a good point. And I think, yeah. And the other place where this sort of rears its head greatly is on social media, right? Because there you have this situation where everyone who does at all well on social media has a certain public profile, right? Well, everyone's got a profile now.

Right, exactly, right. Maybe it's a few hundred followers, maybe it's millions of followers, but like the saying, you know, that on the internet, everyone is famous for 15 people. And it's like, if you make a big song and dance on social media and you need validation in that way, you will have a few thousand few thousand followers you might go higher and like yeah somebody with zero followers is

either a bot or um or or maybe it's just fine not to have any followers you know maybe it's actually exactly not seeking that kind of external validation yeah um it says that people needing to make decisions or wanting help and advice from oliver bertman who wrote this column for week after week giving advice to people um in your final article point number two was when stumped by a life choice choose enlargement over happiness which i really liked i thought it was a really nice way. Could you expand on what you meant by that? What does choose enlargement mean? Yeah, this comes from a Jungian psychologist, James Hollis, whose work I really, really admire, and I've had the amazing luck to then get to meet and talk to. And he says, yeah, if you're

facing a big choice, but I think you can use it in day-to-day context as well, right? Instead of thinking or asking, what is this going to make me happy? What should I do that make me happiest? Yeah. Ask what would enlarge you and what would diminish you. So what does this mean? I think for me anyway, what it means is what we really want deep, deep down is growth. It isn't actually necessarily hedonism. Firstly, we're terrible at predicting what's going to make us happy, right? That's just the oldest finding in social psychology is we think we want this and then we get it and this doesn't give us what we wanted. But also this question brings into focus the idea of whether happiness is quite the

right word for what we should be shooting for anyway in life, because there are lots of contexts where we're not actually having a happy time in that moment, but where looking back, we know that that was a really meaningful thing to do. And I think this question about enlargement, it really works to connect you to your intuitions on that matter. So to give examples, right? In relationships, in jobs, there are all sorts of difficulties that you encounter, all sorts of times that do not feel pleasurable and happy and fun. But some of them might be a sign that you're in a toxic relationship or a terrible job. Others are just kind of like part of getting better at living with a whole

other adult or doing a challenging job to achieve something worthwhile. And that enlargement question can really help you filter between those two. Because when you think about some difficulty you're undergoing in one of those domains, you know if it's the kind of difficulty that is ultimately helping you grow as a person. It's not fun, but it's like, yeah, this is challenging me in good ways that I need to be challenged. And then I think you also know if it's just the kind that's making your soul shrivel inside,

in which case, sure, do what you can to get out of that situation. And that's really important because otherwise you're just going to think to yourself, well, this is unpleasant, therefore it must be wrong for me. And I've had, you know, I've given this example before, but the one that is just so vivid to me that I come back to it. I lived and worked in the US for a very long time. My wife's American.

And there was a time very early in my time there when I had this sort of moment when I could have like returned back to the UK or stayed out there. And for me, it was very clear when I sort of pondered it in this way, that the enlarging choice was to remain out in the US and to not sort of walk away from all the life that I was beginning to get embedded in there. But you could easily imagine somebody else who was living in another country where it was like, okay, now it's time to go home and face the music. Like now it's like the enlarging choice here is to stop sort of messing around as an expat in another country and go and like, go and do the thing you said you wanted to do. Maybe this is not a very good example for other people.

I don't know. But like it always speaks to me because it was clear to me then that like it would have been the comfortable option to leave at that point, but not the enlarging option. to leave at that point but not the enlarging option and i think that's often that is often staying with a situation not always but often staying with the situation is like the sort of more important challenge than leaving it and i guess that's very individual to whoever's making that decision isn't it it's like it's impossible to say to someone else that's an enlarging choice that is not right exactly exactly i can't possibly know what that say to someone else, that's an enlarging choice. That is not an enlarging choice. I can't possibly know what that is for someone else. But when they ask themselves that question, I think they often have that instinct.

If we allow ourselves to be quiet enough to actually tap into our instinct, which I think is another big problem these days. And it can work in the opposite way, right? Than the example i gave so you know someone might have the idea that their job is to tough out like an abusive relationship or or an exploitative work situation that they're they might have been raised with the idea that their job is just to like stick with it come what may and when they ask this question they might be like no this is this is having the opposite effect of growth on me and that and that can then be an opportunity to you know if your personality is someone is of someone who does stay if you're not a sort of commitment phobic person

but a sort of people pleasing person in that way that might be the the spur to actually yeah make a big change to your to your life yeah yeah in that final column i also liked i think point five the future will never provide the reassurance you seek from it what's that about this feels very personal to me i feel like one of my sort of big weird psychological issues going back but like that anyone who's a bit of a chronic warrior or a compulsive planner and i i historically would sort of count myself in those categories for sure, is basically trying to feel like they know that everything's going to be fine in some area and to do with the future. And because you can't actually ever know, because we are, as someone else put it, we're vulnerable to events.

In every moment, anything could happen. This is a horrible thought when you think about truly horrible things happening to people you truly love right but it is true in every moment in any moment anything could happen and i think we're always trying to sort of defend against that psychologically and one way we do that or one way a certain kind of person does that is by like worrying and fretting and planning and trying to make sure that everything's that everything's lined up well, and that it's all planned out properly, and that you've left enough time to do this,

and that someone else has reassured you they're going to be... You'll never get that certainty. And the reason you'll never get it is because the future hasn't happened yet, and because you don't know what's going to happen in the future. And so if you're constantly sort of... Your reach is always exceeding your grasp, right? Because you're constantly sort of your reach is always exceeding your grasp right because you're constantly trying to reach into the future from the present to be like okay can i can you just reassure me that this is going to be fine and like actually no you can't ever be reassured you can you can definitely like take actions that make better outcomes likelier than others right so definitely like you know pursue good health and good diet and exercise, it's going to make a massive difference to the level of probability that you can assign to your being healthy at a later date. But you can't

know. And that sort of desire to know, I think, fuels a lot of anxiety that we don't actually need to feel. It is possible, not easy, I don't do it flawlessly, but it is possible to sort of surrender to the fact that you're on this sort of whitewater rapids ride through time that you don't get to control what's coming next. And you can adopt this attitude on my good days anyway, of like curiosity about what's coming next. It's like, I wonder if my plans for today will bear any resemblance to how the day goes not i need my plans for today to bear a close resemblance to how the day just shifting the perspective to curiosity makes all the difference because then it's not

about whether you're right or wrong it's about oh what what great opportunity to learn something and just find out what happens and right you know why i think your book is also as well as i think we'll go down as a very important philosophical text actually um i think some really quite profound ideas in there i think it's also got health implications because a lot of what we see as doctors these days is related to our collective modern lifestyles. But it's not just about things like food choices, or are we moving our bodies? It's actually a lot of this kind of stress and worry over trying to control time that's uncontrollable, right? So you always, you're trying to meet this bar that you can never meet, that you'll have work-life balance, you'll have mastery over your email inbox.

And actually, the frustration when you don't have it, A, it leads to a lot of poor lifestyle choices because that sense of frustration, that discomfort needs to be soothed in some way, whether it be with a tub of ice cream or biscuits or booze, or you just can't sleep because you're chronically stressed and thinking and worrying about the future or fretting over the past. So actually really understanding our relationship to time, learning, as you say, to surrender and knowing that you can't control it, I actually think is very, very important for each and every single one of us these days. It's not just something that's philosophical it's actually the fabric of our daily lives and when we get it wrong

it impacts every moment in our life yeah no that's a really that's a really interesting point the ways in which we try to sort of not feel this discomfort to dull the pain of those things yeah absolutely specifically the point you just made about how they they have impact on us physically because of the sort of narcotic ways that we choose to sort of absolutely it's uh it's it's huge yeah no totally i want to finish off by talking about keeping options open i think and i guess i'm passionate about this because I feel for much of my life, I've not wanting to commit to certain things. Like, I just want to keep my options open.

What if I want to do something else that day? Well, I don't want to, like, I'm not, I'm not very good at committing to stuff in the future. In fact, if someone invites me or there's an opportunity two or three months in advance, I don't like it because i like well i mean i may be busy i may want to do something else that week do you know what i mean oh join the club you know i know this very well so this is i guess i'm i'm looking for some wisdom from you i think on the problems with keeping options open well it's only wisdom if it is wisdom at all

that comes from having been in exactly the same situation, wanting to do that. I think that basically what happens when we insist on keeping our options open or refuse to commit to things is, again, it's a form of feeling in more control than we really have. So like procrastination, if you don't launch into a project, in reality, you still get to feel in control of it. If you don't commit to relationships or to projects or to a career or to a place where you live or something, it feels like you're holding all the potential inside yourself. And at some later point, you can find when you feel like it, you will make that commitment, but not now. That again, is something that is actually false simply because

of the fact that we are finite and that time just keeps elapsing whether we like it or not. So the example I give in the book, right, or one of the examples, if you decline to get into a long-term relationship and instead you want to spend like 10 years dating people and playing the field, right? You might tell yourself as a commitment phobe that you were keeping your options open. But in fact, you've just made a different kind of choice about how to commit to that time, right? The upside, there's an upside, which is that you don't have to encounter the sort of difficulties or limitations of a long-term relationship. And there's a downside, which is you don't get to enjoy all the benefits of a committed long-term relationship. That might be the right decision

for someone to take, but that time is still gone. You've decided to use those years that we will never get again in one way rather than another way. It might be the right way for someone. I'm not saying everyone has to get married at 18 or something, but what we tend to tell ourselves is that it isn't really committing to something. We're telling ourselves that we're sort of holding back from, we're maintaining our position of power. But the sands of time are running out, whether we like it or not. So you're just using up those years of your life in a different way. And the idea I'm trying to get at there is that you're always committing to things.

It's just that you're sometimes committing unconsciously. So then it's not, some people might say then, well, that is not a commitment, but you are still sort of trade-offs are present, whatever you're doing. And so, you know, if you decide to keep your options open about a career path by not sort of giving yourself fully to one thing um again that might be right for some people that they want to sort of keep have a finger in multiple pies during their life but like don't pretend that you're not deciding to use up a bit of your life in that way that you're somehow sort of you know real life hasn't begun yet yeah and you're holding all the cards no real life has begun and you've decided to do that with it yeah I guess before you know it, you never end up making a decision.

You can always endlessly keep your options open, but you've just got a load of options. Right, as they say. Yes, exactly. Yes, you end up with nothing. And I think that's true, right? So the problem is not that I'm against people having portfolio careers or something, but that if what you want in life,

and you think you do want is a family or to be very, very accomplished in one career, there's a terrible danger in telling yourself you don't need to get involved in it just yet because you're going to sort of keep all your options open. And then that goes on and on and on and on and on. And actually it turns out that you weren't keeping your options open really you were just sort of yeah you were using up your time in a way that was not in tune with the thing you wanted to do i think one of the downsides of trying to keep options open all the time certainly was something i felt in the past is i caused myself such mental anguish and yeah maybe i could i know but if i did that

then i if i want to do this at that weekend i can't do that so i won't commit and then i wouldn't even make a decision i just keep trying to delay that decision. But you don't measure the fact that you're using up a considerable amount of mental energy and cognitive reserve day after day. You haven't made a decision. You're trying to postpone the decision. So you have all the information at your fingertips so you can make the perfect decision. I guess it's a bit like, a lot of people like to book their holiday early. They know in six months' time at that week, we're going on holiday, the flights are booked, everything's booked.

And I used to think, man, you've committed early. What if there was a better option? I think you guys have got it right because actually you made the decision. There's no more cognitive advantage. You know what's happening. Everyone around you knows what's happening. And there is a kind of freedom to that isn't there no totally and like i say in the book there's this weird phenomenon where very often people who take decisions that they were sort of dreading feel absolutely sort of fine having make it made them

because like it's done it's over all you can do is deal with the consequences of that choice. So buying a house, getting married, leaving a job, all sorts of things. They less frequently turn out to be stressful in the way that you were predicting, because actually the stress was the not deciding one way or another. And again, coming back to time, we don't measure that. We don't account for that, I don't think. We just think, oh, if we end up making that we don't account for that i don't think right we just think oh if we end up making that right decision it was worth it but well how many evenings did you waste not

being present to your life because you were thinking about this you know and again yeah i there's certainly something i've been guilty of in the past there's just so much i could keep talking to you about oliver and given that there's no watch in the studio i don't know the time which is the way I like it, which is why these conversations often end up being quite long. The podcast is called Feel Better Live More. When we feel better, we get more out of our lives. At the end of this conversation, at the end of this podcast, what I often try and do is leave the audience with some actionable things to think about in their life. Many people these days are struggling. They feel a chronic state of overwhelm.

They feel that they don't have enough time to get all the things done that they think they need to get done. And I wonder with all your kind of years of writing and just wisdom from being immersed in this topic, do you have any kind of final thoughts or words to share with people? in this topic do you have any kind of final thoughts or words to share with people i mean i think one one way to think about this is just to sort of ask yourself

how you might do today differently if you really knew and believed that you definitely weren't going to get all the things done that you were hoping to get done in the day and might you in that situation make at least a little bit of time now today for something that you know you really care about rather than telling yourself that that's coming down the pike that you're going to get all this other stuff out of the way first and then you're going to have time for that i've said in the, as a bit of a joke, but I think I mean it, that the only sort of time management technique worth its salt is like step one, choose something that you know matters to you. Step two, figure out when today or this week, you're going to give it at least like 20 minutes of your time. And then there is no step three,

because like, yes, some other things are not going to get done. And that was always the case. And only this time you will have spent some time nurturing that relationship that matters to you, or starting to write that screenplay you've been thinking about for a decade or a million other things. But like, I think people know more than they always necessarily realize they know what what matters to them and it really ultimately is just a matter of making a little bit of time for those things here and now i love that there's no step three brilliant way to end the conversation thanks for coming to the studio thank you for writing a truly wonderful book four Weeks. And I hope we get to do this again at some point. Thank you so much, Ron. I've really enjoyed it.

Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, do think about one thing that you can take away and start applying into your own life. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. Remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more.