Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Time Management For Mortals" with Oliver Burkeman

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"Time Management For Mortals" with Oliver Burkeman · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans! Welcome to the show that doesn't deal in absolutes, that doesn't deal in blacks and whites.
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  So many shows, so many politicians, so many commentators, so much of your social media feed,
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  expects either your agreement or disagreement, either your furious love or your furious anger.
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  I do not. I ask only that we give each other the benefit of the doubt, that we wrestle with ideas,
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  we reject, as well as those we think are right. Let's escape the dogmas of conventional wisdom,
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  let's have conversations that straddle the cultural divide and make us all just a little uncomfortable.
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  Well this is very exciting. This is the first time in the history of uncomfortable conversations
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  with Josh Serbs, that we've had a return guest. Oh Mr. Birkman, oh Mr. Oliver Birkman, I'm such a fan
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  of Oliver Birkman's. He's a guardian columnist who lives in New York City. I fell in love with him when
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  I read his book The Antidote, Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, which is
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  almost a decade old by now. And I'm ashamed to say that when I spoke with Oliver recently,
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  I didn't realise that he had just finished his guardian column. He has had this column where he's
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  basically done sort of essentially self-help, pop psychology, life hacking, time management,
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  spiritual guardianship, columns. For as long as I've been aware of him, I suppose a couple of
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  decades. And his last one was in September of 2020. I didn't notice them slip out of the world
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  into the great ether beyond, but I do now note that I have been missing them without even knowing it.
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  He also does occasional radio shows for BBC Radio 4 called Things Like Oliver Birkman is Busy
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  with subtitles like In Praise of Idleness and Addicted to Busy. But if you haven't heard him before,
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  I do encourage you to go back and listen to the, I think it was probably the second episode ever
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  of Uncomfortable Conversations that he was on because we don't rehash all of that here. What we
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  get into here specifically is time management. He's got a new book out. Oh, by the way, there's
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  another book that you can get of his called Help. How to Become Slightly Happier and Get A Bit More
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  Done. But that's actually a collection of his columns for the Guardian newspaper, most of which you
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  can get online anyway for free. But his new book is called 4,000 Weeks Time Management for Mortals.
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  It'll be released in the US and Canada on the 10th of August and the UK, Australia and New Zealand
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  a few weeks later. I can't wait to read it. I am sure that you will love it. I want you to listen to
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  and appreciate this conversation between me and the one and only. I'll love it that much.
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  I was going to say why do we need another time management for? But I suspect it's not actually a time
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  management book. Or is it? I mean, I think what it is is my attempt to talk about time management
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  in the context of the ultimate time management problem which is that our lives are finite and we
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  don't have that much time. I think what I start by saying in the book is that on some level time
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  management should be everyone's chief concern that sort of all life is in a way. But that's not how
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  we've come to think about that phrase time management or that other phrase productivity. They
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  tend to mean something much sort of narrower and kind of dull. I wanted to reconnect the question of
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  how you schedule your day and think about your daily time with the real questions of what's
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  the state? There's an enormous amount of sort of irritatingly. It reminded me a little bit of
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  your earlier books in the sense that it strikes me as a pushback against a very irritating
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  sort of positivity cult around time management. I've tried listening over the past couple of years
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  to some very celebrated books about this sort of thing. The people whom Silicon Valley
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  tech heads seem to be really inspired but I can quite often be really off-putting to me in the
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  sense that if I listen to an audiobook and they're reading it themselves they're like
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  if Henry Ford could be indestructible you can be indestructible too and a focus if your mind can
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  yeah and I'm like just pull me a cup of tea and I just want to just want to go and walk the dog
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  why is that partly the motivation for coming at this from a different angle?
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  Yes it is. I mean I'm always happy to sort of throw some comogenly cold water on any of that
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  kind of kind of stuff. I think to get a bit more precise what I'm trying to argue in the book is
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  that a huge amount of this advice actually ends up making matters worse and it does this because
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  subtly and not necessarily deliberately encourages us to try to deny our limitations, to try to
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  to carry on avoiding facing up to the fact of how little time we have, how relatively smaller
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  number of things we're going to have time for, how little control we have over how life in the
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  world and in our lives unfolds. So you know if in a world of sort of effectively infinite inputs,
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  the number of emails you can receive, the number of demands your boss can make of you, the number
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  of ambitions you might have for your life or businesses that you wanted to launch, whatever it is,
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  in a world where all that is effectively infinite if you get more and more like efficient and
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  optimized at processing the stuff you're not you're never going to get on top of it all right because
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  it's infinite. You're never going to be in the position of calm control that you're being led to
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  believe you're you're heading to, you're just going to get more and more rushed and for other
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  reasons that we can talk about you know also end up focusing less and less on the things that you
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  value the most yourself and I sort of trace this idea through all sorts of different areas we
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  can talk about if you want but like the basic sort of governing idea I guess is just that like
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  we are these radically limited radically finite beings and if you do all you can to sort of not confront
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  that and not feel it then you're going to end up not spending your life on what matters the most
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  to you. If you kind of can go through the discomfort of facing it it's not necessarily pleasant
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  at first it's actually incredibly empowering not scary and you know it's the it enables you
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  to sort of get some purchase on life and make good decisions about how you're going to spend your
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  time and sort of stop worrying about the fact that you're not going to get through the infinite
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  to-do list because that's mathematically impossible. You just said it's not scary Oliver what's not
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  scary? Well I'm a bit I'm saying that partly out of insecurity because I'm a little bit concerned
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  if you write a book you title a book 4,000 weeks that you know I want to shock people that that is
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  the length in approximately in weeks of an 80 year lifespan but I don't want and I don't think
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  if you read the book you're going to end up doing this but I don't want people to think that you know
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  what you then have to do is go through your the remainder of your life you know in the sort of
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  white knuckle incredibly stressed out attempt to seize the day and you only live once you know
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  there's a kind of there's an attitude there which is actually just as bad as the attitude that
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  says you've got all the time in the world and you can do absolutely everything which is this kind of
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  approach that you've got to sort of incredibly self-consciously try to you know spend every
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  weekend every day or every day as if it was your last I always thought that was the most curiously
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  like I've never understood that piece of advice like obviously if I if I knew that I wasn't
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  going to be here after today I do all kinds of incredibly irresponsible things that have no
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  heed for the future but I care about my future so I don't like I'd be much likely to do something
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  that was going to kill me if I knew that I was going to die tomorrow anyway it was really fun
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  yes no absolutely and so I don't want to you know it's not that kind of like ramping up the
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  ramping up the internal anxiety what I'm trying to argue over the course of the book with
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  hopefully lots of sort of practical implementations as well not just a philosophical argument is that
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  you know the problem here is not that we are finite the problem is that we're sort of systematically
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  trying to do more or control things more than we actually can and that if you can sort of fall
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  back into reality and so for example you know if you can understand that the key skill of time
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  management is figuring out what to neglect it's been called by you know becoming a better procrastinator
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  somebody I quote in the book right this idea that not that if you can sort of come to terms with
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  that idea of figuring out okay it's going to be a matter of failing in certain roles it's going
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  to be a matter of giving up certain ambitions disappointing certain people that's built in that's
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  not because you haven't found the right technique or you haven't put enough effort into it that's
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  just built into the human condition if you can sort of let yourself fall into that reality it's
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  incredibly freeing and liberating because because then you can then then you can focus your time and
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  attention on some of the things that matter the most and you can sort of give up trying to do
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  something that you were never going to do in the first place that's that's right yes I do I mean
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  there are so many places to go without one one thought that I that I had is the I was I was
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  talking to my therapist recently it sounds I always sound very American when I was talking to my
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  therapist but during the pandemic hey I'm very accustomed to that don't worry yeah the Australian
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  government provided additional Medicare subsidized therapy sessions under the universal healthcare
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  system in Australia still have to pay a big a big copay but it's it's been great so I was talking
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  to him about about this sort of stuff and he was I've just bought my first house and so we're just
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  about to move in next week and it's all congratulations thank you it's it's but as you can imagine it's
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  been it it's a huge headache and at the moment the pandemic was over there was a massive spike in
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  house prices and it was impossible to buy a player's and everything was going through the roof and
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  it was all terribly stressful and there were all these things that I had to do and the therapist said
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  and I was beating myself up for not having gotten them done and he said well when do they need to
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  when do they really need to have been done by and I said well you know the end of the month
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  and he said will you get them done by the end of the month and I said yeah but I'll end up
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  scrambling on the 31st and they'll all end up getting done at the final second and he was like
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  well if that's going to happen anyway and you know that that's going to happen and that's the
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  way you live your life and that's the way you organize your time why don't you not beat yourself
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  up about it until the 31st and then just do that because either either you're going to be frustrated
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  about it every day and then do it or you can just not be frustrated about it every day and then do
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  it that way or you could do it now but if you're not going to do it now at least choose not to do it
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  now and I loved that sense of that sense of empowerment of choosing the knot
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  yeah it sounds very like very wise advice I mean I think you know we spend
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  in different ways but like we're spending so much of our energy and our time to some extent
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  trying to feel certain that things are going to unfold in the way that we feel we need them
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  to unfold and then the sort of extreme I you know I write in the book about coming from a family
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  of compulsive planners who you know there was an onion store a few years ago which with the headline
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  dad suggests arriving at airport 14 hours early it was basically like could have just been ripped
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  from the true headlines of my upbringing with only a little exaggeration this idea that like
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  one way that we respond to the stuff is to the sort of situation of not being able to know
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  what's going to happen next right because literally anything could always happen at any moment
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  in the future it's kind of built into the notion of the future so instead we're constantly trying
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  to sort of lay down these frameworks that are going to guarantee that things will turn out the
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  way we want and one way that people do this people like me is by sort of being compulsive planners
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  and trying to sort of schedule everything in advance because it's completely ultimately impossible
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  because the future hasn't happened yet your attempt to do this to exert this kind of control is
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  always running into the fact that you actually can't be certain about what's going to happen so
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  you're always on this slight sort of knife edge about not knowing how things are going to go and
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  you know it I'm sort of drifting away from the very good point that you were making about about
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  like not stressing in advance about stressing later on or whatever but but in all these different
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  ways it's like to the extent that you can relax into the fact that nobody ever knows what's coming
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  next you can make good preparations and you can have sort of contingency plans but you can't actually
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  succeed in achieving a feeling of control in achieving a feeling of certainty about like what's
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  going to happen in the next minute something very relaxing about seeing the truth of that I think
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  are you the 14 hours early at the airport guy too no and now I'm feeling a bit bad towards my
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  father he's listening to this it wouldn't it wouldn't literally be 14 hours but no I know what you
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  mean but my grandfather was like that my grandfather would get to the get to the airport you know
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  a good half hour before he'd be in the terminal a good half hour before the earliest time that
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  the airline tells you to drive which used to be two hours and then became three hours and then for
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  some flights to the States I think now it's four hours or something and so I would I'd be and this
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  was only in New Zealand and I'd just be flying back to Australia and you know being the in
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  in Vetterat obnoxious international jet setter that I was I was the type of person who arrives
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  just at the nick of time and tries to time it so either last person just walking onto the plane
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  unless I specifically wanted to go to the lounge and get some work done or something and so I would
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  just lighting him when he was giving me a lift to the airport about what time the flight the plane was
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  I would do the mental calculation about when because he would not let me I would say just drop
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  me off there like an hour and 15 minutes before the flight and he'd be like no they say two hours
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  and so you know three and a half hours before the flight he'd be pacing around his apartment
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  with his car keys in his hand saying come on come on mate let's go it does not be late and he's not
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  even traveling he's not even at any risk of missing the plane but it just landed for he's like
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  would just whip him up into a state of anxiety and I'd never understood that who wants to be sitting
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  I mean my family members are like this as well I have this difference with with my own brother
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  like who wants to be sitting at an airport gate but there are people for whom the sensation of being
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  hurried and the fear of missing the plane even if it's unfounded is such a bad feeling that they
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  will avoid that feeling at the cost of wasting two hours of their life sitting in an incredibly
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  unpleasant airport gate I totally relate to this I mean I am I am not the person who
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  arrives 14 hours early at the airport but I am a person who has had to struggle with wanting to
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  I'm not the person who can sort of easily easily get over that no it's been a it's been a you
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  know that's the you write books about the things you struggle with and that the part of this book
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  that is about compulsive planning and not trying to ask too much of your certainty about the
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  future is um is totally personal um what do I do at airports I I leave um probably more time than
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  is strictly necessary but I try to sort of um push myself to not sleeve four hours when it isn't
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  uh when it isn't necessary I think one of the things that this may be partly also with your
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  grandfather maybe generational in terms of how yeah of course um in terms of how sort of
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  special flying is um but one thing I always find it's very frustrating is that I don't I try not to
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  get um early in the morning flights because I know I will my sleep will be interrupted through the
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  night as I wake up to to out of concern that I might have missed the flight um or because on some
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  deep level something in me thinks that it's life or death if uh if I miss that if I meet meet that
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  plane or not and you know that that's just not true so there are these certain kinds of things
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  that we're in with which we invest this kind of level of it's so important to know that they're
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  going to work out fine and yeah if you can and it happens in other contexts as well you know to
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  the extent that you can relax that and and sort of drop the demand obviously this is partly
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  a function of privilege you know it always makes a big difference that if you have enough money in
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  the bank that you can always go and stay in a hotel somewhere for a night that's is a sort of a
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  complete game changer when it comes to things like travel and international trips right you're not
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  sort of having to make that uh connection somewhere because otherwise you're literally just on the
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  street well yeah I mean it totally depends and yeah I have had I have found myself caught out in
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  situations like when my grandmother died in New Zealand and I didn't leave maximum amount of time
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  to get well I did actually leave quite a lot of time to get to JFK to go to her funeral in New
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  Zealand uh the air train broke at JFK and the you people were just being dumped out of whatever it
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  was the Long Island Railroad or or the the train um onto the street and they were scrambling to get
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  buses and the line the line I mean the line was more than you know it would have been more than
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  400 meters long and there were just it was going to take hours and hours and hours and hours and
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  hours and hours and I just went to the front of to the front of the line and I just said I'm so sorry
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  my my grandmother died in New Zealand I'm going to a funeral and I just pushed in front of someone
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  and got on and got on the bus and and and made a solid American approach I'm talking to you
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  exactly and in that case you absolutely have to make the flight but yes 95% of the time you're not
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  having enough to pay for an overnight hotel I mean you might pay a change fee if the airline is
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  feeling particularly nasty but if you're flying from Auckland to Sydney there's going to be another
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  flight in two hours so there's a sort of a there's a sort of broader point here you know that goes
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  way beyond air travel I think I quote in the book um uh Krishna Murty the the spiritual
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  teacher who was sort of very big in the the 1670s sort of slightly ostentatiously revealing his
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  secret the secret his secret to happiness that a meeting in California uh in uh in the 1970s where
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  he said that um he asked you know the assembled audience if they wanted to know his secret and then
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  he said I don't mind what happens and um you know there's lots of ways of interpreting this there's
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  ways of interpreting it is sort of overly passive and sort of apolitical and maybe we should mind about
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  all sorts of things that are happening in the world but there is just this sense of like if you can
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  live not in the state of constantly waiting to see if the next minute or hour um meets your criteria
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  for it uh you you you sort of it's sort of a superpower um something you're claiming that I do that
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  all the time but uh it's it's sort of a superpower because you realize how much stress and anxiety
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  is not that you need things to go a certain way but that you need them not that you need particular
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  things to happen necessarily but that you sort of need to feel that you're in control of how uh
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  events are unfolding it's so interesting that you just allude to your sense that you're uh you
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  know people's guilt about not being uh full of anxiety about what's gonna happen it in fact since
• 20:53
  we last spoke I've used your your wisdom all of a quite a lot in dealing with our with my thinking
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  about the pandemic in the sense that it was specifically our conversation and if listeners haven't
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  heard our first conversation you really should it's great um specifically in the context of
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  um spending so much time worried about big abstract distant events and our political hot
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  takes on things that don't actually impact our lives uh you know US politics being an obvious
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  example for especially for non-Americans uh and not enough time focused on the here and now and
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  I still find people really uh uh having a hard time grasping the seeming paradox of
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  of both allowing yourself to not care quite so much about things that don't impact you
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  and also being a good person who is engaged as a citizen like I tweeted I'm just looking for it
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  I tweeted it two days ago um I tweeted if you're finding yourself furious with your political leaders
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  in the lockdown this is to my Australian audience obviously uh remember their human beings doing
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  their best every policy has flaws Australia's done well leave the political algae bargey to
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  journals and polies and go for a sunset walk with your kids and I was inundated with negative
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  messages saying that I'm very easy for you to say like uh you know or you know the these people
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  are doing you know these people we're holding people to account and you're encouraging us that
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  you're encouraging political apathy uh someone wrote a democracy needs to hold its politicians
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  feet to the fire not to look away and like I know people who've lost family members and
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  right you know I was like you kind of missed in the point yeah although you're totally
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  were being uh provocative as well I suspect but anyway no I mean I think um no I mean yes right
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  that the the there are various different points here I mean one is that um crucial one I think is
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  that you know a lot of people are not having the impact that they believe they're having right
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  there's this there's this idea that the mere exertion of emotional energy on something is somehow
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  a good in itself and I think that um social media especially really encourages this really makes
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  you feel like you're you know the very active tweeting the very active scrolling through a news
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  feed is somehow much more interactive than just watching TV news and I think that um you know
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  people are misled into thinking that that that that that they're emoting is is really
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  helping now that doesn't mean there isn't there aren't contexts in which you know uh
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  politicians constituents can can move the needle in by um you know conveying their anger at what's
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  happening it's just that we're sort of them it's more an exception to the rule especially when it's
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  yeah like on the other side of the globe all it's going to happen there is that you sort of
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  uh just dissipate what what capacity you have for for care um over so many different issues there's
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  a Canadian writer blogger called David Kane whose work I follow and really uh enjoy who I think it's his
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  he has this he talks about some of this in the context of uh some metaphor that I'm going to
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  get wrong but like um to do with what you know it's to do with like sort of the difference between
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  water sort of light rain spreading right across a whole country uh versus sort of pouring a lot
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  of uh water concentrated into one place there'll be a real case for saying you know if you can
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  bring yourself to do it there's a real case for saying like I'm going to really care about this
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  issue and I'm going to deliberately sort of try to not care about all the other ones because
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  that way I might have a real effect this idea you know through social media especially we are
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  asked to care about you know far more stuff than anyone in history they've been forced to ask to
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  care about to a sort of crazy degree um I think on some level we just have to accept that we're not
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  constituted to um to exist on that sort of scale and that if we do want to be good citizens and
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  spend some portion of our time making the world a better place you are far better advised to like
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  pick a pick a topic and get properly stuck in locally uh as well as nationally internationally
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  vanta sort of emit this kind of not that I didn't do it too but you know sort of emit this sort of
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  general uh uh sort of anger and and angst um I mean I like I like that analogy about the rain
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  it was it how do you spell cane K-A-N-E C-A-I-N his blog is raptitude oh the raptitude guy
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  yes wonderful um I like that analogy about you know directing your torrential downpour onto one
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  thing rather than sprinkling uh it gently across a huge field but I think social media is even worse
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  in the sense that it doesn't sprinkle gently over a field it encourages you to join whichever
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  torrential fire hose is happening in the mo in this instant right and then you're you're just jumping
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  from one haphazard fire hose to the other so the intensity is is extremely high but you're not really
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  in possession of any metrics by which you're determining where your energy is going to be directed
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  you're just getting buffered around by algorithms so you're getting really really outraged
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  about the victorian premier one day and then you're getting really really outraged by the federal
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  health minister the other day and then you're getting really really outraged by transgender people
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  at the Olympics for third day and it's you know you know there's no there's no there's no
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  there's no very absolute control of your own yeah plus yes plus you then are not actually
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  plus your sort of exposulations that you do in response to this are not efficacious and I think
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  there's something else that's been really notable to me in terms of COVID especially I mean goodness
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  knows I don't want to sound like I'm coming to the rescue of to the aid of Boris Johnson or
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  anything but like we have this situation which is completely unprecedented which is totally
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  unpredictable in many ways I'm not at all suggesting that politicians couldn't have done better jobs
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  of dealing with it because in other countries they they have done a better job but you do get this
• 27:28
  kind of centrifugal force online where it all has everyone has to be completely terrible or
• 27:35
  completely on the side of the angels and you notice this with COVID this this notion that like
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  every single death from COVID is effectively is blood on the hands of the politicians who've
• 27:47
  mismanaged it as if a better management in that context would have would have eliminated
• 27:54
  the death toll entirely when actually you know it may be there may be differences between countries
• 28:01
  that are to do with their existing health systems and their existing plus structure and all sorts
• 28:05
  of exactly all sorts of factors but that are not sort of but we again it's this very strong desire
• 28:11
  to sort of find specific people and and hold them deeply responsible now yeah yeah I think
• 28:17
  Boris Johnson has a lot to be held responsible for I mean I was I was actually quite confronted when
• 28:23
  reading online a Twitter thread from a conservative who was saying like how different do you think
• 28:29
  the US's death toll would have been if if Hillary Clinton had been the president instead of Donald
• 28:33
  Trump like let's actually go through it and he made a quite persuasive case that yes Trump
• 28:39
  bungled it but was the US going to close its borders to the entire world immediately the way that
• 28:45
  Australia and New Zealand did and was that possible probably not no no president would have done
• 28:51
  would have gone would have turned the dial up to 11 in March of 2020 the way that that smaller
• 28:56
  more remote countries would have even if they had was there enough of the disease circulating
• 29:03
  if the infection is circulating already like in the Pacific Northwest that it probably would have
• 29:07
  gotten out of hand you know probably would Hillary Clinton have been able to build up a contact
• 29:12
  tracing effort fast enough to get on top of it given that it was probably two months ahead of where
• 29:17
  it was in Australia you know probably not and so you know actually going through it looking at the
• 29:24
  looking at the the death rate in places like Germany per capita and you know which which a lot
• 29:30
  of Americans look to as being a paragon of small L liberal social democratic policies run by a
• 29:39
  very pragmatic you know doctorate in science woman you know even even there it's gotten
• 29:46
  out of out of control so it's it did sort of make me think yeah actually politicians are not the
• 29:52
  supermen we require them we demand them to be but we're wondering yeah a little bit off you
• 29:57
  then it reminds me it does remind me a little bit just oh yes let's let's go back but like you know
• 30:01
  people often say that one of the motivations for conspiracy theorism is the idea that
• 30:07
  it's actually more comforting to think that there's an evil cabal of people directing events
• 30:12
  down to accept that they are actually as as random and uncontrollable as chaotic as they seem to
• 30:17
  be and there's something of the same thing in that right I mean that the idea that there is something
• 30:22
  comforting about like explaining this by the fact that you know we just got unlucky by having an
• 30:30
  evil person in charge at that time and it's harder to I mean you know there are also some other
• 30:35
  reasons systemic the American health care system blah blah blah but you know it's very comforting
• 30:40
  to be able to look at one person and say haven't been for them yeah and in terms of in terms of
• 30:47
  how random the the benefits and downsides of history can be I mean one amazing thing that Australians
• 30:55
  never talk about which I wish we would pay closer heed to is that during from sort of December of
• 31:01
  2019 through to February of 2020 there were cases that were you know of this unknown virus that
• 31:10
  were leaving China and seeding into it's eating all over the world and Australia and China have
• 31:17
  extremely high levels of trade and and and human you know cross-cultural transportation and tons
• 31:26
  of Chinese tourists come to Australia well what was happening between December of 2019 and February
• 31:31
  of 2020 in Australia the continent was on fire nobody was coming the bushfires were rage that the
• 31:41
  worst natural disaster in Australian in Australia in generations was taking place it was all over
• 31:48
  the news all over the world the blood red skies in Sydney yeah visitors were canceling their trips
• 31:53
  in droves from the United States and Europe and China and I do wonder this was raised to me by an
• 32:00
  epidemiologist you know would we have been able to get on top of it the way that we did in March
• 32:05
  and April if the cases had been arriving in December and January instead of starting to arrive in
• 32:11
  February so completely random yeah completely random you know maybe maybe Australia got lucky
• 32:18
  and then made some good decisions I want to come back to you saying to to your point about scary I
• 32:25
  the the scariness of mortality is something well known but there's another thing that's scary
• 32:32
  about trying to get your shit in order which is when you actually face up to big challenging
• 32:41
  projects that represent things you really want to accomplish with your life that's scarier than
• 32:48
  just scrolling Twitter or procrastinating and I'm wondering how you get around that
• 32:55
  yeah it's a big challenge I mean one of the one of the points I try to sort of go into is this idea
• 33:00
  like I don't want to let Silicon Valley off the hook at all so the kind of economy of distraction
• 33:08
  that they've built to sort of mine our attention against our will but but you know we do have to
• 33:14
  it only works because we play along on some level right it only works because we are in the market
• 33:19
  to turn away from from whatever it was we're focused on and so I try to really go into this
• 33:26
  on the face of a mysterious question you know why is it that something you really want to do
• 33:31
  a work project creative project it can be nurturing a relationship all sorts of things
• 33:39
  why is it so frequently that it's those things that you then when it comes to the crunch kind of
• 33:44
  don't want to do and they're kind of very willing to distract yourself from with readymade
• 33:52
  digital and other kinds of of distraction and you know I sort of explore various people writing
• 33:57
  about this and it begins to get a bit less mysterious really right I think it's just that it's
• 34:04
  a rather obvious point in a certain way that that things that we care about inevitably bring
• 34:11
  us into a different kind of confrontation with our finitude with our limited time and our limited
• 34:19
  control our limited capacities because it's when you're trying to write the chapter of your novel
• 34:25
  that you have to face the possibility that you don't have what it takes or that it won't be received
• 34:31
  in the way that you hope or that you know you have to be putting something else really valuable
• 34:37
  in your life aside in order to spend the time on it you're sort of brought into a confrontation
• 34:43
  with the feeling that like life isn't a dress rehearsal but that this is it and you're choosing
• 34:48
  to do this now with your time and you don't know for sure how it's going to turn out and I think
• 34:55
  that's all kind of synonymous with meaning right I can't imagine what a meaningful activity would be
• 35:03
  if you could be absolutely certain of how it was going to go if it didn't bring you up against your
• 35:06
  edge in any way at all you know that that that's almost the definition of a meaningless activity so
• 35:15
  it's interesting but I can imagine a meaningful activity where although you don't know where it's
• 35:20
  going to go everywhere where it could go is desirable and therefore you slip towards it frictionlessly
• 35:28
  but no meaningful activities in my life seem to have that feature.
• 35:35
  I mean I think it's just because you know well I mean I mean what are you thinking of I mean
• 35:43
  what do you I suppose I'm thinking of creative and professional things but even personal things you
• 35:51
  know so like do do I want to improve my communication with my partner around household chores yes
• 36:00
  is that scary and annoying yes you know do I want to break the back of this writing project this
• 36:07
  TV writing project that I've got burning inside me that the muse wants to let out but I don't seem
• 36:11
  to have time to do yes but is that scary yes but all of the I suppose in I suppose in the creative
• 36:19
  case there is a perfectionistic fear that once you put it down on paper it's not going to be as good
• 36:23
  as it is in your head and so you don't want to you don't want to make it real because the perfect
• 36:27
  version that doesn't exist is preferable to the real version that is imperfect but that can't apply
• 36:34
  to all big challenges surely. No I don't think those specific criteria do and I don't think I'm only
• 36:41
  talking about big challenges here but I think there is a sort of inherent discomfort in being
• 36:48
  absolutely present some a lot of the time it manifests as boredom right I mean I think that's um
• 36:56
  it's not necessarily that you're sitting there terrified about how something's going to go it's
• 37:00
  that feeling that you're sort of at the mercy of reality in in some way um you can't think of
• 37:07
  anything to do that's one reason people get bored or you're into the sixth hour of solo
• 37:13
  parenting of a small child who you love deeply but at the same time you know that there is no there's
• 37:19
  no escape uh in that kind of context and there's something constraining about the idea of there being
• 37:24
  no escape even if nothing is uh sort of overtly negative about the experience there's a psychotherapist
• 37:31
  who I quote who called Bruce Tift who wrote a great book called already free which is a
• 37:36
  combination of sort of Buddhist perspectives and psychotherapeutic perspectives and he just talks
• 37:40
  about this sort of universal feeling of being sort of constrained by reality that uh I think um
• 37:47
  you know almost all of us have in one way or another a lot of the time and it can be anything from
• 37:52
  being stuck in a traffic jam that you can't make move at the speed you wish um trying to write a
• 37:59
  difficult creative piece of creative writing that you don't know if you're going to be able to do it
• 38:03
  or just something as simple as you know not not being able to not be able to not be doing the
• 38:11
  bit of parenting or partner honoring or whatever it is that you're doing right now even if nothing
• 38:17
  about it is negative it's just there's a sort of um there's a requirement that you sort of
• 38:23
  give yourself to it and I think that on some subconscious level there's a recognition that you are
• 38:28
  doing this with a bit of your finite time and like this is life and and I think you know this
• 38:35
  fantasy that is encouraged by hanging out too much online where it feels like you're completely
• 38:40
  limitless and you can be anyone and do anything and find you know connect to information from
• 38:45
  the other side of the globe instantaneously there's a kind of a godlike feeling to that which
• 38:53
  takes you out of this kind of constrained sense of being in in reality this is getting pretty
• 39:01
  abstract I think it is sort of underlying idea I think yeah but this is why so much of time
• 39:08
  management is so annoying because it doesn't go abstract or deep it just goes it flits across
• 39:12
  the surface of how you should be structuring your day when in actual fact if you if you truly
• 39:16
  analyze why the person who has a novel burning inside them hasn't written it it's not it's not about
• 39:23
  the time is it it's about the stories that we tell ourselves about I mean I'm just trying to think
• 39:28
  as you talk about how this relates to me right now so like I need to and I'm not saying this because
• 39:34
  I think that that my position is uniquely um is going to shine some unique insight but other but
• 39:40
  listeners might find something in these stories which relates which they relate to so I've got I
• 39:45
  need to set up some new bank accounts so that you know I'm putting aside the correct amount of
• 39:52
  goods and services tax in advance so that I'm not always scrambling at the end of every quarter to
• 39:57
  pay the tax man and you know I need to structure my my I suppose cash flow better now that I've
• 40:02
  got a house you would not believe or how many times I managed to procrastinate about just going
• 40:08
  onto the bloody bank website yeah and opening an account and setting up an auto transfer of ex
• 40:15
  amount per month from this account to that account and then like obviously there is some pathology
• 40:23
  there is some code that's running underneath this which is something like why do I have to do
• 40:31
  this bullshit stuff why is the world set up in such a way that and the tax offers set up in such
• 40:36
  a way that the onus is on me to do this mundane chore when there are so many more pleasurable things
• 40:42
  that I'd rather be doing there is something inherently unjust about this and as a free man I'm going
• 40:48
  to assert my right not to sit down at this stupid computer and do this stupid bullshit and look
• 40:54
  up my bloody account number like you know what I mean like it's not it's not time time isn't the problem
• 41:00
  right I mean another sense it is because it's to do with how you are using your time yes I know
• 41:06
  what you mean it's not that you can't free up the time to do it in fact count you know the
• 41:12
  really self-defeating irony is that you will now have spent much more time thinking about how you
• 41:19
  ought to have done this oh how you don't want to do it then it would have taken to do it yes um
• 41:25
  yeah that desire to be the master of your time has a sort of yeah it results in the opposite
• 41:36
  which is you know more time the viewers has been used up on something that you
• 41:40
  so how do you how how does one take the thing that's hanging over one's head
• 41:45
  and insert it into reality and and get it out of the way and have it done
• 41:50
  well I sort of take a twin approach in the book I have got a whole bunch of sort of little tips
• 41:54
  about how to sort of really scale down into something sort of a radically kind of incrementalist
• 42:00
  approach to this kind of stuff where you can do things in such tiny amounts that that you can
• 42:06
  sort of fly under the radar of these kinds of reactions I do really truly think though that the
• 42:13
  most the biggest sort of the sort of most effective life hack in this area is just sort of stopping
• 42:24
  expecting it to feel otherwise right to sort of to to feel that you know this feeling of
• 42:34
  pushing against constraint it's just sort of the feeling that goes with being constrained it's
• 42:38
  just the feeling that goes with doing things that that that matter to us in one way or another
• 42:45
  I mean your example of the bank account is a little bit different that's more like sort of life
• 42:48
  admin that yeah I think I would definitely look at sort of doing in miniscule amounts on a very
• 42:57
  sort of regular basis like picking picking your three most annoying things you've been feeling guilty
• 43:02
  about and spending 45 minutes every day just plowing through those things you know yeah it's
• 43:07
  right yeah it's a trolled fashion but when it comes to the bigger projects I mean when I
• 43:15
  and this is I'm slightly borrowing from Cal Newport or through the book's deep work and digital
• 43:21
  minimalism here but like he has this way of expressing it which is it's like the thing people
• 43:25
  call writers block that's the feeling of writing like that's that's doing that's doing a hard thing
• 43:31
  and that's one example of this broader point I'm trying to make that you know if if you don't
• 43:37
  if you can nicks if you can be a bit more okay with the fact that it's not going to feel hugely
• 43:41
  comfortable then suddenly it doesn't actually feel that bad at all and there's a sort of a this
• 43:47
  is a theme that runs throughout a lot of stuff that I've been interested in and that I've been
• 43:50
  writing about recently which is that you know learning to tolerate a little bit of discomfort
• 43:57
  is a kind of a crazy superpower because the level of discomfort that is required to put us off
• 44:04
  doing things is so small that yeah you know that that if you can just and I don't mean that you
• 44:12
  should sort of try to squelch it and not feel uncomfortable I mean if you can take sort of very
• 44:17
  generous and welcoming view to your emotions and say look yeah I really feel uncomfortable I really
• 44:24
  feel reluctant to do this this really makes me bored or resentful or scared or whatever it is that's
• 44:33
  okay and meanwhile at the same time I'm gonna open the laptop or you know make the call send an email
• 44:42
  like those two things can coexist that's interesting that that almost reminds me Oliver of
• 44:47
  Stephen Pressfield's trick in his books where he names resistance with a capital R as being the
• 44:54
  thing that you're carrying around with you and the thing that crushes people's lives and people
• 44:58
  dreams if you give it an inch you know the war of art yeah I do I do I have I'm gonna be honest
• 45:05
  and say I have mixed feelings about that book it's obviously so successful and meaningful to people
• 45:08
  that I'm not going to say like it's not great stuff but like I I think that can lead to a sort of a
• 45:15
  sort of combative you know approach that you're gonna sort of go mano a mano with right with resistance
• 45:23
  and and you know if it works for you do not let if or someone listening you know do not let me put
• 45:29
  you off but I mean I think a there's a way of sort of maybe there's a way to winemity towards towards
• 45:38
  yeah or just being more yeah I mean not sort of yeah not not not not not vowing to destroy resistance
• 45:44
  so much as like accepting that you're gonna hang out with it um I get what you say but it was
• 45:52
  sorry yeah no no it was yeah Elizabeth Gilbert in her in her book on creativity which is called
• 45:57
  Big Magic and has some analogy about how you have to sort of you have to let fear come on the road
• 46:07
  trip with you but there's no way you're letting it take the driver's seat you know yes I understand
• 46:13
  now that I think about your temperament and press fields temperament I can totally see why
• 46:17
  there would be a mismatch between you between that and why his work wouldn't land for you um
• 46:24
  because because so much of your outlook on life is finding ways to be gentle with yourself and to
• 46:29
  roll with the way things are and to to sort of transcend the our own reptilian brains
• 46:39
  floors and and sort of make peace with them whereas he is much more yes combative but I take his
• 46:45
  message as being not one of you must vanquish resistance or you must eliminate resistance or you
• 46:51
  must find a way for resistance to be no part of your life but almost the way that an alcoholic
• 46:57
  would recognize the temptation or a smoker or a gambler or something it that the addiction is
• 47:03
  going to be there it's going to be eternally vicious you must remain eternally vigilant and
• 47:10
  it's just going to be the coder it's going to be it's going to be in the car but don't let it touch
• 47:15
  the wheel keep it in the back seat you know what I mean and and that's what I get out of his
• 47:20
  his work that by naming resistance as a thing yeah it's a it when when it when it arises
• 47:26
  I can I can distance myself from it in a way that actually doesn't feel combative because then I
• 47:32
  can go oh right I know you you're the mediocre piece of shit that prevents me from doing what I
• 47:38
  want to do so welcome uh you know stay quiet and you know you can ride with me but I'm not going to
• 47:44
  give you any power that sounds I mean that sounds extremely similar to what I'm saying and what I
• 47:49
  was borrowing from Elizabeth Gilbert to say and you know the other thing about this of course is
• 47:53
  like I don't think now any fixed answers universal for absolutely everybody and if and if it works
• 47:59
  don't don't mess with it that's so you know I wouldn't certainly want to pick a fight with Stephen
• 48:04
  Pressfield also I think you just win wouldn't you and so let's get down to priorities and how one
• 48:15
  decides what one should be doing with one's time because you know I think it's easy when we're
• 48:20
  saying oh you know I've got this great novel to write and so I shouldn't be flicking through Instagram
• 48:25
  I should be writing but if you've got a great novel to write and you've got a TV project to pitch
• 48:33
  and you've got a podcast that you could be working on and they're all fulfilling many creative
• 48:40
  people many multi-hythonates find themselves you know talk about the torrential downpool versus
• 48:47
  the sprinkle of rain and sprinkling their rain across a lot of projects and not quite knowing exactly
• 48:52
  how to have laser focus on on any one and finding themselves terrified by the prospect of eliminating
• 48:58
  all these other things that they want to do in order to focus on one thing because what if that one
• 49:02
  thing isn't the one that they should have been focusing on how do you get out of that pickle
• 49:07
  no it's a really good question and I mean let's go further than just saying what if you've got
• 49:14
  lots of other fancy media projects in your life I think it's also just like you know people in
• 49:20
  any work of life who might be you know listening and feeling overstretched just to try to sort of do
• 49:26
  the five or six things that seem essential to life right I mean you know working working
• 49:32
  uh parenting whatever else you know it's not only we um I think it comes to a head for people
• 49:39
  like us who do creative stuff but I think it's I think it's there on some level um universally
• 49:45
  this sense like there's more that you on some on some level must do than you can do and the
• 49:52
  must might be because you're driven to realize certain potentials all the must might be at the
• 49:58
  other end of the scale like in order to not get evicted right I mean it can be the whole scale
• 50:03
  and I think what I'm trying to say sort of applies to um all of it I'm not just I'm not just
• 50:09
  rudely telling you to check up privilege I'm saying that I think this is a universal
• 50:14
  uh phenomenon because it's this feeling that at every level of the economic ladder and every
• 50:18
  walk of life we the large part to do with the way that the state the way the world is and technological
• 50:26
  developments you know we we are led to systematically feel like we have to do more things than we can do
• 50:31
  and the first step in addressing that is just to see that it's like that can't be true it can't
• 50:37
  be the case that you absolutely must do more than you can do it just doesn't make any sense right
• 50:43
  I mean in philosophy they talk about ought implies can you can't you can't you can't have any kind of
• 50:48
  duty to do more things than it's possible for me to do but can you can you elaborate on that
• 50:56
  because if you're if you're a single mother with four kids and you're working three jobs
• 51:02
  it it may be the case that you're going to get evicted if you don't keep working at those jobs
• 51:09
  and also that you're going to neglect your kids if you do and both of those are
• 51:14
  burningly bright priorities for you being a good parent and not getting evicted and so how does that
• 51:21
  how does that sit with what you do well I mean I think you know the we're into the territory now where
• 51:25
  it's very easy for me to say but things that are easy for me to say not necessarily false and I
• 51:29
  think that one of them is that you know if your life is making demands upon you that are literally
• 51:37
  impossible in terms of time like then they're impossible like that that's the clue is in the name
• 51:44
  and and if that is such that you know if it would if keeping a roof over your head would require
• 51:51
  you to do more than it is possible for you to do then actually like okay you're you're going to
• 51:57
  lose the roof over your head it's not it's not something to be relaxed about but for me to be
• 52:03
  relaxed about but it is just a sort of logical entailment and so I think that you know again at every
• 52:10
  level of as a good fortune and whether whether you're doing this to keep a roof over your head or
• 52:16
  to sort of feel that you maximize your creative potential or anything else starting from this
• 52:23
  this position that you don't need to you may the world may make impossible demands on you or
• 52:30
  your sort of upbringing may make impossible demands on you but you don't need to collaborate with
• 52:34
  that by thinking that you're ever actually going to find a way to do something impossible you can
• 52:39
  sort of start from the position that says okay you know have a limited amount of time I have
• 52:46
  things that I value and I'm going to try to do as many of the things that I value in the time that
• 52:52
  I have but I'm not going to add to the stress of the situation by by sort of beating myself up
• 53:01
  to for for not doing something that it would not be possible for me to do there's a kind of a
• 53:05
  psychological form of resistance going on here like a resistance to bad and impossible demands
• 53:14
  you may have to then still work incredibly hard or you know live a very very time pressed life
• 53:20
  but you're not you're at least not collaborating with sort of wider socio economic message that says
• 53:29
  like if you just put in a bit more effort and you just keep going faster and you just find the right
• 53:33
  productivity technique you might actually get to the top of this mountain and I think you know
• 53:38
  then again to go back to the situations where it's a little bit sort of where it's a bit more about
• 53:42
  fulfillment and it is about you know keeping a roof over your head that too is a question of sort of
• 53:55
  like it's not it's not the advice that you should decide to not give
• 54:01
  effort to the TV project or the polka it's just it's a it's a it's a realization that you will not
• 54:07
  be giving more than 100% effort into right right right that that's sort of that's fixed so the
• 54:15
  question is how do you make the most conscious and wise decisions about what to prioritize and how do
• 54:22
  you sort of live with the fact that that means other things get not done at all or or put off and
• 54:31
  again if you want to get us to the level of much more sort of concrete tactics something that I
• 54:35
  found really useful is this this general idea of limiting your work in progress I don't know if
• 54:40
  you've come across any of this sort of personal can ban not productivity stuff that comes from this
• 54:48
  workplace consultant called Jim Benson who wrote a book called personal can ban a co-roach book
• 54:52
  called personal can ban the basic idea here is just that you limit you put a very hard
• 54:59
  up a limit on the number of projects that you are working on at any one time and you can look
• 55:07
  at this at various different levels of elevation you could talk about having only sort of 10 tasks
• 55:12
  on your to-do list at any one time you could talk about having only two major creative projects
• 55:19
  at any one time that there are different ways of sort of implementing it but there's basic ideas
• 55:24
  right you don't you have a fixed number and you don't get to put a new one in until you've
• 55:30
  freed up a slot by by moving one out and it's really extraordinarily powerful you know because it
• 55:41
  really causes you to confront what is already true which is that your bandwidth is limited and
• 55:46
  that you're not going to be effectively working on 50 20 things at once one of the problems for
• 55:53
  so many others is that we've dramatically overestimate our capacity so the bandwidth in my brain
• 55:59
  no matter how many times reality teaches me how narrow my bandwidth is in my brain it's still three
• 56:04
  times broader and deeper than it actually is in reality and and so I mean you're completely right
• 56:11
  that the only times that I've been able to pull off any big you know project is when I've done
• 56:17
  absolutely nothing else I mean forget about two things you know I've when I've written something
• 56:21
  that took real effort like writing an entire show to do at the Melbourne Comedy Festival for example
• 56:26
  little loan writing a book I'm sure this is the same experience for you unless that's the one
• 56:30
  thing that I'm doing and I'm getting up every morning and I'm devoting you know in my case the first
• 56:35
  few hours of the day I have to do it at the beginning otherwise I get distracted and start feeling
• 56:40
  recrimination recriminations towards myself and not having gotten it done and then I've fallen
• 56:44
  into a cycle of procrastination but I have to be doing that thing every single work day and nothing
• 56:49
  else as my big creative project and yet time and time and time again including right now there are
• 56:59
  three or four different big things that I want to do and I go all right well I'll do that one on
• 57:03
  Tuesday and then I'll do this other one on Thursday and before you know it you know I'm cleaning the
• 57:09
  kitchen yeah no I totally I totally feel what you're saying I think one thing that's worth sort of
• 57:17
  noting there is that like you can what and actually one thing that some of these
• 57:23
  work in progress limiting approaches naturally lead you to do is you can sort of break
• 57:28
  they lead you to sort of break things down to the right level so I don't know if I'll express
• 57:35
  this properly but like you can make progress on multiple fronts if you if you only make progress on
• 57:44
  one thing at a time but they're broken down into the smallest into the to the right size of sort
• 57:50
  of resolution right so so like yes I it's probably actually very effective if you can if your
• 57:55
  life permits you to just say like write that comedy set and don't do anything else significant
• 58:00
  using your creative energies until it's done great but you know if you can break it down into I don't
• 58:08
  know how that works with comedy sets but let's talk about books you know like if you break it down
• 58:11
  into like structure the book as a as a as a thing and you won't do anything else until that is done
• 58:17
  chapter one you know don't do anything else then you can and then you can certainly alternate
• 58:22
  that with other other tasks and big projects can flow through your look this narrow aperture that
• 58:29
  you're creating of you know only a handful of tasks I don't think most people are in the position
• 58:36
  most of the time to sort of not have multiple ions in the fire it's just that what happens if you
• 58:43
  don't do something to structure that to sort of close off most of them until some kind of progress
• 58:51
  is made on one of them what happens is every time one project gets difficult or you're waiting for
• 58:55
  somebody to reply or it just becomes kind of annoying in some way because you're again you know
• 59:01
  up against your your limitations you'll just bounce off onto one of the other ones
• 59:06
  right um round in a circle so that uh so so that you um uh you know you never really make any progress
• 59:14
  on any of it so what's the best tool to assist with that sort of chunking of a big project into
• 59:18
  little ones a regular handband project management manager I mean I think yeah these kind of
• 59:23
  canban boards are all which are all the rage now I use one inside uh piece of software called
• 59:27
  notion but there are a huge number of uh alternatives and they just have they just um
• 59:34
  turn digital the idea of like drawing three or four columns on a
• 59:40
  notice board first sort of to do doing done whatever and moving post-its through the different
• 59:48
  channels and the point there is that you only allow two or three post-its into the doing column
• 59:54
  yeah right from the to-do column at any one time and um you know there are um
• 1:00:01
  there are multiple different ways to do another very simple one is just to have two to-do lists
• 1:00:06
  right one sort of open list that you might have like 500 items on it who knows you know
• 1:00:11
  usually add everything to it and then one that's sort of a closed list where where it has maybe
• 1:00:16
  like six slots or something yeah and uh you move you move tasks from one from the long list of
• 1:00:21
  the short list and you don't move more than six and you don't move anymore until one of them
• 1:00:25
  has been crossed off you know that it's it's the principle I think that is the most important
• 1:00:31
  thing here it's just like you are anyway only focusing on a few things in your life at any one
• 1:00:36
  time so it is you might have got to be conscious about it and then yes carry carry those things through
• 1:00:43
  to completion instead of just opening uh yeah it's a great way to feel like you're on top of
• 1:00:48
  everything when you're not really is is just to start in on 50 things and you're like
• 1:00:54
  totally you know then you're like hey um i'm rocking a rolling the lines in the fire it's all
• 1:00:59
  but actually the progress is not being made yes the the idea i mean it's i used to
• 1:01:05
  I went through a period of of being non-digital and just having an index card and a textile or a
• 1:01:12
  sharpie uh and and whatever can't fit you know sharp what an index card written in sharpie is not
• 1:01:19
  something that i'm gonna feel bad about not doing that day so that's usually about three things
• 1:01:24
  really and it comes off the to-do list goes on the index card and those are the things to do that day
• 1:01:29
  and then the next day there's a new index card now i mostly just use my calendar my online calendar
• 1:01:34
  to copy things across from my master to-do list to the the day that i'm actually going to do them
• 1:01:40
  and then those are those things and yeah you're right that as long as you dramatically underestimate
• 1:01:44
  what you can achieve the only time i get into trouble now is when i overestimate what i can do in
• 1:01:48
  it in a day and this brings us to another question that i wanted to get your thoughts about which is
• 1:01:54
  the different psychologies of how mapped out one's day should be that um you know in Sam Harris's
• 1:02:02
  episode of this show he talks about how he really doesn't have a structure to his days he
• 1:02:07
  he bounces around creatively and and temperamentally i'm very much like that as well i like to know one
• 1:02:13
  or two things that i really want to have gotten done but i also like to have permission
• 1:02:18
  not to do them until they crop up and then if it turns out that i don't want to do them and i want
• 1:02:22
  to do something else and that other thing is also really useful and i'm doing that other thing
• 1:02:28
  as a way of procrastinating and postponing the thing that i was supposed to do that's also okay
• 1:02:32
  if i make the decision to embrace that that choice whereas some people find that
• 1:02:38
  totally stressful and chaotic and would much rather have a calendar where they know that okay
• 1:02:43
  from 10 30 to 12 30 i'm doing this thing and then from two to four i'm doing this other thing
• 1:02:49
  and that gives me certainty and structure whereas for me such a calendar lands as nothing more than
• 1:02:55
  a a temptation to find a way to get out of it you know and yeah no absolutely i know you mean i
• 1:03:02
  i've got i want to listen to some Harris talk about how he organizes this day i'm un reasonably
• 1:03:07
  obsessed with the question of how people especially very accomplished and productive ones
• 1:03:13
  organized their days i think it's endlessly fascinating yes i mean i try it's quite you'll
• 1:03:18
  hear my frustration i think in my conversation with him because i mean i've spoken to Sam many times
• 1:03:23
  my old podcast and and with Joe Rogan and so on we were quite we were regular um
• 1:03:30
  colleagues when i was living in la and the he always i don't even think he sees the problem
• 1:03:36
  he's one of those people who like it's i'm so envious of a brain that works that way he's like
• 1:03:40
  you know i just i just sort of do it because it's important i'm like but what kind of alien are you
• 1:03:48
  right right what's your system i gotta have a system i think you know i um firstly i
• 1:03:55
  learned and made my piece some years ago with the fact that i wasn't going to have like one
• 1:03:59
  approach to this that was going to be fixed forever um so every few months i'm changing things up
• 1:04:05
  i'm doing things uh doing things differently and i've certainly been prone in the past to trying to
• 1:04:10
  sort of schedule a data within an inch of its life and then be kind of yeah instantly rebel
• 1:04:18
  against the uh internal um commanding officer that i have set up in my brain to yell at me to do
• 1:04:24
  these things in this particular way also to sort of ridiculously over over and claim about to
• 1:04:32
  myself about what i'm gonna have the time to do um that said i think that um a certain kind of
• 1:04:42
  time-boxing is is something that is really useful for me a sort of a basic sense of boundaries
• 1:04:50
  um both between work and non-work and then between sort of the kind of work where i'm focusing
• 1:04:57
  deeply and trying to write things versus the more sort of bitty work um those kind of those kind of
• 1:05:06
  boundaries mean a lot to me so usually at the beginning of the day i will sort of map out um
• 1:05:13
  uh a sort of a box of time for maybe three four hours of the important creative stuff which
• 1:05:21
  i'll i mean i tried to it's in advance so that i don't plan meetings and stuff in those times um
• 1:05:26
  so and then and then another chunk for sort of secondary stuff what what's important about that
• 1:05:32
  for me is not sort of that it absolutely happens at that time and that i need to know how it's
• 1:05:36
  going to go but what's important about that is it it it it speaks to this idea of limitation because
• 1:05:43
  it puts the time first right it says you've got this amount of time and rather than sort of here are
• 1:05:52
  the ten things that you've absolutely got to try to achieve somehow and you know that just that
• 1:05:57
  that puts you in a sort of a a fight against time right and i what i want to try to it's a hard
• 1:06:02
  to express is what i want to try to have in my own life is this kind of steadier approach where you
• 1:06:09
  know i'm definitely going to put in those hours and i'm going to focus during them and i'm going to
• 1:06:15
  have some sort of intermediate goals for the day sure i'm not going to sort of just be totally drifting
• 1:06:20
  but but the thing that's the thing i want to sort of mentally prioritize is the idea that i keep
• 1:06:27
  coming back day after day and doing three or four hours creative project and yeah there's a
• 1:06:33
  wonderful quote from Adam Smith some way that i've i've quoted this in the past i don't have
• 1:06:36
  it in front of me right now but like that the the person who can work so moderately
• 1:06:43
  as to work every day all year round or whatever um we'll sort of not only preserve his health but
• 1:06:54
  also like end up producing the most amount of work right there's that sort of i want to get
• 1:06:59
  on a very good job of remembering that quote so nearly as articulate as Adam Smith probably
• 1:07:04
  wrote it there's another wonderful one which i have above with my desk but not the desk i'm
• 1:07:11
  sitting at now about virginia and lennard wolf again writing admittedly you know in situation
• 1:07:19
  where they had servants and parents and all sorts of things but but writing for like three and a half
• 1:07:27
  hours every day six days a week for 11 months of the year and just talking about how lennard wolf
• 1:07:35
  this is talking about how extraordinarily much that leads to you know and yet it's this very sort of
• 1:07:41
  non-intimidating uh eminently doable non-exhausting kind of portion of time so that's why i'm using
• 1:07:50
  the the time boxing and what i'm always trying to stop myself doing is yeah kind of trying to
• 1:07:56
  use it at such a fine grained level that there's no freedom in room for maneuver and
• 1:08:01
  yes that's failing at the standards that you didn't need to have set yourself in the first place
• 1:08:06
  exactly and yeah no that's a really really wise thing to to to remind ourselves of i think is
• 1:08:12
  because i fall into the trap of saying all right i'm gonna finish this one pager that i need to
• 1:08:18
  write to you know about this proposal about this project or something but actually the important
• 1:08:23
  thing isn't finishing it if it doesn't have a deadline if it's just something that i'm doing
• 1:08:27
  for myself which a lot of a lot of work at the end of the day is you know not office work but i
• 1:08:32
  mean all of the things that we're up to in our lives whether they be parenting or uh
• 1:08:36
  cleaning the house or whatever there's rarely it's really like a hast absolutely has to be done
• 1:08:40
  by 230 this afternoon but simply putting aside time to do that thing exercises another good example
• 1:08:46
  like you know the only time i've gotten fit is when i've i've carved out just the time don't
• 1:08:51
  worry about the thing just the time like if you if you commit to going to the park for 45 minutes
• 1:09:00
  three times a week and then that's the battle the battle is one you can go to the park
• 1:09:06
  and sit down if you want you can go to the park and walk around you can jog on the spot you can do
• 1:09:10
  jumping jacks you could take the bike you could go you know but the the challenge is not what you do
• 1:09:15
  the challenge is that you do something yes and i think that also works in the sort of you know
• 1:09:22
  i'm a big fan of setting daily goals for creative work that are sort of strictly quantitative and don't
• 1:09:30
  don't get you sort of don't trigger your sort of emotions and like you know numbers of words
• 1:09:36
  um uh you know you really do not need to write very many hundred words a day if you're able to do
• 1:09:42
  it every day to to um to produce a huge amount of it although i even find the word count
• 1:09:48
  stressful in a way that a time count isn't like i mean i'd much rather say to myself i'm going to
• 1:09:52
  sit down for an hour in front of the laptop and it's not going to be connected to the internet
• 1:09:57
  and i'm not going to have any apps open apart from just a word doc and i can sit there for an hour
• 1:10:02
  and not type anything if i want to but i will do that hour my ass will sit in that chair and for an
• 1:10:07
  hour i will do nothing but write and if i can't write anything then i have to stare at a blank
• 1:10:11
  cursor blinking at me for an hour yeah i think that's yeah yeah that would i think that's a yeah
• 1:10:16
  i totally see that yeah i mean they're both quantitative but the time one is even more sort of
• 1:10:22
  it's it's again it's being very gentle with yourself it's saying now you know come a long friend
• 1:10:26
  all you need to do is do you right it's like it's it's only opposite to kind of
• 1:10:29
  it's the easiest screaming yourself yeah just sit sit down keep your ass in the chair and don't
• 1:10:34
  all you have to do is not create not put any air between your butterk and the chair that's your
• 1:10:41
  only task you can't stand up that's it um well that's uh that's very good i think oh yeah the last
• 1:10:48
  thing i wanted to get from you is is mood is met the management of one's mood especially after
• 1:10:53
  something like what we've what the planet has been through over the past 14 months what is it 15
• 1:10:59
  months um and do you get gloomy like i've found myself on a roller coaster ride of um all the obvious
• 1:11:09
  reactions like stress anxiety and and worry and but also longer stretches for really for the
• 1:11:17
  first time in my life of gloomy-ness and i because i have never have never experienced depression
• 1:11:25
  um thank god touch wood uh i don't quite know how to contextualize that i'm just sort of talking
• 1:11:33
  about the color draining out of things to an extent that it hadn't before and then when i
• 1:11:39
  managed to get on top of my time management or i managed to exercise and do all of the things
• 1:11:43
  that i that one knows intellectually one should be doing it i recover but of course as anyone who
• 1:11:50
  has suffered depression knows you you know intellectually what you should do but you can't find
• 1:11:56
  the motivation to do them so it doesn't necessarily matter that you know that you should go that
• 1:12:00
  you'd feel better if you went for a run you don't go for a run how do you think about that
• 1:12:06
  command room yeah it's really interesting i mean i'm definitely on the
• 1:12:12
  i was going to say the anxieties ended the spectrum rather than the depression one of
• 1:12:16
  though they do go together and it's not really it's not really a spectrum but um so you know one of
• 1:12:20
  my first very strange epiphanies of of lockdown was you know i spent the first two weeks of
• 1:12:26
  our lives changing because of covid feeling incredibly anxious and sort of in a sort of bodily way
• 1:12:32
  and then as all the news began to come in even though it was very bad i suddenly realized that
• 1:12:38
  i had been carrying not just for those two weeks but through my whole life a sort of a sense of
• 1:12:43
  sort of impending apocalypse that was so extreme that when um that when bad things started to happen
• 1:12:51
  and the death toll started mounting and you know i don't want to you know if there's anyone who's
• 1:12:55
  lost someone close to them to covid it's very sort of dicey territory i understand but like
• 1:12:59
  everything that happened was finite everything that happened was not the apocalypse and the world
• 1:13:04
  going up more flames and so every day i would be like oh oh it's actually not as bad as i
• 1:13:10
  so i was so i found something i had a very strange experience of being sort of turned from a
• 1:13:14
  a defensive pessimist into a slightly more of an optimist just because you know
• 1:13:20
  the world did seem to stumble on through this through this stuff and lots and lots and lots of
• 1:13:25
  things did not collapse yes i don't remember if we talked about this last time all of it but i had
• 1:13:29
  the same experience in the sense in the sense that i had through my science connections and being
• 1:13:36
  a bit of a data wonk i had tweaked to the magnitude of this maybe three or four weeks before other
• 1:13:44
  people did and so i was chicken little screaming from the rooftops and going at the supermarket
• 1:13:48
  and stocking up and trying to explain to people that their trip to barley in april was not going
• 1:13:53
  to happen and everyone thought i was an idiot and being hysterical and so then when everything
• 1:13:59
  started going to hell in march it was a sense of enormous relief like i don't have to be that guy
• 1:14:05
  anymore and i don't have like here we go let's it's like you're at the best of the roller coaster
• 1:14:09
  we're all on it together so let's see what happens but at least i don't have to have to be the only
• 1:14:14
  person worrying and now and i felt less worry and then yeah absolutely and but i don't want to
• 1:14:19
  neglect the question about sort of low mood and gloom and stuff and i think that you know
• 1:14:27
  on the sort of abstract level i want to talk about how you know these are not feelings that
• 1:14:33
  people should be feeling like they have to eliminate and and you know all the things you might
• 1:14:38
  expect me to say about taking a sort of gentler approach to them when it comes to practical things
• 1:14:44
  i think that what works for so many people in that kind of situation is just to radically
• 1:14:51
  radically narrow the time horizon of what you're what you're hoping to do so you know a technique
• 1:14:59
  that i've seen written about and seen called various things in various places is this is a
• 1:15:05
  productivity technique when you are deeply in a rut take out a notebook or piece of paper
• 1:15:09
  write down one thing that you're going to do do it cross it out and when you feel ready write
• 1:15:16
  down another thing do that thing and and like really do not think beyond that i there's a there's a
• 1:15:24
  line in um i've various people objected when i quoted Jordan Peterson and something i wrote a
• 1:15:30
  while ago because he writes in his first book twelve rules of life um again i'm not quoting
• 1:15:38
  verbatim but like you know as a as a technique for getting out of the rut like ask yourself what is
• 1:15:44
  one thing that you could do and that you would do that would leave your life um less chaotic and
• 1:15:52
  more orderly uh by the end of the day um of which you know tidy your room is the is the great cliche
• 1:16:01
  in uh Jordan Peterson land but it could be anything you know um tidying up is a very vivid example
• 1:16:06
  of this because it sort of is a sort of imposing of a little bit of order on chaos um do that thing
• 1:16:12
  and then reward yourself with a fancius presso or a bar of chocolate and i mean it's just that
• 1:16:18
  incredibly it's that it's that the it's getting to that level that is so small that you're in the
• 1:16:26
  realm of like okay what could i do and i would do yeah and maybe it isn't um adopt a new exercise
• 1:16:34
  regime for the next month but maybe it is get outside into the sun for walk around the
• 1:16:39
  minutes yeah you know all we're ever doing anyway in life is one action followed by another action
• 1:16:46
  so you know pretty swiftly pretty swiftly your uh you're into something that at least has some
• 1:16:51
  movement in it right that's really good isn't it almost reminds me of uh of tiny habits bj
• 1:16:57
  fogs uh yep system where you know he talks about the way to build habits is to just pick the
• 1:17:02
  tiniest most incremental habits so that you know when you brush your teeth in the morning do one
• 1:17:07
  push up and you're not allowed to do any more than one but you know you you start there and then
• 1:17:11
  it gradually gradually builds um that's great Oliver do you want to touch on anything else before we
• 1:17:16
  before i bid you a dear to encourage people to to buy the book no i don't think so why we covered a
• 1:17:21
  lot of uh we did we covered a lot of territory yeah it's always great to talk to you i hope you
• 1:17:25
  have a wonderful time in the move to the uk and that it's everything you could have dreamed of so
• 1:17:30
  are you going in September uh yes we are just three year but yes we are yeah your hope it's
• 1:17:36
  kind of a bit of a shame that you miss out on the summer but i suppose you'll get a beautiful
• 1:17:40
  autumn i'm rather looking forward to winter in yorkshire my uh my partner is maybe not
• 1:17:49
  that's true that's consistent with your mood sort of wandering around the grey mowers gazing
• 1:17:54
  wistfully at the clouds thanks mate great to talk to you as always and you thanks very much