How Productivity Ruins Your Life with Productivity Expert Oliver Burkeman
For over 10 years, Oliver wrote the a weekly column in The Guardian, called *This Column will change your life.* ****Starting out, Oliver was mocking productivity literature etc., but as he got more into it he started to find genuine value in some of them - even if they can be a little embarrassing.
While writing the column for a decade and trying out heaps of techniques, Oliver slowly arrived at the realisation that “the next technique” is not going to fix his issues with time - he simply has to acknowledge his inescapable finitude first
<aside> 🪨 The Parable with the Rocks
A teacher brings a glass jar and a lot of big and little rocks into the classroom. He then asks the students to fit all the rocks in the jar. Stupid as they are, they first pour in the sand, then the pebbles, and then look surprised when they can't fit the big rocks in.
The teacher’s a smart cookie though, he just puts in the big rocks first, then fills it up with pebbles and lastly pours in the sand - and hooray, they all fit.
The Implication: If you just prioritise around your most important tasks, you will get them and everything else done on time.
The Problem: The experiment is rigged today - there are simply too many rocks to fit either way
The key implication of the stereotypical productivity / time management book is that, with the right technique, you can get everything done and achieve total control over your time
Or in more nuanced books, the call is “discard what doesn’t matter, so then you have the time for everything that does matter”
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<aside> 💡 Burkeman’s proposal is “No, you don’t even have time for what does matter!”
<aside> ⚠️ The Fundamental Mismatch
We are finite creatures with the capacity to conceive infinite interesting tasks and obligations - this simply doesn’t work out
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And this is not a bad thing - it is just a thing - it is just a condition of being a human, and accepting that circumstance can lead to a more relaxed approach
We don’t beat ourselves up for not being able to fly, do we?
Life’s difficult - but if you fully internalise that truth and come to terms with it, you can start to work within that difficulty instead of trying to fight it
Your time is already finite, you already say no to all the other things when saying yes to something - now just make it conscious and work around it:
→If you feel like you “have to do x” today, then it’s easy to experience FOMO (”But I could’ve done y”) → If you actively choose to do x today, you are aware of all the things you’re willingly missing out on - and you get to do what you wanted to do, so you can become fully absorbed in it!
This is the Joy of Missing Out - the realisation that
It’s not a to-do list you have to get through, it’s a menu you get to choose from
→ It’s not bad to be busy (old people are happy to “keep busy) - but being overwhelmed is more disappointing
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→ This does not discredit all the wonderful tools & techniques we can use to get more done, but it changes the approach to them:
A technique doesn’t have to offer salvation from the time conundrum - it’s just there to help
A tool doesn’t have to be the last one you ever use - it just helps you right now
Adapting someone else’s system / technique (and trying to follow it perfectly) will almost certainly introduce a rigidity into that system that they never had,
<aside> ⏱️ We don't “have time” - we're just given every moment as it comes
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Common phrases around “making time”, “putting time aside” etc. imply time as this commodity that we can possess & work around - but this relationship with time is purely fictional
By acknowledging the actual reality around time, we can start living in less of a fairy world of tomorrows, and just focus on what is relevant - today
This does not mean that planning forward is stupid, but the focus differs
We like to tell ourselves that we have less freedom than we actually do (e.g., just go to Bali for a writing retreat, just take a week of break, walk out of a marriage, etc.) because:
→ the fact that we do is pretty scary
→ actually doing that thing can be quite uncomfortable, new & uncertain
This doesn’t mean you always should, but you can.
You’re free to do whatever you want, but you have to face the consequences.
The fact that a lot of choices just never occur to us can keep us from evaluating them properly - and maybe they could be the best thing to do
Additionally, there’s this constant “if only x, then I’ll let myself be happy” and the whole uncertainty situation
<aside> ‼️ Tool: Imagine all the things you want your life to be / look like in 5 years - and, for each one, check “What’s keeping me from doing that today?”
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This also relates back to the Mini-Retirement Idea from the ‣
<aside> ⚡ Put your finitude first.
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