475. Embrace Your Mortality

Welcome to episode 475 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why people Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Oliver berkman, author of 4000 Weeks and Meditations for Mortals. Ready?

Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello everyone.

My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Whether we like to let ourselves realize it or not, our lives are finite. While we humans have struggled with the meaning of life and how to live.

A good life or our best life.

Or how to win at life for generations, and we have a tendency to put off too much for some future time and not make the most of the days and weeks we have right now while we're living them. My guest today, Oliver Berkman, aims to help us overcome that tendency first by helping us all to really embrace how little time we have here on earth.

With his New York Times best selling.

Book 4000 time management for mortals and the years he spent writing a popular weekly column on psychology for the Guardian called this column will change your life. Inspired and moved by his investigation of how to live unblinkingly in the face of our limited time on earth after reading 4000 Weeks, many people have changed their lives and made big decisions to rethink careers, relationships, priorities and misguided assumptions about productivity. His newest book, Meditations for Mortals, which we're discussing today, helps put these themes into practice while also looking beyond the challenges of time management to the most fundamental questions about how to live. I'm so delighted to have been able to sit down with Oliver to discuss his work and know you're going to love the insights as well. Really quickly before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books and ways to follow Oliver and myself and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 475 now let's jump right in. Oliver Berkman, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Thank you for inviting me.

Oh absolutely. I am beyond delighted that you are here. I am a huge fan of your work and you know, recently actually I was I attended nudge stock in 2020 for and saw you present live which was delightful. About 4,000 weeks, which is so cool. And like I already told you, I'll ask you some questions about that. But for the few people, right, for anyone who doesn't yet know, you can share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do.

Yeah, sure. I'm a. I guess I'm an author and a journalist is what I usually say. I wrote a book called 4000 Time Management for Mortals and quite a bit before that a book called the Antidote Happiness for People who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. And then a new one which I'm sure we'll discuss, called Meditations for Mortals. I lived in Brooklyn for a very long time, but I'm back in my homeland of the UK now. I could go on, but I'll probably leave it there for now.

Yeah, yeah. Well, how did. Let's talk a little bit through, I guess, the journey, like you said. So you started as a journalist, right, and then got into this first book about happiness for people who are against positivity or whatever.

Yeah, I mean, to me the journalism and the books all very much sort of melded into one. Right. It wasn't like a departure, a sort of sudden departure. And I really do think of these books as journalism in a sense. Right. Because it's more like the sensibility, I hope, is that I'm a sort of hopefully smart layperson digging up what I can in a field, in a terrain, as opposed to, you know, coming at this either as an academic or in a particular tradition, as a therapist or a Buddhist, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It's just very kind of eclectic stuff. But yeah, for years I worked at the Guardian as a general feature writer and reporter. And then for years I wrote a column in the Guardian Weekend magazine called this Column Will Change youe Life, which was sort of meant as a joke as I ended up having to clarify to lots of people on a regular basis. And that was really just a great opportunity to write about self help, personal development, productivity, time management, the science of happiness, positive psych, all this stuff. And it was really lovely because, you know, there's a discipline there and having to write every, every week. But there's also the ability, the opportunity to kind of explore countless ideas and just sort of test them out, see how they land with people. And so that really developed into the Antidote. And then from there I was more focused on books, I guess.

Yeah, yeah. And so I do appreciate, and especially, you know, in the Meditation for Mortals that you breaking it into kind of a day by day approach to things to be thinking about and be looking at. It does have like you were saying kind of an article vibe to it, right? Like here's a thought and a thing to look at and then we'll look at the next thing and the next thing and you can kind of digest those as you go, which I think is lovely and nice as you kind of step in piece by piece. So do you have a. I guess I think the happiness piece kind of ties in on some of what's in the new book as well. But do you have any like general thoughts, tips, advice if you were going to kind of like sum up what's in the first book for people of things to keep in mind in the antidote?

Well, I mean there is a sort of common thread here. I don't want to. I hope each book is original in some sense, but there is definitely a common thread. And the point about the antidote was that I was sort of. I had noticed a pattern emerging from all these kinds of think strategies and philosophies and techniques that I'd been experimenting with in the column, which was that those that focused on directly trying to sort of will yourself into a better state of mind or force your goals to become achieved simply by top down willpower, all these kinds of very simple approaches and sort of seems like they ought to work on some level approaches to psychology just relentlessly backfired and had the opposite effect. And there's good research that you know, if you get convinced you've got to only think happy thoughts all the time. Just to give one obvious example, you become. Your whole brain becomes like an internal surveillance mechanism for the presence of a negative thought. Right. So it's like it's an incredibly stressful way to live. Likewise with goals. There's certainly benefits to focusing on goals, but you can definitely over focus and too narrowly focus on on the place you're trying to get in a way that actually makes it harder to get at least somewhere good and meaningful. So, you know, I attended sort of appalling motivational seminar in Texas and I went to a place on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya to understand why people, to put it bluntly, didn't seem as unhappy as they kind of ought to be living in quite extreme poverty and sort of insecurity. And that general notion of sometimes the trying too hard is the thing that stops us having the thing was something that has sort of come back and back in my subsequent work as well.

Right?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

If we.

It's the like don't think about white bears Some of that problem.

Right.

It's all we can can think about it and focus on kind of in that way.

Yeah. That's the thought experiment that I kick off the antidote with. It's like it's famous. It's. It's like lots of research has been done on it. Now, if you tell. If you challenge someone to spend a couple of minutes not thinking about a white bear, you greatly maximize the chances that white bears are precisely what they'll be thinking about.

Absolutely. So, well, will transition a bit then into 4,000 weeks. And what I really love the framing of this and helping to, you know, people to learn, I guess, how short life really is in this way. Can you share a little bit about the story of, you know, coming to that realization and, you know, that title and everything.

Yeah. So 4,000 weeks is the approximate average lifespan. Life expectancy in the developed world rounded down a bit for a good number for the title. Although that can be quite shocking when people aren't familiar with it and they realize it. Really, the goal of the book was almost the opposite of shock. I had sort of gone through various sort of stages of coming more to terms with what it means to be finite. Right. I think it's something that happens to a lot of us in world the. Around the middle of, or hopefully the middle of adulthood. So I'm not saying that was sort of wildly original, but I really wanted to explore the idea that actually there's something very empowering and relaxing and there's sort of an energized peace of mind that you can come to, in other words, by sort of really looking your limited time in the face. So it's not, you know, it's not about. It's not a book about. Time is so short. So we better really, really stressfully try to cram every day with as much excitement or achievement as we possibly can. It's really, I suppose, one way of putting it. It's really about seeing that our capacities and our lives are so finite compared to the kind of effectively infinite universe of things we could be doing or could usefully give our time to that, in a way, the burden is lifted. Right. It's not on you to try to get your arms around everything. It's on you to make the sort of wisest decisions that you can about what you choose to focus on here and now in ways that matter the most to you and to other people. And it really isn't about this hamster wheel of trying to get to the point where as a limited human, you can somehow do an unlimited amount that's actually never going to happen. And even if you feel like your boss expects it of you or your situation or your culture or anything else demands it of you, it still doesn't ultimately help you do as well as you can to believe the hype, as it were. It's still far, far more empowering to turn towards the truth of limitation, I think.

Right. Well and as you said, it's a great lead in to then the new book and those meditations for mortals and you know that point of the mortals being like, hey, you're a human person. So like assuming that's true, then like you said, your capacity is limited. You have kind of these weird counterintuitive things your brain's going to be doing. And so here are some, you know, general guides I suppose, of what you can do. So. Yeah, can you share a little bit about the approach?

Yeah. What I really wanted to do in this most recent book, I mean the subtitle is four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts. And I really wanted to do make a sort of usable book, a book that would address this problem that I myself had been struggling with. Because isn't that always what books are about? Right. The author's struggles, which was the gap between knowing how I wanted to show up in life and the work I wanted to do and how I wanted to be with other people and the sort of fact that it's possible to just never actually do it and that extraordinary and fascinating gap between knowing and doing. And so I wanted firstly to explore that, but secondly to actually sort of make and design and structure a book that could address that directly. So yeah, it's divided into four weeks each, each week into seven very short sort of article length chapters. The idea, nobody's obliged to read the book how I suggest, of course, but the idea is that you might read roughly a chapter a day, a day for a month. And over the course of that I'm sort of offering different perspectives of this kind of governing philosophy I think of as imperfectionism, which is all about sort of taking action now, not waiting till you feel ready, not waiting till you know you're not overwhelmed anymore and you've got extra time not, not, not putting life off into the future. And my hope is that sort of by reading that in over a month, like in the middle of your life, not waiting till you have time to just read it or anything like that, right in the middle of the too many emails and the terrible personal problems, you still haven't managed to fix in yourself and all the rest of it. You could actually sort of edge closer towards more and more focus on what matters the most. So it's sort of intended as a bit of an intervention I guess as well.

Right.

And a gradual habit building intervention. Right. Instead of just like there's all these.

Metaphors I get, you know, I go, I go round and round, loads of different metaphors. But it's something to do with these ideas sort of sinking under your skin a little bit. I have found for myself and also for the people who I've, you know, who I. Who are my audience, I suppose through the books and email newsletter and all the rest of it that we all sort of want the kind of plug and play approach to personal change. We want the sort of module that we can install into our brains and then it's all effortless, but it's actually this sort of marinating in a way of thinking that is the most genuinely effective. It's like coming back to it from a different angle and a different angle, being incredibly patient, making it a few minutes of each day. And that is part of what informs the structure of the new book.

Yeah, absolutely. And I was so delighted when I saw the structure for the book because so we at the brainy business have been working on some courses for a while that potentially by the time that this releases, they'll actually be in the world. But they're not there quite yet as the. At the time that we're talking but is uh. So it's this like five minutes a day for a few weeks, you know, versus the like sit down for two hours and watch this thing. So similar to the books and everything. So it was nice to see others, you know, doing that kind of similar approach as you look at the structure of the books. Like you said, four weeks. Let's talk a little bit about like what's the theme of week one, week two, week three, week four? Just to kind of explain how those like group together for people.

Yeah. So there's sort of a journey. They are the sort of. It was, it was. I mean, I don't know, maybe it's like a sort of optical illusion from my position as a writer. But it was really striking how once I had figured out that a month was the right sort of scale for this encounter with these ideas, it sort of fell out very naturally into four stages that seem to me to represent the sort of four parts of this journey. So they build on each other. The first one is called first week is called Being finite. And that's really just about sort of turning to look at the truth of our situation. How little time we have, how little control we have over how that time unfolds. Not no control, but a seriously limited amount. Even just the limited knowledge that we can ever have about, like, what makes another person ticket go through your life, probably, especially with the people closest to you, frankly. Right. Just kind of not ever quite fully understanding them. And actually exploring some work in that week as well by various thinkers who point out that that's actually a good thing. You wouldn't want the kind of control and security that we often feel that we would want. Because to give the example I just gave, a relationship with somebody who you understand completely in every single particular is not really a relationship anym. Like something has gone from that. People think they want their soccer team to win every match that they play, but if they knew in advance that they were going to win everyone, it would be a very strange thing to follow that team. Right. If you could be absolutely certain of the result. So I'm sort of exploring those ideas and sort of coming to terms with them in the first week. And then the second week is called Taking Action. And that's all about, as it sounds like, taking action in this context of being finite, what it means to act in reality and how sort of that's. This focus on limitation unleashes and motivates action. And we can talk about that in more detail if you want. Week three is called Letting Go. And this is a sort of important complement to this and certainly one of the bits I've struggled with the most. There are lots of contexts, I think, where our failure to act the way that we want, our failure to live in the ways that we want, is not a matter of needing to push ourselves harder. It's a matter of putting things in our way that we need to sort of. We need to step out of our own way, I guess, and let things happen more than make them happen. So I'm exploring various different facets of that in week three. And then week four is called showing up. And I sort of see that as in some sense the goal of all this, right. Which is to kind of be here more fully, to show up for life more fully. It's a strange idea. It doesn't quite make. It's not quite something you can put into words. But I think we all know that there's some kind of feeling of being more fully alive, which kind of is the thing that ultimately we're all going for here. Whether we do that through business, through making money, through relationships, whatever it is, the ultimate goal is to sort of feel that you're really as fully here as you. As you could have been. To kind of experience this gift of being alive.

For sure, definitely. I want to expand on all of the things, but we'll make sure we use our time wisely of how much we have here. So like you said, though, there's this bit of by embracing the limits we have, it actually allows us to take action. And that. You were saying you can expand on that a little bit. I think let's start there.

Yeah. So I think that there's a natural sort of assumption that if you choose to become more conscious of the ways that you're limited and finite, that that would somehow be associated with like, resignation and giving up and doing less. And I just don't think that's the case. I think that happens when people have sort of gone a little bit down the route of these ideas, but not. But not all the way. In fact, I think it's once you are no longer carrying this impossible burden of trying to get your arms around everything and that illusion has sort of been dispelled and you have accepted defeat in a way. That's exactly when you're free to sort of pour your finite time, energy and attention into whatever counts the most knowing to you. Knowing that you won't be able to get to everything. So one of those days in that week, just to give an example of it, is about what I call decision hunting. And this is sort of a reframing of how we think about decisions in our lives less as things that sort of come along sometimes and we have to deal with them. The sort of archetype there would be. Somebody proposes marriage and you've got to decide whether to accept. Somebody offers you a job, and you've got to decide whether to those things happen. But what I think is much more powerful most of the time is to think of decisions as things to sort of go looking for. And so I unpack in that chapter a whole approach for kind of getting out of procrastination, getting out of a sense of directionless, directionlessness in life by. By looking for some decision that you could take in the morass of stuff that is in front of you. So whenever I'm stuck on a creative project, for example, I find it incredibly powerful to ask what is some relatively irreversible decision I could take? If I've got five different ways that I'm thinking of structuring the introduction Could I just pick one? And then that changes reality in a subtle way. And now I have different decisions to make about where to go from there. So, you know, again, this is just a reflection of the fact that in fact, as finite humans, we're always making decisions. Any time you do anything, you're choosing not to do all the other things with that time. But we're usually not conscious of it. And there's something really powerful about becoming more conscious of it.

Definitely I enjoyed. And I forget if it's in part three or part four, four of the book, but you were talking about the writing process and for you is this like, it's more a, like, deleting process. And like, as you go through of like, starting and then going, no, that sucks. Like, I hate that. Or like going back and forth and get the. You may sit and write for four hours, but you have nothing at the end of it. Sort of a deal. So. I've been there. I get that.

I mean, yeah, it really has been. And I. And I. This book really marked a departure from that a bit, as I write in that section because. And this was very much my own sort of reckoning with an aspect of this sort of imperfectionist approach. I had always scorned, like, disdained these kind of free writing exercises where you set a timer for 20 minutes and just write, write, write without stopping. Always. On some level, I think I was thinking to myself that these are for amateurs and I'm a professional. You know, that was the sort of prejudice in me. But I got to a point after, really after 4,000 weeks did a lot better than I was expecting. And then you slightly freeze as a familiar thing to many people where I really needed to be willing to, like, yeah, make a mess on the page and then clear it up. And it's amazing how difficult that is at first, even when you know for a fact that nobody is ever going to see the stuff you write. You know, there's something about the. You want a degree of control, or I wanted a degree of control over the process that just wasn't actually helping the process to happen. So, yeah, if you sit at a screen and wait till you can think of something good to write and then you write it, and then you immediately think it wasn't good enough, so you delete it. But gradually stumbling, you know, you get a few things. If you do a free writing exercise, you're effectively saying, I'm going to write, come what may, and then maybe there'll be some good ideas in there at the 800 word point, maybe, or maybe there won't. And sort of easing up from demanding that kind of control over the process actually brought many, many more ideas to the surface. So it was well worth doing. But it wasn't pleasant at first.

Yeah, well, I found, you know, sometimes you come back the next day and.

You read it and go, wow, that was really bad.

Like, I was right. That was bad.

Right.

But I've had, you know, more often than not the next day I sit down after I, you know, wrote some stuff and go, oh, that's reasonably coherent. Like, that's better than I thought it was going to be. And so if you don't allow yourself to delete things that you think are bad when you're, you know, head down in it, it can, can work well. And, and like you were saying, this idea of just picking something, like commit to something for an hour or five minutes or, you know, whatever it has to be. And then as you, instead of just ruminating on all of the options that you could do, which will make it so you never actually do anything and don't make enough progress, at least if you start, you know, you can make some more choices down the line. But it's better than just fretting, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think we overlook the, the importance of the skill of just being willing to take an action, right? Not erecting some whole complicated routine about how you're going to take these six actions every morning or anything like that, not guaranteeing that you're going to do it every day for the rest of your life, but just literally being willing right now to do a bit of the thing that you care about badly for 10 minutes. I think that if you can gradually master that skill, then all the other things about systems for building habits and organizing the day, they're great, but they are nothing compared to that willingness to actually bring things into concrete reality, even while it feels kind of icky to do so.

Just going back to the embracing the limitations piece and that you don't have infinite time, you don't have infinite capability. Like all of the things like I remember. So I really wish that I could speak all the languages. Like if, for me, if I could speak every language fluently and have great conversations, that's the dream. And I'm really bad at learning languages. Just really does not stick in my brain. And like, if I wanted to pour tons of time and attention into it, I know I could get better at it, right? I could learn a language reasonably well. And there's so many things I wouldn't be able to do if I spent so much time on that. And so I made a decision a few years ago. It's like, I accept that I will never speak other languages, at least not yet.

Right.

Like, I'm going to put the pin in that. And I'm just, anytime I have that thought about, like, I would like to do that, go, well, I. But I've decided that I'm not going to do that thing. So I have space for this other thing that matters more.

Right.

For being able to invest that. That time and research and writing my books and doing the podcast or whatever else. Right.

Or even that doesn't matter more, but that matters just as much. Right. You don't even need to convince yourself that the thing you're foregoing didn't really matter. It's like, no, we just. We just have too many things that matter in as. As humans. So it's fair enough. And you get to forgive yourself. Yeah.

Yeah, well. And that's like, I've come around on. So I actually now I have some multiple clients in Latin America and people I work with where it feels like I should at least improve my Spanish a little bit, try to make some effort in that way. And so. But I do my duolingo and I do one a day.

Yeah.

And that's it. Right. And I not going to get like sucked into the whole thing and try to do a million and burn out and then never do it again.

Right, right, right. And your job is not, I mean, unless it is, your job is not to become an incredibly impressive, fluent speaker. Your job is connection. And you'll do that on a.

Right.

You'll do that at a lower level of the language. Yeah.

Yes. Right. For sure. So. But yeah, like you say in the book and in this conversation here, that accepting that I'm choosing to not do that thing so I can do something else and like accepting. Embracing the limits, it's actually very freeing in a lot of ways. And you don't have to read all the books on the shelf and. And whatnot, which I think like you say in showing up.

Right.

So, you know, when you have the thought, one of the chapters there that really resonated with me is this piece of when you think, oh, I should follow up with that person or I should take this action, I should do that thing. And we tend to put it off and say, but I'll do that in a week or a month or whatever when I have more time and to just do the thing. Right. Just do the thing, if it matters and you want to have that connection. Right?

Yeah. No, and I think you're right that we put them off because we're too busy. But there's also something almost, it's a sort of adorable human quirk in a way, but we almost put things off because we want to do them well. You put off reaching out to a friend because you're too tired to really do it well at the moment, or you put off, let's use the same example, you put off just reaching out to a friend because what you actually want to do is have a new policy where you contact three old friends every week. And that's just a bit too daunting for now. So you just don't do anything. And. Yeah. Joseph Goldstein, the meditation teacher, who I'm quoting in one part of that section, has this personal practice which I really admire and try to emulate, which is just don't try to make yourself more generous, but just try to get a little bit better at acting on a generous impulse once it arises. I think most of us are not actually unkind people or utterly self absorbed people. We're just not good for various forgivable reasons at turning the impulses into action. And one of those reasons is this notion that you're going to do it really well in the future. And it's like, well, it would mean a lot more to that one friend who you contacted or that one charity that you made a donation to that you actually did it today.

Right. Versus, like, I really thought about it a bunch of times and didn't do it do anything. Right. Where they say it's not, it's not the thought that counts in this case. Right, right.

And I, you know, another example that's in the book is I have many times, you know, walked past somebody panhandling in the street and thought that I would like to help that person out, but then remembered, and I believe this is true, that it's much more effective if you want to deal with the problem of homelessness to give money to a well organized, efficient charity that's working in that sector. Now, it's true that that is a better way to give your charity dollars. But of course, what actually happened almost every time I had that thought was that I did neither. Right. It's like I let my perfectionistic notion about efficient charitable giving cause me to just do no charitable giving. And I think that pattern arises in all sorts of contexts. It's like the vague thought that you're going to do it perfectly later stops you Doing it imperfectly in the present.

Definitely. Well, and I very much resonated with the idea. I have definitely had the.

I'm going to write three thank you.

Notes or like every day or like every Friday, I'm going to sit down and send the cards to people and until I'm ready to, you know, and so that one day I send the first one and then tomorrow I kind of, well, you know, forgot or whatever. We've, we've all been there, right, because you get busy, but if you, it's better to do that little thing now and you can just, you know, text your friend and say hi and see what happens. Right.

And. And very probably you will come back to it and do it more. And that is the way you will change the kind of person you are. But. But at some point you just have to do it right.

Well, and that's like, you know, you talk about in the, in the book and everything this like it. But when you focus too much on being this perfect thing and then stress about how bad you are at doing the thing that was an arbitrary line that you drew in invisible sand about who you are supposed to be, that like, no one else is holding you to a standard, but you're like frozen in the sand space of nothing and stress. Whereas if you free up the space to just like do a nice thing every so often, it'll just. It kind of naturally exists more.

Yeah, no, exactly, exactly. It's all sort of purely internal psychodrama often. Yeah.

Right. Well, so you said, you know, that like that part three has some of the things that you have struggled with kind of maybe more differently. And potentially it's based on a journey you've been on with these concepts for many years, as you've said. Have you found that. Is there a particular section or a thought or a point where most people tend to get stuck or where a lot of people should maybe, you know, thoughtfully start or where they have a bigger problem with.

I mean, ironically, in a way, I think one of those is the. And certainly for me is one of. Is the section on allowing the possibility that things might be easier than we expect them to be. I wanted to draw attention to this cast of mind that so many of us have that, you know, if we're going to do something important where the stakes are high or where it matters, we can sort of assume that it's going to be grueling in some way. And very often you find yourself, you know, not only thinking that, but it's almost literally like a muscular thing you sort of are clenched and you furrow your brow and you sort of go into the next phase of the day, really sort of deciding that something's going to be difficult. I think writers are especially bad at this because there's all these ideas going around in the world of writing, advice about resistance and how you're probably going to have to have a big fight with resistance if you're going to get your writing done. And so it's actually quite scary. It can be quite scary for people like that, like me, in that situation, to allow the possibility that you don't know that it's got to be difficult. You don't know that if you approach it with an easier frame of mind, it might not go a lot more smoothly. It really does, as Elizabeth Gilbert says, it really is a willingness that you've got to cultivate to let things be easy. And what you find remarkably then, is not only do things generally go a bit more easily if you can allow that possibility, but that even difficult things can be easy in a really strange way that I still haven't figured out how to explain. But you can approach difficult experiences, difficult conversations, difficult challenges with ease. Meaning, not that they won't run you through the mill, not that they won't involve lots of emotions or difficult intellectual puzzles or whatever it might be, but that you're just not going into them with this assumption that it's going to be really effortful in an unpleasant way. And then there's actually often the opportunity to sort of relish the challenge in a way that you hadn't seen before.

Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, I have a talk on change, and I started off this, like, so who agrees with the statement that getting people to change is really hard?

Right.

Like, everybody raises hands. It's like. But, you know, like. Is it, though, like, what. It doesn't have to be. Right. And if we think, like, what if change was easy? Like. But if I go in, like, I'm looking to have a new system that the team has to deal with or whatever, and if I go in with this mindset of, like, oh, man, everybody's going to hate this, and I have to gear up. So then the way I talk about it makes them feel like they should hate it and it's going to be hard.

Yeah.

Like, maybe it's just like, what if it. What if it wasn't? What if it was good?

Right.

Where's the joy in this thing?

Right? And it's, you know, I totally agree. And it's. And it's sort of A bit of a, you know, maybe I'm talking in a slightly sort of non scientific way when I say what I'm about to say. But there is this sense that reality, this is an idea that I feel comes from, always adapted from maybe a Taoist kind of philosophy. There is some sense in which reality rewards those who sort of learn to move with it. And so, you know, the Tao Te Ching is full of all these images of the stronger tree being the one that bends in the wind instead of the one that snaps in the gale and going with the flow. The flow of water is used as a metaphor all the time. There's a way of sort of going with the flow. That doesn't mean you're not taking action and being a sort of agent in the world, but it also means that, yeah, you're taking people as you find them. You're using the resources that are in front of you. You're figuring out the next step as you go instead of trying to force a long term plan onto reality. And another metaphor that I think is very helpful is if you go up to reality, like you're going, like if you walk up to somebody in a bar looking for a fight, like even if they weren't thinking of fighting you, it's kind of likely that there's going to be a fight, right? Whereas if you, why do that, why take that stance towards reality? Unless you, unless you really, really have to.

Oh, I love that. Right. So we, we can just be, be cool man, right? Like we can just say, hey, let me buy you a drink. Reality.

Yeah, I'm, I may be over stating by implication the number of bar fights I've been in. But all the same.

You know, it's, but I, I really love that. I think, and that is also in this kind of the stress. And like stress attracts more stress and drama, bringing in drama. Like I also tell like when we, people that have a default answer, when people say, how, hey, how are you? Right, how's it going? And they say, oh, I'm so busy. Oh man, things are really busy, we're really stressed. We got a lot going on and say, well, you know, okay, so our brains are focusing our attention on what we tell them is important. And so if you're telling your brain that you're super busy and stressed, it's going to filter and just show you things that reinforce the fact that you're busy and stressed and then you can never get out of it. Right? So if we say something else, do you have a go to when people Ask how you are. Your kind of default answer.

I mean, I have been guilty too many times of saying busy. And it's a strange question, isn't it? Because a lot of the time people don't really want the full download on how you are. Either way, I always love the. What I think of as a very British response, which is something like, can't complain or mustn't grumble. It's like, I don't know. No, I don't think I do. I think I say I'm good, thanks. Usually just to sort of move on to more substantial matters.

Yes. I have had. So over the years, I've had different kind of approaches to this, but one being living the dream.

Right?

Living the dream.

That's great.

It feels like, as you say, it feels very American of me to say something like that too.

Right. But there's a nice little sardonic side to it. I'm sure that you use it in context where there's some wit present.

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes, you know, when things are particular, it can take on different connotations in the middle of.

In the middle of a big organizational crisis. It's a funny thing to say.

Yeah, right, right, right. For sure. But, you know, we can kind of filter our attention with those. So as we look for, you know, kind of a last tip or thought for people as they are getting ready to, you know, take this step into their new lives and not wanting to be too focused on the perfect new world, and I'm gonna do all of these 28 things every single day immediately. You know what. What sort of last sort of tips would you have for people?

Well, I'll offer one, and then I'll sort of reject the question as well.

I love it.

I think one that is incredibly useful if you're not already doing it. And I've just found bizarrely helpful, given what a small intervention it is, is the idea of keeping a done list. The idea of not necessarily, instead of your task management system or your to do list, keep all that running if you like, but to really make sure that you record things that you do in the day as you do them and as you bring them to a finish, even if that's sort of a, you know, if that's a very tiny part of some bigger project. We're so sort of conditioned to compare what we've done in the day implicitly to the sort of infinite list of things we could yet do and still have to do. You're never going to feel good about yourself if you make that Comparison, because you're comparing a finite number with infinity and a done list. Sort of implicitly, it's comparing what you've done today with if you had done nothing. And. And there's just a really useful shift of perspective that comes from developing that habit from. You can do it in journaling as well. I'm sure it's not only through the done list, but just that cast of mind that just sort of sees a little bit more clearly what you are doing and how much you are doing. Because otherwise it is just incredibly easy the moment a task is completed, for it to just lose all its value. It's like all I care about now are things I haven't done. But I said I would also reject the. Not really the question, but one of the implications of the question, which is like, what's the one habit? What's the one thing to start doing? And as you might guess, what I really want to say is the one thing to do is 10 minutes of something that, you know, makes you feel more alive in your work, in your life, in your relationships. And just to do it today or maybe tomorrow, if you're listening to this, watching like really late at night, that's probably forgivable. But, you know, if there is a relationship that, you know you want to nurture more, if you want to do better at paying attention to your kids, or you want to explore your short story idea that you've been thinking about, or you want to reach out to some people about a new business venture, just like, can you actually do 10 minutes of that today, however badly, however haltingly, with however little confidence that you'll ever come back to it again the next day, Day or the next day or the next day. But can you let yourself all the same just have that attentive few minutes with your kid or noodle around with some ideas for the short story or, you know, and that is more valuable than any ritual or routine or habit you might be thinking about developing, because that is actually showing up for life, like right here and now.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that and I typically. I love that you went on, on your own to re. Reject the. The question in that way where I often at the end of the show, I turn it into a choose your own adventure where I'm saying, like, I could ask this or I'm thinking this, or you can say no to any of those and say something else that you want to talk about. So I typically do that anyway. So I'm glad that that that worked for how that goes. And I would say too, for, for people when you read the. If you, you. When you get your copy here, you know, Meditations for Mortals, you're going to pick it up and you're going to start going through it. I'd say, you know, when you find something that stands out to you and, like, hits you, like just that one that hits different, you know, as they say, and you're like, man, I love that. Like, then just like embrace that for a while, right? Just like own that thing that. That resonated with you and know that there's. While there's not infinite time for everything else. You can always come back.

Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. I love that point. Yeah. Certainly don't feel like you're trying to store them all away in your brain for some future moment when you put everything into practice. Because that's the whole problem.

When you're ready, when you're the new.

You and you can do it all.

Yeah.

Perfect. Well, Oliver, thank you so much for joining me and for the conversation. We are of course, going to have links in the show, notes for the book and whatnot, but for people who want to follow you or connect and learn more and whatnot, what's their best sort of path to get more? You mentioned a newsletter, right?

Yeah. So my website, OliverBurkman.com has information about the books, and that's where you can sign up for my newsletter, the Imperfectionist, which comes out roughly every two weeks.

Love it.

Perfect.

Well, we will link to that and the books and whatnot in the show notes. And just thanks again for the conversation. It's been delightful chatting with you today.

Thank you. I really enjoyed it myself as well.

Thank you again to Oliver Berkman for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I love how Meditations for Mortals is organized into four weeks of practical wisdom that readers are encouraged to turn to daily ish. That in and of itself is gold. He really knows that perfection isn't the goal here because that isn't reality. The book and its insights aren't prescriptive because those sorts of insights don't work. Instead, he reflects on quotes drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self help to help readers to live a more full life, whatever that means for them. He does a really great job of walking that fine line between people feeling like they want actionable guidance and individual freedom to create their best and most authentic life by embracing an imperfect life. It sounds counterintuitive, but trust me, it all makes sense. When you get into it. The book is separated into 28 chapters which can be looked at one day at a time over four weeks that take you from being finite in week one to taking action in week two. Week three is all about letting go and finally showing up in week four. Each chapter is just a few pages, but packed with stuff to consider and be thoughtful about each day, which you know I love. It is so key to thoughtful habit change and really how we look at our work and training via the Brainy business as well. Whether you want to be more productive, a more thoughtful leader, be better at sales or do anything else, you can't do everything all at once. Thoughtful, consistent focus on the little stuff really adds up over time and I love the approach in Meditations for Mortals to help anyone who is mortal, you know you to identify and live their best life. As we close out the show, don't forget about those show notes which include links to my top related past episodes and books including Meditations for Mortals, ways to get in touch with Oliver and myself, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 475 and thank you again to Oliver Berkman for joining me on the show today.

It was a delight to chat with.

And learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't to want want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.