Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2: This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 2: episode is going to be a longer one part of
Speaker 2: the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
Speaker 2: take their days from great to awesome and any advice
Speaker 2: they have for the rest of us. So today I
Speaker 2: am excited to welcome Oliver Berkman to the show. Oliver
Speaker 2: is the author of four thousand Weeks Time Management for
Speaker 2: Mortals and also Meditations for Mortals, which is newly out
Speaker 2: in paperback this month. So Oliver, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for inviting me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very glad to have you. Why did you tell
Speaker 2: our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 4: Gosh, well, I wrote them books that you mentioned, so
Speaker 4: I won't mention them again. I'm British, as is easy
Speaker 4: to tell. I worked as a journalist at the Guardian
Speaker 4: newspaper for quite a few years and wrote a column
Speaker 4: that sort of got me into all this kind of
Speaker 4: personal development, self healthy stuff, although partly by testing a
Speaker 4: lot of it out finding it not to deliver.
Speaker 3: In the ways that I felt I needed it to.
Speaker 4: I lived in Brooklyn, New York for a bunch of years,
Speaker 4: and now our family lives in North Yorkshire. In the
Speaker 4: North York Moor was sort of Wuthering Heights territory where
Speaker 4: I'm speaking to you from now.
Speaker 2: Very literary sort of area, like you inspired to write
Speaker 2: some sort of great British novel just by walking around.
Speaker 4: I am sure all my work is going to become
Speaker 4: really gothic from now, yes.
Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, but your earlier work, when you were a columnist
Speaker 2: for The Guardian, you was there a particular reason you
Speaker 2: wound up on the self help beat?
Speaker 4: I mean, looking back, it seems very obvious to me
Speaker 4: now that I was attempting to find ways personally for
Speaker 4: my self, sort of therapeutically, grappling with these questions of
Speaker 4: how do you feel more in control than I did,
Speaker 4: or how do you feel happier or you know, not
Speaker 4: beset by anxiety or feelings of crushing, feelings of duty
Speaker 4: and obligation, all the personal hang ups from which I suffered,
Speaker 4: And so it didn't feel particularly like that at the time.
Speaker 4: I think that's probably true. A lot of reasons people
Speaker 4: write about a lot of stuff. Maybe in a lot
Speaker 4: of your work, you're a bit more sort of transparent
Speaker 4: about this fact. And maybe it's more, maybe it's more
Speaker 4: unconscious in other people. But I think I was at
Speaker 4: first through a kind of often being quite sarcastic and
Speaker 4: critical about self help world, which I still think is
Speaker 4: probably entirely justified at least in some instances. But I
Speaker 4: was sort of backing into asking difficult, vulnerable questions with
Speaker 4: this alibi that it was just for work, and I
Speaker 4: always just work exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, there's an interesting thing about productivity.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of it is mental, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, we were we were having a discussion before
Speaker 2: we started recording about you had something that happened to
Speaker 2: your day which was not planned, and sort of through
Speaker 2: through the day off a little bit.
Speaker 4: And then we're still here talking and I had you
Speaker 4: introduced me as someone who's going to share wisdom about
Speaker 4: how to how to really make the day go so
Speaker 4: fluidly and wonderfully. So I'm I'm I'm really being obliged
Speaker 4: to figure out if I walk the talk today.
Speaker 2: But but you know, okay, so productivity is probably how
Speaker 2: we feel about it. You had something happened to your
Speaker 2: day that you didn't anticipate, not anybody's fault.
Speaker 1: It is what it is.
Speaker 2: We're still here having the conversation. At the time, you
Speaker 2: weren't late at all, but you said earlier that you
Speaker 2: were feeling a little.
Speaker 1: Bit sort of off for the day.
Speaker 2: I'm curious why why that is what happens when things
Speaker 2: go awry, that that makes you feel differently about your time.
Speaker 4: Well, I think, I mean the first thing, in my defense,
Speaker 4: after claim after you know, implying that I'm not at
Speaker 4: all the paragon of productivity or calm that I present
Speaker 4: myself as or something like that, I would have been
Speaker 4: massively more knocked sideways. And it's not a secret. My
Speaker 4: my son had to come home from school with a
Speaker 4: sort of minor illness. It's no big crisis, but it's
Speaker 4: enough to sort of sway the day for people who
Speaker 4: work from home, and you know, back in the day,
Speaker 4: although before I became a parent, so it's kind of
Speaker 4: a bad comparison, but things that happened like that would
Speaker 4: sort of knock me completely off course and I would
Speaker 4: like feel like I had to call off the whole day.
Speaker 4: And that is a response, I think to this fundamental
Speaker 4: issue that manifests for lots of people in different ways
Speaker 4: of control. Right, you want to feel like you're in
Speaker 4: control of your stuff and your time, and if something
Speaker 4: happens that really challenges that feeling of control, then if
Speaker 4: you have the luxury, as freelance self employed writers do,
Speaker 4: and not everyone does, but if you have the luxury
Speaker 4: to sort of just kind of be thrown completely of
Speaker 4: course and give up on the day, then it's very
Speaker 4: tempting to do so, because it's like, well, Okay, I've
Speaker 4: lost control of today, but tomorrow will be different.
Speaker 3: Tomorrow I'll be.
Speaker 4: Back in the saddle and I will exert full control
Speaker 4: over the day. And I did have a sort of
Speaker 4: I still get flickers of that. I did have that
Speaker 4: sense today of like, oh, this wasn't planned. I had
Speaker 4: to take a couple of hours out from what I
Speaker 4: was expecting to be doing, So now like, what's the point?
Speaker 4: And then I actually see myself doing that. I think
Speaker 4: that's the big thing that's changed for me. I understand
Speaker 4: that dynamic, and I say, look, I never really had
Speaker 4: that control in the first place. It is absurd to
Speaker 4: think that if I can't do seven hours of effective
Speaker 4: work today, then there's no point in doing one or two.
Speaker 4: This just makes no sense at all, and you can
Speaker 4: sort of and maybe it changes what I want to
Speaker 4: focus on, maybe it changes what I feel able to
Speaker 4: focus on. But to be able to more fluidly navigate
Speaker 4: among those things, I mean, I've got a lot better
Speaker 4: at that. And it came from realizing that I never
Speaker 4: really had the control I thought I had in the
Speaker 4: first place, because actually, long before I became a parent
Speaker 4: or even was in a long term relationship or anything,
Speaker 4: I would have those days when just turned out my
Speaker 4: mood wasn't on board for the day, and it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 4: but am I just going to be completely thrown off
Speaker 4: course by some sort of internal weather pattern like that?
Speaker 4: So I think learning the limits of my own control
Speaker 4: over time and learning to sort of work with that
Speaker 4: and go with that has been really huge for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things you talk about in the
Speaker 2: book and Meditations for Mortals is a lot of different
Speaker 2: sort of I guess product of any strategies or mindsets
Speaker 2: or things that you know could be helpful. And one
Speaker 2: you mentioned is that we probably only have three to
Speaker 2: four hours of good creative energy on any given day,
Speaker 2: and that has a couple of different implications. I wonder
Speaker 2: if you could talk about that rule a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and again, this is something where it's really vividly
Speaker 4: clear for people like me and I think you who
Speaker 4: have a lot of autonomy over our time, who have
Speaker 4: to do the work, like over the long term to
Speaker 4: pay the bills, but who you know, can probably choose
Speaker 4: a lot of the time. What we do with a
Speaker 4: specific hour of a specific day be different for people
Speaker 4: in other kinds of jobs, but the essence of the
Speaker 4: wisdom of it, I think is universal. There's really good
Speaker 4: evidence all through history that the great sort of authors
Speaker 4: and artists, scholars and composers and mathematicians, scientists, all sorts
Speaker 4: of people who have that kind of autonomy, the greatest ones,
Speaker 4: when you look at their daily routines, they do not
Speaker 4: ask of themselves more than three or four hours of
Speaker 4: intense focused brain work, depending on who it is and
Speaker 4: where in history. You then find that they've got, you know,
Speaker 4: twelve servants and a dutiful wife to do all the
Speaker 4: other things in life, so they get to just sort
Speaker 4: of swan about for the rest of the day.
Speaker 3: And this is not how the world works for us
Speaker 3: these days.
Speaker 4: But that basic idea that if you're a knowledge worker,
Speaker 4: and you have the autonomy to kind of limit the
Speaker 4: amount of time that you try to defend for deep, deep,
Speaker 4: deep reflection, you should limit it to that amount of time.
Speaker 4: I think is really is really true and important. One
Speaker 4: of the ramifications of this, I think is that we should,
Speaker 4: to whatever extent we can, try to ring fence try
Speaker 4: to defend that stretch of hours of about that amount
Speaker 4: if we can, in the course of a working day.
Speaker 4: But a really important second sort of corollary insight, I
Speaker 4: think is that you shouldn't stress too hard about defending
Speaker 4: and structuring the rest of the time. So there is
Speaker 4: in this kind of three or four hours idea both
Speaker 4: a sense of discipline, like, yeah, try to pick the
Speaker 4: hours that work the best for you and be as
Speaker 4: uninterrupted as you possibly can and focus on your core projects.
Speaker 4: But then don't be yourself up for the fact that
Speaker 4: the rest of that time is going to be the
Speaker 4: way life is right, full of interruptions and serendipity and
Speaker 4: things that you didn't realize were going to come up
Speaker 4: until half an hour ago. And I find this a
Speaker 4: much you know, again, not exactly a typical day to day,
Speaker 4: but I find this a much happier way to do things.
Speaker 4: It doesn't Trying to structure and plan the whole day
Speaker 4: for me is often a recipe for a lot of
Speaker 4: in a combat because it feels like reality isn't conforming
Speaker 4: to my wishes or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yes, reality sometimes does not conform to our wishes, A
Speaker 2: deep truth of life. Well, we're going to take a
Speaker 2: quick ad break and then I will be back with
Speaker 2: more from Oliver Berkman. Well, I am back talking with
Speaker 2: Oliver Berkman, who is the author of several books, including
Speaker 2: four Thousand Weeks and Meditation for Mortals, which is newly
Speaker 2: out in paperback this month.
Speaker 1: So, Oliver, another tidbit in Meditation for Mortals.
Speaker 2: Is the idea of thinking, well, what if it were easy?
Speaker 2: That you know, looking for something that is hard or
Speaker 2: difficult is not always necessary. I wonder if you could
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, happily. I mean, this was a big deal
Speaker 4: for me when I realized how I had been approaching things.
Speaker 4: In one sense, making decisions about what to spend your
Speaker 4: time on and getting yourself to do that is difficult,
Speaker 4: And that's another theme in my writing right.
Speaker 3: The difficulty is that there are.
Speaker 4: Far more things than we have time available that we'd
Speaker 4: like to do or feel obliged to do that we
Speaker 4: have time to do, we have to make painful choices,
Speaker 4: and we don't have the level of control over how
Speaker 4: reality unfolds that we would like. So in that sense,
Speaker 4: like being a finite human is difficult, but there's a risk.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of us are brought up and
Speaker 4: raised and encouraged by the culture to assume that the
Speaker 4: actual experience of doing a meaningful action in work or
Speaker 4: in many other context too, sort of probably has to
Speaker 4: feel quite grueling. That if it isn't hurting, it isn't working.
Speaker 4: As British politicians like to say about sort of economic
Speaker 4: austerity policies.
Speaker 3: Right that somehow, if I'm doing something.
Speaker 4: That matters, it's going to feel like a fight, and
Speaker 4: I'm going to get to the end of the day
Speaker 4: and feel like, wow, that was really painful and exhausting,
Speaker 4: but at least you know I did the thing that matters.
Speaker 3: And what that.
Speaker 4: Means is we're two things. Firstly, it can trick you
Speaker 4: into thinking that just because the day was really exhausting,
Speaker 4: that must therefore have been worthwhile, and a lot of
Speaker 4: busy work is exhausting, but actually would be best maybe
Speaker 4: delegated or ignored completely or postponed or something like that.
Speaker 4: And most importantly, it means that you don't think to
Speaker 4: ask that question right at the beginning of some difficult
Speaker 4: or seeming or intimidating project, like what if this is
Speaker 4: actually easier for me than I'm assuming? What if instead
Speaker 4: of like girding myself and bracing myself for it to
Speaker 4: be really difficult, I sort of approached it with at
Speaker 4: least the possibility that I know how to do this,
Speaker 4: and that you know, the ideas and the energy and
Speaker 4: the focus will come together in the right way, and
Speaker 4: it doesn't always happen, but you actually, you know, greatly
Speaker 4: enhance the chances of it happening when you move into
Speaker 4: projects in that spirit, and so definitely, sort of anything
Speaker 4: that counts as creative, I find that the effect of
Speaker 4: going into them expecting difficulty is to sort of bring
Speaker 4: down that. It sort of brings difficulty to the experience,
Speaker 4: It makes it harder, It squeezes things so that ideas
Speaker 4: flow less regularly, less easily.
Speaker 3: So I think that's really important.
Speaker 4: If you go into reality as if it's going to
Speaker 4: be a fight then you often get a fight that
Speaker 4: for that very reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things you talk about, you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of changing our mindset about time as well,
Speaker 2: is creating a done list, so sort of a reverse
Speaker 2: to do list, but things that you have done and accomplished.
Speaker 1: How is that helpful?
Speaker 4: Again, it's really the perspective shift that counts, and this
Speaker 4: is like one of a million ways of executing or
Speaker 4: implementing this perspective shift. But what I find really useful
Speaker 4: about a done list, which of course people seem to
Speaker 4: think I'm saying should be instead of a to do
Speaker 4: list and you should throw away all your lists. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think there's an argument for that, but that's not
Speaker 4: what I'm saying here. A done list is just an
Speaker 4: extra thing, right. It's just a way of recording the
Speaker 4: actions that you take as you move through the day,
Speaker 4: whether or not they were on an initial plan or
Speaker 4: a to do list. And I think what's so important
Speaker 4: about that is it just has this effect of shifting
Speaker 4: the kind of internal comparison you're making when you look
Speaker 4: at what you've done. Right, It's very simple and very
Speaker 4: natural going through the day to sort of compare what
Speaker 4: you've done to the hypothetical list of all the things
Speaker 4: that feel like they need doing today, which is always
Speaker 4: going to be longer than time is going to permit,
Speaker 4: and in some sense maybe.
Speaker 3: Sort of infinitely long, so you're never going to get
Speaker 3: to the end of it.
Speaker 4: But this then to keeping a done list sort of
Speaker 4: shifts your focus back because you're looking at these things
Speaker 4: that you're adding to the list. It's correct, it's proper
Speaker 4: that the list is getting longer as you add more things.
Speaker 4: It's not a problem that it's getting longer. You're not
Speaker 4: trying to get rid of it. And you're implicitly comparing
Speaker 4: your output with the day, but on the data what
Speaker 4: you would have achieved if you've done nothing thing at all,
Speaker 4: So the comparison is with zero instead of with infinity.
Speaker 4: And this is a much better basis for comparing your
Speaker 4: for sort of judging your your actions. And I find
Speaker 4: it delivers a real sense of kind of self efficacy,
Speaker 4: of agency, of like, oh, look like I am actually
Speaker 4: doing things in the world. I am actually sort of
Speaker 4: contacting reality and doing things with them. And as I
Speaker 4: write in the book, if if you're in a particular
Speaker 4: sort of motivational rut, if you're in bad shape and
Speaker 4: can't really bring yourself to do anything at all. You
Speaker 4: can just really lower the bar for what gets to
Speaker 4: get put on the done list, right, nobody needs to
Speaker 4: see this. You can put made coffee or took a shower,
Speaker 4: walk to the dog, right. You don't only need to
Speaker 4: put the sort of core work.
Speaker 3: Project on it.
Speaker 4: And when you do this, you actually find I find
Speaker 4: that things snowball quite quickly and you see, oh, just
Speaker 4: that feedback evidence of like, yeah, I didn't do nothing
Speaker 4: because I made some coffee. I didn't do nothing because I,
Speaker 4: you know, loaded the dishwasher. It can snowball into sort
Speaker 4: of more overtly impressive accomplishments than that quite quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: One of the things you talk about in the book
Speaker 2: is not being so kind to your future self. And
Speaker 2: obviously there's a thing with productivity literature that many of
Speaker 2: us are spending a lot of time preparing for say
Speaker 2: the upcoming week, you know, preparing all our meals on
Speaker 2: Sunday for the entire rest of the week, putting out
Speaker 2: outfits for many days to come. How can we create
Speaker 2: the right balance so it's not total chaos, but we're
Speaker 2: not spending so much time dwelling on the future that
Speaker 2: we're not, you know, living.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely a balance, and
Speaker 4: it's a matter of introspecting and figuring out, like what
Speaker 4: your issue is. Certainly there are people, I think who
Speaker 4: are prone to sort of hedonistically squandering all their time
Speaker 4: and their money and their resources sort of on instantaneous
Speaker 4: gratification in a way that means they don't make plans
Speaker 4: for the future. But there is an opposite problem, and
Speaker 4: I think it probably is the kind of problem that
Speaker 4: people who are interested in all this stuff and productivity
Speaker 4: and time management and conversations like this in the first
Speaker 4: place are probably more prone to.
Speaker 3: And that is the yeah, the risk of.
Speaker 4: Being so good, as it were, at delayed and deferred
Speaker 4: gratification that you spend your whole life like dutifully doing
Speaker 4: the things that will make the future better in a
Speaker 4: way that makes life in the present feel kind of provisional. Right,
Speaker 4: everything you're doing is always for some future moment. And
Speaker 4: the sort of classic example of that, I suppose is
Speaker 4: the person who makes a huge ton of money and
Speaker 4: then has to feel psychologically impelled to carry on just
Speaker 4: making grinding to make more and more money. Instead of
Speaker 4: using it for things that you know they would enjoy
Speaker 4: or that would be good.
Speaker 3: For the world.
Speaker 4: But I think we do all do that in subtler ways,
Speaker 4: right we get into this mindset a lot of us do. Anyway,
Speaker 4: We get into this mindset of everything is about planning,
Speaker 4: everything is about finishing things for the future, and you
Speaker 4: fail to kind of lives as fully as you might.
Speaker 4: So the analogy here is the famous mushmallow studies, which
Speaker 4: I'm sure a lot of people listening will know about,
Speaker 4: where children were given a marshmallow and told that if
Speaker 4: they waited ten minutes without eating it, they could get
Speaker 4: a second marshmallow, and the kids who have the self
Speaker 4: discipline to wait for the second marshmallows supposedly had all
Speaker 4: sorts of very very much more positive life outcomes as adults.
Speaker 4: Those studies have been contested in certain ways, but even
Speaker 4: if they're right, like, it's also the case that at
Speaker 4: some point you have to eat a marshmallow if you're
Speaker 4: going to gain the benefit of collecting all these mrshmallows.
Speaker 4: Just holding a big pile of marshmallows and then dying,
Speaker 4: it's not a successful way of having used a finite
Speaker 4: human life so for me, you know, in terms of
Speaker 4: what this really concretely means, it might be about finding
Speaker 4: ways to figure out what it is you want in
Speaker 4: your life, or maybe you know this, and then bringing
Speaker 4: them from the future back into the present in little ways.
Speaker 4: So instead of just telling yourself you're going to take
Speaker 4: a sabbatical in a year and a half time, so
Speaker 4: right now you're just going to work really hard so
Speaker 4: that you're ready for that. Maybe there's a way in
Speaker 4: which you could bring that spirit of rest into your
Speaker 4: life today for fifteen minutes. If there's some hobby or
Speaker 4: some kind of experience that you're putting off until you've
Speaker 4: got all your ducks in a row, as it were,
Speaker 4: maybe there's some way in which you could engage in
Speaker 4: that this week a little bit as well. I think
Speaker 4: it's really important to sort of remember that eventually, at
Speaker 4: some point, a fulfilling and enjoyable and worthwhile life has
Speaker 4: to be happening in a now, right in a present moment.
Speaker 4: Otherwise you do run the risk of spending your whole
Speaker 4: life preparing and then there's no more time left.
Speaker 1: So we should give the batch cooking? Are we giving
Speaker 1: up the batch cooking?
Speaker 4: Are we well? Again, you know you need to ask
Speaker 4: yourself this question, right, that it's not that, like, firstly,
Speaker 4: it's not that every kind of instance of batch cooking
Speaker 4: or preparation is negative, and like, honestly, it's probably the
Speaker 4: case that as human animals we're just not capable of
Speaker 4: not somewhat living in that goal oriented way, even if
Speaker 4: it was a good thing to abandon it, and I
Speaker 4: don't think it is. But yeah, I mean maybe if
Speaker 4: you're the kind of person who is always doing that
Speaker 4: kind of batch preparation, maybe it's worth sort of having
Speaker 4: a bit more trust in the person that you'll be
Speaker 4: in the future when you meet that question of like, Okay,
Speaker 4: it's dinner time, what can I do? Maybe you don't
Speaker 4: need to have it all planned in advance. Again, if
Speaker 4: one specific thing like batch cooking really works for you,
Speaker 4: please don't let me put you off it. But that
Speaker 4: general spirit of like I've got to do it all
Speaker 4: now so that later on everything runs smoothly, it's like, well,
Speaker 4: maybe you can find ways for it to run smoothly
Speaker 4: in the moment when those present moments arrive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would like to say your future self will
Speaker 2: not be incompetent, so we don't have to overcare take
Speaker 2: for him or her.
Speaker 1: We're good, all right.
Speaker 2: We're going to take one more quick ad break and
Speaker 2: then I will be back with more from Oliver Berkman. Well,
Speaker 2: I am back talking with Oliver Berkman, who is the
Speaker 2: author of several books, including four thousand Weeks Time Management
Speaker 2: for Mortals, also the book Meditations for Mortals, which is
Speaker 2: out in paperback this month. So, Oliver, one question I
Speaker 2: always ask my guests is what is something you have
Speaker 2: done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 3: Huh, that's a good question.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I can articulate this properly, but
Speaker 4: I think what I've really found very useful recently, and
Speaker 4: I can remember a few times I've done it.
Speaker 3: In the very recent past, is.
Speaker 4: I'm learning that it to sort of give myself the
Speaker 4: time that I need to transition between phases of the
Speaker 4: day and work to family and kinds of.
Speaker 3: Work to other kinds of work.
Speaker 4: I'm someone who, like by default, does not like the
Speaker 4: idea of maybe stopping working twenty twenty five minutes before
Speaker 4: it's time for school pickup or something, because I don't
Speaker 4: have enough time as it is, and I want to
Speaker 4: try to use that time as well as I can.
Speaker 4: But I'm gradually learning that actually using that time as
Speaker 4: well as you can for me involves allowing that sort
Speaker 4: of seemingly useless, seemingly neutral time to sort of adapt
Speaker 4: from one to the other so that in each of
Speaker 4: those phases, I can be my best that I can
Speaker 4: be and sort of enjoy it and give as much
Speaker 4: as I can to it. A very closely related example
Speaker 4: of this is sort of withholding judgment about how an
Speaker 4: experience feels at the beginning of it. I'll explain what
Speaker 4: I mean, like, if I've spent the morning in a
Speaker 4: frenzy of kind of deadline focused work and then sort
Speaker 4: of emails and calls. If I then want to turn
Speaker 4: to a difficult book that I'm trying to read for
Speaker 4: work purposes, I sort of am learning now that the
Speaker 4: first ten to fifteen minutes of that experience, it's not
Speaker 4: going to feel good, because I really am in that
Speaker 4: transition place. But if I can just sort of notice
Speaker 4: that negative feeling be okay work alongside it, that's often
Speaker 4: the precursor to really getting deeply absorbed into the next thing.
Speaker 4: So I'm trying not to sort of rush to judgment
Speaker 4: about how something feels just at the beginning of the experience.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, we don't want to get lost in transition,
Speaker 2: but transitions are part of life and have to build
Speaker 2: them in to just get from one thing to another. So, Oliver,
Speaker 2: what's something you are looking forward to right now?
Speaker 4: I am looking forward to building out the new writing
Speaker 4: space that I that I have for the really for
Speaker 4: the first time in a very long time, I have
Speaker 4: a room here in the northilk Moors that I can
Speaker 4: use sort of set up as I as I am
Speaker 4: want to for my for my work, and there is
Speaker 4: something very very enjoyable about that sense of, you know,
Speaker 4: completely empty space that I can do exactly what I
Speaker 4: want with. I am extremely aware at the same time
Speaker 4: that there is a major risk from my sort of
Speaker 4: historical perfections tendencies to tell myself that I'm going to
Speaker 4: get this exactly right and then after that writing is
Speaker 4: just going to feel easy and I'm going to have
Speaker 4: no more challenges in my work, and so I'm trying
Speaker 4: to stay aware of that. But I am looking forward
Speaker 4: to sort of shaping that way I the way I
Speaker 4: want to, because I haven't had that opportunity in a
Speaker 4: long while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, of course we've got to be careful because,
Speaker 2: as you know, home office rearrangement is a very good
Speaker 2: way to put procrastinate.
Speaker 3: Yes, there's that as well.
Speaker 4: And you know that that risk that you tell yourself
Speaker 4: like you don't need to it makes sense to not
Speaker 4: make any progress on your writing for now, just until
Speaker 4: you've got this all sorted out. To that end, I
Speaker 4: would just say, in my defense, I have, you know,
Speaker 4: in the space I'm talking about, I've got I've got
Speaker 4: a surface, but I put my computer on and a chair.
Speaker 4: So like, I've been trying very consciously to sort of
Speaker 4: organize the day such that I first of all, do
Speaker 4: a few hours on the work that is not endlessly
Speaker 4: organizing the writing space, and then get to turn to
Speaker 4: that enjoyable.
Speaker 3: Task later in the day.
Speaker 4: That's a sort of one version of a more general
Speaker 4: point that I've really tried to implement and that I
Speaker 4: do write about in the in the in the books,
Speaker 4: which is again that sense of not trying to kind
Speaker 4: of clear the decks, not trying to get everything sorted
Speaker 4: out first, and then I I'm going to get these
Speaker 4: acres of wonderful time for the work that is most meaningful.
Speaker 3: But actually to sort of, you.
Speaker 4: Know, do an hour first thing, do a two or
Speaker 4: three hours first thing on the work that is most meaningful,
Speaker 4: even while I don't feel like the setting is right
Speaker 4: or the context is right, the writing room isn't set
Speaker 4: up yet, or the inbox is too full of emails
Speaker 4: or whatever. It is, to sort of learn to tolerate
Speaker 4: that anxiety and still put a bit of time into
Speaker 4: the things that matter the most. That's a that's a
Speaker 4: real superpower, and one I am only you know, a
Speaker 4: work in progress.
Speaker 2: Think we are with We are all a work in
Speaker 2: progress on that one, for sure, Oliver.
Speaker 1: So where can people find you.
Speaker 3: Books?
Speaker 4: So wherever you get your books and the audiobooks too,
Speaker 4: which are read by me, And then everything else, including
Speaker 4: my newsletter and stuff, is all at my website Oliver
Speaker 4: Berkman dot com.
Speaker 2: Excellent, Well, Oliver, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
Speaker 2: about this or any other episode, you can always reach
Speaker 2: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 2: the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 2: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
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