Speaker 1: In an effort to make time for ourselves, many of
Speaker 1: us fallback on using to do lists and time blocking,
Speaker 1: but often these sorts of strategies can end up with
Speaker 1: the same result, getting lost in chasing productivity. So how
Speaker 1: do we make time for the things that truly count?
Speaker 1: Joining me for a third time on How I Work
Speaker 1: is Oliver Berkman, one of my favorite writers. You might
Speaker 1: have come across Oliver through the international bestseller four one
Speaker 1: thousand Weeks, time Management for Mortals, or his regular columns
Speaker 1: for The Guardian, But what I love most about Oliver's
Speaker 1: work is that he flips traditional productivity advice on its
Speaker 1: head and gives a completely different way of looking at
Speaker 1: how we use our time. With his new book Meditation
Speaker 1: for Mortals four Weeks to Embrace your limitations and Make
Speaker 1: Time for What Counts, which is out now, Oliver has
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about how we can all claw
Speaker 1: back time for the things that really matter. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we explore the mindset you should be using when you
Speaker 1: first approach a task if you wanted to be achieved easily,
Speaker 1: and why allowing yourself to be distracted can actually create
Speaker 1: a positive result. We also chat about the strategy you
Speaker 1: should be utilizing instead of a to do list if
Speaker 1: you want to get the most out of your day.
Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
Speaker 1: and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, Doctor
Speaker 1: Amantha Imber. Oliver's new book, Meditation for Mortals is packed
Speaker 1: full of wisdom and advice. So I wanted to know
Speaker 1: of everything that Oliver wrote about, which pieces of advice
Speaker 1: really stuck with him and changed him the most.
Speaker 2: I seem not able to write anything other than what
Speaker 2: feels most compelling to me on the day that I'm
Speaker 2: writing it.
Speaker 3: And that applies to the whole book in the sense that,
Speaker 3: like you.
Speaker 2: Know, these are the things I have to grapple with,
Speaker 2: and then it applies on the level of individual chapters
Speaker 2: through the process of writing a book. So it feels
Speaker 2: like the answer that changes every day basically. But in
Speaker 2: terms of specifics, this book is organized into four weeks,
Speaker 2: as you know, and with a sort of short chapter
Speaker 2: per day for each of those weeks. Not that I
Speaker 2: can control how people actually read it, but that's the
Speaker 2: sort of idea. And the third week in there is
Speaker 2: called letting Go, and it's about the importance of learning
Speaker 2: to sort of let things happen as a sort of
Speaker 2: compliment to making them happen, and kind of unclenching from
Speaker 2: life a bit. And basically all of that material is
Speaker 2: the stuff I sort of needed the most at the
Speaker 2: point that I was putting that together, and you know
Speaker 2: still now, so all that stuff about, for example, the
Speaker 2: willingness to let things be easy and not to sort
Speaker 2: of head into big projects or life stages or anything
Speaker 2: like that with the kind of assumption that they must
Speaker 2: be going to be grueling and take a lot of
Speaker 2: unpleasant effort. That means a lot to me because it's
Speaker 2: still one of the ones that I sort of grapple
Speaker 2: with the most.
Speaker 1: I suppose I love that I did write that down.
Speaker 1: Actually it's something I wanted to delve into because it's
Speaker 1: a question that I sometimes think about, and I've written
Speaker 1: it here. What if this might be a lot easier
Speaker 1: than I'd been assuming, I think was the wording from
Speaker 1: the book, and I was actually curious, like, well, how
Speaker 1: do you apply it every day? But I also wanted
Speaker 1: to know to this book project, and particularly following up
Speaker 1: on four thousand Weeks, which was such a mega hit
Speaker 1: around the world, and I mean, you've written several books,
Speaker 1: and so it wasn't like that second album syndrome they
Speaker 1: talk about for musicians. Maybe this is like your fourth
Speaker 1: or fifth album syndrome. But I wanted to know, for
Speaker 1: this project in particular, how did you apply that advice
Speaker 1: and did you?
Speaker 2: Well, No, it was a bit like say, album syndrome,
Speaker 2: because you know, it's true that I had written a
Speaker 2: previous book, The Antidote, and also a collection of columns
Speaker 2: called Help, which was a book and is a book,
Speaker 2: but I hadn't had to write in the same way, right,
Speaker 2: because it was just a question of collecting and editing
Speaker 2: some previously written material. But certainly four thousand Weeks was
Speaker 2: far and away the most sort of successful thing that
Speaker 2: I'd written at the point that it was published. And
Speaker 2: so yeah, I think there was a very sort of cliched,
Speaker 2: completely predictable and rather tiresome to talk too much about
Speaker 2: phenomenon where I sort of froze a bit and thought like,
Speaker 2: oh dear, now, if I mess up, more people going
Speaker 2: to be watching. So I did kind of a little
Speaker 2: bit to some extent sort of freeze and headlights. And
Speaker 2: it was interesting because it sort of brought into my
Speaker 2: writing process a lot of the questions that I was
Speaker 2: already focused on in what I wanted to put into
Speaker 2: the book, and it sort.
Speaker 3: Of made them very, very alive.
Speaker 2: And I've found this in the past, right, something about
Speaker 2: the process of writing books will sort of fall ground
Speaker 2: the things that you're grappling with in the substance of
Speaker 2: the book, and actually, you know, you end up, I think,
Speaker 2: and I hope being able to express them more authentically
Speaker 2: because you actually sort of have to go through a
Speaker 2: version of that struggle to get the book written. And
Speaker 2: I did have to find ways to allow the possibility
Speaker 2: that it was more doable than I thought. But the
Speaker 2: basic gist of that was to sort of keep coming
Speaker 2: back and back and back. I don't think there's a
Speaker 2: single way to flip the switch, but keep coming back
Speaker 2: to this thought that maybe what I was ready to
Speaker 2: do and able to do in terms of the next
Speaker 2: paragraph in the next chapter was what needed to be done.
Speaker 1: And now, just like in your day to day work,
Speaker 1: how do you apply that principle of just having things
Speaker 1: be a whole lot easier than you'd otherwise assume.
Speaker 2: I mean, a couple of things come to mind. One
Speaker 2: is that I do think, and I wish this wasn't
Speaker 2: the case, but I do think that a lot of
Speaker 2: these insights are just a matter of returning to them
Speaker 2: and returning to them and returning to them and gradually
Speaker 2: sort of strengthening the mental muscle that allows you to
Speaker 2: remember them. So it's sort of catching yourself from one
Speaker 2: minute to the next. And it's actually quite sort of
Speaker 2: physical for me, right, I sort of I find that
Speaker 2: I'm actually sort of tensed against the work. It's in
Speaker 2: my musculature somehow, and catching yourself doing that and just
Speaker 2: sort of stepping back from it and thinking like, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe that's not necessary is very powerful maybe to get
Speaker 2: a little bit more practical. The other thing that makes
Speaker 2: a big difference there is the idea of really just
Speaker 2: thinking about the very next thing and the very next thing,
Speaker 2: so sort of using methods of productivity, methods of planning
Speaker 2: the day, And there are lots of different ones that
Speaker 2: having common this focus on like, Okay, what's the next small,
Speaker 2: completable thing, the sort of radically doable little task that
Speaker 2: I want to pick and then put into practice. Now,
Speaker 2: you can't do things like write a book or even
Speaker 2: write a chapter. You can do things like that come
Speaker 2: up with a rough plan for the first half of
Speaker 2: the chapter, and that's when I can get it down
Speaker 2: underneath that threshold of what feels doable, back into that
Speaker 2: easier way of working.
Speaker 1: I love that idea of picking the thing that feels
Speaker 1: radically doable that will stick with me. I think something
Speaker 1: else that this relates to, and I want to say
Speaker 1: this might have been in the Letting Go section is
Speaker 1: around developing a taste for problems, and you write about
Speaker 1: how we kind of go through life and think, oh,
Speaker 1: one day all the problems will be gone and there
Speaker 1: will just be no problems to deal with, but of
Speaker 1: course we know that that is not the case. It's
Speaker 1: like it's so simple, but it's also it's like it's
Speaker 1: quite profound when you actually think about it. I want
Speaker 1: to know, like, how does that one resonate for you,
Speaker 1: like on a day to day basis. Is it one
Speaker 1: of those things that you do just keep coming back to,
Speaker 1: because I was very curious about that.
Speaker 2: I write in the book about this story that Sam
Speaker 2: Harris tells about, you know, being in coffee. I think
Speaker 2: it is a lunch with a friend one day and
Speaker 2: going on and on about his problems. He was addressing
Speaker 2: in his work or whatever it was, and her interrupting
Speaker 2: him in mid flow and saying, hold on, are you
Speaker 2: still under the impression you're going to get to the
Speaker 2: part of your life where you don't have any problems?
Speaker 2: And he sort of recounts the experience of realizing like, oh, yes,
Speaker 2: there is kind of something in the stance I've had
Speaker 2: towards life that implies, yeah, not only that a given
Speaker 2: problem might be difficult depending on its content, but that
Speaker 2: I shouldn't have problems. I'm trying to get through to
Speaker 2: the point in life where there aren't problems. And I
Speaker 2: sort of explain in the book why this isn't going
Speaker 2: to happen, and you wouldn't want it to happen, right.
Speaker 2: There are certainly specific kinds of problems that you wouldn't
Speaker 2: wish on anybody, But the sort of sheer existence of
Speaker 2: problems on some level is the synonymous with having meaningful
Speaker 2: work ahead of you. But I try increasingly to have
Speaker 2: some kind of direction, have some kind of vision. I
Speaker 2: don't it's not purely about just stumbling through the dark,
Speaker 2: but not to try very hard to link that up
Speaker 2: to moment moment action. So I'm really trying, and it's
Speaker 2: very much a work in progress, but I'm really trying
Speaker 2: to combine that idea of like having a fairly clear
Speaker 2: sense of what I'm trying to create here with a
Speaker 2: very very much more intuitive and spontaneous even sense of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: what feels like the right thing to do next.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about worrying, and you talk about
Speaker 1: this idea of most of the bridges that we worry
Speaker 1: about never end up being crossed. Can you tell me
Speaker 1: more about that, and just on a day to day basis,
Speaker 1: how do you live that? Because I really struggle with
Speaker 1: that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, me too, and that's why it was interesting
Speaker 2: for me to write about it. The worry is kind
Speaker 2: of fascinating, and I think one way of understanding worry
Speaker 2: is that it's the sort of attempt by a human
Speaker 2: being who is inherently limited to the present moment. One
Speaker 2: of the many ways in which were limited is sort
Speaker 2: of temporarily localized. We wish we could sort of also
Speaker 2: be in the future checking up on it, making sure
Speaker 2: that everything's going to be fine, but we can't, and
Speaker 2: so worry is this sort of mental discomfort that arises
Speaker 2: from trying to repeatedly sort of get out there and
Speaker 2: secure a place in time that we're not actually in
Speaker 2: and never are in. And you know, if I wanted
Speaker 2: to get sort of evolutionary psychology about it, which I
Speaker 2: don't usually want to do very much, but you know,
Speaker 2: you could see how perhaps we sort of evolved in
Speaker 2: an environment where where having that concern and then dealing
Speaker 2: with it was something that happened in a very short order.
Speaker 2: Like you hear a sound, you're worried about it, you
Speaker 2: check it out, you realize it's no threat to your safety.
Speaker 2: Now we live in this world that's been called a
Speaker 2: you know, delayed return environment, where the thing you're worrying
Speaker 2: about could well be whether how an editor will respond
Speaker 2: to a pitch you've made sometime in the next four weeks,
Speaker 2: or whether an attempt to purchase a house will go
Speaker 2: through at some point in the next two months. You know,
Speaker 2: all these kinds of slow things. Whether worry just has
Speaker 2: no to go, It doesn't motivate a quick action to
Speaker 2: get to deal with the worry, It just sort of curdle.
Speaker 2: And I think the thing about crossing bridges is, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's another way of making the same point. Really we're
Speaker 2: trying to sort of think through all the things that
Speaker 2: could go wrong, think our way through what we do,
Speaker 2: and reassure ourselves that that will have gone okay if
Speaker 2: that happens. You can't ever be certain that something goes
Speaker 2: okay until it's gone okay. So trying to cross bridges
Speaker 2: before you get to them, in that sense, is just
Speaker 2: a recipe for that kind of unpleasant, anxious state of constantly,
Speaker 2: repetitively trying to do it and failing. There are all
Speaker 2: sorts of ideas in cognitive therapy and elsewhere about you know,
Speaker 2: scheduling a time of day in which to worry and
Speaker 2: things like this, and I think it does help some
Speaker 2: people to do something like that. The version of that
Speaker 2: that I find helpful is to market date in my
Speaker 2: calendar maybe three four weeks in the future, to sort
Speaker 2: of remind myself to focus again on that topic. And
Speaker 2: I find that knowing that that's there and it's coming
Speaker 2: up in the calendar is incredibly powerful in terms of
Speaker 2: enabling me to let go of it in the present.
Speaker 2: If it's still a big issue four weeks from now,
Speaker 2: then I will kick into worrying about it again. I
Speaker 2: sort of on some level I'm concerned that if I
Speaker 2: were to stop worrying about it, I might completely forget
Speaker 2: about it. Right, And it's wild right as parents, if
Speaker 2: you're worried about some issue with your child's welfare, like,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to forget about that, it's ridiculous. But
Speaker 2: some part of me doesn't trust myself. And it's like,
Speaker 2: if I let go and just got into the thing
Speaker 2: I was working on today, maybe like ten years later,
Speaker 2: I'd be like, oh, no, everything's gone terribly wrong in
Speaker 2: life because I completely failed to attend to this thing.
Speaker 2: So putting that kind of three or four weeks ahead
Speaker 2: thing in I find really effective because then I can
Speaker 2: be like, Okay, just in case I completely forget about
Speaker 2: this important thing, it will come back into my world.
Speaker 1: I love that I've experimented myself with having a worry
Speaker 1: least and then setting a daily worry time and confining
Speaker 1: my worrying to that time of day, and I found
Speaker 1: that quite effective. But what I like about what you've
Speaker 1: just suggested is that it's almost like a test of
Speaker 1: a hypothesis. And the more and more you're like, if
Speaker 1: everything you worry about you actually just put in the
Speaker 1: diary to spend some time thinking about a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks from today, and then every time you get to
Speaker 1: those things, like nine times out of ten, you're going
Speaker 1: to think, what was I even worrying about that never
Speaker 1: eventuated into anything, which I feel then feeds, you know,
Speaker 1: the like a more sensible hypothesis and theory that actually
Speaker 1: I worry about things that I don't even need to
Speaker 1: be spending time worrying about. So I really I enjoy that.
Speaker 2: Yes, and even in the one time out of ten, right,
Speaker 2: then it comes around and you're like, Okay, what are
Speaker 2: some the chances are you'll be in a better place
Speaker 2: to just sort of figure out some actions that you
Speaker 2: could take relative to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, now you're right. Even though you're I would
Speaker 1: say an anti productivity guru if that is a thing,
Speaker 1: you do have some really good pieces of advice around
Speaker 1: how we can I guess, make the best use of
Speaker 1: our time and think differently about things. And I want
Speaker 1: to talk more about this idea of treating your to
Speaker 1: do list as a menu. Can you tell me more
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 2: So I guess where this started off in my thinking
Speaker 2: is in another chapter of this book where I'm talking
Speaker 2: about not to do lists, but like you're sort of
Speaker 2: to read pile or your digital folder of articles save
Speaker 2: to read later, and how not very much reflection on
Speaker 2: how content works in the twenty first century will reveal
Speaker 2: that this is essentially an endless list. The better technology
Speaker 2: gets at filtering information, the more stuff we find coming
Speaker 2: our way that we feel like we really need to
Speaker 2: read or would be really important for our jobs or something.
Speaker 2: And I wrote then about how it can be really
Speaker 2: helpful to see that kind of collection of things not
Speaker 2: as a bucket but as a river. Right, So this
Speaker 2: is just an possibly helpful analogy, not as something you've
Speaker 2: got deal with an empty but as a sort of
Speaker 2: flow of things that goes by you, and your only
Speaker 2: job is to pick a few things that seem interesting
Speaker 2: and not feel guilty about the ones that go by.
Speaker 2: And I find that very useful in my own approach
Speaker 2: to literally that topic. You know, the four hundred articles
Speaker 2: that I've got stored in a read it later app
Speaker 2: If I think that it's my job to get through them, firstly,
Speaker 2: I won't approach them in the most creatively helpful or
Speaker 2: enjoyable way. But secondly, also like that's not the end
Speaker 2: of it. There'll be another four hundred in a short time.
Speaker 2: So treating them as like, well, what actually still feels
Speaker 2: compelling and let the rest go is much more powerful.
Speaker 2: But the more I thought about this, the more I
Speaker 2: realize that you know, in a sense, every list of things,
Speaker 2: even things that feel much more obligatory than a to
Speaker 2: read pile, every list of things has the same character
Speaker 2: because if there are more things that you could meaningfully
Speaker 2: usefully do with a day, then you will be able
Speaker 2: to actually do with the day. Then you are in
Speaker 2: fact picking items for now and letting the rest go,
Speaker 2: whether you like it or not. So to switch screech
Speaker 2: of breaks, to switch metaphor into menus. The point there
Speaker 2: is that we don't get stressed by a rest Most
Speaker 2: people anyway don't get stressed by a restaurant menu. And
Speaker 2: if you do get stressed, it's not because you think
Speaker 2: it's your job to get through the whole list right
Speaker 2: at a single sitting. The fact that a restaurant menu
Speaker 2: is long and you get to pick a few things
Speaker 2: from it is kind of the point of a restaurant
Speaker 2: menu and what makes it pleasurable. And you can actually
Speaker 2: see that the same thing applies to our to do lists,
Speaker 2: right because obviously a lot of the things we're going
Speaker 2: to be doing are not necessarily going to be as
Speaker 2: fun as eating a delicious meal. But if there's more
Speaker 2: that we could do than we're going to get to
Speaker 2: do in a day, then by definition, what you're doing
Speaker 2: when you look at a do list is picking a
Speaker 2: few items and choosing a few things that feel most compelling,
Speaker 2: most important, most meaningful, and not expecting to get through
Speaker 2: the whole of it. And there is quite a deep
Speaker 2: potential shift here, which is summed up in that sort
Speaker 2: of familiar phrase, But it's that the items on a list,
Speaker 2: when you viewed like that, stop being things that you
Speaker 2: have to do and become things that you get to do.
Speaker 2: You get to pick from a menu, and we do
Speaker 2: get to pick from our to do list. Again, we
Speaker 2: may decide that certain things that we're going to pick
Speaker 2: us kind of unpleasant, in the same way that I
Speaker 2: suppose you might pick a extremely healthy side dish and
Speaker 2: a menu that you didn't particularly like because actually it's
Speaker 2: part of your long term goal to eat healthily. But
Speaker 2: there is something really important in letting go of that
Speaker 2: notion that you've failed unless you get through the list.
Speaker 2: And I think that seeing and understanding our list as
Speaker 2: infinite is the way to do that, because then you're
Speaker 2: just like, that's not happening.
Speaker 1: Something else I really liked as an idea in this
Speaker 1: book is around setting a quantity goal.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me more about that?
Speaker 1: Because I think that's particularly interesting for knowledge workers like us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, there are other contexts in which
Speaker 2: the idea of quantifying your life and measuring everything you
Speaker 2: do it can be quite sort of detrimental, and I
Speaker 2: sort of don't recommend it, but I'm always one for
Speaker 2: picking the right technique for the context and contradicting myself
Speaker 2: wherever I feel like it. And the context of quantity goals,
Speaker 2: I think that if you do any kind of creative work,
Speaker 2: and that I would define very broadly, there is this
Speaker 2: tendency to set things up in your mind so that
Speaker 2: you can never feel like you've done something well enough,
Speaker 2: or that you've done it to a sufficiently high quality.
Speaker 2: So the way that you sort of or the way
Speaker 2: that I sort of naturally, if I don't catch myself
Speaker 2: proceeds as a writer, is sort of to sit there
Speaker 2: staring at the screen waiting for something really good to
Speaker 2: occur to me finally, maybe it does, and I type
Speaker 2: it out, and then I sort of judge it again
Speaker 2: and realize it is in. I delete half of it,
Speaker 2: and you sort of make this incredibly halting progress over
Speaker 2: the page. And it's actually antipathetical to high quality anyway,
Speaker 2: because the way to get to high quality is to
Speaker 2: is to allow things to flow and then pick from
Speaker 2: what flows out. So the idea of a quantity goal
Speaker 2: is just that it gives the part of your brain
Speaker 2: that wants to think in terms of goals and progress
Speaker 2: and productivity something to do. But it's something to do
Speaker 2: that sort of doesn't get involved in the quality arguments.
Speaker 2: So for someone writing, this could be simply a question
Speaker 2: of like, my next job is to add two hundred
Speaker 2: words to this, or my next job is to write
Speaker 2: for an hour today, or you know. And the most
Speaker 2: sort of purely quantity form of this is the kind
Speaker 2: of free writing exercise that I was talking about before,
Speaker 2: where you might just say, like, I'm setting a timer
Speaker 2: for ten minutes and the only rule is that I'm
Speaker 2: not going to stop typing or writing for that ten minutes,
Speaker 2: and you know that is not going to create the
Speaker 2: final draft of a publishable book.
Speaker 3: But that's not the point. The point is to.
Speaker 2: Stay in this world of letting things flow out to
Speaker 2: see what there might be to be worked with. So
Speaker 2: I find there's something really sort of something that really
Speaker 2: sort of removes the drama from things by setting a
Speaker 2: quantity goal, because the other problem with the quality goal
Speaker 2: is that it's really hard to express, like what does
Speaker 2: it even mean to say, I'm going to try and
Speaker 2: write this chapter as well as I possibly can, or
Speaker 2: really excellently, or as well.
Speaker 3: As the last one.
Speaker 2: These are just kind of endlessly flexible definitions that you
Speaker 2: will by default flex in the direction of feeling bad
Speaker 2: about yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'm very often in my creative work either sometimes
Speaker 2: literally writing it down. Sometimes it's just in my mind,
Speaker 2: but I'm thinking, like, Okay, what I'm doing next is
Speaker 2: a twenty minute brain dump on this topic. What I'm
Speaker 2: doing next is filling a single page with a little
Speaker 2: structure diagram, because that's how I work. But the point
Speaker 2: about the quantity there is it's like filling a single page.
Speaker 2: It's not getting the perfect structure and so on and
Speaker 2: so on.
Speaker 1: We will be back with Oliver soon, and when we return,
Speaker 1: we'll be discussing why being open to distractions can be
Speaker 1: beneficial and the strategy you can use instead of a
Speaker 1: to do list to make the most of your day.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
Speaker 1: you work can live. I write a short weekly newsletter
Speaker 1: that contains tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for that at Amantha dot com.
Speaker 1: That's Amantha dot Com. I feel like this dovetails perhaps
Speaker 1: into running a done list at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: and I think it's fairly self explanatory perhaps, but maybe
Speaker 1: I'd love you to talk about how you use a
Speaker 1: done list and perhaps what it is in your work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say as a list that you keep
Speaker 2: through the day, probably rather than necessarily just at the
Speaker 2: end of the day. And this is very adaptable, you know,
Speaker 2: if there are people listening and watching who have really complicated,
Speaker 2: tricked out task management systems, Like I'm not suggesting throwing
Speaker 2: that away. It's just a question of building this in
Speaker 2: and making sure that it's got a role, just a
Speaker 2: role for recording proactively the things that you do as
Speaker 2: you do them, so that you as well as a
Speaker 2: to do list or instead of a to do list.
Speaker 2: You're also creating this list of your accomplishments through the
Speaker 2: day that gets longer and longer as the day goes on,
Speaker 2: which I mean to do lists often tend to get
Speaker 2: longer and longer as the day goes on as well,
Speaker 2: But that's a problem. This is a good thing, right,
Speaker 2: the longer you have done with better, And as I
Speaker 2: say in the book, you know, it's a very simple intervention,
Speaker 2: but I think it is so powerful because it invites
Speaker 2: you to compare your output, not to infinity, which is
Speaker 2: what we're usually doing, that all the things we could
Speaker 2: yet do that would be useful if we could do.
Speaker 3: Them, but to zero.
Speaker 2: It's implicitly it's like, you know, here's what I've done
Speaker 2: compared to if I stayed in bed and done nothing today.
Speaker 2: So you know, I definitely cycle through the ways I'm
Speaker 2: actually doing this in my own life, and actually maybe
Speaker 2: that's something to talk about. I'm glad that I do
Speaker 2: that now. I'm not in search of the final rigid
Speaker 2: system in the way that I definitely used to be.
Speaker 2: But one way that you can put this into practice,
Speaker 2: obviously is just writing. Is just you know, adding items
Speaker 2: to a piece of paper, as you go through them.
Speaker 2: If I'm in more of a sort of a motivational rut,
Speaker 2: I will sometimes pair this with another approach. So what
Speaker 2: I'll do is, I'll it's going to sound very silly
Speaker 2: when I put it into words, but you know, I will
Speaker 2: in a notebook, on one page, write down a task
Speaker 2: that I propose to do, do the task, cross it out,
Speaker 2: and then write it down on a different page as
Speaker 2: being done. Right, so you have a list of the
Speaker 2: things that you're doing. You just added one task at
Speaker 2: a time, and then a list of the things that
Speaker 2: you've done. I mean, willing to be told that this
Speaker 2: is kind of dumb on some level, but I find
Speaker 2: it it's really it's really helpful for just sort of focusing
Speaker 2: when you're feeling like you lack focus and just finally
Speaker 2: on the done list. I mean, one thing that people
Speaker 2: have said and that I think I have once or
Speaker 2: twice found myself as well, is that if you're in
Speaker 2: a really low place, like if you're really in a
Speaker 2: kind of like I can't quite make myself get out
Speaker 2: of bed kind of psychological place in life, which does happen.
Speaker 3: You can just lower the bar for what counts as
Speaker 3: something to be added to your done list. Right, there
Speaker 3: is something weirdly motivational, something that gets the ball rolling
Speaker 3: about keeping a list in a notebook where you say,
Speaker 3: you know, took a shower, made coffee, things that you
Speaker 3: wouldn't normally qualify as counters accomplishments because they're two below
Speaker 3: the level of significance. But if you do that, you
Speaker 3: know you don't need to show anyone else this list.
Speaker 1: You can.
Speaker 2: You can burn it at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: and very swiftly people find that it snowballs, right that
Speaker 2: you find that if you see, oh, actually, okay, this
Speaker 2: narrative inside that says I'm totally useless.
Speaker 3: I've already done like five effective.
Speaker 2: Things today and yeah, maybe one of them was brush
Speaker 2: my teeth, But like, okay, maybe two or three hours later,
Speaker 2: I'll have graduated to answering some emails.
Speaker 1: That's so good, something that I was thinking about after
Speaker 1: I read it around. You know, there's a section around
Speaker 1: staying distractible, which of course is the antithesis to a
Speaker 1: lot of productivity advice out there. And I know that
Speaker 1: you're a fan of Cal Newport in deep work and
Speaker 1: the idea of having blocks of uninterrupted deep focused time.
Speaker 1: So I was really curious as to how do you
Speaker 1: apply this idea of being open to distractions and interruptions
Speaker 1: rather than feeling frustrated with them or with children that
Speaker 1: come in and interrupt work.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, it's funny, I sort of. I did
Speaker 2: a podcast with cal just a few weeks ago, and
Speaker 2: I sort of really enjoy exploring this sort of tension point.
Speaker 2: The conversation between us tends to be like I say, like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, but it's really grueling and hard to try
Speaker 2: to impose that level of schedule of your life. Couch
Speaker 2: response is like, yeah, but it's worth it, So, like,
Speaker 2: you know, buck up on some level, right, this is
Speaker 2: not wrong. I'm not sort of against the deep work
Speaker 2: approach and against time blocking in the sense that he
Speaker 2: teaches it at all. A lot of this is to
Speaker 2: do with navigating against one's personality and figuring out where
Speaker 2: you're most likely to sort of get too rigid and
Speaker 2: clamp down, and taking the opposite approach as a kind
Speaker 2: as an antidote to that. So, but what I'm talking
Speaker 2: about there is this notion that it's really easy, I think,
Speaker 2: or for some people people like me, to kind of
Speaker 2: make things worse for themselves by trying to sort of
Speaker 2: stick to a schedule so rigid that more things get
Speaker 2: defined as distractions, and distractions all feel worse when they
Speaker 2: do happen, or interruptions, and that distraction, I guess, is
Speaker 2: an internal interruption, and then the other kind is people
Speaker 2: coming into the room or whatever. So the example I
Speaker 2: give him the book. You know, if it's an afternoon
Speaker 2: when it's not my turn for school pickup and I'm
Speaker 2: working at home and my son burst into the room
Speaker 2: to tell me about something that he's done at school
Speaker 2: that day, there might be contexts where the right thing
Speaker 2: for me to do is to stop and take a
Speaker 2: breath and explain that actually I can't listen right now,
Speaker 2: and I will be free later. That I might be
Speaker 2: working on something urgent, I might be in a conversation
Speaker 2: with somebody. This could happen in the next five minutes.
Speaker 2: It'll be interesting to see. But I don't want to
Speaker 2: have a productivity system that has defined this period as
Speaker 2: so importantly devoted to rigid focus that by definition, that
Speaker 2: lovely thing that life is supposed to be about is
Speaker 2: defined as a problem. I'm not saying it will never
Speaker 2: be something that needs to be managed in that way,
Speaker 2: But like, don't default to that, don't start from the
Speaker 2: position that unexpected things happening must be bad. I think
Speaker 2: that is a risk of sort of overly investing in schedules. Obviously,
Speaker 2: there'll be people in the audience here who may say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, my schedule is you know, there are lots
Speaker 2: of professional roles in which your schedule is more dictated
Speaker 2: than that, right, if you've got appointments, if you're working
Speaker 2: as a teacher, or working in sort of lots of
Speaker 2: different settings where there's kind of a scheduled aspect to it.
Speaker 2: But to whatever extent you have that autonomy, you don't
Speaker 2: want to use that autonomy to make serendipity inherently the enemy.
Speaker 2: One of the ways that I seek to sort of
Speaker 2: operational is that I guess in my working life is
Speaker 2: to relate to another chapter in the book where I
Speaker 2: talk about this kind of three or four hour rule
Speaker 2: of creativity, where you see all the way through history,
Speaker 2: great creative people are choosing to spend about three or
Speaker 2: four hours a day on their core activity if they
Speaker 2: have the freedom to do that, and then everything else
Speaker 2: and the rest of the time. So something I try
Speaker 2: to do to emulate that is like, Okay, I'm going
Speaker 2: to try really hard to ring fence several hours in
Speaker 2: the morning for writing, very few exceptions to that. That
Speaker 2: tends to work best for my energy. So I'm trying
Speaker 2: to keep that time free to try to exert quite
Speaker 2: a lot of control over time. But the crucial flip
Speaker 2: side of that is I'm not going to try to
Speaker 2: do that with the rest of the working day or
Speaker 2: the evening. I'm going to say, okay, after lunch or
Speaker 2: however I do it. Then I am just more open
Speaker 2: to things. Then I'm willing to make more appointments and
Speaker 2: willing to be I'm going to be interrupted. I'm going
Speaker 2: to have my phone on the desk so that I
Speaker 2: can respond to messages. So that, I think is a
Speaker 2: way of kind of finding the balance between structure and serendipity.
Speaker 1: I really like that. It feels like, instead of I guess,
Speaker 1: like a rigid time boxed schedule, which in a way
Speaker 1: is not particularly resilient, what you're describing feels like quite
Speaker 1: an anti fragile kind of system, if you know what
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 3: I think that's a lovely way of putting it.
Speaker 2: I mean, and now I want to say in cal
Speaker 2: Newport's defense now that he needs my defenses.
Speaker 1: Certainly doesn't He's going quite fine that.
Speaker 2: I think I can imagine him saying now if he
Speaker 2: was in this conversation too, that making a very clear
Speaker 2: time blocked schedule for your day is not the same
Speaker 2: point as saying I have failed if I adapt it right.
Speaker 2: So in his like time block planning approach and everything,
Speaker 2: there's always these extra columns to the right hand side
Speaker 2: of the main time block for adapting and adapting is
Speaker 2: the point. And I think there's something to be said
Speaker 2: for the idea of a very clear plan very loosely held.
Speaker 2: For me, the way that works best is if there
Speaker 2: are chunks of the day which are not specifically assigned
Speaker 2: in advanced to specific tasks. But you know, maybe we're
Speaker 2: all agreeing really here at the end.
Speaker 3: Of the day.
Speaker 2: I do think that the thing I'm happy to sort
Speaker 2: of be against is the idea that like setting it
Speaker 2: up in your mind so that if reality unfolds in
Speaker 2: ways that we're not fully within your control, you've messed up,
Speaker 2: because that's just like living in a world that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: The final thing I wanted to ask you Oliver is
Speaker 1: just around your information diet, and you kind of touched
Speaker 1: on it before and in terms of treating all the
Speaker 1: things that we could be reading as a river as
Speaker 1: opposed to a bucket that is filling up. And it
Speaker 1: reminded me of this conversation I had with a friend
Speaker 1: of mine who's in creative fields and does a lot
Speaker 1: of writing, and she said to me a few years back,
Speaker 1: she said, I've just had the realization I've done the
Speaker 1: calculations of how many books I can read in a
Speaker 1: year and probably how long my life will be, and
Speaker 1: I've just realized I'm not going to have time to
Speaker 1: read all the books that I want to read in
Speaker 1: this lifetime. And that really stuck with me. And when
Speaker 1: I read sort of how you talk about sort of
Speaker 1: there is infinite information out there and for you as
Speaker 1: a writer, and when you're researching books as well, how
Speaker 1: do you decide what to read, what to like, dedicate
Speaker 1: your precious attention to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fraud issue.
Speaker 2: I think that the approach that I'm gradually but successfully
Speaker 2: sort of easing my way in to is just a
Speaker 2: much more fluid one. So it's fluid in the sense
Speaker 2: of treating the list of potential books as articles as
Speaker 2: a river. As we've spoken about like picking from things
Speaker 2: and not feeling bad about the others, it's treating individual
Speaker 2: books in that way, being willing to read bits and
Speaker 2: not necessarily, you know, feel the burden of having to
Speaker 2: complete them. I think also it's the willingness to not
Speaker 2: try too hard to retain what you're reading. There's this
Speaker 2: thing a foot everywhere now in sort of personal knowledge management,
Speaker 2: about how you've got to try to remember everything you read.
Speaker 2: And I'm just like, maybe in certain you know, if
Speaker 2: you're training in the law or in medicine, there are
Speaker 2: context where you have to remember the things that you read.
Speaker 2: In that way, the rest of us don't need to
Speaker 2: do that, right, you can say that if something's relevant,
Speaker 2: it's going to stick to some extent, and you know,
Speaker 2: if you forget about it, then that's a filter, right.
Speaker 2: The fact that something stays or doesn't stay tells you
Speaker 2: something about it. It's relevance. So there isn't a sort
Speaker 2: of answer to how I choose what to read than
Speaker 2: what I feel drawn to and learning to trust that
Speaker 2: sort of instinct of what feels enjoyable and interesting and
Speaker 2: when a book feels like it's like I'm done with it,
Speaker 2: even though I may never finished it and all the
Speaker 2: rest of it.
Speaker 3: I think that's the thing we need to cultivate.
Speaker 1: I love that, Oliver. I could continue talking for hours.
Speaker 3: I love your work so much.
Speaker 1: There was just so much wisdom in here. So I
Speaker 1: have a feeling I'll be going back and rereading it
Speaker 1: and not trying to remember anything, but just knowing that
Speaker 1: it's there if I need it. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being here very early. Hopefully the sun has risen,
Speaker 1: But thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Slowly, slowly. Yeah, I knew it would be a pleasure,
Speaker 2: and it was. Thank you so much. A month I've
Speaker 2: enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I hope you loved this chat with Oliver as much
Speaker 1: as I did. He shed so many nuggets of wisdom
Speaker 1: that I am personally very excited to implement in my
Speaker 1: own life. And if you want to learn more about Oliver,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend checking out his new book, Meditation for
Speaker 1: Mortals four Weeks to embrace will imitations and make time
Speaker 1: for what counts. We've put links to that and his
Speaker 1: website in the show notes. If you like today's show,
Speaker 1: make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to
Speaker 1: be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was
Speaker 1: recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part
Speaker 1: of the Coulan nation.