Oliver Burkeman | A Contrarian Approach to Setting Your Goals for the New Year

Srini: Oliver welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to  join us

Oliver Burkeman:. Thank you very much.

Srini: Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So I actually came across your book, the antidote happiness for people who can't stand positive, thinking at the recommendation of one of my former podcast guests.

Srini: And I, I think as I told you, when I emailed you, I really was intent on starting the year with you as our first guests, just because I felt that you had a very contrarian, but at the same time practical view to the entire concept of self-help. But before we get into all of that, I want to start asking you, what did your parents do for work and how did that end up shaping and influencing the choices that you've made with your life and your career?

Oliver Burkeman: Hello, great question. I could, the first part is easy to answer the second part. We'll just have to come to me in the moment. I'm not sure I've thought about it in those terms. My, my parents both retired now, but my father Ran a grantmaking foundation in the UK making grants in a whole different areas of charitable work.

Oliver Burkeman: And my mother worked in variety of different roles, things to do with housing, social housing getting houses for homeless people, things like that. I guess now you put it like that those are both pretty kind of pro-social jobs if you thought. They're they're nonprofity and and community focused.

Oliver Burkeman: I have to say that. I don't. I think of myself as doing something more and slightly less. I hope my work helps people, but I think that it's, I suppose it is a little more individualistic in a way. Maybe that's rebellion. I don't know. I was raised than the, I was raised as a Quaker, if this is of any interest or relevance.

Oliver Burkeman: My so my parents were Quakers in the foundation that my father ran was a, an is a quake foundation. And although I'm not religious in any way at all today, unless you count being a sort of half. Meditator as being a Buddhist then. But I do think that there's a lot in the ethos of Quakerism that I really like.

Oliver Burkeman: There's a down to earth nurse simplicity, plainness as values confronting truth and reality and and a no bullshit aspect to that whole approach combined with that. I think a sort of hopefully the concern for other people, but I shouldn't really claim that of myself, so

Srini: what are the values that you were brought up with that really shaped this perspective that you have particularly on, on success in the world of self-help and personal development?

Oliver Burkeman: It would probably take my therapist to trace the the detailed connections. But I think that, what I hope is my take on self-help and personal development is that as you say, not credulous, not pretending that as individuals, we can completely remake the world and you can just choose to become incredibly wealthy and happy on the flip of a coin with with nobody else's cooperation, but equally I hope it's not a kind of nihilistic cynical take, like I'm I write about and talk about self-help the way I do, because I do think.

Oliver Burkeman: Self-help at its roots is is a positive and beneficial thing to have that we can grow and develop. And there are exciting ways to manifest our creativity and and be more productive and be better in relationships and all the rest of it, all stuff that I struggle with by the way, I think anyone who is in this space and pretends that, that they're not in it because of a personal struggle.

Oliver Burkeman: Everyone writes and deals with stuff because they're because they are in meshed with it somewhere. Otherwise it would be boring to them. Yeah.

Srini: The joke of all my listeners is that every desk here is basically a reflection of whatever problem I'm trying to solve in my life.

Srini: But I remember there was a period of probably a good two weeks or a month where, we had nothing but relationship experts. Somebody on Facebook says trainee, who's this week's dating expert. And it was true. Absolutely. Every single person is a reflection of that. So one that I wonder is, what actually was the trajectory that led you down this path?

Srini: What advice did your parents give you about careers and making your way in the world?

Oliver Burkeman: I think the truth about why I ended up doing what I was doing, which was and still is to a large extent, newspaper journalism, writing for magazines and for publications was just the fact that, a copy of the guardian was on our breakfast table.

Oliver Burkeman: Every day. And I had a sort of passion for something that resembled some ridiculous kid version of journalism from a very young age. I think I was 10 when I was photocopying making newsletters and forcing my schoolmates to not read them, but at least accept the piece of paper. And then I followed that through all the way up to university doing amateur journalism whenever I had the opportunity.

Oliver Burkeman: So that's the route really? It's like journalism. And then I landed eventually at the guardian and it was there that I started writing columns on this kind of on this kind of material. So I think in terms of family context and setting that is, firstly. The sort of value that, that journalism and public communication is is a valuable and useful thing in the world, but also a kind of just the idea that like I could do it right.

Oliver Burkeman: That writing stuff and photocopying it and trying to get other people to read it as a, is a sort of, that you should just go for it. I remember I always had a problem with the idea that you had to do things in a, sort of a make-believe way that you could that you had to play at being a doctor or a journalist or whatever.

Oliver Burkeman: I was wanting to like, literally make a publication and get real people to read it. When I was when I was far too tiny for that to be appropriate. And I see the same thing in my four year old son, actually, he doesn't want to play at being an astronaut. He's no, I want to really go to outer space.

Oliver Burkeman: So I didn't know what, I didn't know what to make of that, but it's maybe

Srini: you want to call and see if a lot of them on one of the next bisects flights,

Oliver Burkeman: right?

Srini: So there's a lot of things for, I do want to come back to journalism in particular and media, just because it's been such an interesting time in media, particularly here in the United States.

Srini: But one thing I wonder is, why is it that some people have that inkling at such an early age and somehow it gets nurtured in, at manifests early in their life. And it doesn't for a lot of other people. And of course, I think some people would say, oh I missed it. So what can I do now?

Srini: So let's start that. And also based on your accent, I assume you grew up in the UK, what differences have you noticed in the way that Americans are socialized, particularly in the context of growing up versus, children where you grew

Oliver Burkeman: up? It's an interesting question.

Oliver Burkeman: Yeah. I grew up in York in the north of England. And now I live in New York city. I think that the main thing I in the first part of your question is just that I think my parents really did. Encouraged me to do the thing. It's a cliche, but I think there was not a sense that I really should become a specific thing, be a lawyer or a doctor, or to follow exactly in their footsteps or anything like that.

Oliver Burkeman: And for whatever reason that I still don't really understand the thing that was there wanting to come out was doing journalism. It's I've evolved and adapted from there. I I was in the interesting position of achieving something that I had dreamed of since I was a tiny kid, namely, a job at the guardian, pretty young as these things go, which is both great and something.

Oliver Burkeman: Hopefully doesn't sound too much like bragging, but on the other hand, it's creates an interesting sort of a crisis as well. Because the target is is removed. Once you completed a goal, you're like, hang on, I've got a career to figure out here. The whole the whole way ahead of me, Britain versus America, it's really hard to know the difference between like kids being brought up in, in the UK.

Oliver Burkeman: And kids being brought up in the U S because there's also this big time gap, I'm coming at it as a, as an adult and not a super young adult either in in the U S so now I see and share a lot of the criticisms of this idea of people being, having their childhoods, just completely sacrificed to getting in, developing it, having a round.

Oliver Burkeman: CV, having it, having enough of a resume to get into the very best colleges and stuff. And it doesn't seem like a great way to live at all. I really did have a certain amount of you come home from you come home from school and you're just like wandering around the streets with your friends, doing aimlessly, but actually in all sorts of ways, developing your friendships and your passions and your creativity without realizing it.

Oliver Burkeman: But that might've been because it was, the eighties or the late eighties, early nineties, rather than that it was Britain. I do see in, and then just the other thing to say, I think just going out, do you see at least among relatively privileged people in the us though? I don't think it's limited to that demographic, a very strong idea that you can do the things that you want to do, that, that there will be a way.

Oliver Burkeman: It's a cliche again, the American dream, and it's taken a lot of taking a lot of knocks and have a lot of setbacks in in recent years. But I think that is clearer than in Britain. I think there is something I don't particularly love about the overall mentality of Britain, which is that you just have to settle with settle for whatever you seem to have, or the other hand, a certain amount of acceptance in life as a is very useful and important because some things you can't change.

Oliver Burkeman: Yeah.

Srini: I think it's interesting. You brought up, parents and overachievers. Cause I think I remember the first time I started coming across, all this work on high-performance, Malcolm Gladwell's book, Dan Coyle's talent code. I remember asking Dan Coyle, this is it, like as a parent, as somebody now I'm like, oh, why did my parents make me find something that I could practice for 10,000 hours?

Srini: And he's that's the worst possible thing you could do to a kid? Because they, and he said, he's this is why you end up with these child prodigies who actually don't become successful musicians and, successful in their field later in

Oliver Burkeman: life. Yeah. No, I think that's, I think that, that sounds right to me.

Oliver Burkeman: And what it brings to my mind is that I've given you a rosy picture. I I have none, but the normal regular complaints about my parents. I think they did. I think they, they are excellent people, but I did end up by the time I was 18 and going to college, like one of those kind of, not a prodigy, but one of those kinds of.

Oliver Burkeman: Stressed out overachievers, who is it's the whole sort of fixed mindset thing. This idea that,I got really good grades all the way through, but I felt like I absolutely had to. And I got pretty S like I made myself ill in a mild way when it came to university out of some notion that I was going to do terribly badly and needed to do really well.

Oliver Burkeman: And and then I did do really well, but was that worth it? I'm not, I'm still not, I'm still not sure. So that sort of, those sort of perfectionist tendencies that are not to do with wanting to create wonderful results, but the sense that. You're just trying to meet the minimum level for accessibility and that this requires you to be a straight a student.

Oliver Burkeman: It's a stressful way to live. And I think, part of my journey since then has been has been unclenching that grip and being a bit happier with the ways in which, you're not necessarily always going to make a sort of unbroken chain of successful results and you don't need to, and that's not what people care about.

Oliver Burkeman: So anyway. Yeah.

Srini: I think that, that makes a perfect segue to actually getting into the antidote because I see so many interesting things in the world of self-help and a lot of platitudes, right? It's oh, you can do anything. You put your mind to it. I'm like, no, that's not true. I'm like, I could put my mind to becoming the best NBA basketball player in the world.

Srini: And I'm a scrawny Indian that's never going to happen. But what I wonder is, where does this come from first, before you even ended it? Like, why do we have this sort of delusional optimism that gets perpetuated? Because even Werner Earhart, the founder of the landmark forum actually told Dan Kennedy, while they're talking to barbershop, when Dan Kennedy said sum up for me in one sentence.

Srini: Cause I think at that time it was called S he said, it's simple. He said, we sell independence, but we breed dependence. And I thought, wait a minute. That's true of like nearly every self-help situation. That's how you end up with cults like Nexium.

Oliver Burkeman: That's a great, it's a great quote that I'd never heard.

Oliver Burkeman: And it I did not realize he was quite that cynical about what he was doing or as cynical as that quote makes him sound anyway. I think zoom out to the biggest, the longest term historical perspective, in ancient, Greece and Rome, What was called philosophy was intended in some way as self-help, there is the idea that people can through writing and thinking and taking a conscious approach to their lives, make changes for the better become wiser and happier.

Oliver Burkeman: This is a very old idea. And I think it's true. And I think I think it has done that for me. I think when you talk about what happened primarily, but not only in America, primarily coming out of the great depression, a real sort of, and merging a bit with certain kinds of fashionable approaches to spirituality and the in Victorian times and stuff, you get this kind of mix of stuff that really hype it, individualizes the the matter.

Oliver Burkeman: And I think, there's a sort of, there's an economic reading of this isn't that it's this is what happens. The philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome under late capitalism, which is this very, very individualized idea, this idea that you're responsible for everything you do, that you can create any result, but that if you fail, that must be because you were thinking insufficiently positive thoughts, or you didn't have enough self-discipline you can see how it would be a very cheering message at least superficially in, in times like the great depression, when it seemed like the structures, the biggest structures that people could previously depend on were crumbling.

Oliver Burkeman: But the idea that you could just do it yourself, that you didn't need that in order to have an amazing life would clearly that would have have an audience. And I think some of what you get in the kind of self-helpy side of the culture today, especially in a certain kind of. Silicon valley approach to to personal development and self-help reflect something similar, right?

Oliver Burkeman: This is the time of the, this is the era of the gig economy. We don't, nobody has depend on on a job for their whole life anymore. And in this kind of context, there's something very appealing about the idea that we don't need each other in fundamental ways and can just go it alone through the power of powerful.

Srini: Yeah I think that sets up the next question. So Norman Vincent Peale, I'm sure it was work you're familiar with, wrote this power of positive thinking book. And I remember listening to the Mary Trump audio book about, the call, I think it was called the most dangerous man in the world which is about Donald Trump.

Srini: And apparently, he was, Donald Trump's pastor was actually the, who officiated his first wedding, but it turns out the guy was entirely full of shit. And I wonder two things, one, what was the downside to the popularity of his work? And, as a journalist, you probably have this really interesting lens on media and how it shapes the way we think about this stuff.

Srini: What is the cause? Even, people consuming content like this, I realized like I, one of my friends actually said, he said, self-help actually can diminish your self esteem, paradoxically. When you're sitting around reading this. I think the other quote that comes to mind, I remember Tony Robbins in one of his first version, like dissatisfaction as a gem.

Srini: I'm like, not really, because if you're walking around your life dissatisfied, then how are you ever going? Every, everything is basically an uphill battle,

Oliver Burkeman: right? Yes. And there's all sorts of reasons what, yeah, I think that's right. I think if you set your expectations in such a way that you can only ever be that you can either, you're either disappointed or you're at least not there yet, then there can never be any kind of contentment.

Oliver Burkeman: I think it's important to say as well that there is something legitimately empowering at the root of some of these things. I was talking about the great depression and this is the context after. It looks like how to win friends and influence people start to get 'em started to get popular.

Oliver Burkeman: I'm forgetting the dates. I think Norman Vincent Peale is a little later than all of that. This, it's not worthless to say to people who are on some level feeling powerless that you can take that you can seize the initiative in your life. I think the problem is the various sort of reasons why this always turns into totally counterproductive over promising.

Oliver Burkeman: And I've read that the Mary Trump book too. And I think that there's a very she gives a very good sort of, it's basically a psychoanalytic reading of why Donald Trump is the way he is, why he considers professional failure, prospect of professional failure to be. Synonymous with like death and and what kinds of unconditional love were withheld from him as a small child.

Oliver Burkeman: If you go too far down this road, you suddenly start empathizing with him. And it's very scary experience but, everyone was a old once and they were either being accepted and loved by the people around them. Or they were being sent the message that love was dependent on certain kinds of external achievements.

Oliver Burkeman: And that would be withheld if they if they didn't do them. I think that's all it all hangs together, but yeah, I think also there's now tons of research. I write a little bit about it in, in the book that if you've got low self esteem and you start saying unrealistically positive affirmations to yourself about actually, or incredibly rich and not not feeling not feeling depressed or whatever.

Oliver Burkeman: That this sets up a conflict of mental conflict where you just start argue against yourself and you end up feeling you end up feeling even worse. Yeah. Yeah.

Srini: So let's talk about being powerless because your people are hearing this at the very beginning of the new year. And of course, people feel like they have this sort of blank slate.

Srini: And one of the things you say early on in the book is for civilization. So fixated on achieving happiness. We seem remarkably incompetent at the task. One of the best known general findings of the science of happiness has been the discovery that countless, that the countless advantages of modern life I've done so little to lift our collective mood.

Srini: And so I want to start with, by looking at depression first, I, you one, how do you end up in this situation? Like how do people get out of this sort of depths of depression and the darkness of it? It took me, three years. It was, reading books, some of which did absolutely nothing, which made me feel worse about my life, because there was this constant comparison.

Srini: If a person listening to this is depressed, based on your work, what is the first thing that you would say to them?

Oliver Burkeman: Bearing in mind that I, I am fortunate not to have personal experience of severe depression. I'm more of an I'm on the anxiety end of the scale. So I can probably talk more about having that but but I happy, I think I feel of us have no experience.

Oliver Burkeman: And also given that, I think the answer to the question really is to seek out, good therapy and counseling and and not to rely on a random thoughts of random journalists but with all that to one side, I think what's interesting here is that it, it seems pretty clear that the, the kind of positive thinking that, that sees depression fundamentally as a matter of feeling sad, which you should then try to alter by changing your thoughts into happy ones is is doomed to fail.

Oliver Burkeman: Not just because. You can't make yourself feel happy, but also because depression seems to be more abs feeling of the absence of meaning than the absence of happiness and that actually all sorts of approaches that, that sort of start by acknowledging that negative feelings are present, but they're not going to kill you that they are negative, that they can't just be changed with the click of a finger into positive ones.

Oliver Burkeman: These are the ones that sort of, these are the approaches that, that leave you then capable of, taking the next step. I think the ones that say, yeah, I do feel this way and yeah, I do think that things are not how I want them to be in my life. And I'm not trying to pretend otherwise.

Oliver Burkeman: I think that's what acceptance really means, right? Not resignation to your circumstances. Like you're never going to change them, but acceptance that things are as they are. Right now and that, there's no need to try to pretend that they aren't say one of the thing on that I've been really helped in my life by a question that came, comes up in the work of James Hollis.

Oliver Burkeman: Who's a union psychotherapist whose books I would definitely re recommend. And here he recommends asking this question, what direction in life right now would enlarge me rather than diminish me. In other words, not what would make me happier because that's very difficult to tell, and it usually doesn't work but to connect to this question of meaning and to find in whatever emotional situation you find yourself, something, just the next thing that you could do, however, small, that would be that would make you into a.

Oliver Burkeman: There would be growth focused instead of diminishment focused and it might be it might be nothing. I know I think there are good reasons why Jordan Peterson is very controversial and has a lot of, has a lot of critics, but I think that focus on, just do one thing.

Oliver Burkeman: If you can, if the only thing you can do right now is to like, make your bed and then reward yourself with a, a chocolate treat for having done that, that counts. That is real, that sort of, what is the one right next right thing that you could do right now. And that doesn't connect you to questions of like, how can I make myself full of good chair?

Oliver Burkeman: That's not relevant, right? It's what is the next step in the darkness rather than. And it, and yeah, it absolutely might be that you can load the dishwasher or if you're not in that kind of rut, it might be that you can answer some, a bunch of emails. So you're no longer, so overwhelming, whatever, it depends where it.

Srini: So you may be the one person who might be able to give me an answer to this question because I've asked it to numerous people and nobody seems to have an answer that I'm satisfied with. So I looked at, yeah, exactly. No, not at all. It's just based on your perspective, I feel like you might have some insight on this that nobody has been able to,give me, but yeah, if you look at a typical personal development effort, whether it's a book, a seminar, whatever it is, or course.

Srini: And you see this across the board you get three groups of people, right? The person who would have gotten the result, whether they went to that thing or not, or did that thing or not, because that's just how they're wired, the person who actually that thing becomes a catalyst for their change.

Srini: And then you have, this other group, which is basically people who go from seminar to seminar book to book. Like I always said, if I actually implemented all of the advice I've received from my podcast guests and the books that are on my shelf, I'd be a billionaire with a six pack and a harem of women.

Srini: And I'm none of those things, so like why do we get those three groups? Cause I feel like that third group is literally the one that builds the industry.

Oliver Burkeman: Yeah. It's very interesting. I do think there is some, there are charlatans, there is real cynicism and the veteran heart quote that you mentioned points to that.

Oliver Burkeman: There are people who are just out to you make a big promise, but you can't completely deliver on it because that will be a disaster for your business model. You've got to keep them dissatisfied, but I don't think that cynicism and Charlotte's aneurysm completely explains that problem.

Oliver Burkeman: One thing that I think certainly explains the problem and that I have, I feel like I have been, I've been there completely as a reader and consumer of this stuff is this mistake. And we could talk about where the mistake comes from, but this mistake, that new information is the thing that is going to make all the difference.

Oliver Burkeman: I am still to this day on some level completely convinced that the next sort of productivity book I read is going to provide the specific system for organizing my to-do list. That is going to make all the difference to my productivity and creativity. Yeah. And naturally, if it's what you think is that more information is what you need.

Oliver Burkeman: Then that's a very understandable reason to consume more books and courses and everything being, see where I'm going with this. I think that very often it isn't new information that we need. And in fact, probably the most important things that anyone can do to build a more meaningful life they already like.

Oliver Burkeman: Absolutely no on an intellectual level. And it is a question of finding different ways of of making that, making it a habit making it a, sort of an, a perspective shift on the level of one's emotions learning to let this idea seep into you, but it's not like you need a new idea.

Oliver Burkeman: Like either of us right now could list the sort of five, six things that people ought to have in their lives to feel. As fulfilled and happy as possible, whether it's, good social relationships, physical exercise time spent in nature, get enough sleep. It's it's not hard.

Oliver Burkeman: Excepted it for years. You've been thinking about getting LASIK. You've been talking about getting LASIK and now it's finally time to get LASIK. LASIK plus is offering $1,000 off LASIK. That's $500 off her. I visit my LASIK, offer.com, but hurry, you must be treated in an October to receive your discount off.

Oliver Burkeman: LASIK must mention this promotion and be treated in October of 2021. To qualify $1,000 off both eyes on standard WaveLight price, $500 off for one I cannot be combined with any other offers. See details at my LASIK. offer.com.

Srini: If you like the unmistakable creative, there's a new podcast. I want to tell you about that.

Srini: I think you'll really like on the stories of impact podcasts, they go into the science behind innovative tools that help human beings flourish. The birthright of every human being is not just to survive, but to thrive here about the intersection of the science and spiritual practices that give life the deepest meaning and fulfillment here from Deepak Chopra, Laurie Santos, and more the award winning stories of impacts podcast returns for his fifth.

Srini: This acclaimed podcast features award winning veteran journalist, Richard Sergei, and a claimed writer and producer Tavia, Gilbert. Find them wherever you get your podcasts. The stories of impact podcast is support by Templeton world charity foundation. Even though my family is filled with amazing cooks me being in the kitchen is basically a fire hazard waiting to happen, but I still want to eat healthy.

Srini: And if you want to eat healthier and feel your best, then listen up. This is hands down. One of the easiest ways I've been drinking something called Chava as my breakfast to fuel my day. And it keeps me full for hours and it takes less than a minute to make, which is pretty awesome. So what is it's been called the cleanest most nutrient dense meal imaginable, and I describe it as the best protein vitamins and everything.

Srini: You need to eat healthy all in one. It's loaded with over 70 superfoods in nutrients like Maka root. She has seeds, Satya, Annie Mach, Highbury, OSI, and coconut. And it actually tastes really good. The people who built this company started in the jungle on the side of a mountain during a health retreat. And their mission is to bring the world's best superfoods into a single ready to go meal to help busy people stay healthy on the go and Catawba is offering 10% off for the listeners of our podcast.

Srini: Just go to dot com slash creative again. That's good. Chava, K a C H a V a.com/creative for 10% off. So I want to ask you a question about spiritual bypassing. So I, I moved to Colorado from a town called Encinitas, and I remember the first time, first few weeks I were there, I was there cause I was a surfer, but it turns out that it's like this just, it's like the Mecca of new age bullshit and which I, that's what I refer to as, although my roommate's dude, even your own work falls into that category, I was like, yes, I'm aware of this.

Srini: But it really is like to the point where I remember the first time I saw it, the conscious community Facebook group, which I'm sure I'll probably piss off a few people. If they're members of that. I remember I called my friend shrubby and I said, can you explain to me what it means to be conscious?

Srini: Because based on the posts that I'm reading here, I think these people are out of fucking touch with reality. So that is my understanding, but you get a lot of this new age, spiritual bypassing people are like, oh, crystals and candles. Like I literally said, you know what people what sends is I'm like, it's a town full of white people who wish they were Indian.

Srini: If they're more Indian than I am, like they all have Sanskrit tattoos, they're vegan and I'm like, oh, let's go eat at a steak house. That's just weird to me. Why is it that we have this sort of mix of causation and correlation? Like you see this you literally see people who post pictures of gods of religions that they don't actually know anything about and somehow associated with.

Srini: And of course hundreds of comments follow and people are like, oh yeah, of course. I'm like, wait a minute. You're not even a person who knows anything about this religion. So where do we get this sort of mix of causation correlation with new age bullshit and success.

Oliver Burkeman: That's really interesting and spiritual bypassing your listeners may be well familiar, but it seems like it might be worth a quick sort of definition.

Oliver Burkeman: The idea of, for me anyway, the idea of using spiritual practices and this idea that you're going to become one with a cosmic consciousness to avoid slightly more mundane. Like issues that you probably should get probably should be talking to a therapist about, or or, at least, paying some attention to, rather than just thinking that you can bypass it all by, by merging with the universal.

Oliver Burkeman: And then I think that's very, I think that's very prevalent. I think it's more prevalent than people realize. I think a lot of American Anglo was meditation culture is that actually and I think it has been for me in the past, this idea that I don't need to worry about all issues and hang ups and neuroses.

Oliver Burkeman: I could be working out because what I'm going to do is just transcend my ego and then none of it's going to matter. But then you also raised this other sort of related point of is the idea that by having the same, like crystals that look the same as the person who has achieved something.

Oliver Burkeman: Of spiritual peace. I'm going to get it from the crystal or from a adopting the lifestyle. I think, that it's okay to some extent to adopt whatever lifestyle you want. The big issue there of course, is that it becomes, any idea that you are pursuing one of these spiritual paths that involves at least loosening the grip of the ego is undermined by the idea that what you're doing is building up a really firm and forceful ego as a sort of super spiritual person as someone who is I'm if you're so you're so past.

Oliver Burkeman: You've gone so far beyond the self that you have to keep decorating yourself with expensive new clothes, the packets, something's gone wrong. And the sort of the meditation teachers and people who I know personally who impressed me the most, they're not like that they're living, in many cases, very ordinary looking Lives, because learning to be part of the ordinary world is on some level, it's like the whole challenge, instead of trying to find a sort of aesthetic puff out of it, I'm not sure that Boulder is a good move if you want to avoid, if you want to leave.

Srini: The funny thing is fortunately here we're quarantined, so we're not, and here they have this sort of bizarre balance of the, wealthy entrepreneurs combined with, Naropa university.

Srini: So we'll have, at least some semblance of balance here. And I'm sure I've probably pissed off everybody who lives in Encinitas and blossom subscribers because of this. But, that's the price you pay for having an opinion. Let's talk about the, two, two ideas you talk about Cecil's optimism and dynamic adaptation.

Srini: And so one of the things you say is Cecil's optimism about the future only makes a greater shock when things go wrong by fighting to maintain only positively about the future. The positive thinker ends up being less prepared, more accurate, acutely distressed. When things eventually happen that he can't persuade himself to believe her good.

Srini: And he was go, you're going to say that psychologists have long agreed that one of the greatest enemies of human happiness is he'd done. It adaptation the predictable and frustrating way in which any new source of pleasure we obtain, whether it is as minor as a new piece of elec trying to gadgetry, or as major as a marriage swiftly gets relegated to the back of our lives.

Srini: Now I th these two things sentences in particular struck me because I've been trying to find an answer to this question of, is there a way to get off of the hedonic treadmill? And can we find a balance between fulfillment and ambition? Because, I think that you have to have some level of self-interest to.

Srini: Achieve anything. And yet we've seen what happens when self-interest, it's taken too far. We live in a world that's the by-product of self-interest taken to the point of diminishing returns from, our leadership in governments to our, CEOs of companies. So w how is the, is there any way off of this hypnotic treadmill?

Oliver Burkeman: It's a really good question. And I think part of your question gets at this idea that you wouldn't necessarily want to completely get off it, right? This idea that you make your life and the lives of those people, you care about better through a certain amount of, self interest I think is a true one and a good one.

Oliver Burkeman: I don't think I would be a better person if my, if I didn't want to make my life situation or my family's life situation on a sort of constant process of. Improvement, but the treadmill is the idea that, in many cases, if you do that by moving into a bigger house, you'll just forget about how pleasurable it is to live in a bigger house.

Oliver Burkeman: The one that always I know happened in my life very clearly was that I I like upgraded the quality of the coffee I was consuming. And now it's just I have to have that quality of coffee which is sad, because firstly, it's more expensive. And secondly, I don't get the special pleasure of thinking, oh, that's really good coffee.

Oliver Burkeman: So the first thing to say, there are some curious exceptions in the research, right? So one thing that you do not expect to find, but apparently is true is that,people who have cosmetic surgery which in general, we tend to disdain as a particularly kind of superficial route to happiness that doesn't seem to lose its its capacity to lift their spirits.

Oliver Burkeman: They don't seem to adapt well back down to being depressed about it. So I don't know what that's going on there, whether it's just feels so fundamental to yourself when you like change what your face looks like or something that that it that it doesn't have that effect. I think the real answer for most of us apart from getting Botox is is to do with the shift in perspective, right?

Oliver Burkeman: The reason that gratitude is so championed by people working in this field. I'm not particularly good at keeping a gratitude diary or anything, but I think it's good. And you should do it if you can is because it has the effect of calling your attention to things in your life that are delivering, that are capable of delivering a wellbeing and good feeling and that you've forgotten about.

Oliver Burkeman: If you actually go through the exercise of realizing that, like the tree in our backyard in the winter looks to my eyes looking at it, now it looks to my it's really beautiful. It's oh, okay. I've actually taken myself through the process of seeing that it pops out again, and and its role as a part of the backdrop of my life is at least temporarily changed into the, to the foreground.

Oliver Burkeman: And sort of anything, I think, anything that sort of Shifts your perspective is going to have that effect. I'm often struck. I know other people have this as well, right? If you've traveled somewhere, obviously we don't travel anywhere. If you travel somewhere else. Firstly, if you travel somewhere where people's lives are a lot worse than yours you have some gratitude returning to your own life.

Oliver Burkeman: But even if you go somewhere if you go on something like luxury vacation, there's always something to me anyway, about getting back home, which is oh great. I like this. So obviously if you don't like your home, this particular suggestion is not going to work, but there's something to do with shifting your location, shifting your perspective.

Oliver Burkeman: I think just to be totally cliched that the sort of changing your attention that is wrought by doing right by meditation generally does also help you see things more clearly in that way, that sort of thing. Yeah,

Srini: It reminds me, I was in India with my cousin. I went there for a surf trip and we took a trip up to the mountains and, my cousin was telling me, the guy who drove us, he said, look, you get to make in one hour with this guy probably will not make in two to three years, as a public professional speaker.

Srini: And I realized, I was like, wow, this guy, literally he does a nine hour drive up and down the mountain up to the mountains of India, four to five times a week. And these are not like pleasant drives. The roads are treacherous. Like every, one possibly involves death. The guy has no upward mobility.

Srini: And when I remember seeing that thinking, I was like, wow, every time I think about complaining about something in my life, I always want to remember this guy, even to the point where I was like, I need to get a picture of this guy. Cause I had a picture of me and him and I wanted that on my wall as a reminder.

Srini: And now you've reminded me to make sure I have that framed and printed. Just who is this random guy who was like there's a story about this. That always stayed with me. We're at the beginning of a new year, of course, everybody talks about, setting goals, new year's resolutions, which never work, that kind of thing, like literally everybody's mind is on, oh, I'm going to become the next best version of myself because it's the beginning of a new year.

Srini: But you have probably the most contrarian view I've ever heard, which is why I wanted to begin the year with you. In fact I think that, the person who you mentioned, Stephen Shapiro is also going to be a guest, but you actually say two things here that really struck me. One is about attachment.

Srini: So let me mention the quote on goals first. She said whether or not we use the word goals, we're forever making plans up on desired outcomes and goal free living simply makes for happier humans that flies in the face of probably everything that everybody who's listening to this has ever heard.

Srini: So expand on that.

Oliver Burkeman: I'm going to expand by immediately backing away from that and saying that the thing that, what I think I unpack in the book is go free living is it's certainly not having no goal in any sense of the term because there's human organisms. We were goal directed through the day, even if it's just to eat some food and get some sleep.

Oliver Burkeman: But beyond that, I think that's goals in the conventional. Self-help personal development sense of the term can be absolutely important in in a life. I think what I'm trying to say is that there's a kind of attachment to goals which automatically places fulfillment of them in the future.

Oliver Burkeman: For one thing, it means you can, you spend your whole life struggling to achieve things, which if you then achieve them, bring pleasure for about a day and then you have to set up the new set of goals. So I think what I think until limited extent, I've moved on a little bit, maybe from when I wrote that as well.

Oliver Burkeman: I don't want to say I can't change my view here is the template. I think the way to think about this is goals as and plans in general, right? Fundamentally. Present moment, statements of intent and ways to help you organize your present moment. And today in the most promising and fulfilling way, not these kinds of shining things on a hill that you're constantly waiting to get to.

Oliver Burkeman: And there are a whole lot of other problems with that stance in life. I think in terms of like how it distorts the other values in your life, et cetera, et cetera. But just as sort of navigational tools for bringing into being the best stuff that you can and the best feelings and the best product, whatever you're doing today.

Oliver Burkeman: And that's what I increasingly try to do in my life. I don't think that like creative visions are a bad thing at all. Things that to steer by, but I also don't want my life to be about. Getting to my deathbed and for five minutes being great. I did it well. And then like Keeling over.

Oliver Burkeman: I w I want the fulfillment to be an aspect of the, every day of the process as it were. I can, sorry. I was going to say all over the news resolutions. I think the problem here is that setting aside the fact that new year's day always struck me as a terrible day to begin anything.

Oliver Burkeman: Cause you'll probably have till three in the morning drinking. But that wouldn't be the case this year,

Srini: we did that last night.

Oliver Burkeman: One of the one we'll have been up until 3:00 AM drinking at home. Yes. No, I think that the the real problem. That is the way that it encourages this kind of belief in a total fresh start.

Oliver Burkeman: That is actually really contrary to successful personal change, which is absolutely possible I'm this is not a, this is not the advice to give up and just conclude that you can't be better or happier or more skilled or whatever it is. But it's this idea that there's something very philosophically odd, right?

Oliver Burkeman: About saying I'm going to be a completely new self this year. And yet the person you're trying to change is also the person who's doing the changing. It's it's circular and a really confusing way. And it's also just sets the bar so high that that the first day you fail at some particular resolution you go on the usual sort of yo-yo cycle, right?

Oliver Burkeman: You end up like calling the whole thing off and and not doing it at all. I think. A lot of this is anxiety driven. People look at their lives and they say, look, I am not as fit as I should be. I'm not as happy in my romantic life as I should be. I'm not as successful. I work as I should be.

Oliver Burkeman: So I've got to change it all at once because I can't bear the thought of accepting that some of these areas are going to be suboptimal for awhile while I focus and work on one specific area. And what I've come to believe really is that, the whole challenge here, actually a big part of the challenge of all successful personal change is actually with standing and tolerating, the anxiety and the discomfort of knowing about all the things you're not changing.

Oliver Burkeman: So it's about saying look, this next couple of months is about getting a sort of basic exercise routine going. And just being okay with the fact that I'm not addressing these other three or four massive life areas that feel like so urgent knowing that I will get to them in their turn in sequence, and doing the sort of serial fashion and for someone like me and probably you and a lot of people that's really hard to do precisely because like you're so into the kind of transformation kind of idea.

Oliver Burkeman: But I think once you see that is a kind of, there's a kind of anxiety that's driving that usually. And actually, it's probably fine if I don't change up my exercise goals for January and February while I work on getting my personal finances in order, like that's probably in the long run at the end of the year, I'm going to have attended to far more stuff that needed my attention in life.

Oliver Burkeman: That way than if I had this kind of weird plan that I was going to magically find 10 more hours every day from January the first. Which do all of these things.

Srini: So let's talk about two, two to two other things here. One is this whole idea of these like wildly ambitious goals, right? Like becoming the next Elon Musk or Steve jobs or Beyonce.

Srini: You may have read his book. I will store who's another journalist. I believe in the UK wrote a book called selfie, how we've become so self obsessed and what it's doing to us. And he said that, we are creating this cultural narrative of, you don't have worth if you're not going to be the next, whatever Steve jobs.

Srini: And he said, it's so toxic. And people yet have these, very ambitious goals. Also, to, to piggyback on that. I've had Elon Musk's ex wife, Justine here. She's a good friend of mine and we're talking about extreme success. Cause she wrote this really long answer on a core, a piece that, some kid had asked the question, how can I become great?

Srini: Elon Musk, Steve jobs and Richard Branson. And Justine probably has a view into this, that most of us don't and her view on this was really eyeopening. She said, people don't realize like these accomplishments almost come at the cost of everything else in your life.

Srini: And she said, I don't want to get all deterministic here, but I don't think that this is something that can be like. It's something that you know, is, you're born that way. And I don't think the idea that, you're born as smart as Elon Musk and you can't become, that is something people ever want to hear in the world of personal development.

Srini: But you have, a view into this than a lot of us don't based on your research. And then, on top of that, couple that with the sort of, vision board, mental masturbation, that also happens with the law of attraction. So what's your take on all of this? Yeah,

Oliver Burkeman: I think it's so interesting because I do think that I have three thoughts and I'll try to keep them keep them concise.

Oliver Burkeman: But w one is, yeah, I think if you look at the lives of a lot of these people who we idolize, that the sacrifices they have wittingly or unwittingly made are huge ones. This is the. There's a story in my book about somebody who had set out to become a multi-millionaire by age, I don't know, 35 or something and had achieved it, but it wasn't really success if you've you've ruined your health and you've alienated your whole family and your partners left you and your kids do it's like at some point that wasn't actually what you intended.

Oliver Burkeman: And I think you see that pattern sometimes. I think the other point is that, and maybe this is my particular psychological issues talking but I do think that if you look at a lot of these people, I'm not saying that it's bad that they achieved what they did,or that have innovated in the ways that they have, but it's been done as a way to meet some kind of psychological need.

Oliver Burkeman: It's not it's not because they just were hanging around and thought oh, it'd be really cool to do some cool things. It's they needed to fill some void in themselves or something. And I think a lot of people who overachieve become celebrities, all sorts of things are struggling to fill some void.

Oliver Burkeman: It is amazing. I haven't got the figures in my head, but it's amazing what proportion of recent American presidents have had absent fathers. And you're just like, whoa, something interesting is going on there, but fuels that kind of. Th the kind of level of energy and discipline and struggles that you need to reach those kinds of Heights, which is none of this is to criticize.

Oliver Burkeman: Cause we all have our hangups and our needs and our like holes inside that we're trying to fill. But I think it is useful to remember that in certain ways, the person who is content with being ordinary is arguably more psychologically healthy than the person who who absolutely needs to pull off these big goals.

Oliver Burkeman: And I think that leads to my final point on this, which is the perspective shift I'd like to suggest, which is, it will be interesting to look at it for anybody who's in the position of really wanting to try and pull off that kind of stratospheric success to say okay, what am I real motivations here? Why do I think I need this in order to be happy? Could I. Could the key here actually be to be becoming more easy and okay.

Oliver Burkeman: With being ordinary, I don't say not successful, but successful in a more sort of modest and achievable way. And here's the twist, right? Not just because probability dictates that you're not going to be the next Elon Musk full to get your mind straight on that. But also because I actually think that the more okay you are with the life you have and with ordinariness and with not being super achiever, the more freed up psychologically, you are to actually create amazingly impressive things, to really make a difference in some field, perhaps even to become a sort of, one of these sorts of stratospheric gods of the civilization.

Oliver Burkeman: I don't know, but just, to think okay, my life is I'm good enough as I. I'm good enough if I don't ever do any of these things and therefore it's all extra, right. It's all it's like a wonderful game that you can then play launch some cool projects and connect with some interesting people and take a few risks as opposed to I've got to on some subconscious level, I've got to do this, or I'm not worthy to be a person on planet earth.

Oliver Burkeman: Yeah.

Srini: I think I feel that as an author, like it was an experience I had, like my publisher's portfolio, which, the other authors, there are Simon Sinek, Seth Goden and Ryan holiday, all of who've sold millions of books. And I remember thinking I'm like the red step redheaded stepchild of this imprint.

Srini: And that it took me a while to get my head around that. Okay. You know what, I probably not going to be the next, Ryan holiday, mark Manson, whoever. And I think that when I finally. I made some peace with that. I was able to get back to

Oliver Burkeman: work. And then maybe become one of, that's the other thing.

Oliver Burkeman: Yeah. I just think it's I totally see that. And I obviously, I'm partly just talking about a journey I've been on here too. I think, I spent a lot of my young adult hood thinking that I had to do certain things. Otherwise I wasn't. It was, I wasn't, I hadn't justified my existence. And actually it's when you're not tightly gripping on your goals like that, because that actually you'll find as you are, you don't need those things for validation.

Oliver Burkeman: I'm not saying I've completed this journey spiritually, but I've made a bit of prudence. Yeah, you are freer to just Hey. Send that thing to that person at that company who knows there's, it doesn't matter if if the, if this suggestion for a really exciting project gets turned down, it doesn't matter if this publisher doesn't want this book.

Oliver Burkeman: It does matter on some level got to make a living, but it doesn't matter on the sort of am I allowed to have I earned my place on the planet level and that makes you freer and ease. It makes it easier to send those things and to put yourself forward in those ways, I think.

Srini: Yeah. So I want to come full circle.

Srini: I realized there's a question I'd mentioned at the beginning about journalism and media. You're a journalist who was talking to a group of people on a media platform. And as a journalist, how do you think about. The role that our media consumption plays in our happiness and becoming more conscious about that.

Srini: Even this, like I had a listener one tonight, I shared this story before who emailed me. He said, I am sorry to tell you this. He's but the people on your show is so amazing. They're making me feel horrible about myself. And I replied back and said, I can relate. I was like, I've been there.

Srini: So I don't take any offense to what you just said. But you as a journalist, you're shaping perception as am I as a media creator.

Oliver Burkeman: Yeah, absolutely. And I think about this a lot. I think about it primarily with regard to like the news, the political and international and national news. You're raising another sort of very closely connected point.

Oliver Burkeman: I think about how, people in my old position by trying to share what's most useful and up inadvertently giving this idea that our lives. Unbroken accomplishment. I don't think I've done that in this interview. I think possibly the opposite, but it's if I find a piece of if I find some, if I have some sort of useful insights and I write about it, and then next time I'm writing, I do the same someone who only knows me through my writing, thinks all I do in my life is like living in this world of deep wisdom.

Oliver Burkeman: And and sometimes I get wonderfully almost embarrassingly, nice emails from readers about about how great I am. And once or twice I have shared them with my wife who is finds it. Absolutely hilarious. Cause she has to put up with all the other sides. Yeah, a normal human. And so I think there is that risk just in the way that media works, especially, these days we have to we want to try to make stuff that people, the people that inspires people and that they want, and then you get this weird effect.

Oliver Burkeman: It's a bit like the old thing about people only post their vacations and their weddings on Facebook. So you end up thinking all your friends have just on vacations and at weddings all the time, because they don't post about just being bored. Although they do that too.

Oliver Burkeman: The fact that, I'm the thing that I'm really thinking about now, especially as I move away from I don't really do news type journalism anymore. I'm Ray. I think there were some very unhealthy incentives operating in the sort of attention economy on newspapers. And I don't just mean like bad publications that pump out a disinformation of which there are many, but even very reputable, good newspapers, the most reputable ones who are just trying to inform, there are all sorts of reasons why they are unavoidably incentivized to create a more alarming picture of the world than is necessarily right.

Oliver Burkeman: A scarier picture of the world. That is right. I've noticed the, even during coronavirus, which by the way, I think is a desperately serious crisis and a catastrophe. I'm certainly not someone who thinks it's like, shouldn't make a big deal of it. But even these things that are legitimately very serious, there's an effect of the media to spread even more gloom and despair that is necessarily.

Oliver Burkeman: Justified at any one time. And again, I don't think it's because the journalists, the cynics, I think it's because the structure of how this is happening now in the attention economy is so is what it is. And so I think more and more, we have a kind of person that'll part of self-help. Now I feel like all the sort of responsibility we have to ourselves is it's really figuring out how we manage our connection to all of that.

Oliver Burkeman: I wrote a piece a year ago now about this weird way that so many people seem to inhabit the news cycle. I can't even express any other way. They live inside the news. They and I've done it a bit too, right? It's it's not that they just think that politics is important.

Oliver Burkeman: It's like they think politics is where their life really is. And then their house and their job and their family and their friends. That's a bit secondary. That's not like their real life. Somehow that's gotta be unhealthy because you don't have, because you're deliberately identifying with a realm where you like.

Oliver Burkeman: Control and you lack the ability to make a significant difference on your own. So I don't know. I feel like there's some there's. I might try to write more about it, but we really need to think about how to sanely relate to the media today as a kind of, it's like something kids should be being taught in school.

Srini: Wow. This has been absolutely phenomenal. I am so thrilled that I got to have a chat with you about this. I feel like I could talk to you for hours. This has just been so fascinating. Before I let you go, I know that, so I have one final question, but I know you said you have a new book coming out. I want to make sure I give you an opportunity to talk about it because of course we'll have you back when the new book comes out.

Srini: So what's the deal with the new

Oliver Burkeman: book? Great. The book is it's going to be next a late spring, early summer, but it's that it's out. It's called 4,000 weeks time management for mortals. And it's a sort of I suppose one way of thinking about it is it's an attempt to help us get rid of some unnecessarily stressful ideas about time and how we use our limited time on the planet.

Oliver Burkeman: And also then to look at how, what are some more constructive ways. I tried to take the idea of time management, but then take it like really seriously, like stupidly seriously in a way. How did, how do you use the time that you have on the planet? Not not just what's usually meant by time management.

Oliver Burkeman: Coming out next year. Yeah.

Srini: Great. I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the unmistakable creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something on sustainable?

Oliver Burkeman: Wow, that's an interesting question. That it is the same question, it is the question to which I would answer that, that there is a sense in which our job in life, I think is to become more completely who we are. It's a kind of a paradoxical thought, but it has quite a lot of people think as have written about it in this way.

Oliver Burkeman: And I feel. There are certain kind of people I know in my life and who I aspire to become, who competently the way they more fully embodied themselves and who they were and what they came here for. If that makes sense than others. And I think that to me is the sort of is perhaps a criteria that answers your question.

Srini: Yeah as I said, this has been absolutely wonderful, amazing Antifa, hilarious thought provoking. I'm so glad that we get to kick off the year with your wisdom. I just thought it was, the right you are the right person to this year off with just based on where my thought processes has gone over the year.

Srini: Where can people find out more about you, your work, your books, and everything that you're

Oliver Burkeman: up to? My website is Oliver berkman.com. That's B U R K E M a n.com. And I have there a twice monthly email called the perfectionist, which I just launched a couple of months ago. I would love people to subscribe to, and I'm on Twitter at all of the government as well.

Srini: Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.