Relistening to Burkeman's "Meditations for Mortals"
After hearing Oliver Burkeman on a podcast last month, I listened to his Meditations for Mortals audiobook and was blown away -- it felt like he was talking directly to me through the book. As I listened to the book, I was struck with the (incredibly rare for me) desire to go through the book again, so I'll share some thoughts as I go through it again. Below are some notes from the Introduction of the book.
Burkeman's concept of imperfectionism's main tenet is "the day is never coming when all the other stuff will be out of the way, so you can build a life of meaning and accomplishment…" His point is that don't wait until focus on big, important projects/activities until life gets organized/sorted out, as it will never happen. It reminds me of the time management story of putting rocks in the jar before gravel or sand.
He talked about after publishing his time management book (Four Thousand Weeks), many readers reached out to him, to share their sense of not having things to together. He talked about Andrew Wilkinson talking about how achieving wealth or status doesn't make the problem go away, and the Wilkinson quote "Most successful people are a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity."
He talked about the Efficiency Trap, where you get better at getting things done, so you get more work to do (I used to call this being a "Victim of your own Competence" at Halfaker, as organized, hardworking people would often get crushed under the weight of additional responsibilities and scope, which was especially brutal when they didn't have the experience to know how to scale their leadership.
He talks about how pursuing a life of fulfilment requires shifting away from a focus on optimization and control and instead towards a looser grip to life, where we take bold actions, see how the world responds, and then adapt.
