Oliver Burkeman
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I do. I do. I have a really good one from out in Utah in the 1970s. We don't have the names of the people involved. I'm going to call them a man and a woman, but this is every bit their story. We just don't use their names. I think they actually didn't want their names used. That's what I recall.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So back in the 1970s, there was this young guy and young girl who were the main characters of the story. And I think they met in college and they go out on this first date. They go to a restaurant, a diner, and they got along fine, but there wasn't any magic.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
It was kind of a nothing date that they both kind of instinctively knew that this was likely not going to go anywhere beyond this first date. There's no chemistry. However, they both kind of intuitively noticed it. And the guy, towards the end of the date, when it's kind of like, okay, time to wrap things up now, he decided to take a chance. He figured, what's the worst that can happen?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I already can tell this isn't going anywhere. And he says to his date, he says, you know, do you want to do something kind of unexpected? Do you want to go do something kind of crazy with me right now? And the girl was actually like, kind of taken aback. Okay. What, what do you want to do? And he's like, well, I, I oftentimes go for walks out in Provo Canyon, this beautiful Canyon.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
That's not near it. It's nearby. It's got this amazing trail. It brings you out to this overlook with this incredible view of the stars. Like it's a really cool spot. And I go there, you know, later in the day and no one's there. And it's, it's pretty cool, but it's, you know, we're hiking in the woods in the middle of the night. You know what I mean? And she's like, OK, let's do it.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
You know, it's like suddenly the date went from going nowhere to it's kind of exciting. And so now there's there's chemistry that's like they're going into the unknown together. And so they quickly leave the diner. They hop in his car and it's a short drive over to the parking lot where Provo Canyon is. You know, he pulls into the spot. There's nobody there. They get out. And now there really is.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
They're getting along. They're kind of laughing, telling jokes. They're holding hands. And they walk right from the parking lot onto this paved trail that goes right into the forest. And so it's nighttime. This is a well-used trail. This is not some goat trail in the middle of nowhere. This is a well-used trail.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And so they start walking into the forest and after a while, and this is something they would say after the fact, but we know this is what was happening. As they were walking, the feel, the vibe of the night really changed as soon as they got into the woods. They're excited, the states suddenly become exciting, and then they get into the forest.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
They're on the trail, they're holding hands, they're walking, and both of them began feeling this really intense dread as they're walking in. But they don't know each other. This is their first date. They don't have the background of a relationship to begin touching on something that's hard to point out. Neither of them turned to the other and said, I feel uncomfortable.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Instead, they just kept their mouth shut and thought, okay, I'll just keep on going. So they stopped talking. They begin walking faster out of this kind of nervous energy they have now they're holding hands and they're just walking through this trail because they're trying to get to this overlook, basically get it out of the way and come on back, but it's all unspoken.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
They haven't said, boy, this is anxious. They just, they're feeling that way. And so they're walking on this trail again, surrounded by trees. There's nobody else out there and it's pretty dark. They don't have a flashlight. And as they're basically speedwalking at this point in silence, at some point they hear a rustling sound kind of off to the side.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And at the exact same time, the guy steps on something that he described as being soft and he stepped on it and he has no idea what he's stepping on. No clue. It's something soft. And he's heard this rustling sound and they're feeling anxious. And he immediately stops because he stepped on something. And the girl, she's sensing, okay, what's going on here?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And without any communication, they turned and walked out. Didn't even look down. They have no idea what's going on. It was like they both knew, let's get the fuck out of here. I don't know what's going on out here. And they practically ran back to their car, totally safe. They get in their car. And now that they're in the safety of their car, they kind of begin laughing about it.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Like, yeah, I wonder what that was. I stepped on something out there. I don't know, something moving around. Maybe there's a big animal. I don't know. But that was it. It was just, that was the whole date. And actually they wound up getting married because this date was like this kind of amazing thing where they bonded over the fear of being in this, this forest.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And so they get married, and 10 years later, they're at home, and the TV is on. It's tuned to like a Dateline type of show, like a true crime show. And neither of them are really watching. But an interview comes on, and it's a journalist talking to a death row inmate. It's a very famous death row inmate, and he's very near his execution date.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And he's giving this kind of full-blown interview about, you know, what he did. And at some point, the journalist asked him, was there ever a time that you almost got caught before you got caught?
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And the serial killer is like, yeah, there was a time I was out in Provo Canyon and I just killed a girl and I was trying to dispose of her body and I dragged her across the trail and this young couple comes turning around the corner. And they stepped on the body. And I was maybe a foot away holding her, looking up at them in the darkness, waiting to see what they were going to do.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
But for some reason, the couple didn't look down. They didn't look around. They just turned and left. And so that was it. That was the time I was caught. And so it turned out the guy or where they had come in contact with Ted Bundy, like one of the most infamous serial killers of all time, who effectively said, had he investigated, he would have had to kill the couple. That's great.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So they got their first date was running into Ted Bundy. Wow. Yeah. Oh, my God. And actually, if you're interested, there's several other close calls with Ted Bundy that if you Google close calls with Ted Bundy, he came close to killing people several times.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I forget what it was. Unfortunately, I don't remember all of the anecdotes, but there's quite a few that are, that one is the most startling because it's so like visceral what happened. But the others were, you know, this girl who almost went on a date with Ted Bundy, but then got a bad feeling about it and canceled.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And it like the day later he gets arrested for being Ted Bundy, um, stuff like, or one person who Ted Bundy randomly befriended this, this woman. And I think they were dating for a while and he was very close with her child. And it was, I mean, he's like in their family. while he's killing other people at the same time. And then he just broke up with her and moved on.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Like he didn't do anything to her or her family while he's actively killing all these women. But for some reason, he just had this normal family, happy, wholesome relationship with this girl for like a year. And she would find out after he was executed that she was actively dating a serial killer. So it's just Ted Bundy had all these weird interactions with people that have been documented.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
But that one to me is the most startling.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
I really think an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure with this. So I try to prophylactically have routines in place that seem to decrease the likelihood, including cold exposure, which for a long time was prescribed for melancholy. This is not new. But like medieval times? Like 100, 200 years ago, it was a prescription, cold baths for melancholy. AKA depression.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So this is what is old is now new again. But certainly cold exposure, I would say without a doubt, having a consistent exercise routine and something is better than nothing. Like the difference, the zero to one difference between no movement and some movement is black and white. So even if it is just going for a 20 minute walk twice a day, if you have a very packed day,
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Schedule your calls around your walks. Social time. Time with friends. Which is where I disagree with some of the...
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
very strong denouncements of say alcohol in the sense that like even one drink is terrible for you that may be true from a strictly biochemical perspective and i'm not advising you go out and get shit-faced five nights a week but for instance if one night a week i pre-schedule a group dinner on a friday and i'm gonna cook with friends and that means we drink wine while we're cooking
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
if that alcohol acts as a social lubricant and helps me connect with my friends, I think there's something to it. There are social effects, not just biochemical effects. I don't drink very much, but the group interactions and scheduling those in advance. On a yearly basis, I will block out This is very important for me.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
And again, not obsessing on the daily routine, but thinking about the weekly, which we've discussed, thinking about the annual. So I block out multiple weeks every year to take trips with family and friends. And I have two that I'm organizing right now. These are week-long trips. There will be, let's call it, six to ten people in each group.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Some will be slightly smaller for wilderness adventures, and those are blocked out for the year in advance. And this is really critical for a few reasons. It's not just about the experience. You have all of the group threads and excitement and training and prep and fantasizing and stupid dick meme jokes that guys swap or whatever in the WhatsApp groups that lead up to the trip.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Then you have the trip. And then you have all the memories and the shared experiences and the misadventures and the mishaps that you get so much juice out of these things. And those act for me as psychological safety nets. You always have something to look forward to if you have three or four of these a year.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So let me build on that and say another piece of managing or mitigating or preventing low mood for me is having some identity diversification, which means you're not just doing one thing. If you have your podcast, your startup, your job as the sole barometer of your self-worth, There's so many factors outside of your control or your investment portfolio, whatever it might be.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
If you were solely fixated on one thing, you're too vulnerable to black swan events or simply ups and downs due to variables that are outside of your control.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So in contrast, if you have your Saturday workout or you have your deadlift, you have rock climbing, you have archery, you have whatever it might be in addition to your primary work, in addition to drawing, in addition to your relationship that you're trying to cultivate and deepen.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
If any one of those things is down, just like in a stock portfolio, if they are somewhat uncorrelated, you can still have a good week. If you have a terrible week, but then you hit a PR on your Saturday workout. We did it, baby. We did it.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Yeah, exactly. And that that is very, very, very important to me that I have multiple tracks running at the same time, so that if one hits a roadblock, that it's it's not just an existential spiral.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Yeah, I would say one, I'll give some that are perhaps more easily within reach of most people and easier to recommend. Honestly, group dinners. Three to four friends. Group dinners. Long group dinners. No alcohol. If I see low mood coming, then no alcohol.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Yeah, you're borrowing happiness from tomorrow. And there isn't much. There isn't going to be much tomorrow. Someone put it to me. And if you compromise your sleep... For me, generally, low mood, if we want to call it depression, it's not a first cause. For me, I would say it's typically some type of anxious rumination, worrying about something. I compromise my sleep because I have onset insomnia.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
Then I consume too much caffeine, which further compromises my sleep. And then after three or four days, that's when the low mood slash depressive symptoms show up.
Modern Wisdom
#882 - The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)
So anything that compromises sleep, I try to avoid in that period.
The Ezra Klein Show
Burned Out? Start Here.
I feel like there's so much wisdom in the idea that's been so prevalent in recent years that one should praise children for their effort, at least as much as for their attainment, so that they don't get the idea that they've got to maintain a specific certain standard as a minimum for being acceptable, but that doing what they can and bringing themselves to the task is the thing that really matters.
The Ezra Klein Show
Burned Out? Start Here.
And yet I think, I wonder if that doesn't sort of reinforce the notion that if something's worth doing, it's going to feel kind of difficult or grueling or hard in some sense.
The Ezra Klein Show
Burned Out? Start Here.
Yeah, I mean, if we knew how, I think what we would want to do as parents, I think, it would be to guarantee that we were always just praising our children for being them, right? as opposed to either putting in the effort or as opposed to demonstrating certain innate qualities. We're taught from an early age that if it's worth doing, it should feel hard and unpleasant.
The Ezra Klein Show
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And one of the ideas I explore in this new book is how scary, in a way, it is for some of us – again, talking about me as much as anyone else –
The Ezra Klein Show
Burned Out? Start Here.
to ask that question you know what if this thing that i'm approaching in my life might be easier than i was expecting what if what if i don't need to sort of furrow my brow and tense every muscle in my body and sort of barrel into it as if i'm headed for a fight it's it's quite subversive in a way for some of us i think to allow that possibility
The Ezra Klein Show
Burned Out? Start Here.
This is an idea that I've adapted from a few sources. One of them is the work of a writer, Alex Pang. There is a huge amount of evidence that Alex and others gather to suggest, and it's mainly anecdotal, but it's not entirely anecdotal, that over and over again, all the way through history, you look at the daily routines of artists and authors, scholars, scientists, composers, the list goes on.
The Ezra Klein Show
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They each, when they have the freedom to do it, put about three or four hours in each 24-hour period into the kind of core-focused creative work that they do. The kind of work involving thinking and reflection that I think is increasingly widespread in the knowledge work era, right? And I'm sort of exploring the notion that there's something really...
The Ezra Klein Show
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wise for any of us who have something like this degree of autonomy over our time and absolutely not everybody does to kind of really work hard to ring fence that sort of three or four hour period in the day for the things that are at the core of your work i'm not suggesting we can do all our job in three or four hours a day but that we could sort of profitably separate out the kind of focus reflective part of it from the rest
The Ezra Klein Show
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not to try very hard to ring fence or schedule or defend the rest of it, right? Because we have to find some way of approaching the kind of work we do these days that treats this kind of focus time as sacred in some sense, but also doesn't turn us into the kind of jerk that you become, I think, if you're trying to sort of dictate how every hour of your time is used.
The Ezra Klein Show
Burned Out? Start Here.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that this is endemic these days. And as you say, it kind of arises in all sorts of different professional contexts. I mean, my basic outlook on this is just that it's never going to be done, right? The nature of...
The Ezra Klein Show
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world that we live in today especially but on some level i think it's a a timeless universal is that there is more that could profitably be done with our time than we will ever be able to do there is always something more that you could do uh cal newport who i know you've you've had on the show has this lovely line about how you could fill you know any arbitrary number of hours in a day with work that feels like it needs doing in that day right there's no there's no limit
The Ezra Klein Show
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Wow. I mean, I think that burnout really is probably best understood as having this sort of component of a lack of meaning. This component that you're not only working incredibly hard, but the harder you work, it doesn't seem to get you any closer to the imagined moment when you're actually going to feel on top of everything and in control and like you can relax at last.
The Ezra Klein Show
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that unless you place one. And I think in that inability to stop or at least to stop cogitating about it once you've left the workplace or whatever it might be, there is that sort of yearning to get to the point where it is all done and you can finally relax. And I think the skill is being able to relax. in the midst of it not being done. This is what Benedictine monks understand, right?
The Ezra Klein Show
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This idea that you have a work period, the bell rings. When the bell rings, you put down your work and you go on to the next thing. And there's a real kind of spiritual practice in being able to psychologically as well as physically put down the thing that you're working on just because the bell rang, not because you finished everything and it's all done.
The Ezra Klein Show
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Yeah, I love this. Hunji Ukenne was a British-born Zen master, as you say, and she used to say that her preferred approach to teaching was not to lighten the burden of the student, but to make it so heavy that he or she would put it down. And I'm certainly not a Zen master, but I think there is something...
The Ezra Klein Show
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really wonderful in this that sort of gives me goosebumps and that does characterize something I am hoping to try to do, which is to show that very often anyway, the path to peace of mind and peace of mind combined with being productive and functional and efficacious in the world comes not from kind of trying to
The Ezra Klein Show
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make things feel a bit better finding new ways to take on more work or to get more done to get closer and closer to that never reached point of control but really to take a good look at how unattainable that is really to feel what it means to be a finite human swimming in a
The Ezra Klein Show
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sea of infinite possibilities and infinite demands and infinite pressures and just to be like okay well maybe i can stop fighting that particular fight and have some new energy for doing the things that i actually can do that's what i understand by making the burden so heavy that you put it down
The Ezra Klein Show
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Yeah, I think that's fair. I suppose a nuance that I add to that just because of how this has mattered to me in my life to date and in coming to terms with these ideas is that it feels a bit less like a focus on death and dying.
The Ezra Klein Show
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It feels a bit less like that, something that I have no particular reason to believe I am more reconciled to than anybody else, so much as it is a focus on a very specific set of things that follow. from the fact that we're going to die. The fact that our time is not unlimited. We can't be in more than one place at a time.
The Ezra Klein Show
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I think anxiety is a big part of that, but anxiety can obviously manifest in
The Ezra Klein Show
Burned Out? Start Here.
We can't reach outside of the present moment and just check that everything in the future is going to be okay. All these different ways that we're limited that feel really uncomfortable, perhaps because on some ultimate level they are daily, hourly reminders of our forthcoming death. And how much effort we, by which I certainly mean me for many years, sort of put in to trying not to feel that.
The Ezra Klein Show
Burned Out? Start Here.
so many different life domains i think this idea that i love from the german social theorist hartmut rosa about resonance the vibrancy that makes life worth living i think that is what is gone in burnout right it's that sense of working harder and harder and harder just to stay in one place and it's not even working and what's the point of it all anyway
The Ezra Klein Show
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And so many of the things that we call self-improvement or we call making a life change or developing good habits, I think can be best understood as a big sort of structure of avoidance so that we don't have to really start to feel how uncomfortable and sort of claustrophobic it is to actually be who we are as finite individuals.
The Ezra Klein Show
Burned Out? Start Here.
a deep way and i should reflect on that yeah i love that i think there's there's a certain kind of cliched version of memento mori in the culture that sort of says you know life is very short so you've therefore got to cram every minute of every day with being as impressive or unusual or unconventional or just generally kind of high octane as you possibly can and I don't think that is the point.
The Ezra Klein Show
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I think the point of what we're circling around here is that when you really begin to let it permeate you, that we are of the nature, as Stephen Batchelor says, to be so finite, you get to exhale, right?
The Ezra Klein Show
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You get to let your shoulders drop, not in order to then just kind of veg out, but precisely then to move forward, doing a few of the things that would be the most meaningful things to do with your day. So it is a refocusing
The Ezra Klein Show
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Yeah, it is. And I think one way of understanding it, see what you make of this, but is that it is the same idea of wanting to feel like we are in control of the processes of our lives and actually valuing
The Ezra Klein Show
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or being tempted to value that feeling of control more than the things that we really want, which in your case is good ideas, as opposed to really the knowledge that you sat at your desk like a good worker for the right amount of time. Now, as you've said in other parts of this conversation, there are plenty of people who can't choose to go at a more leisurely pace into work.
The Ezra Klein Show
Burned Out? Start Here.
But I think the sort of unifying principle here is just that actually... There's a lot of positive things that come from being able to unclench a little bit that desire to kind of steer the day in the way that feels right and being able instead to listen to the whisperings of chance and serendipity. And then there's actually something about
The Ezra Klein Show
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really trying to control the day to within an inch of its life that militates against those moments of inspiration and this i think is a challenge at an organizational level too right i think there's plenty of reason to believe that the more kind of total control an organization seeks to impose upon people the easier it is for the real work to not get done
The Ezra Klein Show
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Yeah, I think you're right. It's one side of a coin when we need both of them. I think something that's sort of related, not quite exactly the same point, but something else that it leads to is that it encourages us to distrust our own intuitions about how would be the right way to spend the next hour, the next day, and sort of put our faith instead on
The Ezra Klein Show
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Now, it might often be in situations at school and even in the workplace where there's some coercion there, where we have to follow the rules. But then we sort of do it to ourselves even if we don't have to.
The Ezra Klein Show
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And people who start working for themselves or go freelance or whatever it is, very often find themselves, first of all, recreating the prison of rigid schedules that they thought they were escaping.
The Ezra Klein Show
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And one of the things that I think is really a problem there, and it's made a big difference to my working life to sort of let go of this a little bit, is that it teaches you that what you feel like doing is almost certainly the wrong thing. And that even when you are privileged as I am to have the luxury to ask in a given moment of the workday, what do I feel like doing now?
The Ezra Klein Show
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You kind of shouldn't ask it because probably... the answer would just be like getting distracted on social media or like just being passive and useless and lazy. And I don't think that's true at all for most of us. In the book, I quote a post that the meditation teacher Susan Piver wrote once that made a really big impact on me about sort of her own experiments in letting go of a
The Ezra Klein Show
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eventually throws you into some other state i'm curious how that resonates for you yeah that does resonate i think that um we really feel an extreme pressure from inside and from the culture and from all sorts of sources to overcome our built-in limitations you know to fit more in to the time that we have than anyone ever could to exert more control over how things unfold
The Ezra Klein Show
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what she wanted to do in each moment as an experiment. And finding that pretty much all of the sort of dutiful tasks that she was worried she couldn't be trusted to complete without a rigid internal set of commands got done anyway, because most of us want to keep our commitments and meet our deadlines and pay our bills if we're able to do so. So I think there's a real sort of
The Ezra Klein Show
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lack of faith in oneself that is inculcated by the idea that you've always got to be pushing on the side of self-discipline and never listening to what it feels like you might want to do on the inside.
The Ezra Klein Show
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Well, I do think I'm significantly different. Perhaps you would expect me to say that, but I think it's true. I think the claim that I'm more relaxed and easier to live with and all the rest of it is probably better addressed by my family than by...
The Ezra Klein Show
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than by me but i i believe it's true i think that it's not that i sort of changed completely and then shared my beautiful wisdom with uh the lucky public right it's that it's that these books like any book i think especially any book of advice these books are me working through these issues but something i find definitely not true about this podcast
The Ezra Klein Show
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Something that I find consistently to be true in writing books is that I will come up with kind of a
The Ezra Klein Show
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neat intellectual account of what i want to do for the book proposal but then to actually write the book i kind of have to change more in the direction of the ideas that i'm outlining right i mean the book won't write itself without me changing so to some extent it happens during the process of writing the book also you know it's slow i think it would be completely ridiculous to claim that um
The Ezra Klein Show
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Any of this is a kind of module you can install in your brain, and after that, you're golden. It's all fine. I think it's in the nature of it that it's sort of falling off the wagon and getting back on again. One thing I have a very clear and vivid experience of all the time, though, is that it's not that I won't fall into these old ways of being, it's that I...
The Ezra Klein Show
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well firstly that i sort of notice what i'm doing more quickly and can let go of it more quickly which i think is something that um also sort of formal meditation is something that people say brings them right that ability to sort of catch yourself but also i just kind of Don't believe my own bullshit as much as I used to.
The Ezra Klein Show
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So it's not even that I'm not going to try and do more than I can reasonably do in a day. It's not even that I'm not going to like download the new productivity app and mess around with it. But I don't think it's going to save my soul. And I don't end up sort of postponing real life now until I get to the point where it has.
The Ezra Klein Show
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And as a result, I think I am able to be more present and attentive and like actually show up for the life that I actually have.
The Ezra Klein Show
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because we feel that we must just to keep our heads above water in the modern world. But I say that we can't because they're built-in limitations. You know, there's always going to be more that you could meaningfully do with your time than the time you have to do it. You're never going to be able to feel confident about what's coming in the future because it's in the future, all the rest of it.
The Ezra Klein Show
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I think that's true. And I also think that there are dangers in sort of setting it up as something that is only worth doing if it is done completely consistently. I think that one of the things I try to do in this latest book is in the structure of it, in this idea of four weeks, short daily chapters that you might read at the pace of...
The Ezra Klein Show
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of one a day or so was specifically an intention to try to get at this issue, to try to let these ideas seep under your skin, into your bones, through coming back to them and back to them. There is a greater benefit, I think, for people in marinating in this kind of stuff. than in necessarily being taught a sort of five-point set of steps to execute.
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And I think that finding a commitment mechanism is absolutely one version of it, but finding some way to just sort of be in these ideas for an extended period, there's nothing that rivals that.
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That's a great question. I mean, I grew up in a more sort of suburban setting and I now live in a much more rural one, but it's roughly the same part of England for sure. And I find lots of very predictable benefits to my nervous system of living in natural landscapes. That's a common experience.
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And I think sort of Throwing yourself at that wall again and again and again and never getting to that place of feeling in control is a thoroughly dispiriting and fatiguing way to live.
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There's actually one of the sort of slightly surprising things, although I shouldn't have been surprised because I had sort of explored this a little bit in 4,000 Weeks, is the sort of benefits of something that I think I would call inconvenience, ultimately. A sort of friction in life that I didn't experience in Brooklyn.
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Just tiny little things like one has to think about when you're going to go and run various errands instead of hopping out to the store to buy an extra ingredient while the dinner is still boiling on the stove.
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A degree to which you have to kind of, this is a famous thing about rural life, I suppose, but a degree to which you have to sort of be attentive and aware of the interests of other people because you're going to see them tomorrow and the day after and the day after and you might need them in a pinch. There's something about the environment that while it is relaxing,
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compared to very sort of hyper-stimulated urban one, actually calls me to attend to it in a way that feels a little bit effortful, but ultimately feels like completely right.
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Well, I think that the area that we live specifically, the North York Moors, is characterized by big, open, rather bleak, especially in winter, moorland. It's close enough to the setting of Wuthering Heights, if people need a reference point.
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And there's something about walking in that environment that is a kind of in-the-bones, deeper-than-conscious, really, most of the time, reminder that I'm really a very small deal in the scheme of things, which I personally find to be incredibly liberating and not dispiriting at all.
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Yeah, this is Eric Hageman. This is a profile that the Times ran, headlined, The Man Who Knew Too Little, which is a great piece of headline writing. And
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What interested me about this story, so you've summarized it, but yeah, the anecdote that really stuck in many people's minds was that when he left his lovely home to go to his local liberal-filled coffee shop, he would wear noise-canceling headphones playing white noise, I think, as I remember it, so that he wouldn't have to hear anyone else discussing what was happening in national politics.
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And there were various other examples like this in the piece. And you can imagine, and you specifically, I'm sure, recall the kind of response to that in many quarters, right? There was a sort of standard response among kind of left-leaning media who were writing about this profile, or just sort of mocking him on social media, that this was kind of just monstrous privilege, right? It was just...
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outrageous and repugnant to imagine that you know because so many people couldn't choose to opt out of the real ramifications of what was happening and what is now happening again but it was clear from the profile that one of the main things he was spending his time on while um while not filling up his attentional bandwidth with political angst was restoring an area of wetlands that he'd purchased and planned to release back to public ownership
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It just strikes me as possible that this is somebody not being a monster of selfishness, but rather being quite realistic about the finite nature of his attention and his time and his sort of emotional energy.
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And deciding in a quite defensible way to withdraw it from things that are sort of structured in our attention economy to try to claim it in every single moment and put it somewhere that has an absolutely important role to play in making the world a better place in the future. So I kind of, you know, I wanted to make a defense of him on those grounds.
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I do think there's a... He's a sort of an avatar for something.
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Right, right. No, absolutely. And you're putting me in mind also of the work of the political philosopher Robert Talese about how he argues, as I understand it, that one of the things that the health of democracy could do with it is more time spent with people who are on some level on the other side of the aisle.
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but not arguing about politics, not trying to understand other people's political opinions, not having our heads in politics at all, but just building civic life at sports games and at gigs and in bowling leagues and all the rest of it in places where politics doesn't arise and where you don't know what the politics of the other people are. That's obviously...
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harder and harder with the sort of total geographical sorting of people into their partisan groups, as I know you've explored in a lot of detail. And also, perhaps we've reached a point in American politics, especially where the thought that somebody might be on the other side from you means that you just can't bear the thought of having them in your social world.
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I'm sure you hear this a lot. How do you think about it? I mean, I don't think I'm making the case that on every metric life is worse today, or even on almost any metric that life is worse today. There is a specific thing, which is the sense of fighting against time, the sense of
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But there is a room also here for us sort of getting our heads out of politics, even for the sake of politics.
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I'm using the term in that context, resonance, having discussed the work of Hartmut Rosa on that topic, this idea that there is something that the modern world lacks, and he argues that it lacks it because of our attempts as societies and individuals to extend more and more control over the world. Something about that that squeezes out a sense of
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I think that might just be another word we could use here, right? A sense of really sort of being alive, which on some level makes no sense because we're all alive, but I think people know intuitively what that means. They know experiences in their own lives when they really felt alive and when they didn't. And I do think that there are sort of dysfunctional forms of feeling alive.
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There's a kind of an intoxication that I'm sure comes when people are picking fights in social media spaces, for example, or I'm sure when they are sort of burrowing themselves deep into sort of intricate stories of what's really going on in the world, despite what appears to be going on, the conspiracies unfolding behind the scenes and all the rest of it. There is just something...
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I find that even as somebody who repudiates most of that stuff, that's the point at which I can think like, oh yeah, I can see why that might feel fleetingly good. It's a little bit related in a way to the way that anger can feel strangely pleasurable in a certain way. There is an aliveness that can be all too readily lacking from our days that it does reintroduce
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being hounded by or oppressed by time that is i think a very modern thing i think it is a thing that people in the medieval period for example just would not have had to trouble with this specific sense of racing against time of trying to get sort of on top of our lives and in control and um you know to make this the year when we finally master the situation of doing our jobs or being parents or
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I think there is. I think it is a sort of rather suspect kind of pleasure when you examine it. As you hinted out there, there's a kind of an avoidance very often motivating it. And I think that's what is at the heart of a lot of workaholism. I'm not accusing you of being a workaholic necessarily, but I think it's adjacent to what you're talking about, right? The idea that when it's
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uncomfortable to confront certain ways in which your life feels out of control there is a sort of sense of calm control in work that then makes it very appealing there is firstly a sense that like you're a little bit more in charge now but also the sense that it's all leading onwards and onwards to this this future moment when you're really going to have sort of mastered life and um
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I think that probably is a feeling that is reinforced by professional success and therefore it gets worse in a way the more that it seems to pay off because it becomes more and more useful as a form of avoidance. There is a kind of a high or an intoxication which I guess has some parallels to kind of other forms of intoxication and what they are emotionally giving people.
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sitting in the the actual unending mess of life yeah i agree completely i think all sorts of meaningful and ultimately very joyous experiences of of life are are kind of uncomfortable to let ourselves fall into because they involve accepting our limited nature, our vulnerability to distressing emotions, all the rest of it. We have to just sort of be present and ready for whatever might happen.
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I suppose a sort of perfectly realized Zen master in other words very much not me would say that it is on some level possible to sort of complete each moment of existence in that way to sort of fully experience and then completely let go of each passing portion of time but it's a heck of a lot easier when it's reinforced by the structures where we're working and living inside yeah
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Well, I've mentioned the work of Hartmut Rosa, who is really writing on a societal level in some ways, I feel like, about the things that I'm writing about on a more individual level. He has a small book called The Uncontrollability of the World. He's also written a very big one, but if we're going for easily finishable things.
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spouses or anything else i think that is a really specific acute modern phenomenon that has to do with how we relate to time is it our relationship to time or is it our relationship to life to our expectations about life
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let's go with that that's a really lovely overview of this idea that there is something important in the idea that the world escapes our complete control however much we might think we wish it otherwise I'd also recommend a book by a friend of mine, Elizabeth Oldfield, called Fully Alive.
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I think the subtitle is Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, which I've written from a Christian perspective, but I actually think really gets at this idea of aliveness that we've been circling around and what that might mean in the modern world. So I think that was quite an important book for me in bringing some of those ideas into focus.
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And then there's a book by a spiritual teacher called Joan Tollefson, which has the remarkable title, Death, the End of Self-Improvement.
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It's essentially, she's a sort of a non-dual teacher, I guess, in a sort of eclectic, modern, spiritual teacher. And the book is essentially a memoir of handling the circumstances around the death of her mother and then her own serious illnesses in older age. But what I really appreciated about
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This book was how, unlike a lot of books in this space, which claim to be about showing up for the present moment, but then when you look at the present moments in question, they all seem to be rather lovely ones. They all seem to be looking at the beauty of nature or appreciating the beautiful taste of a glass of water or whatever it might be.
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She's really applying this idea to some grueling experiences. And I think... suggesting that there is something about full immersion in the life that is actually happening to us that is meaningful and elevating and deep and perhaps even enjoyable when the content is not um is not happy at all oliver berkman thank you very much thank you very much indeed
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I think that is right, or at least partly right. I think that we do live in a time when there is that expectation that life should be manageable in that way. And there is also the promise in technology and, you know, that we're sort of almost there, right? That like one last heave of self-discipline combined with the right set of
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apps and the right outsourced services that handle our food delivery or our DIY around the house, you know, we could finally cross that gap.
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And I do think, yes, I do think that if you live in an era when there isn't that expectation, and go back before, you know, the last few generations to, again, back to the medieval period when people would have just lived in this situation of completely endemic food, uncertainty. I don't think it's necessarily true that they didn't find the opportunity to be happy.
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I think the crucial distinction is that they wouldn't have postponed that until they felt in control. So they wouldn't have said, before we can have a festival, before we can sit back and look at the stars, we have to sort of know what we're doing here and feel in charge and control of things just exactly because that
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possibility of being in control of things for most people anyway was just so remote so yeah i think the closer we get or the closer it feels like we're getting to being in charge of life in a way the more tormenting and dispiriting it gets that we still aren't tell me about the idea of productivity debt
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I just sort of stumbled across this concept and found that it resonated really a lot with my audience. I just define this as the feeling that so many of us have, I think, that we sort of wake up in the morning feeling like we have to output a certain amount of work in order to have sort of justified our existence on the planet.
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And as with paying off a financial debt, the very best thing that could happen if the day goes really well is that you end up at zero again before the next day it all starts again and you wake up in a new productivity debt. I mean, just to head off an obvious objection, anyone who works for money is in a kind of a productivity debt to whoever pays them, right?
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But I'm really trying to pinpoint this existential sense that if you don't do a certain amount, you kind of
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don't quite deserve to be here and you know there are lots of sort of causes we could look at here the sort of protestant work ethic the idea that there's something sort of inherently virtuous in in hard work is is relevant here but i think that that is just a really powerful thought that we sort of go through the day in deficit and our best hope is to get to the end of the day exhausted and be like okay i just about earned the right to be here for one more day
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I just wonder, do we really need to say that the only viable way for making a difference in the world has to be from this place of deficit? Do we all have to be what the psychologists call insecure overachievers who are doing lots of things in the world, but doing them fundamentally to kind of fill a void? Or...
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plug a hole so i think where i'm headed with all of this is in some ways to try to sort of salvage the notion of ambition and of making a difference whether that's you know in a business kind of context or a political or activist kind of context but to salvage it from these notions of sort of doing it anxiously and insecurely to try to plug a hole could we do it
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as an expression of the fact that we already feel good about ourselves. There's a strand of thinking in Zen Buddhism specifically, I think, that suggests that if we could only get out of our own ways, if we could only let go of some of the things that inhibit action, we would just sort of naturally do a lot of things, many of which would be pro-social and for the good of the whole.
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It's not that we need to kind of be constantly kicking ourselves from behind with the threat of being a bad person if we don't do it. On some level, that's aspirational, including for me, but I think it's useful as something to navigate by.
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have been known to be evasive on these questions of causality because I just think it's overdetermined, really. I do definitely think that we live in an era when there's a real kind of just natural incentive to wanting to say, like, there's more to do. Here's how to do it better. You're doing X all wrong, you know?
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Because that's just the world in which we live and how attention is commodified and all the rest of it. And then, of course, the sort of psychotherapeutic, psychoanalytic understanding that the lack is the lack of kind of good enough, unconditional love received by almost everybody as kids because so many parents are so normally and humanly imperfect.