IN-DEPTH:The Productivity Trap (w/ Oliver Burkeman)
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I'm counterpart, and this is in depth a simi regular series where I interview interesting people about the quest to cultivate .

a deep life. I'm excited .

about today's episode. IT is the first episode in which we have the guest here in person at the studio at the deep H. Q.

And I will be talking to Oliver burk men. You probably know Oliver from his mega best selling book four thousand weeks. We talk about this book all the time on the podcast.

It's a book to took a really psychologically astute and philosophical cally sophisticated look at productivity culture, the role of productivity and how we think about our life and the life will live, and how to get past some of the traps that thinking too much about productivity can instore you within. He has a new book out called meditations for models that helps you take some of the ideas from four thousand weeks and actually embody them in your daily practice. It's more practical, but is also philosophical, and it's fascinating.

And I loved IT. So I was very excited to have all over, over here what we talked about, the goal of this conversation was attack of the question, what is the role of productivity in the deep life? I think to the outside observer, there's places where Oliver and I are at odds.

He is very suspicious of productivity systems. Uh, he is suspicious of over thinking and trying to be over organized. He does believe you do need to be organized to some degree, but that we often take IT too far. And so what I wanted to understand, because I think this is critical for getting the deeper life right, is how do we walk this line of having enough time manager, an organization in our life that is not chaotic and stressful, but avoided having so much that we become trapped in the pursuit of efficiency for the sake of efficiency, that we use productivity and its promises to escape the realities of life. And while doing so, also avoid its wonders.

So if you've had these questions yourself, these questions about, am I doing too much to be organized? Am I not doing enough? How much do I need to do? Should I be guilty that i'm not time blocking is IT a problem that i'm not using full capture? This conversation is for you um we really get into IT, we get philosophical, we get technical.

And the second half of the conversation, we try to exactly specify where all of and I agree and exactly where we disagree. And we try to find what's useful in the space in between. IT was of A, I loved having, I think, for anyone thinking about the deep life and the role of organization, and imagine the deep life, this conversation exactly what you need to hear.

I think you're going to like to go buy Olivers s books. Their fantastic. He, he's a great writer, long time journalist.

I love in the professional writers who spent their whole life as professional writers and journalists. When they tackle these topics, the books are really good, right? They know how to turn a phrase.

They know how to structure a chapters. They're fantastic books. I highly recommend them.

But you want to think you're going to enjoy this conversation, which we will be presenting without any commercial interruption. Me, Oliver burk men and a lot of deep diving on productivity, enjoy. And I am pleased to have joining me here in the deep work.

H. Q, none other than Oliver burkman. Oliver, thank you for making the trip here. Or to D. C.

it's, it's so exciting to be a in the location, you know.

Yes, today is if I have this right. The american release state the day were recording this of your new book, meditations for models. That's right.

Very excited. It's been on the U. K. For a month, has been doing very well.

Let me ask you, just so people know off the back, i'm going to try to describe the relationship of your new book to your last book four thousand weeks and you tell me how you would modify that, right? right? Because I don't see that as it's not quite right to say follow up the four thousand weeks.

It's not quite right to say a response to four thousand weeks. I see IT as maybe a companion flash collaboration, flash iteration. There's new things in IT indeed, like it's more practical.

But IT also has a lot of philosophy. And some of the philosophy is we're finding what you talked about in four thousand weeks in some of the philosophy is also new, which gives you a really interesting relationship. Am I getting that .

sort of vegas right? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's IT was very important to me writing IT. That would not be something that requires you to have red a word i've written beforehand. But I think there is on on one level. My subject matter is human funny de limitation, how we get things done and enjoy life in the situation of being as as limited as we are. And I guess the the focus of this book is much more in my mind, on action at a data level and really going from you know no going from the fact you can you can have all sorts of ideas about how you want to live and work and not and never actually do them. So it's about crossing that gap into sort of actually doing the things ah.

which is kind of where things get exciting. So let's back up a little bit. So what I want to to starts my my goal we talked about off like my goal is to try to understand this is a show about the deep life.

What role does productivity play in the deeper life that can be a goal including, and I think this one, glad you're hear, the traps is a lot of dangers. As you tried to integrate productivity ideas into your life, there's a lot of traps there. So let's start from the beginning.

I want to try to identify Better what IT is you are responding to with both this book in four thousand weeks because I I think something that's different about you then other writers from the last five years who have had some skepticism about productivity culture is, you know about what's you speak. You wrote this colum for the guardian. I think I accounted over six hundred columns.

Over four hundred, I don't know. I counted as simply, there was over a decade too many. You won a coal lump that looked at advice culture, self help culture, productivity culture for a very long time before he came to these books. So what was that, that you came to notice that LED you to the motivation to start writing skeptically about this culture?

yes. So I mean, one of the great benefits of writing a column for a long time where you get to, among other things, you know, test out all these methods and systems and techniques is that, you know, once you've you have tried one hundred of them and none of them have been the silva bullet, that brings total piece of mind and calm productivity to your life.

You you begin to asked the next question, which is whether there's something a miss with with that quest. Obviously, if you do A A more important job in the world and all, you only have the time to test out a handful of these. You might still believe that it's just a question of finding the right systems. I really feel like I went through a very kind of productive and positive kind of disillusionment and .

in how earnest I read your original column day. And there's an earnestness in IT like I really do want to try to figure out what works. And then there is also, I think, a very british sort of self application of IT as well.

But but how earnest, if you are looking back at two thousand and six, what would if I interviewed back then, what were you hoping did you at that point where you holding out a significant piece is going to be found? Or you already pretty suspect because the column had has a bit of a ordinary title. Very curious where your mindset was back then when you started.

It's interesting, I think, of the process of writing that column over the years of being a journey from cynisca two sincere, really, even though as well disillusion ment in the ways that were being offered to to set of build a meaningful life.

But the, you know, I think i'd began thinking I was mainly going to sort of be knocking and sarcastic about terrible self help, still taking this sort of quest for happiness seriously on some level, because IT is obviously on some level of very serious quest. But the big surprise was how much value that was like hiding in the cheekiness than the kinge. That's also much more interesting and provocative thing to present.

The architect, al guardian reader, right? My audience was, I took my audience anyway to be similarly jed and skeptical. So that sort of obviously, is that always with what I just said about getting disillusion by the methods. But I think this so that was a of a twin track thing where I gradually was sort of forced into having different on my own ideas about how to get to these goals. But I, but I did get more sincere about the the goals.

And I think what's going on their party, obviously, is that when you start that thing often, when you start writing cydnus ally about stuff as a relatively Young adult, part of what you're doing is sort of a bit of a defense mechanism against the fact that you do care about these things and you would like to find ways to be less anxious and feel less oppressed by obligation and overwhelm. But it's kind of little bit embarrassing to admit IT. So you do some .

stic stuff in and do do journalists have a like a special relationship with these hypo topics like productivity? Because this is a weird job, is a very autonomists in some sense, is also very deadline driven in.

There's an unlimited ceiling IT feels like you can go you can advance to become as uh famous as as successful as you can imagine or anywhere along the way and all kind of comes down to what you're going to do and you're all sort of starting from the same place and everyone you have to find some way to break out. IT feels like journalism, maybe similar to like academia has a special relationship to this advice because they worry a lot about the things at this advice promises to help. Yeah.

I think that's right. And I was sort of doubling that up by then. The substance of what I was writing about was this stuff as well. But yeah, that kind of deadline driven environment where you are a part of a collective Operation and getting the pages filled physically or or digitally is is the ultimate sort of driving goal. But yes, it's really sort of individual alisa. In another way, everyone inside that organization who's a writer anyway, sort of specially on some level, competing with with each other and IT yeah feels like IT really matters to find the most ect effective and efficient ways to to to deal with each project so you can get onto the next bigger one, I suppose.

Yeah, it's in the water there. So then what was when you had the revelation? And you talk about your last book, he was on a bench famously in broke lin, how do you describe the revelation you had that LED to four thousand weeks?

Well, this was very much in intellectual kind of revelation. And the process with me, I don't know if it's I think it's probably quite common, is that I I have these kind of what seems like incredibly clarifying intellectual insights. And then I can take years and years the kind of live into a new way of of, of living.

My intellect goes first, and then the rest of me has to catch up. But I was, yes, I tell the story. I was, i'd stopped to a park bench on my way to my to micro working space in in brooklin, where we lived.

And I just had even more article deadlines and stuff I was supposed to do by the end of that week than I usually had. I was even more about IT all cycling through what combination of, you know, productivity tricks and total suspension of my social life or sleep. You know, I was going to used to try to force my way through the status completion on this stuff and just being struck really powerlines the thought, oh, it's impossible.

I'm i'm trying to do something that isn't possible. I am trying to do more things than there will be a way to do in the time available and just experiencing that as just incredibly liberating as supposed to depressing, right, that moment of i'm trying to do something that isn't on the cards. So actually the very best thing I can do is to pick some of the things that seem like the best use of my time and energy and and do them. And incidently, like you're sort of not overwhelmed in that moment because the whole conceptual structure of overall kind of Operate that you take .

things off your plate right after was just a matter of saying notice some things or backing out of some things. What was the practical implications on your workload?

And in that moment, I think in that moment, a lot of IT was just A A little bit of renegotiation of existing deadlines facing up to the risk of people being furious with me and of course, finding out that you've got their own problem. They they were not pacing up and down their offices, cursing my name and didn't really mind at all, taking a bit of extra time.

I don't remember in detail, but I think there might well have been a project or two that I had to essentially put on the ice. And then the rest of IT is it's almost like IT wasn't even real in some sense, right? It's like, yes, i've got a lot of emails that need answering on for some value of need answering.

But if IT takes in a lot of those cases, if you sort of tree out of them, in some of them maybe you never reply to and some of them, yeah gonna take two weeks. It's not not particularly proud of that, but it's not going to bring catastrophe. And there's the depth of the sort of unexamined idea that something absolutely terrible is gonna en. If you don't yet to the end of a sort of purely on some levels.

self created list of tasks is is a joke on the show that that people like to imagine. There's a dark room somewhere where all the people you work with are sitting around and they have all this data about you up on the board somewhere and they're studying in your patterns of like how many things that all of us say no to wait a second and he said, note to fifty percent more things in Normal and what's his average response time they're all Carrying about .

this and no one cares and I mean, know how weirdly insulting to the people involved, right? It's like, know when I I was I was saying to my editor of the publisher had just the other day, right? Is not that I suffer from this like I used to, but when I am late with a deadline or something, there is this sort of involuntary mental image that this, you know, busy, high status person with lots on their plate is doing nothing but just of sitting around thinking bad all about me.

because, you know, they are all sitting around with sifters of Sherry.

And look, obviously, that there's a certain fact or here, whether people in different situations and there are genuinely people who are in a sort of tight to spot them, me in terms of it's a part of a job requirement to answer every email from a certain personal kind of person in a certain time scale. And so these traders can be different. And i've got a certain amount of good fortune in this very sort of autonomous life. But even in those cases, the sort of existential layer that people bring to IT, yes, like like then they have not earned their right to exist on the planet if they if they don't power through all the things, I think that that is something we can all let go of.

Okay, so you have this insight. So what I do, the response. So once, once you recognize you can't do IT all. There's, I mean, I think you use the word utility.

There's a utility to the idea that um you can get IT all organized right and like my saying this, right, that people have this idea that there's this this group of things you need to do to be successful and it's it's maybe a little bit outside of what you could do comfortable ly, but if you just get your systems right, you can tackle and you will be successful. But reality, you write about us. No, no, there's a vast universal things you could be doing about how organize you are, most things you're not going to do.

So why have that eps alone of that like extra twenty exhausted percent doesn't really make much of a difference in terms of how much you're getting done. Not really. Most things you're say no to to anyways. If I have that right offers all do I have that right? And I thinking .

about that, right? Yeah, I think one way that so of resonate a lot with me is that it's about a certain kind of feeling of of control, right? It's about it's about wanting to feel all these phrases like on top of everything or like you have your life sorted out or something like that. And and it's the the problem with that whole approach is, is that that sort of the point of which that feeling of control would be satisfied yeah is is essentially when you had your arms round and infinite yeah amount yeah.

So before we get too far into, okay, now, how do we rewire our mindset and then what practically we can do from the new book? I'm curious in the relationship between your ideas and critics and what I think is the other mainline of productivity critique the last five years, which I would I guess I D characterizes like the genotype maybe and helmet ter son cam, that's much more of an economic critique I think more of like a classic marxist tiguan wit says, okay, uh, these productivity mindsets there are sort of caution sues that you also talk about, are essentially implanted by the imperative of capitalism, is more of a marx's critique that these are, it's a mindset it's been in planted to try to exploit labor year critical ks him very different. They see more psychological, the economical. But how do you how do you think about the relationship between europe s and the other kind of big names that have been critical productivity in the last few years yet?

Such an interesting question because I I do appreciate the best that work so much at the same time as kind of feeling that I diverge from IT. For me, IT starts with an issue of like my personality. Really at the end of the day, I I want to try to wage the idea of productive ambition within the kind of context that we we live.

I'm not sort of drawn to the revolutionary implications of of that most of marxist critique. So I am just like, okay, I would really like to have much more piece of mind be coming into this. And to some extent still today, I would like to have much more piece of mind and calm, but I would like that not to be a kind of checking out of of accomplishment society and and launching cool stuff and making some money out of IT and all the rest of IT.

So I am of trying to reconcile those things for myself. The question then, I suppose, whether that can be done or whether sort of consistency requires you to eventually end up in that in that Marks this camp? And then at the end of the day, I just sort of like I feel like i'm writing for people who get up in the morning and have a to do list and have stuff they wanna achieve and stuff that they feel pressured to do and and all the rest of IT.

So maybe in the census, just like while we're waiting for the revolution, but what can we do? You know because I absolutely think the there's a legitimate criticism to be made of what I do, which is that IT sort of puts the social economic critique to one to one side and and doesn't very much adress IT had on and sort of says that all very well. But at the same time, here we are as individuals trying to sort of live flashing lives right here.

right? I guess the standard critique from the revolutionary is don't distract, don't distract the masses with practicality because you'll turn their mind away from revolution. But but actually it's it's a very healthy tension that is good to have the pressure on the world of work and capitalism. But you also have to be helping individuals, as you say, who right now feel completely overwhelming and and don't know what to do. And capital m is probably not going to fall this year.

right? And i'm being a little bit unfair and talking about revolution, right? There's a completely legitimate sion of this that says what really matters is family friendly health care systems and child care systems and all sorts of other aspects.

And if we have that, then a lot of these kind of bad tensions that we feel in our work, in our productivity might not arrive. And but again, you know the responses yeah totally. And meanwhile, what what should we do?

I think an interesting place where maybe i'm closer to those writers than you is something that I think the those writers and me are very interested in, is the kind of boring details of knowledge work. Like, how does knowledge work function? How does management happen in knowledge work? How does work flow?

Like, what's the structure of a typical job where you work at a computer and you go to a cuba? Color this or that? And i'm interested and I want to get your opinion on this because he feels like there's there's two different relevant forces that are both the source of people's exhaustion with the idea productivity. One is the psychological which which I think you talk about very well, the the pressure you put upon yourself to figure IT out, have the best systems, get IT all done fine, peaceful productivity. Then there is what's happening in the the workplace.

So it's like what I write about my last book, suitor productivity um the rise of the managerial strategy of using visible activity as a proxy for useful effort um the impossibility of that it's almost as it's an institutionalize ation of, I think, the future mindsets that you talk about in your book as ultimately being uh nalty tic and you're never going you're never going to get your answer on everything and you yet the modern workplace has these pressures of activities. One matters so more Better than less in any moment where you could be working and you're not you're actually having a personal negotiation and having to baLance your life against work and is just like impossible sort of baLance you have. I mean, so how do you how do we think about the world of work? Like what is its contribution to this exhAusting that people feel with productivity and and how that overlap with the way you talk about IT?

Why are that an interesting question? And and I think you're right. That is something that connects you with the, we might say more radical productivity critique in the same way.

And the main difference, I always say, is they think the world the work is doing on purpose to exploit and get more labor. And I say no to know the managers and the role and knowledge have no body what they are doing. It's a dumpster fire.

It's random and everyone is running around. And actually IT makes people very unproductive. IT doesn't create value. It's not it's not like getting the longer hours out of the a simply line worker or it's bad for the worker.

But you build model t keepers as an actually the way we work, acknowledge work as chaotic IT exhausts people. It's unproductive. It's bad for the organization.

It's more ignorance and not understanding how knowledge work works. That's the main place we differ. But we both see, I guess, the world the work is being a big force of productivity .

negativity yeah and this and I don't dispute that at all. I just I think the only answer I have really is that is that yeah, I am coming, I think, from this somewhat more psychological please, where i'm asking like how one confront the reality with which one has faced each day, one big part of which is obviously organisational life and the office and and how and how work works.

So one place where this comes up is is in sort of the question of how much autonomy you need in your work situation to benefit from the things that i'm saying, the things that you're saying, things anybody saying and and I think one place that I go in this new book is almost in a sort of existence alist philosophy direction, right? To look at the kind of the the choices that we retain, even in situations where where we're very much sort of actions are guided by these kind of, as you say, properly, in many ways, largely counterproductive ways of approaching work. So yeah um I think they're just different, different angles on the same materials, not a very, very good on some level.

One of the things I like about the way you talk about, and you even said this earlier in this interview, and I think it's a good point for me, and I think it's something that my audience really likes about you, is that I think you're pointing out that some non trivial percent of what people in a Normal office job feel like is unavoidable and put upon them by their managers is actually in their mind, I think, is really interesting that that we tell a story of everyone is demanding this email to be answered and everyone is demand.

And I say yes. And if not in the control center, they are going to notice this and start getting upset. And I think that's a really important point that even in knowledge work, which does put these we're productivity pressures, we amplified IT in our head.

right? absolutely. If you go sort of if you zoom out or up or something from that far enough, you get to this kind of question of what that means to be a human facing options and choices in the world.

What that sort of dissolves the boundary between the work setting in the rest of life. Because IT applies to the whole of life. And in one of the chapters in this book, I talk about this quotation from the therapy children cop, who says, you're free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

And it's this whole sort of vision of the world which is absolutely on point, I think for finite human beings where every single thing that you feel you have to do is really a question of saying you're not prepared, perhaps quite wisely, to shoulder to pay the costs of not doing IT, right? That's always the only question at hand. And I think you know there's a terrible clacked version of self help that says you can always choose anything and you've got no limits on your autonomy at all.

And just like by thinking about large piles of gold, you become a illiana. But there's another the most sort of say istana alist idea of choice, which is like actually it's never little unless you're under physical restraint I propose is never literally the case you have to do anything. It's always the case that you're choosing which disadvantages to to put up with the disadvantages of submitting to those pressures of the workplace or not doing.

And that can be very, very obvious for some people, right? Like i've got to do that wise othe wise, I get fired. But there's something important in terms of one sense of oneself in the world. There's something very important about seeing that IT is still technically a choice. Yes, even if to take one of the options would be kind of totally insane and you never do IT the fact that you could mean .

mean something you could there's nothing to stop in you from saying i'm not answering emails or i'm just gonna. No, I don't want to do this type of projects anymore. Like all this is that you you you're choosing sort of what your what your day to day is and IT might be a bad option, but you have not been forced to do anything.

right? And if you start from that sense in which your choice, your freedom choice, is sort of unlimited, and you can say, no, it's like I would prefer not to write it's battle. Be the scriveners as them as the key to modern productivity. Culture like that are not suggesting that most people are going to or should decide just to stop answering emails from people. More scene as them in the organization, for example. But just from once you see that what i'm what we're getting out here IT then allows you to more consciously let back in the pressures you're going to submit to the ones you're going to resist and and through that sort of process, navigate to where you, anna.

get to. Well, I like this for good IT. It's compatible though. We talk right here on the show a lot about lifestyle planning.

So you working backwards from an image of what makes a good life good, as opposed to, like, fixated on a singular grand goal, and hoping this will fix everything right, knowing, like, what do I want my schedule to feel like? What do I want to live? What do I want to rythm of my day to look like? You have a lot more options for sort of working in small steps and taking advantage of small opportunities to move towards some ideal lifestyle image.

There's lot more options than you think. Vers, I just want to to be at the top of the pile and if I get there and then i'll be happy. But I want to actually, so what I want to survey, I want to get to help on this.

Like I know a lot about the business world and its intersection with productivity. Somewhat ironically, given that I write about this, I know very little about the other types of productivity culture, online books, uh, the way people talk about productivity when they actually are talking about productivity. You know a lot about that world because you wrote this column for so long, and you push back against that world in the books.

Can you give me, like, what is this world saying? I don't use social media. I'm not very online. I don't read a lot of books in my own genre.

What is the non corporate productivity self health advice world? Like what is this as a books? Is IT online? What are the core messages? Like what how do we to find this world that you were reacting to?

I mean, I think IT on some level, it's getting more varied and multifarious ous. So I don't want to sort of totally character IT， but I do think that what you get in all of that and I I familiar especially with what's going on in this world, in youtube and on twitter, whatever it's called now to some extent, is there in in, in the books world as well. This there is still this driving focus on the idea that there is one very simple way. Obviously, it's a totally different way depending on who whose video you're watching, but that there is one very simple way to there's a rule of some kind, the system of some kind, that if you follow IT, everything will fall into place and I will be essentially automatic that you that you do an enormous amt that is the right stuff and that you make huge amounts of of money from IT is very youtube.

right? And feel youtube? No.

there's this extraordinary escalation in like IT starts off with like how I might how I make ten thousand dollars month. And then by then you go through the videos, I exactly. So that's the sort of really money focused side of IT. But even when it's not really money focus, right, that has the same the same basic idea that there is something that will make IT sort of plugged and play.

And I think, for example, I know you say you're not so familiar with IT, but I think this stuff, but I remember you talking about in the world of when IT comes to writing, right? There's a there's a version of this in the world of like personal knowledge management and note taking and the great, very interesting writing that's been done on things like the idea of a settle cast in which we probably don't need to get into now. But again, sharing this notion that if you really do this well, the bit way you're sitting down to right will be effortless and you won't have to ever go through the difficult bit of like I know what you right i'm thinking like and I think I am preaching you all the time on on writers block just being the the. The feeling of the feeling of writing.

So i'm seen this maybe now with A I too, right? So so now I think I kind of played in the what you're talking about because I see this with A I A lot. So just if you here's a possibility, and this is the exact same thing, by the way, that went on in the two thousands during the light productivity prome period.

Or the idea was if you're using technology in the new way to support your test systems, work will become effortless, right? And you would believe IT because like this technology is new so as possible that there's like some sort new inside. I'm seen that now with A I so if I just I have this look, I have this like interactive.

I built a custom lm and I I talk to IT and there's yeah okay. Now I think i'm unload into what you're saying it's less about. Sometimes productivity culture is characterized as like, well, there's all these books saying do as much as possible or do more but I what you're saying much more subbed, no, it's not that the books you're saying do more is there is a system that's gonna cure you. There is a system that's going to make the hard thing go away. It's going to make life easy like it's gona be ranking wdx ts.

And and I want to say at least two things against this, right? One is, but here maybe three. One is that this doesn't exist. They are not going to define this thing. But another is that you you really wouldn't want IT if if you, if you had IT. So first of all, if you if you put something like that in place and IT sort of works a bit, one of the things you find is this thing i've referred to elsewhere as the efficiency trap, right?

You find if even if an AI assistant can handle huge amounts of what you'd previously been handling, what do you think gonna happen to all that freed up band with, right, just going to all else being equal, it's just going to get filled with even stuff for you to do. But also, and I think this is where I this is the new book in some ways. Who ever thought that like a life of cracking, which is is isn't fun, and this idea that if you could sort of get everything running completely smoothly and not have to engage with problem after chAllenge after problem, that that would actually, this is my argument, that would actually be a much less rich and meaningful life.

So we are really capable of sort of, and this is, there's a quote from some game design about this, right? People left their own devices will optimize the fun out of the game. And I think that's what we really at risk of doing productivity well.

So I agree with you. You probably ree with me. I think David island, he's so misunderstood a because the title of that book getting things done makes people who just hear the title think it's a book about maxi zing output or getting ahead is a dark book.

I keep telling people it's very nyalong tic. I keep he wants to reduce work to just cranking widget because he sees work as so stressful and anxiety producing and soul numine is like, I just don't want to be feel this way anymore. So can't we just how to make things into like automatic actions that you just do and and you can just disengage? I mean, feels almost like a something you would see, I mean, from an existing tious writer or nail alist writer from like the only twenty centuries or something I see.

IT is a dark book I see is a cry for help to is like, look, the fact we have people trying to figure out how to num themselves to work means the world the work is broken like you should see getting things done to be like, okay, what's going on in knowledge work in the late nineties, early two thousands but instead people see that title and think, oh, he says, yeah, you can just do more. We're going to get ahead. He didn't want anyone to get ahead. He just trying to is nothing himself with task list like can just like take our mind, like just disconnect from this grim ess that is knowledge .

work that I I have never really considered the the the dark version of of of G T D. I do think it's misunderstood. I tend to come at IT from somewhat more, somewhat less analytical perspective, I guess, about the book in the sense that like first he's a little bit like you shakespeare or somebody and that there are ideas from that book that we just all completely use .

now and don't give him credit for because just and .

then the other thing is, yeah, I mean, in a way, and there is a whole kind of spiritual dimension to his life in motion phy, which is interesting actually.

But like in a way, this this debate about whether it's positive or negative is a debate that goes through all sorts of kind of eastern philosophy, right? Should you deal with the things that burn in us in life by trying to sort of non attached from them? And then is that a recipe for kind of retreat from life? Or is that actually the way to plan gentle life? So I thinks a positive way of getting things done where where not we're sort of reducing everything to cranking widgets might then allow you to sort of be more fully present.

So maybe that would be a more positive reading, but you're right. In neither case is IT about maximize your capacity to move through as many tasks as possible, certainly not that you might ever get to the end. Yeah.

to the end of them. There was, there was reference. I went and looked this up the other day. Getting things was references in the office, the the american version of the office, the book was, they had one of the characters in the story art was he was trying to impress the manager. He said he had been given.

So he was trying to show that he was productive, and he said he had been reading the spot, getting things done. And I saved IT was something like, I saved ninety seconds this morning by, like, brushing my teeth while I showered and he's like, and I just lost that ninety. I was explaining this suit or whatever, like, that was the conception of getting things done that he was somehow about.

If if you brush your teeth in the shower, you're the same. More time, I think of more of the architect. Al, I like going back in memory lane.

This literally is very interesting to me. Probably the archetypal block in my mind of you can get your arms around at all is maybe Steven coffee, which was really trying to unify its work. But your life outside of work, nothing about that book was about optimization.

I don't think if you think about that book was about a getting more trying to get more done than other people. In fact, there's very few books that actually make the argument do more. The closest one I can think of is maybe hyper productivity.

Yeah which was but that was like pretty pragmatic is like i'm an executive. This is a stupidly hard job because you have to do fifty things. Here's how I do IT right.

But Stephen coffee seems that may be the architect of you can figure out what's important to you, and then you can very carefully plan based on these visions of the roles and you and making sure that your actions are aligned. And there's there's a super optimism. And I wrote about this in the new york are right to this whole history of time managment, productivity books.

And I was like, that book reflected the optimism of the latest. Capitalism is booming. All the baby boomers were doing well.

They are buying houses. Everyone was feeling pretty good and was very optimistic. Like you can, you can shape a really meaningful life with .

the right system, right? And also the sort of especially digital kind tivy is not yet at a place where the sort of chAllenge to that, from what I think of his infinite inputs right, has become evidence, right? You're not going to feel you're not going to be suffering from this problem of just a completely unlimited incoming stream of emails or completely limited list of things you feel you want to read or opportunities to go play, right? It's still sort of sheltered by the sort of lack of that kind of technology.

I mean, that's that's the difference between Allen and coffee is email came along. I mean, I think of Allen is entirely a response to the digital workplace. And I went from this optimism of a couple meetings during the day and and maybe i'm going to, like, dictate a memo, which i'll give to the typing pool. IT went from that in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine to, oh my god, this stuff is coming in. Allen talks about in his book working with clients for an intake process. We're like, let's just write down everything that you have some sort of commitment to your obligation and IT would take you set on average like four to six hours, right, which I think in covey's time IT be like i'm working on this project and and when i'm done, i'm going to do this and i'm having a Martini with lunch. I think he was .

no totally .

yeah a different time yeah for sure. Okay, so let's get into them. Um so in four thousand weeks you kind of go through the psychology of utility after the liberation of recognizing you can't do at all. Life is finite and it's okay.

You can you can instead of trying to control everything, trying to master your life with with systems, uh, you can make sure you make time for the important things, make sure you make time for just the present. Right now, your new book now wonders a little bit more into, okay, how do we put some of this in the in the practice, which I appreciate. So this is my big question, kind of my goal for this interview. How do we find the line between having enough structure that is not chaos but not getting snapped in the productivity efficiency trap? How do we find that line?

Yeah, that's the question. And it's probably the question that will surface the most interesting kind of differences between us. So I would expect so you make for A A Better debate as they were. So I want to say something quickly. I want to go on on about the book, but about the structure of the book .

because I think it's like substantia.

So it's this book is divided into four weeks, and each week has a seven short chapters. And the invitation, as I put IT right, certainly an instruction is that you might read one of these chapters roughly per day for for a month. And part of the thinking there was that I really needed to avoid this book itself becoming another example of the kind of thing that you read and maybe take notes on for your note taking system.

And then. Try to put into practice one day when you've got lots of free time and you can do IT perfectly right. I really wanted to resist that and pull the rug from that every opportunity I should.

I'll just going to his little cast in system, which will surface automatically the semantic connection .

and then will be brilliant awesome yeah if if that works for you, i'm not sure I i've ever found someone to blame me as well. no. So the idea of this is that like if you're doing if you're reading IT roughly on this pace, or maybe you read IT through once and go back and do IT if if you like, something that these tiny little perspective shifts, which are all in the direction of this approach that I call imperfection ism, and all about sort of getting around to doing the stuff here. And now these little perspective shifts will actually take root and have some impact like in the next twenty four hours after you read that chapter.

And so IT doesn't become another of these things that you you have to sort of make a big transformation in order to put IT into place or wait until you've got the band with. That can just be something that that that helps right here. And now in the midst of the too many emails and the anxiety inducing new headlines that you can stop thinking about or whatever. So in in that sense, to come back to your sort of guiding question here is really about getting over the IT is really for people, at least one, one lever who are who are very drawn to lots of structure, lots of plans and lots of systems like like me, because it's sort of constantly saying, well, here that has a role to play.

But the main thing is, can you just like do one of the things now and it's like, well, this is an interesting really you might like to follow about for the in the meantime, just do that thing that right, it's about sort of taking the things that we know we want our lives to consist of and building the muscle that allows you to just do a little bit of that thing today for ten minutes, however imperfectly, with however little confidence that you're going to be able to make a practice of IT and come back to IT every single day for the rest of your life. Because actually, I think that skill and the willingness kind of an emotional struggle anyway, for a lot of us, I think that skill to be able to do that, almost not withstanding, the system is kind of foundational. And when you have that in place, I think that's when all sorts of rules and structures can, can, can play a role.

I think my big fallacy in my earlier life was thinking that, you know, first of all, I needed to figure out the structure. I would then put the structure in place and the emotions and the motivation and the inspiration would all sort of follow. And I think it's probably .

the other way around. I mean, I think that's really interesting because most people, including myself, and always think about that aspect of delivering ideas like the actual functional intake, like how you encounter and start making progress on ideas. We just give out the frameworks which leads to, I think a lot of people do, which is framework collecting.

Just collect. I'm getting, i'm getting closer. They're been ready to I put things that, but let me collect a little bit more information. Let me figure out exactly how this system is work. Let me get my my computer set up just perfect before I turned IT on.

And so I I really appreciate that about the book is the book itself as a framework of like, hey, I know you don't want to hear IT at a page a day like a week like trust me, you need to actually start doing some things. Religion kind of has this figured out right? Where it's okay.

Wait, you actually have to start doing the rich walls for you to have a deeper religious experience. You can just sit and study the religion from a far like, okay, i'm convinced. Let's do IT like religion has been very good about that.

And so IT, maybe it's bar with a pretty good idea like you got to kind of get in there and we need help. How do you kind of mesa de with perfection kind of get in there and get started trying some things making ideas that are attract and body something like it's intuitive and you understand what's going on. That's very part. I really like .

that about the book. Thank you. And yeah, I think when IT when IT comes to the structure piece, i've got this chapter in there on the idea that really summed this up in some sense, that the role of rules and the role of systems, and in a productive and meaningful life, has to be that those rules serve the life we want to live, rather than that our lives become in in service to the rule.

So one example of where this where this comes, and I think could be maybe an interesting, and you just know if you agree or disagree, is that an awful lot of approaches to productivity seem to me to be based around holding in check or even suppressing mood and desires, right? And to sort of say that the question of what you feel like doing in any given moment has really got to be put away in a box. And I feel like i've tried that many, many times and not without realizing I was doing IT and found that that all that does is run into this sort of constant internal combat between what I feel like doing and and what my system of my plan calls for me to do.

And so one of the things i'm looking at in this book is what is how can we maybe think about riding or harney, those those flows. what? What is the role for asking yourself if you have tony y, of course, in your situation, what is the role for asking yourself? What a what I what do I feel like doing now? And I quote Susan piver, the meditation teacher, who has written very eloquently about this, I did, actually, once he was able to sort of navigate a little bit more by pleasure or by what he wanted to do.

You don't find that actually all you want to do is is sit around and and eat ice cream and not pay your bills into your taxes. You find that at the appropriate moment, you you are happy to do those things. So obviously, there is at least a sort of surface level tension here with most obviously time locking, even your very sort of flexible and accommodating approach to IT. I'm really interested to know what you yeah make of those.

Well, I think it's a place where we disagree and degree right right? So I actually agree with you IT is draining the the fundamental psychological state time blocking is keeping your attention on the thing that is blocked yeah even if you don't want to do IT um and it's draining and it's why I talk about you can't don't time block your evenings, don't time block your weekend.

Not to that one in be useful but you're just going to exhaust yourself, right? It's really it's really hard. Um you have to take breaks more.

You have to kind of take days off. I think time blocky is very psychologically difficult. I also think i'd be glad actually if we didn't have to do IT. So I think we actually secretly agree.

Is icc time blocky as a necessary evil for a lot of knowledge work jobs, the the amount of things that are being put on people's plates and knowledge work jobs, the only way for people to actually get them done in a way that they don't have to work late at night, in the morning, to be running around the hair on fire, as they have to do this like really hard discipline, they have to be done. It's like the monk in monk, that master shall in come food to sort of accomplish another mindstorms really hard work. But they know that's what they have to do. That's like that's the trial. So I think I said this on my show a few weeks ago.

I think you said something in in in response to something I said that was great response to .

yeah interview you were doing where you're talking about IT and I was saying, okay what I agree is um I I want to me an ideal job you wanted need a time block time blocking is pretty brutal IT also, however, gets about two two x more things done during Normal workday and for like the really overloaded knowledge worker who doesn't want to bring their work home, who only has like a child care window that last from here to there, it's like IT brings home the bacon.

That's pretty interesting because actually you there's a little chapter in my new book about you know what I call the three to four hour rule about getting creative work done. I tell more about and actually in a sense that is advocating for some kind of time blocking, right, for sort of vigorously defending three or four hours in your day for this sort of deep work. But then what i'm also saying is that is that not trying too hard to to structure or block the rest of the of the time being open to interruption and distraction. That time and serendipity in that time like that is where I place the sort of reasonable baLance in terms of how much control we can expect to have over the flow of workday. So this leads to me to the interesting, although possibly in some ways very kind of mundane, e conclusion that maybe the we're talking about here is just that I think I have the kind of strainer and capacity for time blocking about half of the ordinary working day and you're advocating doing IT and including those sort of more bitty email conversational parts of of the day. In which case, like you know, unity and consensus has been been to stop piece in our time .

well and i'll say anything is important data point in the summers, right? So i'm when i'm doing the Normal academic here, my job approximates, I think like a busy executive, right? Because I have academic responsibility lies. I often have service responsibility, ie. S at at orchard lic right now, the director of undergraduate studies for the computer science department and the director of a computer .

science ethics major and academic always love getting dream.

It's why we got into academia was to run things and and going committees. Officer, and then I am right in my podcasting. So I feel like a like a mid level VP and I I feel like time block to hell out of my days in the summer.

I'm a full time writer. I don't time block. I think that's probably telling.

In other words, when might load becomes possible that I feel like I don't have the time block? I like, good, right? Let me, let me stop.

Let me stop. Actually do IT my fear is in the the type of positions like I have during the school year. If I went to the second half of the day, this going to be a little bit more reactive and chaotic.

There's a lot of little things to do. The reality of the moor workplace is you would lose the entire afternoon, right? IT would all be emails beds. Nothing I have is basically ride off that time is the way .

I see a interesting yeah no, it's it's some it's really interesting because I sort of the the other author who I and I mentioned him a couple of times in my broken, i'd be fascinated to hear an interview between fascinating, ever decided interview him and this this that right to called poor humans, who's writing this book called time surfing, that I think you must maybe has passed across your radar.

I but it's a it's a completely intuition based approach to time. It's like i'm slightly exactly, but it's basically throw away all lists, throw away all plans and just just navigate by your intuition and then choosing what to do. And it's certains, the most sort of world developed and credible version of that very radical approach that i've ever encounter. And and so it's on the other end of the continuing here. And so I guess where why i'm bringing him up right now is that I sort of when I think about that second half of the the day or whatever is I think there's there's something very useful about developing the muscle, metaphorically speaking, that permits you to to not just be lost to that flow. Now maybe there are workplace context where you know it's this people yelling at you and you can't possibly developed that muscle bit to sort of be able to think, well, actually what I would like to do now is this thing, even while I can feel the precious of this other thing, I think in that there's something very useful being being, being strengthens there. And it's actually, I guess i'm a bit more optimistic than knew that .

I can be I love ideas, right? I think this the number one fear people have. You don't think about like my audience, if I say, if they hear your advice, kind of feel where your energy is, they don't trust themselves. They said my energy is always going to say, look at social media or whatever, but where you're seeing is going to know that's trainable and and you have and until I tell us about that, they give us confidence that with some practice, you can actually make good decision. I think this thing .

about trusting yourself is extraordinary powerful. So good that you brought IT up yet and if IT comes up in all sorts of context. So yeah, one of them is in planning the notion that the reason we have to set of plan so so vigorously is because we will just completely lose ourselves to dopamine hits or whatever, if we aren't following a plan.

IT comes up in some sort of anxiety and worry about the future. And I quote Marks really in this. But right, there's a famous line in his meditations where he says, don't work about the future because you'll meet IT with the same psychological resources, basically weapons and one translation that you meet the present in the moment.

We trust ourselves a lot. We trust ourselves to implement all sorts of great productivity systems and make all sorts of plans. But it's all premised on the area that the future version of ourselves will be this kind of totally vulnerable.

A person who can sweet everyone else is agenda. And Marcus is same like, well, actually like if you've got some agency of your life now, why not to see you you you're going to have agency of your life in the in the future as well. So when IT comes to planning, yeah, we have this kind of strong sense that we know what we're doing now, but only on the base that we won't know what we're doing.

We won't able to trust ourselves later on. And the ridiculous part about that, I don't know if i've ever quite managed to convey what I mean here, but is that even if you think of yourself as a person who who's very planned driven, you are in fact completely spontaneous, right? Because you're deciding in each new moment to Carry on the other plan.

So every bit of event you've got that brought you to where you are now is that you can trust yourself to navigate through life like that. And you know absolutely, the attention, economy, social media, the world we live in is is more of a threat and the chAllenge to that than anything before. No, I think IT is completely trainable.

And that question I mentioned before about like what do you feel like doing is a part of that, right? Because it's to do is trusting that your the emotions in the whole world of your mind and psych that a separate from your sort of rational thought right now might have some role play right there might be something that can a little bit guide you instead of something you've got to constantly be trying to sort of eradicate and stamp out. So yeah, I think it's IT gets a little bit well, maybe, but I think this sort of self trust part of this is is huge.

I believe that right? Like I buy that. I think time if you think this is fair, I think part of a bit of IT, we provide the sort of collective audience you and I like the collective audience who who you just care about like like I feel overwhelmed.

They care about my life. I want to be meaningful. I don't want to just be stressed out. All the issues that we deal with is we can present sort of two ends of a spectrum in which people find their way in the middle.

So like in my situation, uh, you know, I have these multiple roles, i'm an extreme, and so I have systems died in that makes IT all manageable. Like my planning is complicated because it's really pretty intricate. You like i'm trying to make the writing career double tail with the academic career, with this new media peace coming up over here in my like how does this all IT is complicated long term plans.

And so like in my world, I do planning at different time scales for simplicity. I think you look, I can't in the moment, i'm not going to be able to keep straight the sort of complexity of how trying to make these things work. So why do I like put aside time, and I think about the big picture and and then at the weekly scale, I can sort of to steal that down to like what matters about that for this week because a lot of the stuff does IT.

And that on the daily scale of the way about that at all, just sort of but I also agree with you, I think most people, their plans not so complicated and the intuition like they know like this is what i'm trying to do and that's what's important to me. And and maybe maybe it's okay. It's like you represent for people first all there's like a psychological validation reality of like what we struggle with and how we think about IT trust in intuition more.

And maybe a lot of people find this is why both of us are popular, is not that most people maybe aren't. They're not taken on all my system's economic extreme, but maybe they have more than you're talking about. But they need to encounter both of us. They try to figure out what they're doing.

Yeah.

it's like a arria tEllen approach. The productivity, the golden mean, is where virtue lies.

I think I think there's a lot to that. Um certainly you know my working life is is less complex than yours in the sense of these kind of whole big significantly separate domains. On the other hand, I I kind of feel like I almost want to say that my working life and maybe everybody's working life, by definition in a sense is sort of maximum complex, right?

It's like there are I still feel very much like i'm navigating through you know two thousand things that I could in principle do with the next moment. Definitely not sort of divided up in the way that um I know your your work is, but certainly like just a huge kind of pointed st nightmare of things that I could spend the next. And it's reality riding.

is that the Better you do IT writing, the more people want to try to stop you from writing. I give you all these things. No, that is something I though .

i'm sure that something similar is is the first ort of any almost any knowledge work, right? This sense that like there's just an endlessly ly proliferating number of things, you could be keeping trickles. So actually. I I think a lot of what you say is right, but I also think that something about a somewhat more intuitive approach, somewhat more self trusting approach actually fits very well with a situation of great complexity because, you know, it's almost as if you you can't work this out using there isn't some algorithm you can bring to any sort of to do this that bigger than your time than the band with you have. It's just gonna a question of, broadly speaking, feeling your feeling your way and developing yourself trust to to focus entirely on the thing that you do decide to do because at least like you know, do that thing and finish IT instead of being distracted by the knowledge that there are an infinite number of other .

things you could be to. So as this is a good summary, I would hit someone like the big practical ideas from the book that resonated with me. So here's three I want to underscore.

One, protect a few hours for deep work, essentially like you do. Make sure you have some time protecting every day for working and what's important. So I kind of acknowledged min of lake, okay, you're not protecting time at all.

You're never gonna sort of have a lot of free time. I could protect these like two to four hours for work. Something is important.

Try to make progress on the things that matter. Use the term daily is which I like so that means like, be regular, but don't beat yourself up. It's gotta be everyday. I like the way you talked about sign field and the sign field don't break the chain, which is very popular online and he'd said, I just said that as a quip like this should try to do things often like he was not able to be a big .

productivity system. Again, self trust because it's like have the willingness to see that you can bring discipline to your work without in some way other than sort of being absolutely in slave to a very, very specific brittle system that you've got to follow everyday. right?

right? You take your comedie seriously, right? You're gonna on IT if you were sick on sunday, this little matter.

And then the third idea I was going to put into this trio, you talk about b OK with your house being messy when guests come over, which I actually see as a problem ment, as a broader metaphor for the imperfections ism yeah, philosophy you talk about, which is b OK, with not everything has to be perfectly done. Yeah, I didn't get around to cleaning up the house of four people came over. But IT IT applies to work as well.

Like, you know what? I didn't like polish this thing and I was going to go do it's okay, like not it's okay. The goal is not everything else to be perfect.

right? And I think something that's important to say about that, that's the chapter on called scruffy hospitality, right, which is this great phrase that comes from anglican pastor from tenor eo jack king. And he's and he's not just saying and i'm not just saying like it's OK permission to not be able to do everything perfect. That's important because actually our fundamental nature as limited humans in this world is such that we're not going to be held to do things perfectly.

But it's also in that context is really interesting relational side of IT that this approach to literal hospitality, having people around for dinner is very often more connective, right, that actually when you sort of dropped the facade of trying to do things perfectly, people feel more welcomed in to your to your home and they feel like they must be your real friends because you're showing them the unvarnished version of you. And I think where that sort of generalizes, i'm not suggesting that you know at a sort of White shoe, new york city law firm, you can just walk around the office in your pyjamas all day. It's not there are obviously limits to this, but there is this thing, and I find this in my writing all the time.

But when you're willing to sort of confessing a little bit more to the kind of flaws and imperfections and insecurities that we also have navigate through the world with people respond extraordinary positively to that there is the same, right? And there is a kind of there, not just a sense of shared problems, but also a kind of an empowerment. Become from, like when I write an email news letter that even mentions like this is what I do when I am feeling completely overwhelmed by to do, I will get some responses that, like, I can't believe even you sometimes feel completely overwhelmed by to do. And I like what part of calling everything the imperfection is that did do you not understand? But you know, there's something directly empowering and connecting and part of building a meaningful life for us all to just be a little bit more open with each other about the the the fact that we're not sort of sAiling through IT and absolutely perfect confidence.

So what do you think about the anxiety of workload ideas like David and full capture having a place to store things? So it's not in your head because I could see you fall in on either side of this, its system zy. But also the idea of full capture comes out of, I don't want to be stressed about stuff all the time.

I can be sort of frame. So where do these ideas of not keeping stuff in your head? How does that fall into how you think about productivity?

This is an interesting one because this is definitely one area where I where I am sort of less intuitive and the sort of pollution s sense that I mentioned and more, more systems. Z, and I don't know what you think about this. You may well have spoken about IT, but I think there's a really important in interesting distinction to be made between task management and time management.

And I think there's quite a strong argument that sort of very intuitive and flexible and forgiving approach to managing your time is actually aided by having a really quite rigorous and clear system of way or recording things. And I think that you know yeah that full capture part of David Allen to this day. It's my immediate response to feeling like i'm overwhelmed and need to get clarity is to literally get like you know an enormous stack of index cards and write down on one per card every single thing until i've got a big pile and thing.

okay. And the difference now is that I don't mistakenly think now if I just do what up to the other, I I will to zero. I'm just like there IT is and that enables me not to be taking on this year this this role that the brain is not is not so is not so great at.

So you are not sort of I don't tend to set of usually structure those lists i've writing elsewhere, I think know having a sort of endorsed sly, huge masterly st and then feeding things from that onto a very limited thing that's just as of cambon has aspects of that a and IT right you have limiting your work in progress, anything that does that incredibly powerful. But IT starts with being willing to be yeah completely comprehensive because otherwise I think what you end up doing is not writing things down or not recording things because were you to do so, you'd be you you'd frighten yourself by by how many things there are. And actually part of owning your limitations is to say, yeah, I exist in the world that has a four hundred item, a list of things that are, in some sense on my plate okay, and i'm going to be doing about four today.

I mean, we use the phrases on the podcast facing the .

productivity dragging exactly, exactly. That's exactly the phrase. yeah. okay.

So a place for this seems like we definitely agree and this might differentiate us from some of the other writers on the topic that sounds like we both agree A A life with no thought about productivity. That's not Better either if it's just productivity is a construct of false conscious ness or whatever. And i'm i'm not going to have to do this.

I'm not gonna think about what I am and am not going to do with structuring my time or having no thinking of about oranienburg seems like and you could work with, but we both have to agree. Well, that's going to be a stressful existence as well. If it's the horse e theory, yes, no productivity can bring you right back around to too much productivity and IT gets you too. A stressful exists via different means.

Yeah absolutely. And the sort of the part of you, the frontal cortex part that is planning and and taking over you, that's a part of you too, right? There's a very there.

There's a place you can go not so much in the sort of radical work critic stuff, but more in the spiritual literature that I ve spent a lot, a lot of time in as well. There's a place you can go that sort of takes you to the idea that there's something wrong about like thinking and strategizing and tactics. And it's sort of it's to be switched off, if at all possible.

And then you get, you know, into the places where people use that phrase, like, don't forget where human beings, not human downs. And I get very annoyed and want to grab them by little pills and say, no, doing stuff is the point here. On some level, doing the right stuff, absolutely not just doing the biggest quantity of items totally, but there is some sense in which the point of being a lie is just to zoom out to the biggest picture possible, is to bring things into reality, to creates.

yes, we like doing things right.

And then maybe that's not what we traditionally think of as productive tasks and maybe it's to do with building a family or strengthening the bombs of a community or all sorts of things that could be. But it's still creative in the broadest sense. And I don't think that, that requires or even benefits from trying to sort of switch off the part of your brain that can make plans and strategies and organisational systems for .

so we can summer ze to go here as you want to do. Things are important without being chronically trust out by the things you have to do.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

okay. So I think we made some progress here. I mean, that sounds like, okay. We agree a life with no thinking about tasks and organization. Time management, you're gonna that's very stressful and that alienation ure from your nature. We agreed task management supported because if you have stuff just in your head, it's trustful and you can't relax, you can do anything.

I don't think to written down somewhere where we differ is actually pretty minor, I think, which is the degree of systemized needed to deal with the question of managing your time when you have that down, a your advice fall short of systems. I tend to talk about things in terms of systems that's pretty similar water, I would say. And we can have the same goal of.

Where both I think we both have a real aversion to anxiety and stress. I have a huge version to I have too much to do. I'm overwhelmed by days packed.

I really dislike that. I think we have that a version. So we're sort of on the same page where we're differ is just to the degree of structuring and time management.

I think there's a lot to that point. And you know it's is always a little bit to satisfying to bring kind of but sort of personality type based arguments into things. I don't like those things generally, and I think i've heard you I am suspect that you also don't like that kind of form of argument, but I do think that it's relevant and important.

What i'm doing that when I say i'm i'm not so into systems, i'm doing that from the point of view of someone who has sort of so gone so far in the direction of systems, but i'm sort of providing an antidote to myself into people who think like me in this way and are all this particular kind of you know recovering productivity, eec or whatever race sometimes. So so it's definitely sort of a IT definitely has that sort of antidote feeling to IT. It's like this is the way to think if you if you if your tendency through your upbringing or whatever else is to swing so far in the other direction.

So i'm you know i'm super curious as to in your version to being overwhelmed, for example. Is that because you've been through large phases of being very miserable through being overwhelmed? Or are you actually coming from significantly different personality than me who is in no danger of kind of massively over investing in attempt to control your life?

It's actually it's more psychological with me. In graduate school I develop in in soma that could be severe, but random and IT gave me the anxiety of if I try to do too much. So if my days are filled with, like these things have to get done.

What what happened? If I don't sleep, I won't be able to actually do that work. Yeah, but that, like a quirk of brain wiring, got me the way I started talking about work is okay.

I need work to be something where tomorrow doesn't matter, but next month does. In other words, like no particular day is critical, but it's critical that over the next month I make progress on the book. So it's like sunday's not important, but february is.

That's the way I began to think about work. And IT was just happenstance. I think if I hadn't had the insomnia, I probably would have fell into the lets rock and roll.

Let me feel, let me feel every minute of the day. Let me crush IT. Because I know i'm a capable person. I have energy and a Spark. I I probably would have pushed a lot more into IT, and I probably would have been, I don't know, more successful, professor, something like this or had business is or something. So it's a court like a lot of my approach of time management, which is anxiety stress reducing based, is I don't trust myself to be able to get after IT every day. So how do I design a whole life or that's not necessary.

right? That makes perfect sense.

And I love them. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, I could, I could talk.

We could get out about this forever, but I know you are not a book to where you have a schedule over. My my audience loves you. They love your stuff.

They're always talking about IT. We talked about a lot on the show, so I know they're excited. They're excited for this one, and i'm excited you are here by the new book.

Yeah, you were like if if you like what we talk on the show, you are going to absolutely love petition for models. And if you have to read four thousand weeks, you should read that to you don't have to, but you should be. You should read both of those as well. All of her, a real pleasure. And thanks for joining the podcast.

Thank you. And so that we go to do IT.

All right. So that was my conversation with Oliver. I hope you've liked that we have some more in depth interviews lined up in the spirit of all over bergman's philosophy i'll release as I have time. I'm not trying to put too much pressure on my self.

I'm just using my intuition, as he would say, to figure out when there's an idea like in the released as I am able, again, you got to check out all of his book, as new book is called meditations for models and is fantastic. His previous book, four thousand weeks, is a must read. If you haven't read that as well, be back on monday with another Normal epsom of the show. Be back with in depth up in the three or four weeks or so. And until then, is always a deep.