How To Be Sanely Productive | Oliver Burkeman

Hey hey, welcome to the Ten Percent Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Today we're bringing a classic conversation out of the archives and bringing it to you. My guest is Oliver Berkman. The author of two excellent books that have genuinely changed The way I think about time management, productivity. and mortality. The first uh is called Four Thousand Weeks, a book about time management.

That takes seriously the fact that we're all gonna die. Uh the second uh which is the book we're gonna talk about mostly in this conversation is called Meditations for Mortals. Oliver's central argument, and I have found this both deeply annoying and deeply liberating is Is

that the feeling I have that I will finally be able to relax once I get to the end of my to do list. A feeling that is uh deeply wired into my nervous system. is actually a lie. It's uh A forgivable and understandable lie, a structural lie, because there really is never an end to our to-do list. And the sooner you accept that,

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