Book Club Meets: “I was burnt out!” Live a slower life, with Emma Gannon
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.7 • 15.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sometimes the braver thing isn’t trying to keep going. Writer Emma Gannon hit real burnout, admitted she was overwhelmed, and embarked upon a year of doing... nothing.
A Year of Nothing was our Happy Place Book Club pick for February. In it, Emma charts stepping away from the noise and rediscovering joy in life’s simplest pleasures, from dog borrowing and dopamine dressing to relearning how to swim and embracing a child-free life.
In this chat with Fearne, she explains how to stop being so mean to yourself, and how to rebuild your identity when you feel you’ve lost it. Often, she says, it’s not about ‘finding yourself’... it’s about unlearning all the stuff everyone else has heaped on top of you!
Emma wants to be strong and do big things with her life, but appreciates she had to stop in order to grow.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton. Today, a year of nothing by Emma Gannon. |
| 0:08.4 | We're so much more resilient than we give ourselves credit for because I don't know about you, but I've had times where I've been like crying on the floor, just absolutely just falling apart. |
| 0:18.1 | And then I will get up and go make a sandwich. You carry on. So I think if |
| 0:23.3 | anyone's worried about completely falling apart and not putting themselves back together, like, |
| 0:26.8 | you will put yourself back together. And actually saying you're not okay was a huge one for me. |
| 0:32.5 | I remember like ringing my parents and just being like, I'm really unwell and I'm taking time off |
| 0:36.5 | work. But it was like |
| 0:38.3 | admitting defeat or failure to me was really hard. So a year of nothing was our happy place |
| 0:44.8 | book club pick for February. Emma Gannon is a writer who found herself massively burnt out. |
| 0:50.9 | So a year of nothing follows her quiet rebellion against the cult of doing and |
| 0:56.2 | striving and pushing all the time. This book charts Emma stepping away from the noise and rediscovering |
| 1:02.9 | joy in life's simplest pleasures, from dog borrowing and dopamine dressing to relearning how to swim |
| 1:09.4 | and embracing a child-free life. As ever, we've all |
| 1:12.9 | been chatting about this book on Instagram. Our handle is at Happy Place Book Club. Come and join us, |
| 1:18.4 | book nerds. Sarah said, she read this in two evenings. Love, love, loved it. So did I. I couldn't |
| 1:24.6 | put it down. I read it in like two sittings. As someone who signed off with burnout, |
| 1:28.6 | it was as if it was narrating my life. It resonated so much. I took so much from it, kindness |
| 1:34.4 | and a slower and more gentle approach to life. Sarah, I mean, Emma will be thrilled to hear |
| 1:40.4 | you say that. That's exactly why she's written this book. It's changed Shelley's |
| 1:45.1 | attitude too. She says she now doesn't feel guilty or worried that something's wrong with her |
| 1:49.6 | when she's lost her zest for life if she just wants to get home and hunker down in her PJs with a book |
| 1:55.5 | in the dark evenings. I mean, that is literally me every damn day. And I love this from Julie. I've read this exquisite book and I love it, |
... |
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