Reclaiming Time with Oliver Burkeman

Upstream

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.9 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2023

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At the beginning of the 20th century, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that within a century, thanks to the growth of wealth and the advances of technology, that no one would have to work more than 15 hours a week. The challenge, in Keynes's view, would be how to fill all of our newfound leisure time without going crazy.'

That obviously never happened — so, what went wrong? Technology has advanced to the point where we could all be working much less, and with all sorts of time-management apps and tips from experts, why does it somehow feel like there's never enough time in the day?

In this episode, we've brought on someone who might help us figure that out. Oliver Burkeman is the author of 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals — a book about why life today often feels like a battle against endless to-do lists. In this conversation, we explore with Oliver how time has been instrumentalized under capitalism, why it's important to "waste time" on activities that are not productive and cultivate the feeling of a "joy of missing out" as opposed to FOMO, the "fear of missing out," and how to connect with what is truly most important to us right now and full-heartedly embrace our finite time, our mere 4000 precious weeks, on planet earth.

Thank you to The Weakerthans for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for the cover art. Upstream's theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

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Transcript

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1:02.9	The nature of capitalism and consumerism at first glance is a system that is fueled by people
1:25.6	seeking the next horizon, seeking growth in a certain sense, as the sole variable, seeking to gain
1:34.9	a kind of foothold, and other people have talked about capitalism as an economic system that
1:39.9	sort of instrumentalizes everything it comes into contact with, that this sort of instrumentalism
1:43.7	is the core of it. It's like, how can this be used for goals of the system, natural resources,
1:49.9	people's energy and ingenuity and skills or the rest of it, and obviously also time, right?
1:56.4	I mean, this idea that like your time itself is a commodity is a big part of this because then
2:02.3	it becomes absolutely part of the same logic to try to squeeze as much value out of every minute,
2:06.8	every hour. You are listening to upstream upstream upstream a podcast of documentaries and
2:14.8	conversations that invite you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics.
2:20.0	I'm Robert Raymond, and I'm Dela Duncan. At the beginning of the 20th century, economist John
2:26.4	Maynard Keynes predicted that within a century, thanks to the growth of wealth and the advances of
	...

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