Working: Writer Oliver Burkeman on the Dangers of Obsessive Time Management

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4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2021

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, host June Thomas talks to Oliver Burkeman, author of the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. In the interview, Oliver shares his philosophy of time management, which hinges on the finite nature of life. He also discusses his previous experience as a “productivity geek” and explains some of the dangers of obsessive time management. After the interview, June and co-host Isaac Butler discuss their own approaches to organization and productivity. In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Oliver talks about the benefits (and drawbacks) of group activities. Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to [email protected] or give us a call at (304) 933-9675. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Big Mood, Little Mood—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're always making decisions whether you see it or not. You are always making trade-offs.
0:11.2	So if you're in a job that to do perfectly would be impossible, right? Because the number
0:16.1	of incoming messages, the number of projects you're working on, you know, it's just sort
0:19.9	of, it doesn't fit. It's just a question of like which problem do you want to choose to
0:24.1	have because that it's kind of built into the situation that there's going to be one.
0:30.2	Welcome back to working. I'm your host, Isaac Butler. And I'm your other host,
0:35.2	June Thomas. June, welcome back. How was your holiday? It was fantastic. Thank you. Like,
0:40.2	holidays should be. Oh, good. Well, we missed you. It's good to see you over this Zoom
0:44.4	window once again. And whose voice was that we heard at the top of the show? That was all of
0:50.0	a Berkman, a long time guardian writer who now spends most of his time writing books. And his
0:55.4	latest one is called 4,000 weeks. Time management for mortals. And it's effectively about how short
1:02.6	life is. June, even that title makes my heartbeat just a little bit faster because, you know, I'm
1:09.0	middle-aged in the inevitability of death. It's kind of freaking me out. Is this, is this episode
1:13.6	going to be a big bummer for our listeners? Absolutely not. This book is incredibly entertaining.
1:19.2	And it is really bracing in the best possible way. As I was reading it, I had some really
1:24.4	stimulating but kind of heavy internal conversations and some important discussions with my real
1:30.4	life nearest and nearest about how we spend our time on earth. And the more you appreciate how
1:36.5	precious and uncontrollable and potentially short life is, the more you can enjoy it or at least
1:42.1	focus on the things that are important to you, which to many of our listeners will mean working
1:47.0	on creative projects. All right, I'm going to trust you and dig into this interview anyway,
1:52.6	despite my dread. What do we have in store for our slate plus members this week?
1:57.1	So all of this book contains a really interesting chapter about the benefits of doing things with
	...

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