PDF Summary:Meditations for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman
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Many people have lofty goals that they pine after but never achieve. As a result, they’re left feeling dissatisfied with their lives and critical of themselves. In Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman argues that you don’t fail to achieve your lofty goals because you’re incapable or uninspired; rather, you’re focused on the wrong things. Rather than clinging to unachievable dreams, striving for perfection, and fighting immovable obstacles, you need to embrace and work within your limitations.
In this guide, we’ll explore Burkeman’s four-step method to achieving success and happiness within the life you’ve been given—accepting your limitations, making progress toward your goals, releasing control, and focusing on the present moment. In our commentary, we’ll supplement Burkeman’s advice with insights on achieving success and happiness from other experts, like Mo Gawdat (That Little Voice in Your Head) and Matthew Dicks (Someday Is Today).
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Burkeman explains that breaking big goals into smaller tasks will help you get more done because your tasks will seem less daunting. Perfectionists often avoid getting started on tasks that seem big and scary because they’re afraid they’ll fail, but if a challenging task is turned into 10 small, easy tasks, the work will be more enticing. Creating smaller tasks also encourages you to keep working because you’ll have small accomplishments to look back on—as we discussed before, achievement encourages action.
(Shortform note: In Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy reiterates the importance of breaking big goals down into smaller tasks and provides a structured framework for doing so. He says that once you’ve determined your goal, you should write it down—this makes it more real. Next, list the tasks and steps needed to achieve the goal. Then, turn those tasks into a plan by putting them in order with higher-priority or foundational tasks coming first. Also, set a deadline for both your overall goal and the smaller tasks you’ve identified to make sure things go to plan. Finally, as Burkeman recommends, act immediately and consistently.)
Burkeman also recommends tackling little tasks that cause anxiety immediately rather than pushing them aside. The anxiety that little tasks (like paying your doctor’s bill or canceling subscriptions) cause becomes an ongoing issue in your life that drains your happiness and peace. To get rid of these irritations, implement strategies to regularly manage these tasks. For example, dedicate a few minutes every day to handling them, or even dedicate a day from your weekend.
(Shortform note: One method that can help you get started on overwhelming tasks is the Pomodoro technique. The Pomodoro technique encourages you to stop procrastinating by splitting work into 25-minute intervals with five- or 10-minute breaks in between. The 25-minute intervals are small enough to seem manageable rather than daunting, and once you complete a session, the sense of accomplishment encourages you to keep going.)
Strategy 3: Be Reasonable
Finally, one of the most important parts of taking action toward your goals, according to Burkeman, is being reasonable with yourself—don’t overwork yourself or focus too much on your problems. He offers three practical methods for being reasonable with yourself; let’s explore each.
First, Burkeman explains that consistency is key when it comes to accomplishing goals, but being too strict can be unrealistic—so you should build in some leniency. Life happens and people are imperfect, so forcing yourself to meet perfect guidelines is unlikely to work. For example, instead of striving to work toward your goal every day according to schedule, give yourself some leeway and work on your goal five days a week.
(Shortform note: In The 12-Week Year, Brian Moran reiterates the importance of being both consistent and realistic in dedicating time toward your endeavors; however, rather than having a work goal for your week as Burkeman recommends, Moran argues that you should be creating a structured work routine. Your work routine will be based on your day-to-day habits and patterns—when you’re the most and least productive, when you like to take leisure time, and so on. Creating a routine based on your life will help you be realistic, as Burkeman recommends, while avoiding pitfalls that come with having a loose work goal such as simply allowing yourself to quit when your day feels too overwhelming.)
Second, spend your time wisely—Burkeman says that people can only concentrate intensely for three to four hours at a time. Forcing yourself to do high-level work for longer than this will likely lead to burnout; you’ll likely be less productive or produce lower quality work. To make the most of your limited focus time, avoid interruptions, and when your window of focus has closed, don’t push yourself just for the sake of finishing a task.
(Shortform note: This high focus mode Burkeman discusses is commonly referred to as “flow.” In Ikigai, Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia provide instructions on how to reach a state of flow. First, choose an activity that’s challenging but possible. This will keep you interested in the task at hand; you won’t get bored if something’s too easy or anxious if it’s too hard. Next, set an objective for your session, such as meeting a certain word count if you’re writing. Then, as Burkeman recommends, avoid distractions. Finally, focus on only one task—multitasking prevents you from focusing on one thing long enough to reach flow.)
Third, Burkeman reminds you to take problems in stride. People tend to hold the belief that they’ll eventually reach a point in life that’s free of problems. This isn’t true, and it causes people to stress over not only the problem at hand but also the fact that there’s a problem at all. Instead, remember that there will always be problems in life—this is natural.
(Shortform note: Adhering to the Stoic principle of logos can help you follow Burkeman’s advice. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius explains that logos is a guiding force in the universe that ensures everything happens as it should. As such, everything that happens to you, good or bad, is essentially fated. Even if you make good and logical decisions, you can’t prevent problems from arising in your life that are out of your control. You can, however, make peace with the fact that everything is happening as the universe prescribes. This belief may encourage you to follow Burkeman’s advice—stop striving for an unrealistic problem-free life and instead embrace life’s ebb and flow.)
Step 3: Loosen Your Grip
Burkeman explains that we generally have a lot of anxiety in life due to our desire for control. This prevents us from enjoying our lives to the fullest. In this section, we’ll focus on methods to help you loosen your grip so you can embrace life and make progress toward your goals.
Strategy 1: Stop Magnifying Situations
Burkeman explains that our anxiety and desire to achieve perfection often cause us to make our goals, problems, and barriers seem bigger than they are. This only exacerbates negative emotions like stress and discourages us from moving forward. To overcome this bad habit, Burkeman makes three recommendations:
First, rather than viewing your goals as big and requiring massive motivation to accomplish, pretend that they’re easy. Taking this perspective can help you feel less overwhelmed and make the goal feel more manageable—especially if you also break the goal down into smaller tasks, a strategy we discussed earlier. Further, imagining that your goals are easy will help you avoid making them unnecessarily complicated—for example, by thinking you need a laptop or a certain program to write your book when you could make do with your notes app or a pen and paper.
(Shortform note: To change your mindset and start believing your goals are easy, consider using transformational language to talk about them. In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins explains that transformational language—positive and encouraging words and phrases—promotes empowering thoughts and behaviors. In other words, changing how you talk about your goals can change how you think about them, as Burkeman recommends. For example, don’t just pretend that your goals are easy, but verbally tell yourself that they are. Further, you can refer to difficult tasks as “ambitious” rather than “hard,” and when you face challenges, refer to them as “puzzles” rather than “setbacks.”)
Second, stop trying to control other people’s emotions. We often tailor our decisions to avoid causing negative feelings for others—even if the path they’d choose for us isn’t in our best interest. But Burkeman explains that you’ll never be able to control others’ feelings, so you shouldn’t use your desire to please them as a basis for decision-making. Instead, Burkeman recommends taking others' feelings into account, but ultimately making decisions based on what’s best for you.
(Shortform note: Overcoming people-pleasing behaviors can be difficult, especially if it’s a long-standing habit. To help conquer this, psychologists offer a few tips. First, spend time alone and pay attention to your inner voice so you can pinpoint what you truly want and differentiate it from what others might be trying to influence you to do. Further, practice being assertive—if someone’s negative attitude or behavior is making it hard for you to do what’s best for you, express that to them.)
Finally, Burkeman says that rather than obsessing about creating perfect work, you should focus on consistently producing work—even if it’s flawed. If you wait to have a brilliant idea before getting to work, you’ll likely be waiting a while before you produce anything. In contrast, if you push through the desire for perfection and produce work anyway, you’ll make a lot more progress toward your goals.
(Shortform note: In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron reiterates that regularly producing work is more important than making that work perfect, adding that the more work you produce, the closer you’ll get to producing something brilliant. You can get more comfortable with this practice by identifying what’s “good enough” for you, and striving for that instead of for perfection. For example, a perfectionist might want to write the final draft of a chapter on the first try, but good enough might look like writing the chapter, even if it’s bad, and editing it later on.)
Strategy 2: Go With the Flow
Burkeman’s second strategy for letting go of control is embracing resonance. He explains that embracing resonance means engaging meaningfully and reciprocally with your environment, relationships, or activities—taking all you can from your experiences, and seeing the unpredictability of life (including its good and bad parts) as a gift rather than an inconvenience.
(Shortform note: In addition to helping us let go of control, embracing resonance may be important for our mental health. Experts explain that if resonance is a state of connection to ourselves and the world around us, then a lack of resonance is a state of alienation where we feel incapable of relating to the world or getting in touch with our inner experiences. Psychologists explain that people living in this state of alienation often may also experience mental health struggles such as depression, anxiety, trauma, and substance abuse.)
Burkeman explains that embracing resonance helps us release our desire to control the uncontrollable. When we constantly attempt to exert control over life, we end up creating unnecessary anxiety for ourselves and others. We also fail to recognize how random, sometimes inconvenient situations can bring meaning to our existence. Embracing resonance helps us overcome such short-sightedness. For example, it helps you see that it might have been inconvenient for your car to break down in the middle of the street, but if it didn’t happen, you wouldn’t have made friends with the person who pulled over to help out—an event that held significant meaning for you.
(Shortform note: In You Are Not So Smart, David McRaney suggests that the sense of meaning we find in resonant moments is made up. Our brains dislike randomness, so we create narratives that bring order to the chaos of life. While this can make our lives more fulfilling, as Burkeman says, McRaney cautions that we need to be careful not to let this tendency influence us to make bad choices. For example, if the new friend who helped with your car ends up treating you poorly, don’t keep them around just because you think it was your fate to meet them. Instead, base your decision on the facts of the situation, weighing their positive and negative behaviors.)
To embrace resonance, Burkeman recommends doing what you can to achieve your goals (working within your realm of control), but rolling with the punches when setbacks or distractions occur (not resisting what you can’t control). On a typical day, this might look like doing your best to stick to your schedule but engaging with interruptions that arise, such as a surprise guest visiting your office. You never know—the interruption might even give you a burst of inspiration.
(Shortform note: In Seeking Wisdom, Julia Cameron reiterates the importance of handling life as it comes, without resistance, noting that doing is key to boosting creativity. One way Cameron says you can take the unexpected in stride, and even benefit from it, is by actively looking for inspiration, even in situations that seem like setbacks. She explains that reflecting on lessons and inspirations from a situation could help you notice that a higher power is guiding you toward your purpose. For example, an interruption from a friend might initially seem meaningless, but maybe something from the conversation will inspire your work.)
Strategy 3: Be Compassionate
Finally, to relinquish your need for control, Burkeman recommends practicing compassion for yourself and others. He explains that being kind and understanding to yourself minimizes controlling, self-sabotaging behaviors like perfectionism and self-blame that ultimately decrease your productivity and happiness. To treat yourself compassionately, lend yourself the kindness and understanding you would offer a friend, and don’t force yourself to do things you don’t want to—do enjoyable and fulfilling things instead.
Burkeman also explains that we often feel bad about ourselves because we believe we need to do more for others—we want to do something kind, but we feel like that means doing it perfectly and going all-out, so we end up doing nothing. Burkeman says you can avoid this trap by simply acting on your natural inclinations; behave generously when you feel like it, instead of putting it off for when you can act on it perfectly. For example, if you see a commercial that makes you want to give to charity, go online immediately and donate what you can spare rather than waiting for a time when you have more to give.
Program Your Brain for Happiness
Like Burkeman, Mo Gawdat explains in That Little Voice in Your Head that being compassionate toward yourself and others is key to living a happy and fulfilling life. He provides some tips for following this advice:
First, practice being compassionate with yourself and overcoming negative thoughts like self-blame by checking your perceptions of and responses to the world around you. For example, if you interpret your work as unsatisfactory, your brain will respond by being upset. Instead, look at the situation objectively: Regardless of whether you think your work is good or bad, you accomplished the work. By telling your brain you accomplished something, it will be happier, and you will have been more compassionate toward yourself.
Second, Gawdat recommends showing compassion for others by giving away the things you don't need. When you buy something for yourself, you can also buy the same thing for someone else. For example, next time you’re buying a coffee, pay for the order of the person behind you.
Step 4: Find Peace and Happiness in the Present
The final step toward achieving a happier and more successful life, according to Burkeman, is finding peace and happiness in the present. This means making the most of the here and now rather than focusing on the future, and finding peace by detaching from unrealistic expectations. In the following sections, we’ll explore Burkeman's advice for accomplishing these goals.
Strategy 1: Make the Most of Right Now
To find peace and happiness in the present, according to Burkeman, you must make the most of right now. How can you accomplish this?
First, try your hardest and be your best self now—not at some future point. Many people tend to procrastinate or consider the present as practice for a better future. However, this mindset blocks you from ever reaching that potential—if you want something in the future, Burkeman says you should start acting like you’re living that life right now. For example, if you want to be an actor in the future, start practicing today like that actor would practice. If you want to become a more open person, start by practicing vulnerability with your friends today.
(Shortform note: In Be Your Future Self Now, Benjamin Hardy expresses the same sentiment—if you want to become someone in the future, you must start acting like that person now. To effectively do this, Hardy says you first must identify your “future self”—the happiest, smartest, most productive, and most successful version of yourself. Envision who this person is and what their life looks like. Specifically, identify the big things this person has accomplished—those will be the goals you start working toward in the present.)
Burkeman says making the most of right now also requires you to take your present circumstances seriously. Many people evade relationships or commitments because they feel it’s not the right time, or they overwork themselves in the present thinking that sacrificing happiness now will pay off in the future. Burkeman argues that time is finite and you must make every moment count. Your life now is just as serious as your future plans. You should cherish and make the most of the opportunities and happiness offered in the present.
(Shortform note: In You Only Die Once, Jodi Wellman proposes a surprising yet effective way to help you take your current circumstances seriously and make the most of what you have today—contemplating your death. She argues that by thinking about your mortality, you’ll become aware of your limited time on earth and live more fully in the present.)
Strategy 2: Detach From Unrealistic Expectations
Finally, Burkeman says that to find peace and happiness in the present is to detach from unrealistic expectations. To do so, Burkeman says you must accomplish three things: being your authentic self, letting go of your desire for permanence, and being realistic about your self-expectations.
First, being authentic means embracing who you truly are with all your imperfections, rather than trying to appear a certain way. Being inauthentic often discourages authentic connection to yourself and others. In contrast, being yourself and exposing your flaws creates a more supportive environment, argues Burkeman, which will bring more peace and happiness to your life.
(Shortform note: In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown reiterates the importance of living authentically, noting two major barriers to doing so—the fear of resistance from your loved ones and the fear of challenging societal expectations. If you find these barriers are preventing you from being your authentic self, Brown recommends reminding yourself that the consequences of living inauthentically are more severe than any criticism you might face being your authentic self—not only will it bar you from success and happiness, but it can also cause issues like depression, anxiety, and low self-worth.)
Second, letting go of your desire for permanence means enjoying the present without trying to prolong or improve it. All things in life are transient, so clinging to permanence is a waste of time and energy—and constantly worrying about how you can make things better prevents you from fully enjoying what you have right now. For example, rather than worrying about photographing an event to preserve your memory of it or convincing people to stay longer to stop the event from ending, embrace and enjoy everything that’s happening around you. This will maximize your feelings of happiness and peace while dispelling the anxiety you harbor over the situation ending.
(Shortform note: One way you can practice paying attention to the present is by actively looking for beauty and positivity around you, as Mo Gawdat suggests in That Little Voice in Your Head. Gawdat explains that doing so will keep your mind busy so you don’t spend time ruminating (for example, on how you could improve the situation), and helps you notice more things around you to be grateful for, which will make you happier in general.)
Finally, Burkeman says that rather than striving for your actions to have a big impact on the world and getting disappointed when they don’t, you should start appreciating the small differences you can make in your immediate environment. Burkeman believes that the former attitude stems from a fear of mortality—we’re afraid of being forgotten when we’re gone, so we feel the need to leave a legacy. In reality, Burkeman argues that in the grand scheme of the universe, our actions, whether life-changing or not, don't really matter. So instead of holding yourself to unrealistic standards that leave you unmotivated and disappointed, take pleasure in the mundane things you can do to make a difference in your immediate environment.
(Shortform note: Marcus Aurelius echoes this sentiment in Meditations, adding that our actions make very little difference in the grand scheme of time and the universe. Therefore, to make the most meaningful impact, Aurelius argues that you should strive to benefit the common good rather than for success that only feeds your ego. For example, rather than aiming to get your business on the Fortune 500 list, strive to make enough money each year to be able to donate a million dollars to charity.)
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