Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

Posted on by Live & Learn

I have always resisted anything that smells a bit self-helpy. Perhaps it’s because I’m pretty content with my pretty average, relatively low-stress life, where days seized and squandered pass in fairly equal number, attended by tides of frustration or mild satisfaction… Floundering is living, too, Burkeman explains. And if there is any key to success, it’s giving up altogether the quest for super-productivity and rejecting the nagging impulse to get on top of things. Instead, we’d all be happier and more productive if we did what we could – and no more – while embracing our imperfections. Now that’s the kind of pep talk I can get on board with. […]

Meditations for Mortals could be read as a slacker’s charter, or as rehab for burned-out high achievers. For me, it fell somewhere in between. I have been grappling with my own middle-aged productivity wobbles. It can be deeply frustrating to know how much more you could earn or achieve if you could only find another gear, or rediscover the one you seemed to zoom along in as a care-free youngster.

Burkeman’s insight – always clear-eyed and jargon-free – backs up, in a reassuring and constructive way, the other sense I have on more forgiving days (going easy on yourself is the theme of day 16): that it’s better for you and everyone around you to work with, rather than fight against, who you are now. After all, Burkeman says, quoting the entrepreneur and investor Andrew Wilkinson (who gets a free pass as a tech guy because he’s both Canadian and self-aware): most highly successful people are “just a walking anxiety disorder, harnessed for productivity”.

— Simon Usborne, from his review of “Meditations for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman. (The Guardian, September 12, 2024)

28 thoughts on “Monday Morning Wake-Up Call”

  2. well, that‘s something I subscribe to, no more than 100%. You know, dear Dave, I was an over-achiever for a long time in my life. Never for the money, reputation, career, but out of simple necessity . Having a high powered job, a family, kid and pet, wanting to learn even more, day after day , inviting friends over for meals, also going out to cinema, concerts, playing instruments, singing in choirs, reading, reading, reading – the agenda overflowing! I didn‘t really want all this but life took over my being.
    Then, big cut, finally finding time to think (more), ponder, balancing needs and wants, health issues – gosh, I can‘t start telling how lucky, happy, well-balanced, quieter, more serene I am now.
    I probably would highly recommend this book, just from those short passages.

    1. I so understand this insight that you have shared Kiki: “I didn‘t really want all this but life took over my being.” I’m happy that you have found the “quiet” that many of us, me included, strive to achieve. Thanks for sharing.

  3. this is what I’m finding in my recent retirement, and because I’ve worked, raised daughters as a mostly single mom, gone to school ,(and often worked 2 jobs, all mixed together in the early days), it felt like retirement was a trick, but it’s not. it’s a lifestyle choice, a slowing down and acceptance of not having to do it all and I’ve earned it and we all deserve it.

  4. Definitely need to read this…the irony doesn’t even upend me. Equating oneness with grace and calm, must also include recognition that if retired, one is no longer needed 24/7 -( and integrate that as only a good thing) we need to survey new territory. It took a few years for me to find my footing.

  6. Love that Wilkinson quote! As a happy official “retiree” with a full and productive life which includes teaching yoga, meditation, painting, walking, blogging, coaching, doing puzzles, wining and dining, avoiding tv, looking out for doggies and spouse … my priorities have fallen into line quite nicely.

          1. So start to think in this way. Get the finances in order, begin the letting go, and focus on a way of creating that which feeds your heart and soul.

  7. Not that I don’t still multi-task to a fault, but now I notice that it makes me and everyone around me crazier. Working on letting the world mostly just be the world, and on me “just being the me I am now” (it’s easy to get sucked into crazy-busy/-productive for years; it is not easy to get even somewhat out of it). For what it’s worth, DK, I’ve noticed a pleasant, more alive *slowing down* in you since beginning your Cove visits. Really, who could’ve guessed you’d even have a spirit bird one day??

    1. Thank you! You made my day. There was a time not to long ago I wouldn’t pause for a beautiful bird, a pretty cloud formation or the rising Sun. That DK is no more. And you are right, I had no idea what a spirit bird was and now I see cormorants EVERYWHERE!

  8. Instead, we’d all be happier and more productive if we did what we could – and no more – while embracing our imperfections. Now that’s the kind of pep talk I can get on board with. […]….

    Yeah. This.

    So the TL dies soon. LOL

  10. We like these ideas very much. We are surrounded by people who see life as a high school, you always have to learn, to become better and, of course. you are getting more stressed.
    Thank you very much for sharing
    The Fab Four of Cley
    🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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