Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts

"Next, I want to direct your attention to the new books from four-time(!) Five Books interviewee Oliver Burkeman , whose book Four Thousand Weeks brought me so much reassurance and clarity back in 2021. In that book, he argued that most discussions of time management are based on the flawed premise that, if we just try hard enough and are more organised, we could get everything done. Burkeman told us to face up to our own finitude and accept that you can only do a tiny proportion of all possible tasks. Plan accordingly. This new book, Meditation for Mortals , again asks us to—respectfully—get a grip, to accept where we are in our lives rather than living in a fantasy land, and to understand that there will never be a golden day when we finally ‘get on top of things’ and live correctly. He calls on us to reflect on ‘the liberation of defeat’ and ‘the futility of becoming a better person.’ If that sounds gloomy, maybe it’s not the right book for you, but if you are anything like me—that is, an all-or-nothing kind of person who strives for perfection and then jacks it all in when they inevitably fall short—then it might just be the book that will change your life. Or (as Burkeman would likely correct me) it could change your day, hopefully the day after that, and maybe every day after that, sequentially, one after another. It’s better, he tells us, not to make grand plans but to make small, ‘daily-ish’ steps towards the person we want to be."