Meditations for Mortals

Monthly Book Review

One of my favorite time management books is Four Thousand Weeks. Largely because it isn’t a traditional time management book, but a reflection on how we think about time and what we can do to change our perspective rather than cram more things into each day.

I wrote about it several years ago, and it’s worth checking out again if you haven’t:

Meditations for Mortals builds on the idea that we are finite, and will never be able to do everything we want to. Whether that is getting through our to-do list, getting through our reading backlog, or visiting our bucket-list travel destinations.

Overview

Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman is a meant to be a daily reminder about our own limitations as humans. The book is structured to read over four weeks—a chapter per day. Each chapter is a reflection on how many of us (especially those of us who are overachievers) view time and time management. And how we should shift our view away from trying to accomplish everything or to control everything, and towards being more present.

Burkeman consistently reiterates in this book (and Four Thousand Weeks) that managing time is less about what we can do and more about what we should do.

“Beyond the mountains, there are always more mountains, at least until you reach the final mountain before your time on earth comes to an end. In the meantime, few things are more exhilarating than mountaineering.”

Key Takeaways

Embrace the Finite

Things are much worse than you think.

That is how this book begins. And while it may feel overly pessimistic (or realistic if you like), it is exactly what many of us need to hear.

Our to-do lists are infinite and impossible. None of us will ever be enough or be able to do enough. No matter how much we optimize our time, or how early we awake, or how late we stay up. The mountain of work is literally infinite.

The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can come to terms with reality.

The book introduces the term “insecure overachiever,” which is certainly a description that applies to me. Those of us in this category often feel like we start each day or week with a productivity debt and have to get our list to zero to pay off the debt. This is literally how I feel and how I act (hopefully some of you can relate as well). My daily list is always huge and usually grows throughout the day. And most days I feel like I haven’t done enough because my list is still huge.

But this isn’t the right way to live. Each day isn’t about paying off debt. It’s about focusing on the most important things to be done rather than everything to be done.

“When you start to view each day not as a matter of paying off a debt, but as an opportunity to move a small-but-meaningful number of items over to your done list, you’ll find yourself making better choices about what to focus on;”

Let Go

In the age of landlines, whenever the phone would ring at home (or even at work when we’d visit him), my dad would say “if it’s important, they’ll call back.” And he’d let it ring because he was focused on something more important.

For some of us, letting anything go doesn’t feel like an option. Every email and message must be responded to, every question must be answered, every task has to be done.

But what if we just let some things go? What if, rather than focusing on every little thing that is demanding our attention, we let some of the less important things simply go?