are you doing a few things every day

that your ancestors would have done what

250 000 years ago oliver berkman he's a

journalist a writer and one of the

greatest thinkers i've had the pleasure

of sitting with here on this podcast

people talk all the time about the

importance of learning to say no right

there's a subtext there they think what

that means is if you just learn to say

no to all the stuff you don't want to do

you can spend your time doing stuff you

do want to do way harder than that you

have to say no to things that you do

want to do we are

wired for racing through things all of

us who are sort of moving at this speed

need to experiment a little bit with

like what it feels like to just slow

down to the speed that things take

any action that actually brings things

into the world involves a confrontation

with your limitations getting through

that discomfort to what lies on the

other side is so empowering without

further ado i'm stephen bartlett and

this is the diary of a ceo i hope

nobody's listening but if you are then

please keep this to yourself

as a journalist um

i was quite surprised to read some of

the articles you'd written and the

subject matter wasn't necessarily like

always about the news or what's going on

or it wasn't gossipy it was quite

i don't know existential and deep and

about regret and life and happiness and

these kinds of things why did the desire

to talk about and to write and research

those topics come from a new

that's a good question i mean i think

early early when i was a journalist i

was doing whatever i needed to do and a

lot of that was kind of news

more newsy but i've always wanted to try

to bring into that kind of daily context

these big

serious ideas and i think it's just

because

i'm fascinated by them and i think i'm

fascinated by them because i on some

level struggle with them right i mean i

don't think anyone if they're honest

writes about happiness who

is just

completely happy all the time because

then that topic is boring to that person

i think i'm probably a pretty anxious

person going back less so now uh having

spent years kind of

therapising myself in public in in the

in columns and books but um

that sense that you sort of need to find

some secret to address

your own issues and also when it comes

to sort of productivity and time

management and all those topics it's

like

maybe if i could find the system that

would put me in total control of my time

then maybe i wouldn't need to feel

worried about the future and you know

things like that we're all just sort of

revealing our deepest

uh issues in the things we choose to

focus on and write about you alluded to

it a little bit there but you said you

know one of the books you wrote was

called the antidote happiness for people

who can't stand positive thinking

interesting title what was the

inspiration but i mean you said

struggling with unhappiness was was i

mean by the time i wrote that i was sort

of i'd given all these things a lot of

thought i'd written this column for the

guardian for quite a few years and i

sort of noticed this pattern emerging

in the in the approaches and the

philosophies that really seemed to do

something for me and to sort of um lift

my spirits help me navigate the world a

bit more more calmly and effectively and

they were not

uh

what i call in that book positive

thinking right they were not

fill your mind with upbeat thoughts and

set incredibly ambitious goals and try

to push yourself relentlessly towards

achieving them it was actually

much more to do with being open to

negative stuff and being willing to feel

anxiety and security uncertainty and the

potential for failure and all those

things

it's actually a much more resilient way

to um

to be in the world i think plus it i

guess it's kind of

it's the contribution that i can make to

the world of self-help and things like

that is to bring my kind of

pessimistic slightly sardonic i don't

know british northern i don't know where

this comes from culturally really but

like

of a of a field like the self-help

industry like

just so much of this is rubbish and at

the same time

the topic that this is ultimately about

is really important and you can't just

dismiss it completely so um what would

you say are some of the big sort of

central misconceptions about how to

become happy or

what is it that fundamentally makes us

unhappy i sat here with moe gowda who

wrote a book about happiness um

the happiness equation and he talks a

lot about expectation management when

your expectations are too high and if

your expectations go unmet then we're

unhappy um and you know in a lot of your

writings you talk about

being a bit more

aware that any lack of productivity or

hardship or struggle isn't a sign of our

inadequacy as humans it's very much

the nature of earth yeah full life i

guess

i mean yeah in terms of misconceptions i

think that the sort of fundamental one

that i was writing about in that earlier

book is

is the idea that happiness is best

achieved by aiming for happiness you

know that setting out in your life to

get happy

is

there's something amiss with this notion

right happiness is the kind of thing

that seems to arise as a byproduct of

certain kinds of meaningful activity but

if you make it the

sort of goal of your life you can sort

of bear down on it too much and then it

sort of

goes away the book on some level is

about

um

turning your attention away from

happiness and finding happiness that way

through sort of the pursuit of

reality right through engaging in

meaningful activities and we can talk

about what meaningful means i suppose

but but not but not sort of what will

make me feel better or best as the

as the as the sort of navigation aid

that you use in life and then happiness

coming as a as a sort of a secondary

effect of that i think you know

the the the sort of crassus kind of

positive thinking fails just because the

human mind

does not work like that if what if you

decide that you're always going to fill

your mind with

positive upbeat optimistic thoughts

then every negative thought that creeps

in is like a new failure and something

to feel stressed about and something to

try to stamp out

and uh

that's just sort of not true to the

situation of like who we are which is a

big mixture of all sorts of feelings so

if we're not aiming for happiness then

and we're aiming for kind of demeaning

meaningful activities in the process

what are those what have you come to

learn are the meaningful activities that

end up creating the byproduct of

happiness

i mean it's the question and i don't

think i've like come to the final answer

in in any of this but um

i think meaning

it's it's a really

fascinating idea because i think people

know

in a sort of intuitive way whether what

they're doing is meaningful there's a

question that i write about that comes

from a psychotherapist called james

hollis whose work has been really uh um

had a real big impact on me which is to

ask of a choice or of a life path that

you might be on whether it's enlarging

you or diminishing you

and

i don't think this language works for

everybody but for me it's like oh okay

you can tell that there are times when

life is not enjoyable

but it's about growth what you're doing

it's like it's good that you're doing it

and it's meaningful that you're doing it

and then there are times when life might

be perfectly fun

but if you really stop and think about

it it's like it's missing the point

somehow i think one the sort of an acute

example of this that most people will

have experience of is

if like a friend or a relation of yours

is going through a crisis and you're

helping them out in some way you're

there to just as some company or i i

recall one example when some friends of

mine were going through a really awful

thing and i was like literally like

doing the dry cleaning for them right it

was just like they just needed help in

this kind of way and you have that

feeling of like

i'm in the right place here this is

there isn't something else i ought to be

doing now doesn't mean it's fun because

the whole situation is awful doesn't

mean it's in great activity because

doing someone's dry cleaning is not

necessarily a great activity but but you

know that you're in the right place and

i think that we can hope to have that

feeling about quite a lot of the sort of

work and

other things that we do in in non-crisis

moments so that's how i kind of think

about that this is a good use of this

day of your

very limited time on the planet one of

the things that i view that seems to be

pretty correct

um when i'm trying to figure out what is

meaningful it makes me gives me that

feeling of like fulfillment that i'm in

the right place as you describe it is

when i look back at like the human

struggle over thousands of years and

really what made us survive it tends to

be the case that i feel best when i'm

doing the things that are kind of in

line with how my ancestors lived

right so i mean on one hand you could

say

eating certain things and drinking and

sleeping but then as we kind of

described it there which is like banding

together and collaborating ultimately

that's central to how why we're here and

so it's conceivable that our ancestors

might have left that message in my

genetic code to say stephen not only are

you going to struggle forward but you're

going to do it together yeah and so when

you helped your friend with their dry

cleaning that was a really human

historically like human act of banding

together and support

um but i i feel like we've kind of lost

track of those fundamental human

things if that makes sense and whenever

we do them now which is like helping

each other

you know eating stuff that's grown from

the ground

the over stimulation of dig like digital

items and screens in our lives

loneliness these are all callings to

kind of get back to our tribe and in

fact i i'm coming to learn despite what

the happiness industry sells you it

actually might be really really

fundamentally simple in a in a way which

is trying to be more human

yeah yeah i've heard yeah that's such a

good point i've heard somebody

express this as like you should ask are

you doing a few things every day

that your ancestors would have done what

250 000 years ago exercise right

being together in our tribes right being

outdoors

outdoors right the studies and being

outdoors are really startling and i

think the problem is so many of us now i

mean uh

writers are the sort of ultimate example

but but but so many of us you for sure

like we're doing what we're mainly doing

with our days is manipulating symbols in

one way or another right images words

ideas all day long

like and

and a lot of these things are so new

like writing is is incredibly modern

invention on the evolutionary uh time

scale let alone podcasting and um this

is a sort of very low grade productivity

idea that i've written about and i think

is really important is to to try to

think about anything you're doing in

terms of physical actions and physical

next actions and so one thing i do when

i'm writing for example is i sort of set

goals that are to do with creating

physical documents right i'm going to do

this i'm going to write this i'm going

to print it out and it's going to have

something on my desk the hole in my

hands that i did today it's very easy to

get lost in that in that world that

doesn't have

like hard edges that doesn't have a

physicality in it and it's very alluring

because it feels kind of

you feel sort of god-like in that world

if you spend all day sort of with your

head mainly occupying

cyberspace or the metaverse but but yeah

you miss out on that essentially human

stuff that you're talking about and in

your new book you talk a lot about kind

of stripping back a lot of this [ __ ]

that has consumed our lives and the

complexity and these narratives which

have been kind of sold by the happiness

and efficiency and procrastination

industry let's call it um your new book

4000 weeks time and how to use it which

i found

incredibly important i think that's the

best way to describe it so i really want

to go through a couple of the points in

the book that i

i found compelling and that i wanted to

ask you questions on the first is

chapter one which was the limit of um

the limit embracing life

um and you talk about this concept of

embracing our limits what did you mean

by that seems to me and it's certainly

my experience but i think it is more

universal than just like my my issues

seems to me that a lot of what we do

uh the way we behave in the world and

the way we try to manage our time

especially

it's all really

based around trying to avoid

confronting something about our

situation

it's a kind of an emotional avoidance

it's to avoid feeling what it is like to

be

who we are which is finite human beings

right four thousand weeks the title

refers to the approximate length of uh

average lifespan in the west um which is

terrifying by the way this is terrifying

yeah yeah i love that

i thought

the risky decision i realized in

hindsight to give the book this title

because it might just cause people to

like run away from the bookshop and not

buy the book but anyway the um

so we're very finite in our amount of

time we're obviously finite on the daily

level of the amount of time we have but

also finite in how much control we can

exert over it right you nobody knows

what's happening in the very next moment

you can you can take actions to increase

the likelihood that what you want is

going to happen but we're all totally

sort of vulnerable to events and to

every

to every moment it's increasingly

impossible to have sort of complete

knowledge about anything that you're

doing or any sphere in which you're

acting and then you know relationships

just inherently involve you know

romantic relationships but all

relationships it just inherently

involves this kind of

vulnerability to other people and and

things they might do to hurt you or

think bad things that might happen to

them that would cause you to suffer and

so we're in this kind of very very

limited

situation and the i guess the main

argument in my book is that like if we

followed through the ramifications of

that we would use our time in a in a

somewhat different way

and actually i think a more relaxing way

i don't think it's a kind of recipe for

stress although the title is probably a

recipe for stress but um

in productivity for example the quest to

try to do everything to become like

limitlessly optimized so that you can

handle all your incoming email you can

pursue all your ambitions and business

ventures you can meet all the

obligations you feel from your family

and friends or from society and do it

all that's trying to become unlimited

right that's trying to become limitless

um

and we there are lots of other examples

of this

where i think what we're really doing is

is just trying to avoid feeling our

finitude

and some people want to say well isn't

it great to believe that we're limitless

because then you can like do astonishing

things and i want to say

no i think the kind of limitation i'm

talking about

confronting it and feeling it and living

into it is actually the precondition of

doing

the the most sort of extraordinary

things with a life because

you get to kind of give up on this

impossible quest to

fit yourself to every expectation that

the world might have one in which you

can only fail right and just focus on

doing that right yeah inadequate yeah

and and the sort of great inventors and

the great entrepreneurs of today and the

great sort of historical

figures like all these people they

didn't

they did things that people thought were

previously thought were impossible yeah

but they didn't um they very very

deliberately understood that using their

time the way they wanted to use it meant

sacrifices

um it meant neglecting things that would

be completely good things to do right

i'm sure you know what i'm talking about

here right i mean it's like you there

are 25

things you could do it's not that only

one of them is any good like

24 of them are good but even so most of

them are gonna have to you're gonna have

to be able to withstand the anxiety of

just neglecting most of them in order to

focus on and fundamentally

you believe which i also completely

agree with which is in fact why i have

this sand timer here which i just picked

off my desk before we started recording

you believe that um people do go through

life

not almost i don't for me it's like not

realizing slash not believing that they

will die it's almost like humans aren't

able to understand the concept of

infinity and they're also not able to

understand the concept of finality right

the fact that we will i will come to an

end so we don't live in such a way we

don't live with such a belief and if you

look at a lot of the decisions i make

you would assert that i'm living like i

think i'm going to live forever right

because my my misprioritization of

things that actually clearly matter more

and this kind of constant difference of

happiness to the future i will be happy

when right and then we live in you know

because one of the things i say and i

say this on my live show is

i say to the audience that

if you think about it

probably about 90 of this audience are

currently living in a way in which a

previous self of them told themselves if

they got here they would be happy right

yes but their current self is saying

not now we'll be happy when so deferring

it going into the future yeah so people

don't live like they know they're gonna

die essentially right and i think you

know something that's important to say

about that is like i think that that

that mindset i've i've seen it called

and i refer to in the book is like when

i finally mindset right it's like when

something happens then the moment of

truth is going to come and after that

life is going to be fulfilling and easy

but not yet i mean it's obviously as you

say it's totally like drains the meaning

out of life in the present but it serves

again it serves this purpose of

avoidance right because if you're always

storing up fulfillment for the future

you don't have to acknowledge the fact

that like this is it life isn't a dress

rehearsal like you've got to do things

now if you're ever going to do them

there's a great quote from john maynard

keynes the economist that i

use in there about how people who live

in this mindset and he's talking about

pretty much everyone really um they're

trying to secure for their actions i

won't get this exactly right they're

trying to secure for their actions of

spurious and delusive immortality by

always pushing them into the future

right so the man who thinks like this

keynes writes uh doesn't doesn't love

his cat but only his cat's kittens and

not really their kittens but the kittens

kittens and so on forever right and so

the downside

is that you never get to enjoy and value

and find fulfillment in life now but the

upside is it sort of helps you feel like

you might be going to live forever it's

kind of useful to be putting things off

because it it

it helps this act of denial that we're

all engaged in it also means that we

continue as humans to struggle forward

right we continue to take on struggle

whether it's challenge or ambition we

continue to be ambitious and then i go

well maybe that's also what allowed our

ancestors to give give birth to us

because if our ancestors weren't

trying to build a better tomorrow and

kind of deferring gratitude to the to

the empire that they were trying to

build then maybe we wouldn't be here so

is it a human

thing to also kind of defer our

happiness to the future i think it must

be and really is and i think we are sort

of goal seeking

organisms i think it's hugely compounded

by

the culture in which we live in the

economic system

in which we live and i think it's sort

of gone uh into warp speed in a way that

we could

step back from but i also think that

it's not about giving up goals right

it's not about stopping trying to

achieve things in the future it's about

it's about not investing the whole value

of what you're doing

in those in those future

outcomes you can't build anything a

relationship business

creative work you can't do it unless you

are partly focused on on where you're on

where you're going but you don't have to

be

exclusively focused on where you're

going and i would say you probably

shouldn't be exclusively focused on

where you're going because it will

damage the

product that you're creating as well so

you might fall into the efficiency trap

as you call it which is chapter two

right you get you get completely fixated

on valuing the the present only in terms

of how it um is going to help uh uh

create the the future thing and then you

find what happens is that

actually you get further and further

away from achieving that thing because

you in trying to make yourself more

efficient in trying to sort of

process more and more tasks to get

closer to your goal

you make yourself more efficient and

then more and more tasks like flood in

to fill the excess capacity and this is

parkinson's law and a whole lot of other

kind of it goes by a whole lot of names

but it's this idea that um

yeah if you if all you do is make

yourself more efficient

then you'll just be dealing with a

greater incoming volume of things and

inbox zero i felt was the perfect

example of that in your book where the

better you get at sending emails and

replying fast in fact the more replies

you get and people come to know you as

having a reputation of he emails back

quickly which is going to get even more

emails and then the challenge of getting

to inbox zero becomes increasingly

harder and then you find yourself

drowning

yeah absolutely right and it's just when

you spell it out like that it's like of

course and so you know i remember when i

was um

a young journalist sort of feeling

overwhelmed by the number of articles i

was being asked to write so you get

really really better at

writing them really fast and you get a

reputation for

being able to

write quite a long complicated article

in a short amount of time like who's the

editor going to ask when the next one

comes up right i mean and you know i got

a lot of benefit from being the person

that the editor asked but it certainly

didn't make me less busy yeah i think i

have that a bit with my pa at the moment

she i've got a reputation with her being

able to do

50 meetings a day right so my calendar

is now 50 meetings a day and we've

actually forgotten about the concept of

like i need to eat at some point

so like there's no i looked at my

calendar the other day she's superb and

in fact she does exactly what i've

always done to do so she's not at fault

here i am but i looked at my calendar

the other day and i was with her in the

car and i go isn't it funny it's like

every minute of the next 14 hours is

scheduled but i but there's no space for

lunch or just like

sending a voice in it to my girlfriend

right so i've kind of like

misprioritized my life but again it's

because i've i've con i've i've not

fought back against that by being

successful at being efficient i've

you know brought more efficiency into my

life and taken away

things that give me meaning like

connecting with my girlfriend or my

mother or my family or you know those

passions and

and i think yeah i mean i'd be

interested to know if this resonates

with you for me when i've got into that

kind of groove that place where you're

sort of pursuing efficiency

at the expense of everything else for me

anyway part of what's going on is was

always to do with self-worth right it's

this idea that you've got to get to this

point where you are this optimal and

this efficient and productive

that you

wouldn't really be justifying your

existence on the planet somehow if you

if you if you didn't do all these things

and so i think lots and lots of people

who sort of accomplish stuff

are driven to accomplish stuff because

they feel like they need to accomplish

stuff like it's not okay if they if they

don't uh accomplish stuff and so

that is a kind of never-ending treadmill

as well because um

like why are you going to decide that

any particular given level of output or

accomplishment is the one where you can

where you can

relax and i think

one of the things i'm always at pains to

try to get across talking about this

book is that um

this is meant to be a relaxing message

right i think this is a liberating

message that can be like a weight off

your shoulders because if you

if you see that what you were doing was

trying to do an impossible amount in

order to feel

like okay about yourself on some deep

buried level

well if you really begin to internalize

that it's impossible

then it can't be what you need to do in

order to feel okay about yourself maybe

you're okay already and then the things

that you do in the world are kind of

extra and then i think you know the

message of our being finite the message

of our of our being limited is not so

now you've got to like squeeze value out

of every moment and

go base jumping every weekend or

something otherwise have you really

lived it's much more like okay oh great

the pressure's off

i can't do an impossible amount

i can only do a few of the things that

seem like they matter

so all i need to do is

choose for now which ones seem the most

important and

focus on them and give my energy to them

and it's much more doable i can

completely relate to that attachment of

efficiency to self-worth it felt so it

felt like you were calling me out

and the other thing i have which i just

realized as you were saying was

because i've become successful in the

eyes of society quote unquote

i'm now also trying to live up to my own

external reputation that people have of

me people say oh steve you're

you never sleep you're so

you work so hard

so when i have days where i don't work

really hard and i clearly just achieved

nothing that day

i'm like haunted by the my almost my

reputation right which is largely false

my reputation that i don't sleep and

that i'm working all the time and that

i'm super productive and that i'm

organized and i don't procrastinate i'll

tell you now it is a load of [ __ ]

i

some days i do like

a lot of a lot of days i do way less

than the people around me right but i

have this so but i do have those moments

now where if i have like an unproductive

day

or

i've like slept until midday for

whatever reason which happens a lot by

the way or i've procrastinated which

happens every day or i'm really

unproductive i go

you're not being steve bartlett you're

you're a fella you're letting down your

reputation right you're a fraud

you are a fraud i get that a lot that

feeling of like it doesn't like [ __ ]

me but that feeling of oh i if i look at

today and i look at the reputation of

stephen butler i am a fraud

um it's fascinating i think it must be

it's a lot it's a lot worse with a high

public profile but i do think it's kind

of almost

a universal trait that a lot of people

have a lot of people who are sort of

well thinking back we've talked before

about like b i was just a sort of your

garden variety high achiever at school

right like the kid getting the a grades

or whatever and and

and

a lot of people in that situation

have what is called in psychology

probably know like they have a fixed

mindset rather than a growth mindset

right so one of the consequences of this

is every time you do well

it's not something to be happy about

because you did well it's like something

to feel pressure about because now

that's the bar that you've got to reach

next time and it's like you know it's

suddenly your your success has become

this um

this standard that you've now got to

meet every single time in the future and

that is like

it's

it's it's a agonizing way to to live

usually that's people thinking

that their inner critic demands it or

their parents demand it obviously the

bigger your audience the more you you

can fall into thinking that like there

are hundreds and hundreds of thousands

of people who who demand it but of

course that also gives you the power to

do something very

helpful and liberating for those people

when you break the fourth wall or

whatever and point out that it isn't

like that yeah yeah the other one i

always get is the morning routine people

will send me on instagram like what

steve can you tell us your morning

routine yeah i can almost imagine them

at home like sending the dm and being

sat there with their notepad ready for

my response and i'm like honestly i

sometimes i get out but at 11.

sometimes i don't sleep so i end up

getting i bet at one sometimes you know

i'll get out six there's no green juice

for me there's no yoga there's no

continual meditation or run or whatever

right it's a sloppy mess the whole

process the whole process of me waking

up is a really sloppy mess i'm trying to

improve i bring people here that talk

about morning routines it still doesn't

seem to work

but um but despite of that yeah i'm

happy my businesses have gone well i've

managed to achieve my ambitions despite

of my total imperfection in most key

areas that the happiness industry would

assert

because they need to sell you complex

things or else why would you buy

if if the truth is that

you're going to be imperfect and that's

okay maybe i'm okay you said that if

that's the truth it's hard to sell you

it but that's the truth as i know it and

that's why i enjoy these conversations

one thing i did talk about there was

procrastination

and this is a topic where which i think

honestly plagues people into feeling

like they are inadequate yeah if i make

a video on my instagram about

procrastination it will outperform

everything relationships perform the

best okay number two right is anything

with the title progress maybe i'll title

this video about procrastination and

it'll do really well yeah why do people

procrastinate

well they watch those videos presumably

while they should be getting on with

their getting on with the working

questions right that's that's that's

probably going to subscribe

procrastination videos are really

popular one level there's lots of

different reasons fear of failure fear

of success fear of all sorts of

different things but but at the deep

level

i make the argument anyway

you don't want to feel

what it feels like to be

limited and imperfect and so if you hold

on to a project if you keep it in your

mind in the world of fantasy

it can stay perfect it can be later that

you're going to do this great thing

any action that actually brings things

into the world involves a confrontation

with your limitations maybe you're not

going to

have the talent for it maybe it's not

going to be well received maybe it's

going to be too complicated if i'm

trying to write a chapter of a book

like the stakes are high for me because

i want it to go well but i don't know

that it is going to go well i want it to

be well received but i don't know that

it will be well received

so much nicer to just spend that time

doing something kind of

pointless and

you know scrolling around or whatever

because

yeah because i don't have to have

confront my limitations and what i want

to try to convey in that topic in in in

this book anyway i think is to say look

bringing anything into the world

studying for any um

qualification doing any kind of creative

work like

launching any kind of business like it

the the imperfection is guaranteed like

you definitely aren't going to get to

bring it into the world in in exactly in

tune with your fantasy and everyone is

in the same boat

and this is completely unavoidable and

baked in

[Music]

so you might as well do it right because

it's like people i think people they get

caught up in themselves they think well

i'm going to make fool of myself or i'm

going to let myself down or i'm going to

let my friends or my parents down but

it's like no

the imperfection

the fact that it will stumble and not be

everything you dreamed it could have

been

that ship has sailed like that's just

for everyone so now can we just move

forward and do our imperfect things and

lots of them will turn out to be

uh

you know fantastic things but they will

all be imperfect because because that's

what it is to to bring things into the

world as a human being knowing that

having written a

chapter in your book called becoming a

better procrastinator

do you still procrastinate

yes um

i've always i always feel like my my

point about that i get asked this

question and i'm always like look you

got to compare me with who i was before

not with this perfect person because i

am not that perfect person but i am a

lot better at it than i was um

[Music]

yeah and what where i stumble

on that is not so much anymore

with the idea that it's got to be

like

perfect standard because if you spend a

few years as a journalist you get that

sort of beating out of you right because

like deadlines come deadlines come you

just got to send the thing in and you

stop thinking after a while that you're

that your glorious prose has got to be

perfect you can't let it out of your

sight until it's perfect because it's

just never how it works where i still

run into trouble is that i do feel this

urge to feel in control of all the

things that are going on in my life and

all things going on in my

work so it's very tempting for me

to say um

you know i've got to write that really

important thing or i've got to think

through this really important thing but

first i'm going to

make sure that all my inboxes are

under control and then i'm going better

do all that admin about finances that

i'd left that i'd left and i better sort

of

and then you before you know it it's

like better like rearrange my desk so

that all the all the pens are

straightened up whatever displacement

activities things that make me feel

more

in control of my world but actually

don't move the things that i care about

forward the most and i'm getting better

on that too but that's the thing that's

where the the struggle is

for me i will definitely spend like

long periods of time

getting my ducks in a row and clearing

the decks and i write in the book about

how you've really got to try and fight

this urge to clear the decks because

they will never be clear right so you've

got to you've got to just get on with

things but uh but yeah

work in progress for sure that's a very

honest answer and i'm glad to hear that

you and me both

quick one for many years people have

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become hooked on it over the last couple

of weeks i've been on a really

interesting journey with huel which i've

described and talked about a little bit

on this podcast i started with the berry

ready to drinks then i moved over to the

protein salted caramel because it's 100

calories and it gives you all of your

essential vitamins and minerals but also

gives you the 20 odd grams of protein

you need and now i'm balanced between

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into the iced coffee caramel um flavor

of heels ready to drink and now i'm

drinking that as well as the protein

make sure you try the new ready to drink

flavors that the caramel flavor is

amazing the new banana flavor as well is

amazing and obviously as i said the iced

coffee caramel flavor has been a real

smash here so check it out let me know

what you think on social media i see all

of your tags and instagram posts and

tweets about you back to the podcast

in that chapter about procrastination

you talk a lot about focus as well in

this idea of avoiding your middling

priorities

which i thought was really good advice

so could you talk a little bit about the

importance of avoiding middling

priorities certainly the the the story

that dramatizes this is this idea that

some people may have heard about it's

attributed to warren buffett but i think

probably it didn't come from warren

buffett people often just take wise

sayings and say that warren buffett will

do that with me

christ

it's warren buffett

buddha and confucius

so hopefully you know he's about you as

well right yes right right right but he

is supposed

buffett is supposed to been asked like

how do you decide what to prioritize in

life and to have replied that you should

make a list of your top 25 goals in life

and

order them numerically from 1 to 25

and then take the top five on that list

and really focus on them in your life

and take the next 20 and avoid them like

the plague

because they are the ones that you care

about enough to let them distract you

from the from the top five but not

the ones that you're that are easy to

let go of because you don't really care

about them right they belong in this

middle zone

whether or not that exercise is a useful

exercise the the principle here

i think is that you have to sort of be

especially wary of of

claims on your attention and your time

that

do matter a bit

but just not as much as the things that

you care about the most it's very easy

to um people talk all the time about the

importance of learning to say no right

but people often i think in the there's

a subtext there they think what that

means is if you just learn to say no to

all the stuff you don't want to do you

can spend your time doing stuff you do

want to do

but i quote actually elizabeth gilbert

the writer in the book saying like no

it's way harder than that you have to

say no to things that you do want to do

because

there are more things that matter

than you have time for so middling

priorities are you know

that friendship that yeah it's fine you

know it's nice when you meet up with

that person but it's not

neither of you getting that much out of

it and it's taking another hour away

from

i don't know your partner your child

your best friend you know definitely

sort of

work projects that sort of

yeah you can do them you could handle

that it might make you a little bit of

money or you know whatever but it's just

not it's not the number one thing takes

quite a lot to resist those because they

are

they're not unimportant they're just not

important enough

and it feels like um

more is more but as the phrase goes in

this context less is more you i i've

observed that in my life anyway if you

if you want to be successful in business

then focusing on one as opposed to

having three startups is much more much

better but some people will brag about

how many businesses they run or how many

things they do as if they believe that

that makes them more more valuable

they'll brag about how many friends they

have as opposed to the quality of them

and it tends to be the case that that

phrase less is more is is true in the

sense of

focusing on less things gives you much

more meaning and depth in life and

that's ultimately what's what matters

yeah and actually i think it's probably

the way to accomplish more things as

well right it's it's um

so

one thing that i've found i i can't talk

on the level of businesses launched but

only on the level of uh you know

articles and books written is the degree

to which i can do things sequentially

and train myself to do one big thing at

a time and wait till it's finished

before you move to the next one takes a

lot takes kind of guts to do it because

it feels better to have a finger in

every part once but

to the extent that i can do that to that

extent i get more of those things done

um

because you make most of them wait

you focus on one

you do it and then it's finished and

then you bring the next one in and you

do that um

it's so tempting to sort of dissipate

your energies because i think it makes

you feel we're back to the same idea

right makes you feel limitless it makes

you feel like

you can wrap your arms around the whole

world stops people in the case of my

work it stops people pestering you

because like where's that thing you said

you'd do and

it's very nice to live in that world of

um of sort of multitasking and

multi-projects but it's not the most

effective way to

get the things done

yeah i i'm struggling with that i think

for sure and

i think

i think as well when you've got um

when you've got more opportunities

like i get a lot of a lot of people

sending me a lot of things to do these

days a lot of things that i could do it

becomes an even greater and more

important skill to master so the amount

of like we had one day last week where

they're like every

journalist across these multiple

newspapers wants to speak to you about

this i made this donation

and

there's part of me that goes oh yeah

that's you know i'll do all of these tv

things that day but then of course it

comes at the cost of something else and

we and we never really focus on the cost

right it seems like yeah and that's kind

of the curse i have in my mind sometimes

is i'm too focused on the benefit of

doing the thing as if

you know which is basically the premise

of your book that like

as if my time was unlimited yeah but

yeah you know it's like i was i remember

reading about this thing which

has weirdly stayed in my mind for many

years

this idea that they believe humans can

only juggle a certain amount of balls

because of the physics of a ball going

up and then the speed in which one could

possibly move so they think it's 14 and

nobody's been able to break the world

record ever

is that the record the 14 balls no one's

ever been able to juggle more than 14

balls and and that record has held

because of the physics of the balls

going up and the way that they would

collide if you made it 15 and that made

me think there is a physical limitation

to the amount of balls we can physically

juggle as humans and the balls you pick

up come at the expense of the ones you

don't yeah and that's i've tried to keep

remember that that i have to pick my 14

balls in life hopefully not [ __ ] 14 i

can probably do two but i have to pick

my balls in life and realize that every

one i pick is at the expense of another

and even looking at you know i write in

my book i really love waffles but i also

like want to have a six pack

i can only pick one you know

right right really you know that's a

metaphor but like i have to choose which

one's important and it's the same with

cheating

some people might like having sex but

they also might like having a

relationship and you have to realize

that if you want to be in a faithful

relationship it comes at the cost of

something and um

right no and i think that you know we

yes we spend so much effort trying to

avoid thinking about costs or trying to

avoid

incurring them but again

there's something

freeing about seeing that you are always

incurring costs that every decision to

spend an hour doing anything is the

decision to not spend it doing other

things that

you know

every path you choose you're you're

declining to choose all these other

paths

it's painful because it means that like

loss is built in to

living a human life but it's also

like it's so unavoidable

like there's nothing that can be done

about that that's just built into being

finite so in a way like

we can relax about that actually if

there wasn't cost though things wouldn't

be special like right yes forever

if i could have the best of both worlds

then the one i choose wouldn't have it

you know scarcity adds value they say so

totally and i mean there's been there's

there's like philosophical work going

back on like would you actually want to

be immortal uh

if you could no and i agree yeah i don't

think you would because i think as i uh

writes in the book like if you were

immortal

the answer to the question

should i do x with my day today would

always just be who cares

like because if you didn't do it today

you could do it on any number of other

days

to the

uh stretching off into infinity so i

think absolutely uh it's not pleasant to

confront our finichu but life would have

no

meaning if it went if it didn't stop you

write about watermelons in your book

oh yeah chapter five is about the

watermelon problem

the famous buzzfeed watermelon this was

like what five years ago now two

journalists from buzzfeed put rubber

bands around the watermelon and they

just kept adding rubber bands

uh things like 600 and something rubber

bands before the watermelon just

exploded

that was the end of the facebook live

but the point that i'm using it to make

is that you know millions of people

watch that

and i'm not like

i don't think there's anything terrible

with spending

an hour of your life watching people put

rubber bands around a watermelon but but

they didn't choose to watch it that's a

it's a very clear example of the way in

which especially in the sort of

attention economy that we live in now

your attention is incredibly important

because what you pay attention to

just is your life right what over the

course of your life whatever you paid

attention to

it's just

it's just what your life was

and yet it's very easily

uh hijackable um

and

and you know nobody who ended up

watching that that hour got up that

morning thinking um

what i'd really like to do today is uh

spend an hour put it watching people put

rubber bands around a watermelon so it's

just really the the question of

distraction the question of how we

steward our attention and again if you

want a break in the middle of the day

and someone's doing some stunt involving

a watermelon fine

right but but just

bringing consciousness to that fact that

when we pay attention to things we are

paying very literally with

little chunks of our of our life have

you found any practical ways to make

yourself less distracted by such

compelling videos

there's really two parts to this i think

one is especially in the modern era

right one is

the source of the distraction so

definitely like i don't have social

media on my

phone i do that on a

i do that on a laptop exclusively um

[Music]

i've i've sort of have a sort of ever

shifting and never never perfectly

observed set of personal rules about

like when i will turn to my email and

when i will turn to the internet and

when i will be

trying to be sort of offline and focused

on

on

writing and thinking

but the other side of it i think is

is the distractibility not just the sort

of

not the things that are reaching out to

grab our attention but the fact that we

kind of go along willingly with this

stuff and again you know it's just my

one thesis but i think the reason that

we're doing that is because it's much

more comfortable than focusing on hard

stuff focusing on hard stuff is is

is unpleasant sometimes because it

brings us into contact with our

limitations and then

distraction is much nicer thing to do uh

with that time because it doesn't

so really a big part of this for me and

it's been definitely a slow gradual

thing it's not a sort of uh one clever

trick or something is just to expect

a certain amount of discomfort in things

that matter right just to sort of

just to expect that

writing i keep using this example

because it's personal to me but like

that it's

like it feels difficult uh cal newport

who wrote the book deep work and digital

minimalism who's very good on this has

this argument that like

what people call writer's block that's

just the feeling of writing right

because it's a hard thing to do and

sometimes you might get into flow great

but most of the time it's probably going

to be a question of like

it's like a little bit hard and the

analogy that people always use is with

weightlifting right i mean you don't

expect if it's you don't expect that to

feel

non-non-uncomfortable not that i have

great experience of it but like you

don't

there are certain areas where things

where sort of growth

involves discomfort and we're okay with

that and then there are other areas

often involving

cognitive activities where we we're

somehow deeply offended that it feels a

bit difficult to do it but no it does

the other thing that i always think is

extraordinarily difficult is really

listening to another person right it

never really gets super easy that i

think especially in relationships right

to sort of to really concentrate on what

someone is saying and not just to be

thinking oh but then when when they're

finished this is what i'm going to say

it's it takes effort and if you're

if if your response to that feeling of

effort is like i can't feel effort it

must be easy then it's going to be much

more tempting to just be like checking

your phone when you should be listening

or something so just a bit of a

willingness to experience mild

discomfort i think it's kind of a

superpower

yeah and obviously

there's a lot of social narratives that

kind of point to it as being a failure

like you're right even the phrase

writer's block

the word block doesn't feel like

very natural it feels like there's

something that must be got a disorder

right yeah yeah

yeah yeah and a lot it's so funny

because you said at the start of this

some of these new inventions are really

holding us back like words

and vocabulary like there's so many of

them even i talk a lot about in my book

the idea of finding your passion there's

so many like

things um hidden within that phrase

first you have to go in search of it

because of the word find

so people go they go off in search of

this thing that they think they can find

it alludes to the fact that it's

singular

because the word passion is singular

so i'm looking for a easter egg

somewhere which i need to go and search

and find and if i don't find it that i'm

a failure and much of the the messages i

get in my dm's as i've said before are

kids that are feeling inadequate and

like they're a failure because they

haven't found their passion when if you

say well maybe maybe it's not something

that you have to go in search of

necessarily maybe there's more than one

yep it can be a really liberating thing

and i think words generally are really

constrained and they cause people a ton

of like are you in love my mom comes

home i'm you know i'm dating someone she

goes is it love immediately after my

brain scrambles around trying to figure

out what i feel is the same as the

definition that she feels because i said

i loved peanut butter but this is

different yeah it's like and that for

and also if it gets a binary response

yes or no yeah makes you so

self-conscious that you can't actually

give yourself to the experience that's

reminding me of um

when i became a

father like literally

95 of people who i interacted with who

were parents themselves already would

would say um

oh you should you should really savor

these early months with a newborn baby

it's so special you should really savor

it and this is true it is incredibly

special you should savor it

but all it did to me was have me

thinking like oh my goodness am i am i

savoring this in the right way am i and

then of course

you're certainly not savoring it in that

time because you're just like lost in

your head and it's like

this yeah absolutely it's just it's

another it's another example of it right

yeah yeah and i guess the antidote is to

liberate yourself from

the expectation of like words and

phrases and

expect social expectations that you

should feel and act a certain way and be

able to answer certain questions

yeah or just to understand that like you

know

yeah things are complicated and you only

they sort of congeal over time and you

sometimes you only understand things in

the rearview mirror and uh you just sort

of have to navigate intuitively you

probably do know

when you're in a relationship you don't

know if it's love you probably do know

if it

feels like it's got forward motion or if

it feels terribly stagnant or if it feel

you know you can you can sort of intuit

these things even if you can't slot

these them into

these kind of rigid categories yeah

i i might get this quite wrong but when

you're talking about c cognitive

behavioral therapy and in fact we can

achieve a form of which may be better

than cognitive behavioral therapy of

that therapy with like self-analysis in

various ways and for me this podcast and

the diary that i had to keep originally

when it first started to do it and also

this obligation i have to make content

for the world has been one of the

greatest forms of like therapy i've ever

encountered um and i i always

i think it's like one of the

unappreciated ways to

arrive at self-awareness overcome your

own [ __ ] and

yeah which is which is having to write

yeah to think and having to try and find

the truth in your own experience yeah

can you relate to that no totally and i

for me i mean there's lots of research

about how writing down your personal

problems for example is incredibly like

journaling it works and it's proven to

work um it's not necessarily because you

come up with solutions although that can

happen it's because you end up you sort

of have to take this third person stance

on your own

mental contents and you have to do that

for sure if you're trying to package it

in some form that other people can um

can benefit from or can understand so

writing for an audience is absolutely an

example of that um

there's something incredibly powerful in

seeing your

issues your interests whatever from the

perspective of

another person i think it's related to

that thing about how so often in life

you know

our friends can see what what we need to

do or

what what's needed in our lives a bit

more clearly than

than we can because you sort of um

[Music]

you can't see the wood from the for the

trees inside your own head but but they

can be like no very obviously you need

to do this and then this yeah so it's a

little bit of that uh of that effect as

well and how you can always give better

advice than you live by no absolutely

tell me about it

um

the consequences of having this highly

efficient

productivity focused life

you see it in people you were talking

earlier about the the great innovators

of the world that manage to focus on a

set of priorities but when you ask these

people if they're happy like elon musk

if he's happy no i know but he thinks

elon musk is happy

no and i think he said in the rogan

interview that you wouldn't like to be

me you wouldn't like to write ahead um

but we still seem to pursue

that over what we think will make us

happy any well what where what what will

clearly make us happy anyway

i think that uh all of us

have

something inside us that we're sort of

here this doesn't sound too supernatural

that we're sort of here to express and

to

to put out into the world i think the

it gets complicated because some people

i don't want to accuse elon musk of this

but

i think it's probably very often true of

certain kind of very driven people

it's not just that they're sort of

trying to bring their gift into the

world it's an odd and not necessarily

helpful way of trying to sort out

certain like psychological issues they

have so they feel that they have to

achieve a certain amount because

they were not um you know given

sufficient unconditional love by their

parents so they need it from the world

or they

feel that um yeah they need to justify

their existence in in some way

and then it gets hard to know when to

stop it gets hard to tell the difference

between success and things that are

truly bringing you happiness but at the

same time right you don't want to

it's important to

to not suggest i think that the the

ideal

is to be

for everyone is to be so completely

chilled out that all you would want to

do is lie in a hammock on a on a beach

and sort of

not

create things in in one way or another

that might be appropriate for for some

people but there is this fear when i

talk about this stuff and write about

this stuff of like oh

wouldn't it lead you to just think well

why do anything you know what wouldn't

it all just lead us to be sort of

nihilists in that way um uh and i don't

think so for that reason but i also

think uh

like let's cross that bridge when we

come to it we're already we're all so

driven and so sort of um trying to get

more and more and more done but there's

not a huge risk yet of us becoming so

zen about all these things that we kind

of stop achieving entirely i i pondered

that a lot in my life um this idea that

because one of the things you said

earlier was maybe i'm okay this kind of

realization that maybe i am already

enough yeah maybe none of these goals

are going to increase my

value maybe even if i become a

multi-millionaire steve bartlett is just

going to be worth one steve bartlett

still

um

i had i pondered that for

when i became a millionaire right when i

was my company listed on the stock

market

and i thought well this doesn't feel any

different in fact the anti-climax makes

me feel pretty bad like the expectation

that i was going to feel

you know like i was more worthy that the

the anti-climax of that has had made me

feel worse

and then

asking myself the question well if i am

already enough then what's the point in

striving for more and my conclusive my

conclusion on all of this

ponderance was that

realizing that i'm enough is actually

the foundation for like real ambition

and the minute when i was when i was

insecure enough to believe that money or

a lamborghini might make me more i was

striving for things that weren't my real

ambitions they were social ambitions and

the minute you realize you're enough and

that lamborghini isn't going to do it

then you start re re-planning your

ambitions and go you know what i

actually love doing is piano right

hanging out with my niece right so that

that feeling that that i am enough

is the foundation for real ambition

totally yeah no i think that's a great

that's such a good way of putting it i

mean i the way i've sometimes thought

about this is like

sort of ambition and achievement and

creation they don't have to be the thing

you're doing the thing that you need to

do in order to get somewhere they can be

the thing you do just to express yes the

fact that it's great to be here and you

they're great to have these skills and

these opportunities um

[Music]

i'm not religious but there is a this

idea in christianity that i keep running

up against now because people contact me

and say have you thought about this

because it's clearly related this notion

of this notion of uh

grace that that like you don't you can't

justify yourself by

your

works in the world right you can't sort

of achieve salvation by what you do

but you also don't in this model anyway

you don't need to achieve it either

because you're already justified in the

eyes of god if you're a religious person

and so the reason that you do things

like this from the reason that you then

do stuff in the world

is

is again it's just like yeah it's it's

for the it's an act of like

glorification or worship right or for as

we were saying like just expressing

the fact that it's great to be able to

do these things and like

hey you could never been born you know

you so it's not a reason to not do

things it's that it's that you're not

doing them to try to justify yourself

in the eyes of the world

or

if you're religious you know be in the

eyes of god whatever but

it doesn't mean you don't do things it

just means you do them from a different

motivation which is like hey i get to do

these things that's great you know i i

feel like these existential thinkers are

somewhat tortured

so yes yeah do you relate to that

oh sure i mean i think you know um

there's a philosopher

uh who died recently brian mcgee who um

talks about the distinction between

people who sort of have philosophical

problems and don't and what he means is

that like

from the age of like five he can

remember

lying on a in a field looking up at the

sky and thinking like

well it can't

it can't be that the universe stops

somewhere but it also can't be that it

goes on forever

like what and and yeah and saying that

there are people who are sort of

troubled by these things in some

real personal way

and then there are people who are not

troubled by those things and they have

i mean

they may be very intelligent and deep

people but they don't have these kind of

like

hold on like what what what's it all

about like was it anyway i'm i'm one of

the people who does and it sounds like

you are too uh but yeah there would be

something nice to not to not be perhaps

in your book you say that we're addicted

to the speed of life

is that true and why is that an

addiction

i'm i'm talking there about

the sort of acceleration of the culture

the fact that everything you know

moves so fast that we're able to do so

many things so much more quickly

travel communicate uh

cook food you know then we than we once

could and how and why that like it's a

if you stop and think about it it's

really weird that all that technology

and all that acceleration has not left

us feeling um more relaxed and chilled

out right because it saves time

um

the world that has

747s in it and microwaves in it and the

internet in it or by right to feel

much calmer

because it's all this time is say but of

course it doesn't have that effect like

it does have has that effect on nobody

um it makes everybody feel

more impatient and rushed um and i think

that the reason

that the the frame of addiction makes

sense i'm drawing on the work of a

therapist called stephanie brown who's

who was herself

an alcoholic got sober with aa

then started being a therapist to in

silicon valley to various people in the

sort of first.com boom around to like

2000's

and and seeing in them this trait in

their addiction to urge what she called

their addiction to urgency their

addiction to speed that reminded her

very much of

of

her youthful experiences as an alcoholic

namely that you're sort of

life speeds up you feel overwhelmed you

think that going faster it has got to be

the solution right if you go even faster

then you can cope with all this rush of

incoming information incoming

opportunities whatever it is um so you

go faster but then you find that

actually

that's just increased the the speed of

everything and now you need to go faster

still and it's a sort of it's a spiral

and you crash

there's controversy about talking about

addiction whether it

should be kept as a sort of strictly

kind of medical idea

but

i think that's really

it resonates with me because i feel like

it's very tempting in this in this world

that feels like there's so much stuff to

stay on top of and it moves at such

tempo there is this notion that like the

only solution is for you to go even

faster than it is to be able to

encompass all of that and this is this

is not going to work uh because

you are never going to be able to you

know there is an infinite supply right

there's an effectively infinite number

of emails you could receive

demands your boss could make

opportunities you could pursue

businesses you could stop whatever

so getting faster at going through an

infinite supply

you don't get to the end of that because

it's infinite so stephanie brown's

advice to her

clients and i think it's it's it's very

useful is that

all of us who are sort of moving at this

speed need to experiment a little bit

with like what it feels like to just

slow down to the speed that things take

and say you know what i'm i'm if i'm

going to read this novel

and it takes my time and it takes

i need to look read slowly and focus i'm

just going to like yeah it's not going

to feel great at first right because we

are wired for racing through things

and it doesn't feel great at first but

but it is a path to a much deeper kind

of engagement

with the world one of the things i do in

the book is i write about um

this exercise that i did that

is recommended by an art historian at

harvard university who i went to

interview who she has all her students

choose a painting and go and look at it

for three hours

like

sit on a little bench whatever

and just look at that painting for three

hours take notes if you want but you're

not allowed to get up

and

she knows it's like it's

completely insane for almost anybody

today to envisage doing something like

that for for three hours

but that's why she that's why she

suggests it and you know for the first

hour it's incredibly uncomfortable

because you're not in charge anymore you

can't race through the day in the way

that you were accustomed to

doing but it is so

useful because

getting through that discomfort to what

lies on the other side

is

is so empowering i think patience is

really a kind of a superpower in the

modern in the modern world and in the

context of the painting what happens is

you literally see things in the painting

that you haven't seen in the first 45

minutes i mean it's it's bizarre in the

context of

work creative work

business i think it's more just that

like when everyone is racing as fast as

they are today there's actually real

power

in being able to resist that and let

things take the time they take and think

about something for a few more days if

that's what it takes like you actually

can

have more success that way as well as

feel less like a headless chicken is

there a role of impatience though is

there a role somewhere in life for

impatience

it depends how you define it right so in

the book i'm talking about in patients

as wanting things to go faster than you

can have them go so then i'd say like no

there's never any

even if you're sort of um

driving somebody to the hospital because

they're going into labor or something

right i mean it's like

you should do that really fast you

should be urgent you should you should

prioritize that and you should you know

go as you should drive as fast as is

practical but even then it's probably

not worth

feeling frustrated that

you're

stuck in

traffic or something right i mean it's

so if impatience is that kind of

frustration

at the fact that you have limited

control over how fast the world goes how

fast something happens then no i mean

it's it's just wild right we now are

much more impatient like if a web page