#1061 - Oliver Burkeman - Why You Can’t Stop Your Productivity Addiction

Is it possible to be the best in the world and relaxed at the same time? The best in the world? I don't know. What I do think is that it is very possible to be really, really good at what you do and relaxed. And actually, my experience is that the more relaxed I can be, the better I am at things. I'm not going to claim to be the best in the world at anything. But I think that notion that you've either got to choose a relaxing life or an accomplished one. This is the thing I'm on a mission very personally motivated to prove is not how it works. I think there's a tension between having high standards, which is hypervigilance and obsession and focus and really paying attention to stuff. That just tends to bleed into the personality and the ambient anxiety. I can see, for instance, if you were to say, is it possible to be the best in the world and never relax at the same time? That question would seem pretty obvious to answer. Yes, of course, because the exact same level of resolution that you're obsessing over your pursuit with is the thing that kind of destroys the rest of your life. The interesting question is to work out whether you can kind of be on and off or if you can hold things a little bit more loosely whilst still getting the right level of output you want. Yeah, it's really interesting. I think that there's something, I mean, this runs through a lot of why I try to write it out, but there's something about wanting to feel in control of the process of getting better at things or being good at things, which is kind of completely different from the actual process of getting better at them or being good at them. So I think there's, you know, this is on some level just the banal observation that people who really excel in what they do very often or perhaps more often in a flow state while they're doing it. They sort of let go into the action. They're not sort of sitting back inside their minds, controlling it all in a very sort of conscious, control-y way. So yeah, for me, and of course, I'm talking about things like writing or speaking. I mean, I'm not talking about, I may work differently and to different degrees for kind of sports performance and things, but you find that the more I'm trying to make sure that things go well, that's just like a, and therefore I'm sort of unrelixt and clenched and muscled, tensed and everything, that the more you sort of pop into this awful self-conscious space where nothing works and it's much better to lose yourself in the activity than to be trying to control it. I think a lot of people are struggling to find a healthy way to pursue goals without tying their self-worth to the outcome. That is one of the fundamental problems. The only way that I can get myself to pursue a goal is if I care about it and in the act of caring about it, I'm going to be disappointed if I don't reach it. And in the act of the disappointment is some sort of value judgment about me and my worth and whether or not I should. How do you healthily pursue goals without tying yourself worth to the outcome given that the only sort of goals you do pursue are ones you care about and in the caring, the disappointment, and in the disappointment, the self-worth? So, I mean, there's a sort of ideal way of doing this, which I don't claim to, you know, totally pulled off or anything, but I think the distinction is when you say care about, there's a way of caring about goals that basically defines yourself as inadequate and insufficient until you've met them. And there are other ways of caring about goals. So, there's a concept in psychology, the concept of the insecure overachiever, which whenever I kind of mention it in public audience context or whatever, like half the people in the room, just the look of recognition that passes over their face is amazing, right? So, people who do really well in life and they're driven and they're probably applauded and celebrated by their friends or by society at large for doing loads of impressive stuff, but on some level, and I was like this for years, they're doing it to try to fix something about themselves or to try to feel okay and to try to sort of fill a void. So, loads and loads of really successful people who are doing it ultimately are sort of feeling like they've absolutely got to succeed otherwise on some level they don't really deserve to exist or something. And that sort of that puts you in a perpetual place where everything you're doing for in terms of goal pursuit is to try to make yourself feel sort of less bad about yourself, and it puts you in this really awful situation as well, which I definitely used to experience a lot where anything you achieve in the world, which you might think you could then feel like proud and happy about, just instantly becomes the minimum standard that you've got to meet next time, which is a very depressing way to live, right? And so, you know, you do really well to an exam or you get a certain level of public success with something and then it's like that instantly becomes like if you don't meet that same level the next time, then like who are you, what are you? There is this whole other way of thinking about caring about goals, right, which is to say, like, at least to entertain the possibility of like what if everything was fine right now and you feel good about yourself and you don't have these self-worth psychodramas going on. And then on top of that you decided to create some cool things in the world because that's a more interesting way to live than than sitting around doing nothing. So, I think there is a way of being ambitious and accomplished that doesn't need to be like in flight from from something, but it's a it can be challenging to get there. I love this. I've it's been one of the central questions. I think it's why I'm such a huge fan of your work and your newsletter as well that everyone's your going to sign up to the imperfectionist. It's one of the central questions that I want to achieve things but I don't want to miss my life. Might might might be a pithy way to sort of describe it. And I called it the curse of competence. This situation where if if things go well for you sometimes or even worse than that, most of the time, then success is no longer a reason for celebration. It's the minimum level of acceptable output. And there's a line from a John Bellian and Luke Kuhm song that says, if the higher I climb is the further I fall than why I love anything at all. And he's he's talking about it with regards to falling in love with somebody, but the same thing is true. The insecure overachiever in me pattern matched it to personal development. Yeah. I was so I just thought it's so funny. I found out in the middle of December last year that the podcast chart is really high globally on this this Spotify thing. And the the Goldilocks zone period, after not knowing that I was I charted at this thing. And before realizing that that meant next year I have to be better than that was right right. Approximately probably 15 minutes or maybe less. And a beautiful 15 minute. It was so good. I got to actually enjoy the thing before I thought, well, 2026's chart is only whatever 11 months and 30 days away. So I must I must get my nose back to the grindstone. I remember I saw this Ryan holiday video. I brought this up to him. And I think Ryan's a super balanced guy and I really, really like him. But I had seen this. It's almost like performative grind set. I didn't think I think it's more him, which is why it's less. It feels less contrived. You got a call from his publisher and he was sat in in his office and it was to say you've hit the New York Times last year. Number whatever one or something like that. Congratulations. And Ryan took like three minutes or less like 90 seconds on this call in his video. And he put it on his Instagram. And then was all right. I got to get back to writing the next book. And I was like, Ryan, come on, dude. Like you're supposed to be the fucking guy. But anyway, Curse of competence. If the high right climb is the further I fall and me, my Spotify debacle last year of realizing this is the minimum level of acceptable output for 12 months time. It's a real pervasive challenge. Yeah, absolutely. I was speaking to an author, more successful than me, talking about how I shouldn't name names. He was talking about how, you know, when his first big successful book had hit right at the top of the charts, he was like following along with his friends on WhatsApp. And they were just like completely amazed that this thing was happening. And everyone was just overjoyed. And then realizing when that happened to his like, I don't know, 4th, 5th, 6th best seller or whatever it was. And it did get to the top very soon after release that he felt only relief. And then realizing that there was something amiss about only feeling relief in a situation where you should be just sort of amazed and celebrating that it's happening. But now it's become the bare minimum. - Yeah, I asked a question at my live show so the people who came to see me in North America last year would have heard me ask this. It's one of the final questions, which was to work out basically whether you're gripping life too tightly. And it is, when things go well, is your presiding sensation, one of joy, or one of relief? - Yeah. - Is it the sort of congratulation of self-love or simply the abatement of fear? - And I just think, like this is what you see. It's strange doing talk, I'm sure you do live stuff too. And it's strange giving talks like this because a musician wants hands in the air and shouting and a comedian wants after and clapping. And if you're us, what you want is this kind of so-and-fearful look on someone's face. It's like, what does an existential crisis trigger? - Right, yeah, exactly. - What does an existential crisis look like from the outside? And that's what, that's the fucking bullseye for me. That's exactly what I'm going for. - Yeah, brilliant. No, I think that's a great question. It's a great way of putting it. It obviously raises the question of what the answer is to this. And I think it's really one of those things where, first of all, just seeing the dynamic is far more powerful than any technical method for goal setting or anything that I've ever come across. Just realizing that you're doing that and that it kind of makes no sense that you're turning your successes into reasons to beat yourself up. And I guess also, I guess this is sort of part of this overarching ideas that I end up writing about. You know, because we are finite creatures, because we're all going to die, because there is, because there are limits of all sorts of other kinds of the control you have over your life or the number of avenues that you can pursue with finite time. There's this really powerful and incredibly liberating and I insist not depressing sense in which you've kind of already failed. And so this, this, this, this desperate kind of white knuckle, clinging to the cliff face attempt to not fail. You can sort of let it go, because like a metaphor that I've used in my writing before, it's like we go through life braced, like we're in a plane that might crash and you're adopting the brace position or whatever and it's like everyone's terrified. But in a way, the plane has already crashed and you're, you know, and here you are, right? You're on the desert island in the smoking wreckage of the plane and that's what life is, right? It's just sort of doing what you can with what's in front of you. And I definitely, there are definitely people who think that this is a very sort of unambitious, depressing, sort of resigned attitude to life. But I think it's absolutely like it's so invigorating to realize that like I don't have to go through life trying to stave off the great failure, because that's just being alive and now I just get to. - It's an interesting inversion of what the actual situation is, right? That I've said this before, I often think about the fact that one day I'll die, but my inbox will continue to accumulate emails that will forever go unanswered and unopened. So given the fact that you're not going to be able to do everything that you want, you cannot do all of the things. There will come a day where there are still things that you want to do and time will be up. So in that perspective, 100%, there is already failure as the set point. If that is your criteria, if your criteria is to do everything that you want to do, complete all of the tasks, answer all of the emails or whatever, one day you will fail at that. And yeah, it is an interesting inversion of what might be more accurate. - Not just to fail to do everything, but even to fail to reach perfect standards in the things that you do or fail to have uniform, positive responses to the things that you do. So once you see the way that all these things are outside of control, it becomes a lot easier to waste less time trying to control them. And thereby sort of free up time and energy and focus for doing a few of the things that you want to do with your life. - You're a fan of Krishna Merti's secret of existence. I don't mind what happens. What's that mean to you? - So just for anyone who's not familiar with it, this is the legend or the anecdote here is that he's leading some group in California in the 70s or something and this is Krishna Merti, the spiritual teacher. And he sort of, he asks everyone who's present, "Do you want to know my secret?" And of course, all these kind of spiritual junkies absolutely obsessed, lean forward, desperate for the secret. And his secret, as he says, "I don't mind what happens." And for me, that is a sort of ultimate statement of a kind of approach to life that recognizes the limitations of the control that we have, recognizes how much of our lives are spent sort of anxiously leaning into the next hour or the next day or the next week, just waiting to make sure that things are okay. And then of course they are okay usually. And all you do is lean forward into the next week. - And it's completely easy. - And it's easy for you to leave your own life. - Right, exactly, exactly. And I don't think Krishna Merti in that line, I don't think he means that some things that happen aren't better than others or that you shouldn't try to have things in your life or the world or the people you love, like go well instead of badly. It's just that when whatever happens does happen, there isn't this sort of automatic, stressful collision between what you are demanding that reality do and what reality does do. And you can still put huge amounts of effort and time and focus into trying to have things go the best way, but then when they don't go the way that you were hoping you're not sort of completely bent out of shape by it. Who knows how perfectly, even he manifested this attitude, right? I think a lot of what we're talking about here is kind of a shift at perspective that one hopes to embody on one's best days. - It's a large and unreachable gold standard, I think, but it's definitely a direction that you can be or an orienting principle would be a good way to do it. A click aside, if you've noticed your energy isn't quite what it used to be, even though you eat well and stay active, there might be a reason for that. 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So right now you can get up to 20% off and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline.com/modernwistim. That's timeline.com/modernwistim. You're the place that I get this, this looking over the shoulder of the present moment thing the most is when I go to comedy shows, especially if you go to the mothership here in Austin because lots of comedians, this is probably the same way it is at many other comedy clubs, but I haven't gone to them. When you see a lineup and there's eight comedians in a night, and it's 10 minute spots, or five minutes maybe for the first few guys, and then sometimes, and then maybe if one or two 15s and then a 30 or a 60 at the end, and what it means is that there's kind of a regular carousel of these new comics stepping out on stage. And me at my most juvenile and worst and most dopaminergic is me going, "Ooh, I can't wait for the next guy as the current guy starts." And then I next guy my way through every comedian. (laughing) Yeah. Until the show's out over, and then I can't wait to get into bed and then it's the morning. And this, you're so right that people sort of lean toward the thing that's happening in an attempt to control it, in an attempt to deal with the uncertainty. I think our first ever conversation that we had, I'd identified that most of your work is around control. Surround people's need for control, their desire to control. Do you see, just to dig into that a little bit, is control the reduction of uncertainty? Like what is control trying to achieve? What are the component parts? What's the problem it's looking to solve? Yeah, it's a really deep and interesting question. It gets to the point where I don't know if I have the answers. I guess what I think ultimately, the idea that I'm tracking, which is of course, me doing personal therapy and coming to terms with my own issues, is that there's something really, really sort of overpoweringly intense and vulnerable feeling about being human and consciously showing up for the human life that we have to really take account of the fact that we're here, that we didn't choose to be born, that we have limited time, limited ability to steer how things go, that we're going to do all of this is just like super intense. And I think that very, very often what we're doing without necessarily realizing it is pursuing strategies for feeling like, not that we've got out of this situation 'cause you can't get out of it until death, but feeling like we're engaged in a project of getting a little bit out of it, or sort of up on top of it sometimes, is the way I think about it. It's like we're trying to sort of lever ourselves into a position where we're kind of controlling life, instead of being in life, which all of us inevitably are. And so you can do that in ways that involve, I think a lot of mainstream productivity culture is all about developing that feeling that, like, I'm really in the driver's seat of the thing now. But also sometimes it's a more kind of numbing out and distracting ourselves response, right? A lot of kind of time wasting is probably best understood as the fact that if you were really to focus on what you wanted to be doing, you'd feel vulnerable again, because like who knows if this difficult plan would work out, who knows if this awkward conversation is gonna go the way I wanted to go. And that manifests in all sorts of ways. I mean, the thing you'll say about the comedy club is interesting to me because there's a cliche about how people put off life until they get married, until they get a promotion, until they retire, these big milestones, and that's true. But even after I felt like I kind of got over that, which to some extent, getting older will cause you to get over it because you passed some of these milestones and realized that there's just more milestones. But you're referring to this thing that I've really noticed in myself too, which is the capacity to sort of live not a decade in the future for when you get that big promotion or retire or something, but like about an hour in the future or 20 minutes, right? Like even once you-- - Such an amount of time that's so fucking unimpressive. (laughing) It doesn't even achieve anything. - Right, and it's just that sort of waiting for the next thing to happen, checking it went okay, and not even checking it went okay, and the case of a comedy club, a night at a comedy club, what's gonna go wrong, right? I mean, actually, and I would be unterrible in those situations because I have sort of too much weird, vicarious empathy for the performers and like, when people die on their feet in comedy clubs, I can't bear it, but that maybe doesn't happen at the high class Austin ones that you go to either. - Typically, the guys are not bombing all that much. Although, I'm sure if it did happen, I would feel the exact same. I'd want to do, throw some sort of a life, I'd feel obliged to make this performance night okay. Like, how is it my responsibility to do that? Do you hear that something that I think is real interesting? So I'm 38 next month, and what I'm interested in, speaking to a slightly older gentleman on a similar set of rails to me, what changes for the insecure overachiever as they age? - It's interesting. I turned 50, well, actually technically last year, but I am 50. Which is completely alarming, and I'm still constantly going through the weird experience of realizing that people in their 20s or even their 30s are relating to me as someone from an older generation when I'm not talking about now in this conversation, but when I was just kind of assuming we were having a comment, oh, I see, right, I'm an old person. What changes is, I think that gradually there's this accretion of experience that gets big enough that you realize that firstly, the world does not collapse when you break a streak of some kind of achievement that you can sort of relax in that sense, and you sort of develop, I have developed, I think, a greater level of sort of basic confidence that I sort of know what I'm doing when it comes to writing things, which I've been until quite recently, don't think I had. But then also there's just the kind of, if you helpfully manage your middle-life crises and your dawning sense of mortality and being in the sort of much more decisively being in the likely second half of life and all the rest of it, there is just that kind of awareness where the panicky or quite sort of down to earth that it's sort of got to be now, right? It's like, when are you going to, when are you going to do that thing, or travel to that place, or learn that skill? Like, I mean, at some point it's going to have to be, it's going to have to be in a now, you'll be familiar, I'm sure, with the book, "Dio Zero" about. - Bill Poukin's good friend, lives in Boston, Texas. - Yeah, right, right, about how dangerously possible it is to defer gratification for too long. And so to the extent that I'm a calmer person and a happier person than I was, which is a mixed picture, but I think one of the big reasons for that is sort of this combination of, I kind of know what I'm doing, and also even if I didn't, I would have to do it now. - Sorry, the fuck. - That's a good combination of motivations. - That's nice. I don't make a habit of showing my phone on the episode all that much, but you might be able to read my new background. Come on, there we go. Can you read what that says? - Do it anyway. - Do it anyway. It's a gentleman walking up what appears to be a completely exploding ravine. And this is just like cosmic hellfire coming down. It's quite artistically done, I think. My prompting was lovely, but that's rotating, that's rotating on my phone background with different versions of "Do it anyway." And "Do it anyway" for me is kind of, do it scared, do it uncertain, do it tired. It's not pushed through and grind. Like the sort of, the just do it thing feels a little bit more forceful and grippy. And maybe this is just like total bias because I did this one. But I really love "Do it anyway." And "Do it anyway," I think speaks to what you're talking about here, which is, you don't know how. Maybe you don't have a hundred percent certainty that it's going to work, even though probably will. Maybe it, what, like just, "Fuck, just do it anyway, dude." And I think that that, doing it anyway becomes increasingly important, the older you get. - Yeah, yeah. And I feel like it's not quite the same point as "Do it anyway," or maybe it's identical, but the slightly more, the slightly more, the one that evokes some of the more British atmosphere for me is, is like, you might as well. (laughing) - That's so much more British. - Yeah, it is. Might as well. Like, it's like, yeah. The stakes shift in such a way that, like, you have less to lose, or maybe you never had what you thought you had to lose in the first place. Elizabeth Gilbert has that wonderful line about how you, you're scared to let go or to surrender because you're afraid of losing control, but you never had control. All you had was anxiety, which I think is a brilliant thing. - What's that right? - That is Elizabeth Gilbert writing somewhere. I don't know which one. - Which one? - Book it comes from. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - How great. Isn't it? I think. There's a lot of pithy lines about true hell is when the person that you are meets the person you could have been or whatever whatever I really Painful version of hell is you getting to the end of your life and finally realizing that you had nothing to lose But you feared it all along like oh god like now now it's gone and I see my entire life fearing that I would get here the place that I was going anyway like I was always gonna be here and Now the time to do anything else has sort of passed me by Yeah, yeah genuine tragic Situation yeah, what sort of person do you think's having the most fun? Do you ever do you ever think about engineering enjoyment as a productivity strategy? I mean I started off very skeptical about any kind of engineered fun right especially in kind of corporate settings But frankly even in one's own life because There's moment you're the moment you're engineering it isn't it doesn't it stop being fun? The moment you're doing it for some outcome other than itself Aren't you just sort of monitoring it all the time Vigilantly to make sure that it's that it's having it's having its effect So I'm not sure this is the quite an answer to your question, but what it makes me think of is um Sort of trying to engineer fun Experiences is not something that um I Feel I've had much success with but asking myself in the moment in the context of the day What I feel like doing what I would enjoy to do letting my Productivity be at least somewhat guided by the question of like What I feel like doing has been a huge revelation for me I think a lot of us probably the insecure over achievers right we go through life with a sort of deep lack of trust in ourselves We think that if we were to just do what we wanted We just like unspool and spend all day I'm so fur-eating Right yeah, yeah, um And of course, it's not true like you know if you're interested in being productive or ambitious in the first place You can pretty much assume that you're not the kind of person who's just gonna become a wreck if you were to Ease up on yourself a bit and the big revelation for me was finding that when I can pursue some kind of approach to productivity that allows me to Take note of what I want to do Firstly, you get to harness that energy instead of trying to Squash it all the time, right? Like crazy to come up with these incredibly Rigid straight jacket productivity systems that say like even if you feel like working on X you got to work on why because that was what you yeah Yeah, that was what you assigned You're just wasting your own energy And then secondly the big discovery is that actually you know I Among the things I enjoy sometimes is things that involve you know Work or administrative things that I would would never have wanted to try to force myself to do but Feel like I need to do those sort of the things that belong to the world of obligation Actually, that does come the do come moments in the day or the week when that's the thing that you want to do because you want to be the kind of person who keeps your commitments and Is organized and all sorts of things like that. So it's kind of a no lose Situation if your professional situation that permits it at all I think to To navigate by fun and enjoyment at least a little bit more than you probably are doing Yeah, you wrote about the idea that interest is everything when you're procrastinating on a project Wondering why you're outwardly successful career doesn't feel as vibrant as it could or feeling stuck on a difficult life choice It's worth asking if you've forgotten the importance of building your days as far as you're able around what actually Interests you and I think this sort of explains the bind that many people are in where they struggle to do what they want Because they think it won't be as effective in the marketplace or something or it's not right For some reason what they want to do is not right what interests them is not right so they nerf that and You know, I've I've I'd be fascinated about to hear about your experiences with this because I think one of the One of the places this is really evident is in any kind of Any kind of digitally mediated stuff including you know Most of what I do but especially a lot of what of what you do and at the scale that you do it right you have The capacity to really know what other people respond well to yeah when you do it this this phenomenon is Famous and podcasting and elsewhere for leading some people sort of Estray the kind of audience capture phenomenon and the rest of it But even if you're not being audience captured you're still Liable susceptible at any moment to really decide that what you're going to try to do is is give people what they want And I think as opposed to what you want to give them because it's more Interesting for you and the big irony of course. I think At least my limited experience has been Actually what people want is to Read watch listen to things from people who are really alive with Interest in what they're and what they're talking about and deal it with Before we continue. 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Yeah, and In my experience the further I've gotten away from what is it that I've interested in who is it that I want to speak to The worst the show's got now the numbers may have gone up but If it's something that I don't care about like Maybe if you run a charity or something you're a Pediatric neurosurgeon or something like it's on you your job is in service of this thing and and it's the Parameters of outcome are a bit more tightly defined like it's not if you do the Surgery and it goes well it doesn't matter if you enjoyed it or not right like what matters is the outcome but with this the All that these sorts of conversations and largely even blogging as well. It's just vibes Just what was your vibe that day? What was the kind of language that you used when you put this thing across? What was the sort of energy that you brought into the conversation and Yeah, for me there's been times where it would be tactically great to bring this person on it would be useful from an optics perspective or whatever and I've done pretty well. I've said no to some Guests on the podcast that would fucking shock the world that I've said no to because I just didn't feel it just straight up didn't feel Something it just I was like no the answer with the answer was no and The more that I've done that and the more that I've been like yeah Morgan Howell for the seventh time yes Rory Sutherland for the 11th time. I don't give a fuck. I'm just gonna do it like Rory Rory Sutherland accounts for like nearly one percent of this podcast Not insignificant amount of hours on this podcast have been Rory Sutherland and and you and I you know I just I will continue to do it and yeah this tension between What is marketable what is effective especially because people Unfortunately momentum is so much more important than ability or Quality for a lot of things and that means that if you play the game enough you can then sort of burn and coast With I've applied some momentum and then I've sort of get to come into London and do the same So that's where playing the game, but knowing it's not about it. That's why I do think that there's an argument to me I'd like you know like this movie star or musician or whatever that maybe they're interesting Maybe you know we'll see see how you get on with them and Sometimes it's really great often as times it's really great like rolling the dice in that way to be like Okay, we're gonna pick up a bit more steam and then I'm gonna bring more people in to learn about some more niche ideas That's not necessarily the worst thing in the world, but fucking hell. There isn't up a bound I If I start to stray beyond that Whatever over to the window thing it gets It gets so it's so dull and you know, that's why you've got this line in that In that blog post where you say collecting to the aliveness is the ultimate point Like just connecting to the aliveness of what that is that you're doing. Well cuz the other I mean, the other point is like, yeah, when you said that you can take certain decisions that are not like that, but the numbers might go up. You know, firstly, you might wonder why I'll keep that the numbers wouldn't, wouldn't indefinitely go up if you kept doing it. There might be a short term boost, but also like, you know, at the end of the day, why do you care, right? That's what it always comes back to is like, if the thing you're not doing is an overall and an aggregate, a sort of a meaningful experience, then once you've got like, you know, basic food and shelter taken care of, why would you do it? And it's, I mean, I say it as if it's an easy thing to remember. It's obviously we're all forgetting it all the time and kind of pursuing these instrumental goals that lead to other instrumental outcomes and kind of losing sight of whether they're all, yeah. That's the thing about climbing a ladder and realizing it was the wrong, the wrong wall. I think it gets the wrong wall, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point. I've been thinking about this with the advent of AI because everybody has now anyone that writes or speaks or fucking anybody has the potential to augment their process by using AI and one of the things that it's given us the opportunity to do is basically, put out, take credit for work that we didn't do at a scale that no one's ever been able to in the past. Right, right. People have done it in organizations and stuff at a lower scale, right? Take credit to their underlings produce. Yeah. You know, but it is, and it's available to everybody and it's available in sort of micro ways. For instance, let's say that you and your partner had an argument and it would be really good for you guys to make up and you go to chat GPT and you load the last few messages in and you say, can you write me a reply that is meaningful and loving that compromises without completely destroying my boundaries and will make my partner feel great. Please refer to as many psychological principles as you can, but keep it light and lighthearted with being together for about five years. Send. They send you that back. You send the message over to your partner, let's say your partner goes, baby, I'm so glad you sent me that message. It made me feel so good. I just, you know what I love about you and then all that you hear coming into your ears is I'm a fraud. I'm a fraud. I'm a fraud liar. Lier can try to be conceitful. Because you do not get to capture what is truly happening here. It wasn't you. It wasn't your genesis. What's somebody saying is, right. Thank you for showing me you and thank you for how wonderful for me to be the progenitor, the muse, the inspiration for your thoughts. Because you didn't do it, you don't get to capture any of that goodwill. Yes, no, that's a great, it's a great, kind of chilling example of that. I know that lots of people are doing it. I think that, yeah, I mean, I think that I wish I could attribute this argument because it's not my own, I'm borrowing it from something I read and I can't remember that fire ready. But I think that a lot of what happens when you use LLMs in that kind of context is again, it's like wanting to stay in control, right? It's wanting to sort of control and direct the process, make sure you say the right thing. It's totally not about the fact that a lot of relationship happens in the repair that follows saying the wrong thing, right? So you have to sort of go wrong first. But somebody was making the argument that, you know, it's a very, very old observation that everyone seems to speak in therapy, speak these days. And sometimes this leads people to go on tirades against therapy itself. And I always want to, I always want to kind of say these are two totally different things, right? And I couldn't really put words to it. But I saw this argument made that actually a lot of the therapy speak, especially in the last couple of years or whatever, is really the kind of generic outputs of both of large language models and of the kind of brains that use them too much and come to think and speak like them. It's the exact opposite of really good therapy, which is about, you know, at least in the tradition that I'm familiar with, is about like long term real relationship with another conscious, emoting human being. And absolutely doesn't need to be full of, you know, so-called therapy speak and jargon terms and, you know, turning every human experience into a, into a sort of technical path pathology or something. It's completely different. But that feeling that everyone is kind of thinking too hard about what they're saying, figuring out what to say for even just the nature of text-based communication and email and messaging has allowed the ability to delete. Right. You think about it first, you work it out, you know, even that is a bit secondary. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that such a good point? Because what is it? Written language has been around for basically no time at all for human history and spoken language has been around for way longer. And like, editable written language has been around for a microsecond, essentially. And yeah, that's a, I've never even thought about that, but that's a really, really great idea that it does, but how could that not create an environment of self-assessment and, and and cajoling energy and this sort of semi-manipulative coercion of, was that really what I meant to say? Was that, well, it's what you said. That's what you said the first time, the second, or the third time when you got to go back, no, that's more like what I meant to say. I'm not, I'm not by any means, if, if all books had to be published on the first pass, the world of literature would be a fucking mess. But, I, I, I think that's a really interesting insight. Going back to the, uh, radio about engineering enjoyment, I think the really impressive magic isn't in just grinding out difficult tasks. It's the very elite structure of people who were able to turn something enjoyable into a drag. Like that is, it's kind of like inverse stoicism. You're, you're insulated from the good things happening to you when you manage to turn everything into something negative. So I had a little essay that I quoted you in that I wanted to, I wanted to read to you and it's called "Frankles Inverse Law." When a man can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure. That's Victor Frankl. Frankl is arguing that lack of meaning causes people to seek temporary relief in superficial pursuits rather than addressing the underlying existential void. Perhaps for many, maybe even most people, this is a big issue. But there is another group who suffer with the opposite problem. Frankl's inverse law. When a man can't find a deep sense of pleasure, they distract themselves with meaning. If ease, grace, joy and playfulness don't come easily to you, one solution is to ignore moment to moment happiness entirely and just always pursue hard things. You become a world champion at winning the marshmallow test. You convince yourself that delayed gratification in perpetuity is noble because you struggle to ever feel grateful. The TLDR is you prioritize meaning over happiness because happiness doesn't come easily to you. I love that. I've got your line. It's significantly longer than that and I didn't want to subject you to the whole thing. But one of my favourite lines paragraphs from you is you need to do at least a bit of what you are out of the way. If you really mean it, when you say you'd like to write a novel or spend more time with your raging parents or fighting climate change or having fun, at some point you're just going to have to start doing it. They think that the category of people for whom ease, grace, joy, moment to moment happiness are more difficult to access. They have learned that a lower efficiency but higher reliability fuel is to just do hard things because the sense of satisfaction can kind of always be achieved even if the sense of joy you can't. That's really interesting and I love your use of the word grace in the bit that you wrote is kind of really interesting to me as well because I think there is. I'm slightly changing the subject maybe or developing the subject but there's a, but there's an aspect to this which is also, which also maps on to the distinction between like living entirely in your head and in your intellect versus being kind of embodied in the world because a big part of enjoying life and showing up for things is embodied. And just the most basic sense of like feeling the air on your skin with your present in a place or something. In your eating a coffee as opposed to using it the maximum possible survival temperature in order to get the caffeine into your system. Exactly. Exactly. And so yes, I think another thing that, you know, the category of people for whom you're rises these insecure overachievers of which we speak and that has definitely been like part of my biography and I see it all over the place as well is being really sort of in your head and really sort of not only driving towards the future but assuming that the only way to but doing the driving through sort of cognition and living in your frontal cortex or whatever. This very specific feeling and I think you sort of see it. I feel like as I've got a bit older and more experienced with what I've been doing you sort of I um I sort of pick up on it in people and kind of public figures sometimes right not people I know personally but it is this kind of it's not just like we're charging into the future but we're sort of dragging ourselves into the future by our by our thinking in some way and it is there is something crucial about remembering that you're a that you're a body as well um when it comes to of course you can then be sort of obsessed with the body for reasons of like you know looks maxing or or kind of really obsessive kinds of physical fitness or whatever that are just as much about the future progress. I think the crossover the crossover between those people is is way bigger than you might think which is why the in the modern world the kind of dumb Jim Rat versus the hyper obsessive autistic with glasses that doesn't lift those vent diagrams have gotten closer and closer together because the desire for control in the cerebral world has moved into the physical world as well and and the and the reverses happened to uh yeah I think you're right to say people hope for they want this I make life happen and that's beautiful agency my friend George Mac is writing what will be the seminal book on agency right now and um it's going to be fantastic and I think I massively value agency and high agency in my own life but there is a a limit to the art of agency I guess you could say like learning when to just be able to be on a set of guardrails. Well I want to say even I'm going to read that book very energetically because I want to say that it's not so much that um agency's great at all but there comes a point where you have to I think it's that agency and controller in some sense fundamentally different things and that's interesting. My experience anyway has been that to whatever extent I can relax the need for control that's the extent to which I kind of acquire what I think of as agency or power or something right it's like when I'm going through my life trying to make sure that it goes the way I think I need it to go trying to bend reality in the direction that I've decided but for a moment fundamentally deep buried emotional reasons right I need it to go I'm actually sort of disempowered I'm I'm kind of uh chained to your fragile kind of you're very fragile right absolutely yeah and and again maybe it's not everybody but I when I when I don't need um when I don't absolutely feel like my basic worth needs something to happen like that's when I can get doing that's what I have to completely know to it yeah that's that's what's no absolutely that's wonderful um so I yeah I think I think um I don't think then there's certainly needs to be any limit to agency we just need to see and appreciate the sense in which it isn't to do with sort of this kind of um it's kind of controlled domination based urge which has another agenda always than just creating and building for the joy of doing so if you struggle to stay asleep because your body gets too hot or too cold this is going to help eight sleep just release their brand new pod five which includes the world's first temperature regulating duvet compare it their smart mattress cover which cools our ones each side of the bed I have to 20 degrees and you've got a climate controlled cocoon built for deep uninterrupted rest the new base even comes with a built-in speaker so you can fall asleep to white noise nature sounds or a little ambient Taylor Swift if that's your thing and it's got upgraded biometric sensors that quietly run health checks every night spotting patterns like abnormal heartbeats disrupted breathing or sudden changes in HRV which is why it has been clinically proven to increase total sleep by up to one hour every night best of all we've 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absolute no no stopping rule right no no limit like you can you could be doing absolutely the most amazing things in the history of the world and you'd have no objective way to know that you had maximized your potential although it was your best life and they couldn't be one better so maybe i'm taking your question too literally no why do you really are asking that that's what you're going to end up there's a really interesting uh tweet that i saw a couple of weeks ago by this lady who's a communications professor and it is a clip of her and she was talking about how being underrated is a compliment but being overrated is an insult and how if you actually think about that what you're saying is why would not being as popular as you're supposed to be be a compliment and why would be why would being basically an overachiever with regards to your capacity and it's it's all just social signaling it's all just you being able to say as the observer i'm the sort of person that is able to detect in another that which hasn't been recognized by other people on both sides like i know that the full of shit when actually people think they're good or i know that they're actually brilliant when no one else has realized it yet and um yes that is kind of happening with our own judgments of our potential that what we're saying is i have an estimation of where i should be based on what i think i can do but the what i think i can do is plucked out of complete fucking obscurity and it is like you say a fantasy because what this is a good question that i sometimes ask myself if i get too self-critical which is what else could you have done what else could you have done that you didn't do in order to assuage whatever deep feelings of insufficiency are currently swimming through you like what else what else would you have done and when you actually go through it like fuck me like i mean i mean i could have gone to bed half an hour earlier on Tuesday and then that would have meant i could have got it but i'm really you know i'm playing in the margins here i really can't really give it a good shot and uh just when you ask what else could i have done um you in my experience you find out probably not that much i i i probably did pretty close to what i'm capable of and again what was if i ever done my type A people type B problems thing to you have i given you this one uh it's not ringing a bell so maybe not god let me give you oh let me give you this i mean this is i'm just so shameless with how much i get inspired by people like you and a lander boton but this this is one of my best ones and this this came out of a conversation between me and George i think type A people have a type B problem and type B people have a type A problem insecure over achievers need to learn how to chill out and relax and lazy people need to learn how to work hard and be disciplined given that you subscribe to me i'm going to guess you're probably type A some version of a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity as Andrew Wilkinson says here's the thing you may have already realized type A people with a type B problem get very little sympathy because a miserable but outwardly successful person always appears to be in a much more preferential position than a content being lazy but on the verge of bankruptcy one problems of opportunity will always get less sympathy than ones of scarcity one feels like a choice the other like a limitation one is a bourgeois luxury the other is a systemic imposition i need someone to teach me how to be disciplined and work hard a mother feels noble, up with aiming and charitable. I need someone to teach me how to switch off and relax, feels dopamine-ergic, addicted and opulent. Every underdog movie ever has a training montage of someone sorting their life out by working harder. None included a guy learning how to log out of Slack at 6 p.m. or finally enjoy a beach holiday. So yes, type A people may objectively have better lives, but subjectively, they're ravaged by the sense that they've never done enough. They wake up every morning feeling as if they've already fallen behind and only if they dominate their entire day flawlessly. Will they have dragged themselves back up to some minimum level of acceptable output, which means they can go to sleep that night without feeling like a loser. Congratulations, you might be very successful, but you also might be very miserable. Just work harder, bro, advice, reliably makes everyone more successful in the only way they can be judged outwardly. There are very few issues in life which can't be solved by just working harder. So everyone treats it as a panacea, not a purpose-built tool. And on average, maybe more people do need to hear David Goggins screaming in their face to go harder than Eckhart Tulley whispering in their ear that they are enough already. But for a certain, perhaps minority cohort of people, they actually need to hear the opposite message. We need a parasympathetic Goggins who's going to carry the TV remote and the Cheetos. Hashtag rest harder than me. Type B problems are just as tough as type A ones, but they require a much less sexy solution, piece, one that you can't actually achieve by simply working harder. Nice. I agree. I agree. I have those problems. I have had those problems. You know what, it also makes me something that would came up in the middle of listening to you read out, which is lovely, is there's like a weird selection bias problem here as well, isn't there, which is that the-- see if I can express this-- the people who are drawn to the hard-charging, self-punishing, work harder stuff are going to be pretty much by definition the people who don't-- for whom that message is something they don't need, right? The temptation is going to be for people to pursue those messages and consume that kind of stuff. Read those books, watch those videos, because they're already in too deep with the idea that that's what they need to do, and they need more fuel to help their driving of themselves. And so-- and probably the reverse is true, right? Which is that people who are already pretty relaxed and into relaxation are going to be consuming a lot of relaxing content. So it's almost like democracy, the people who get into power, exactly the ones who shouldn't be in power, or whatever. It's like the people who really need to relax are going to be the most prone to consuming the message that-- Oh, you just-- You keep fucking activating my trap cards, all of them. I can't read you another-- I can't read you another essay, but it does go to show how astrally fucking connected we are. I did-- I'll just send you it. And you could read it afterwards. Please do. If anyone wants to read it, it's called advice hyperresponders, and they can just search it on my blog. Oh, there you go. Yeah. The title shows me that that is-- Basically, the people who most need the medicine don't take it, and the people who are likely to overdose have taken too much already. And the most spicy example of this that I think still holds true was around me too, which was telling men don't be pushy, caused men who really could have actually done with a bit more confidence around women to take it to heart while the guys that were just blowing through boundaries all along disregarded it entirely. So advice is not taken evenly by people. It amplifies their existing fears and predispositions and worldview. Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's also the idea that I'm not going to try and quote successfully quote per its live. But it's the idea that the worst people are full of intensity and the best lack of conviction. It's the same. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, that comes from-- Well, this is why I'm not going to pretend that it was some sort of strategy in any of the books that I've written. But I do sometimes think in hindsight, and one or two people have said it to me that I might be performing some kind of useful and edifying based in switch in some of the stuff I do in the sense that sometimes I think it appeals to people who think what they need is more time management device or something like that. And then I sort of-- if it works, completely destroy their worldview from the inside. Loathe them in and do a false sense of dopamine and then pull the rug out from it. Yeah, I mean-- And so it's a good point to make. And there's two things that I've been thinking about recently, especially over the last-- maybe 18 months or so, which is since the last time that me and you spoke. I have really fucking tried to go on a journey partly inspired by you, partly inspired by a land, partly inspired by Joe Hudson and my therapy. And to be like, OK, can I be really good at what I do and enjoy it? Can I try and produce it a high standard and not grip life too tightly? And one of the problems of this journey of relinquishing of certainty and control and all the rest of it, it's two things that have happened. First off, I've had to publicly say things that sound like they're in disagreement with something that I previously said. Me saying that just work harder, bro advice, a sentence that I've almost certainly said at some point, like, fuck your feelings, just keep going blah, blah, blah. That feels like-- non-insignificant number of comments had something to the effect of, bro sold us the problem and now he's selling us the solution. And I'm like, well, look, if I did do that, I fucking sold it to myself as well, because I believed it. So I apologize for that. That also being said, at the time, I've never said, this is the way to live your life. This is what I'm playing with at the moment. And I think I've caveated a lot around, don't just fucking end yourself trying to get this done. So that's the first thing. The first thing is that you end up with a lot of criticism, I think. You end up with more criticism, giving the sort of rhetoric philosophy that you do, because it doesn't sound like going from low agency to high agency. It sounds like going from high agency to low agency. And the obviousness of just work harder, grip it more tightly, advice is so much more pithy. And much of my channel is being built on analogies, analogies of that in the orbit around that sort of thing. The second thing-- and this is way fucking harder. And this is something that I'm really interested to find out whether you had to deal with. And I think a lot of the audience are dealing with, too, is a complete loss of congruence as a person, as you try and go through this, especially if you've made-- you've wrapped a lot of your identity in being the hard charger I get things done. I know me. The outcomes I get in the real world are because I do things. I go to bed on nighttime, and I think about doing things. I wake up in the morning, and my plan is to do things. You know, thoughts, intentions, actions, goals, outcomes, they're all aligned. And say what you want about Trump or Andrew Tate or fucking Mamdani or whatever it is, but they are highly congruent people. Like they are just a single line up and down. And this is why Andrew Tate recently lost a boxing fight. That was why it was so damaging, I think, to some of his perception publicly, because he had this sort of very congruent line. And there was now this thing that got slotted on the side. It would be like if you found out that Trump had started doing meditation or something. You go, well, this doesn't fit the congruent that we expect. Or if you found out that Mamdani secretly owned a bunch of bakeries or something. It's like, it just doesn't-- I can't slot it in to my sort of worldview. And going through this, I truly believe that there is something on the other side of letting go. And that is a journey that I'm going to try and go on. But as you do that, your real world results, briefly-- and maybe even for actually a medium-- a pretty significant chunk of time-- get a little bit worse, because you've got to relinquish some of the strategies that you were using previously before you've got mastery in the new ones. You're saying all of this stuff, and you're talking about embodying emotions, and just going with the flow, and learning to-- and from the outside, what it looks like is not that you've evolved into this really enlightened but it looks like you've devolved back to the thing that you tried to only just get escape velocity from a fucking decade ago. So this loss of congruence between criticism and congruence, those are the two things that I've felt in the last 18 months since trying to embody this a little bit more, honestly. That's really interesting. I mean, the criticism one feels somewhat professionally specific, right? Because you're-- Oh. Yeah. is strange. Okay. The criticism was. Having a stroke. You're having a stroke. It's nothing to do with the camera. Go fading in and out. The beginning of the end. This is how you go. Oh, I love Lee. I have an interesting conversation. There's worse way. That's obviously a professionally specific thing. And I had a slightly different journey in that I was being sort of sarcastic about. Socastic in public about self-help related things from an early point in my career and then became, went on a journey towards more sincerity, which does leave you open to some of the same criticisms to some extent, right? It's like, you said this is all rubbish in there. Like, the question I've been asked a lot is, you spent lots of your earlier career criticizing self-help gurus, but now you've become a self-help guru. How did that happen? And it's like, I don't think either of the arms of that criticism are quite accurate. But anyway, that's a separate matter. I think the incongruence thing is really an interesting point. And I do think that, yes, the process that sounds like we're both on is one way you have to kind of be willing to move away from strategies that have served their time. And in one definition, right, that is the original, highly respectable definition of a middle-life crisis, right? Not some kind of terrible problem where you start acting out and being weird, but just where you shift from the first part of adulthood to the second part of adulthood and things that you use to get yourself established in the world or to ultimately, the therapist would say, probably to sort of separate off from your family of origin and your parents, right? And become sort of fully existing individual adult human. They stop working. They're no longer the-- they're not going to get you all the way through the process of sort of coming to-- or further along through the process of coming to sort of understand life in yourself and the endless fascinations and difficulties of relationships with other human beings and all the rest of it. And I think an argument could probably be made that kind of the remaining completely congruent as you put it all the way through your life and from early adulthood through to late adulthood is like a disaster. I think that's kind of a-- I don't think that's anything to be celebrated at all, because I think we all do know people who seem-- maybe they're driving-- I know people. We know people who are stuck in-- they're sort of the wrong age for the psychological outlook that they have. What do you mean? What do you mean? Well, people who are sort of-- there's something amiss about people who are acting in their late fifties, who seem to have the attitude of some aspects of the attitude of being in your late twenties, right? Not necessarily any particular lifestyle choice. I'm not saying everyone's got to be married and settled down and with adult children by the age of 16. There's nothing like that. It's just that sort of-- there's something almost hard to put into words that is a bit too sort of-- right, there's sort of too intent on establishing themselves in the world or something. They're too intent on-- too intent on sort of-- Yeah, I think that is a kind of-- I think that is some-- there's something wrong about that. On the other hand, you know, it's never too late. And people go whatever route they need to go to get to their middle-life crisis. James Hollis, who I know we both are admirers of the work of, I think, the Union Psychotherapist, has this whole very excellent kind of riff about how the goal of really good therapy is to make your life more interesting to you and how the wide world just sees this as nothing-- what a pathetic goal in life to become more and more interested in being alive. But he says, you know, he makes the point that really that's like, that's the whole game. It's the most that psychotherapy can do. But it's also-- it's also all you need for a-- absorbing a meaningful and fulfilling life. And I think that requires this kind of change in development. And I'm sort of going on and on now. You can cut this out. But the bit of what you said as well that resonated with me, like, no, I have quite recently gone through phases of feeling like I'm completely unable to work for weeks at a time, and being completely unclear about the direction I'm taking and really sort of out of sorts. In ways that when I describe them in very simple language, sounds like I was going through a depression or something. But it wasn't that. It wasn't pleasant at all. But I think it's better understood as these phases of-- yeah, the last way of doing things falling away and you just haven't figured out the new way of doing them. One of the particular pains that you feel as you go through this-- whatever we want to call it, this chasm of incongruence-- one of the challenges is if you're around people who are highly congruent at the time, you feel so inferior by comparison. Because these people know what they're doing, they're waking up and thinking about it. And you used to be peers or are comparable, or maybe even ahead of them in whatever version of a hierarchy you've conceived in your mind. And you're like, I'm falling behind. I'm falling behind. Look at this person. This is how I should be behaving. I should be a singular spear of reason and intention and action, and it should all be moving in the same direction. And what I feel like is one of those red ropes that kids eat, that sweets. And floppy and flaccid, and I'm all over the place. How their congruence is throwing my incongruence into harsh contrast. And that's a really dangerous situation to be in. Because what it causes you to do is it causes you to-- it's kind of like being a crab that's outgrown at shell, come out of it, and they're now trying to force itself back into the old one. That simply is not going to work. But it will delay your growth in moving forward. It'll make you feel like fucking shit, the whole time that you're doing it. Because you're just going to-- you're not going to have the nobility of your evolution or the congruence of your past version of yourself. Both of those things don't exist, if that makes sense. And yeah, it's a challenge. Being in a period of transition around people who aren't is a challenge. Yeah, totally. And the sort of-- you can get some way through it by reminding yourself, smuggling the reason they're so congruent is because they haven't-- grappled with the truths that you're right. Exactly. But no, I think it's a real-- I don't think that's not enough. And it's a real issue. It's one of those times where-- and I think we're not easily susceptible to the advice that what's required of you in that moment is just to kind of stay, just to not restlessly leave the situation, whatever they call that middle stage of the alchemical process, where all the things are happening. It's like the only-- the skill you need or the quality you need there is to just sort of remain there and to stand firm or whatever the phrase is, to not let yourself be lured by the temptation to just fix it all and sort of nervously, irritably start tampering. And it's true, but it never gets-- I don't know, my experience-- it never gets easy, but it is pleasant. But you can have-- I said before that these periods of non-productivity in my recent past have not felt like depression. I think you can feel on some intuitive level when this bad situation of being in congruent compared to other people or not being super productive when you want to be being super productive. You still can connect, I find, to some kind of intuition that this is growthee or generative. It's like generative-- There is a way to put it. When you really get quiet or write in your journal or whatever it is that you do, it's not like life is completely meaningless. It's like, I'm out of control. I don't know what's going on. And I wish I did know what was going on. But something is going on. (laughing) - It's so good. 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It's been interesting that thing I wrote in 4,000 weeks about settling because obviously apart from anything else, this is a phrase that immediately can just kind of romantic relationships and dating. And I don't think that's my role on your podcast, actually Chris, I think, to come in and give dating advice. I think that is best left to other guests, probably. But the thing that I was trying to say and that I think is just true, is that it's not so much that you should settle in that context or any other. It's the finitude just means you are settling, right? Like what we mean by settling is accepting some downside in return for the security or whatever else it might be that you get through taking that option, choosing that relationship, staying in that job, whatever it is. And one way of expressing half of what I write about is just like, there are always downsides, right? You can do what you like. You only need to face the consequences as a shield and cop puts it. So it's not really, I think we get into the situation where you think, well, I'm the kind of person who would never settle. So I'm going to max, I'm going to go for the absolute best thing. But what that gets confused with is I'm going to go for this thing that doesn't exist that has no downside. There has no negative consequence. When for finite humans, every choice, every decision on how to use your time or what commitments to make or not make has a downside. So it isn't that you should do any one specific thing or that settling down to extend that phrase right into a long term relationship is necessarily the right thing for any person that any given pointed life. It's just the recognition that if you don't do that and you do the other thing, you're also settling, right? You're also deciding to accept a different set of negative consequences. A lot of indecision, a lot of commitment of phobia, I think, in relationships and in other domains has this feeling of like, I'm just going to keep my options open. But you don't keep your options open. You choose to spend that portion of time without the benefits of a long term relationship, which might be right for somebody. But don't go fooling yourself that you're somehow like hanging back from, like you're in the human condition. Like you're not getting out of it. And this means that this means that you're making that kind of trade off in every moment of time. I hope this is clear. I don't know. It is. How do people know when it's a good time to settle? Is there such a thing? I think that. I mean, rephrasing that question back into what I was saying. It's like, how do you decide which. How do you decide which trade-off to make? How do you know in a given moment which trade-off is the right trade-off? And I think an awful lot of it is annoyingly enough kind of intuitive and beyond words and all the rest of it. But I do think that. You can become aware that the only main reason that you're not committing to something is some sort of restless fantasy of not having to make any trade-off. So holding out for a kind of perfection that doesn't actually exist in the world. And I think when you become aware of that fact that when you see what gain you're up to, then it's often very easy to see, oh, right, actually, yes, this is the. This is the path I should follow. This is the commitment I should make because the only reason that's really stopping me from making it is this kind of notion that I might not have to accept any loss or disappointment. For making it. What are you working on now? Have you got a new book? I want you to have a new book. Can you have a new book? I'm trying to write a new book. I am endeavoring to write a book. I should be more. I should be open about what it is. Shindai shouldn't be your coi. It's probably helpful to the creative process to like put my cards on the table. I'm trying to write a book going into. going in on this topic of aliveness and this idea of this mysterious concept that describes so much of what seems to be missing from so many people's experience and also to be present when things are going really well. This sort of intangible sense of. of. of aliveness. I need some other words, perhaps. And also, I'm trying to get at this idea that a lot of what stops us from feeling that kind of deep sense of being immersed in life and doing the right things and meaningful things and all the rest of it, is a kind of. Well, the word I keep wanting to use is clenching. And then the correct antidote for clenching is unclenching. But my editors are concerned at the imagery. If I considered. I. it's not clenching. talking about clenching and clenching. It's a fraught word. Have you considered grasping? Grasping is quite nice because it suggests that you don't yet have it. I quite like that. Well, yes. I think that's a huge part of it. But it's. Yeah, and also. It's the kind of. It's the degree to which kind of relaxing into the situation that you're in is the pathway to agency and the pathway to enjoyment and all the rest of it. And part of this, where this comes from in some ways, is partly to do with the very widespread sense that people have that we're living in like really unnerving historical times. And that the sort of wider world is one that causes a lot of people to want to sort of like. claim up or tighten or something. And I think that this move of relaxing into the chaos and the craziness and the uncertainty is one that. I think it's really useful just in day-to-day individual life. But I think it might also be a way of relating to the feeling that whether it's politics or AI or a million other crises unfolding everywhere, that trying to sort of shelter from all of that completely is. See, I don't want to write. I'm not an activist, I don't want to write a book about being an activist and making the world's crises better. But I also don't. I've got no time for the kind of argument that is like just ignore all that stuff and focus on. you know, just focus on your own personal life and your. and building your business or whatever. These two. So as ever, I'm sort of annoyed with two camps of writing on these topics and I'm trying to find what I think people should do instead. Walks and balance being in between them. I think if you were to say a book about live-ness, if it wasn't you or someone like you that's going to do it in a sufficiently sanguine and self-deprecating way, it would. My first sense would be a sort of. clawingly prescriptive framework. Spiritual. No, it would be a framework. It would be too practical. It would be what the components of a live-ness. Yes, right, right. by Seligman et al. In. 1988. That would, no, thank you. Yeah, yeah, through that world. So I think to call. I have no plan to tell you, yeah, no plan to tell you about the surprising neuroscience. That's the topic or, or, you know, yeah, the kind of what studies have shown. There's a place for that writing and I apologize to anyone I know it's supposed to be there, but is the place for that writing supposed to be around a liveness? Like the neuroscience of, and you're right. I like that. So no, but this is really, this is very useful information for me because I do struggle with the labels and the words. I'm trying to do something that is not a kind of, I'm not a spiritual teacher writing a book about how to transcend the self, but I'm also absolutely not trying to get into that science-based well-being stuff. It really is this sense that like, there's a, there's a quality to the experiences and the activities that we know the right ones for us to be doing. And there's various aspects of modern culture that seem to sort of systematically squeeze that out. And yes, I think it is all ultimately about control. Backed out. Because I obviously know. Oliver Berkman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Oliver, you're great. Everyone should go and subscribe to your newsletter, which is the imperfectionist. Where else? Are you doing, is there anything else to subscribe to? Or is it just that? That's the thing to subscribe to. My most recent book is Meditations for Mortals, so that's the other thing to mention here. Until the next time, Oliver, I appreciate you very much. So huge pleasure. Thank you so much. If you're wanting to read more, you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page without bowing out. And that is why I made the Modern Wisdom reading list, a list of 100 of the best books, the most interesting, impactful and entertaining that I've ever found. Fiction and nonfiction, there's real life stories, and there's a description about why I like it and there's links to go and buy it. And it's completely free. You can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com/books. That's chriswillx.com/books.