Meditations for Mortals : Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
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Overview
A National Bestseller
Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, Meditations for Mortals offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls "imperfectionism." It helps us tackle challenges as they crop up in our daily lives: our finite time, the lure of distraction, the impossibility of doing anything perfectly, the feeling that the world is spinning out of control. How can we embrace our nonnegotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there's always too much to do? How do we shed the illusion that life will really begin as soon as we can "get on top of everything"? Reflecting on quotations drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores a combination of practical tools and daily shifts in perspective. The result is a life-enhancing and surprising challenge to much familiar advice--and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully. To be either read as a four-week "retreat of the mind" or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.Customers Also Bought
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780374611996
- ISBN-10: 0374611998
- Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Publish Date: October 2024
- Dimensions: 8.48 x 5.61 x 0.79 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.68 pounds
- Page Count: 208
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It’s time to let go of the idea that there is another checklist, another productivity hack, that will lead us to a nirvana where we can finally relax. If you feel like you need permission for this, British journalist and time management guru Oliver Burkeman outlines an exit from the hamster wheel in Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.
“We set out to make mincemeat of our inboxes,” he writes, “defeat our to-read piles, or impose order on our schedules; we try to optimize our levels of fitness or focus, and feel obliged to be always enhancing our parenting skills, competence in personal finance, or understanding of world events.” He flies in the face of generations of self-help books, arguing with kindness and empathy that there is no magic wand to complete every task and attain total control. In fact, we don’t need to “do it all” . . . at all.
For example, Burkeman embraces what he calls “scruffy hospitality”: There’s no need to wait until your house is sparkling clean and you have mastered a gourmet menu to invite people over. Just pick up the major piles of stuff, make spaghetti and feed your friends! In a chapter titled “Too Much Information,” Burkeman writes that we will never be able to consume all the books and all the magazines and all the podcasts, even at double speed. Instead, “treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket.” Choose a few books as they flow past you, and let the rest go with the current.
Meditations for Mortals is a generous book chock-full of hard-earned advice from someone who has felt the same pressures we all have, but has thought about it more deeply than most. Burkeman suggests that we treat his book’s chapters as daily meditations, reading one per day, and that is likely a satisfying course of action. But his compelling set of mini-lessons may have readers swiftly sprinting through. Burkeman will likely forgive us the imperfection.
It’s time to let go of the idea that there is another checklist, another productivity hack, that will lead us to a nirvana where we can finally relax. If you feel like you need permission for this, British journalist and time management guru Oliver Burkeman outlines an exit from the hamster wheel in Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.
“We set out to make mincemeat of our inboxes,” he writes, “defeat our to-read piles, or impose order on our schedules; we try to optimize our levels of fitness or focus, and feel obliged to be always enhancing our parenting skills, competence in personal finance, or understanding of world events.” He flies in the face of generations of self-help books, arguing with kindness and empathy that there is no magic wand to complete every task and attain total control. In fact, we don’t need to “do it all” . . . at all.
For example, Burkeman embraces what he calls “scruffy hospitality”: There’s no need to wait until your house is sparkling clean and you have mastered a gourmet menu to invite people over. Just pick up the major piles of stuff, make spaghetti and feed your friends! In a chapter titled “Too Much Information,” Burkeman writes that we will never be able to consume all the books and all the magazines and all the podcasts, even at double speed. Instead, “treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket.” Choose a few books as they flow past you, and let the rest go with the current.
Meditations for Mortals is a generous book chock-full of hard-earned advice from someone who has felt the same pressures we all have, but has thought about it more deeply than most. Burkeman suggests that we treat his book’s chapters as daily meditations, reading one per day, and that is likely a satisfying course of action. But his compelling set of mini-lessons may have readers swiftly sprinting through. Burkeman will likely forgive us the imperfection.