In a world that never stops asking for more, how can we focus on what truly matters? In the season premiere of Visiting Experts, Brett Hendrie sits down with Oliver Burkeman, author of Meditations for Mortals and 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, to explore the power of accepting our limits. Oliver shares insights on why striving for perfection can hold us back, how embracing imperfection can unlock ambition, and why small, deliberate actions often lead to the biggest impact. From navigating work and life like a kayak on a river to tackling intimidating tasks “one step at a time,” this conversation offers practical strategies for reclaiming control, reducing stress, and making time for what counts.
In a world that never stops asking for more, how can we focus on what truly matters? In the season premiere of Visiting Experts, Brett Hendrie sits down with Oliver Burkeman, author of Meditations for Mortals and 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, to explore the power of accepting our limits.
Oliver shares insights on why striving for perfection can hold us back, how embracing imperfection can unlock ambition, and why small, deliberate actions often lead to the biggest impact. From navigating work and life like a kayak on a river to tackling intimidating tasks “one step at a time,” this conversation offers practical strategies for reclaiming control, reducing stress, and making time for what counts.
Show notes
[0:00] Brett Hendrie reflects on the myth of “zero inbox”
[1:26] Meet Oliver Burkeman, author of 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals and Meditations for Mortals, expert on productivity, time management and personal effectiveness.
[3:39] Understanding what it means to be a finite human in an infinite world, and how embracing your human limits can be freeing.
[5:52] The dangers of perfectionism in professional and personal life, and why imperfectionism can boost efficiency.
[7:19] Making conscious trade-offs instead of trying to do everything: practical tips for prioritization and decision-making.
[9:10] Oliver’s “kayak vs. superyacht” analogy for navigating uncertainty and making meaningful progress in life and work.
[10:37] Long-term, detailed plans for change can be destined for failure. Instead, start small: take action today without trying to control every outcome.
[12:21] The “just going to the shed” concept: confronting tasks and projects you’ve been avoiding to reduce decision paralysis and procrastination.
[14:43] The liberating idea: every choice on how you spend your time has a cost, and once you accept that reality, you’re free to choose which set of costs you’re willing to pay.
[16:42] Integrating imperfectionism with realistic ambition to achieve more without burnout.
[19:14] Applying these ideas as a leader or manager: balancing control and autonomy to empower teams and increase organizational productivity.
[21:18] “Obviously, what people want is like the three practices you can do every day, and then you've got this nailed. But a big part of what I'm trying to say in this book is life doesn't work like that. And so, if you actually want the change, I think you do need to work on developing the patience to sort of try these things bit by bit.
“If you were to ask me for like, what's one thing that people can do, then my answer would be: there is something in your work or your life that you know is really meaningful to you… Do 10 minutes of that thing today and actually do it.”
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Brett Hendrie: Not long ago, I spent an entire Sunday afternoon attempting to clear out my inbox. I had this idea — maybe you've had it too — that if I could just get to zero inbox, I'd finally be on top of things. I'd feel calm, in control, like I'd finally earned the right to relax. And it worked for about 12 hours. By Monday morning, the messages were back: the meetings, the requests, the lingering feeling that I was already behind. At some point, it hits you: the world doesn't stop sending emails. You never actually arrive, and there is no finish line.
And that’s not a scheduling problem. It’s not a personal failure. It’s a deeper issue — one that today’s guest, Oliver Burkeman, has spent years exploring.
In this conversation, we talk about what it means to be a finite human in an infinite world; why accepting our limits might actually unlock more meaning, and even help us do more of what matters. You’ll hear why being an imperfectionist isn’t the same as giving up ambition; why we can’t avoid trade-offs, but we can make more conscious ones; and why the real secret to change might be simply to start small.
Welcome to Visiting Experts, a Rotman School podcast for lifelong learners, exploring transformative ideas about business and society with the influential scholars, thinkers, and leaders featured in our acclaimed Speaker Series. I'm your host, Brett Hendrie, and I'm joined today by Oliver — a recovering productivity obsessive who wrote the bestselling book 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. His new book, Meditations for Mortals, goes even deeper. It's not about tricks or hacks. It's about accepting that we are finite beings in a world that never stops asking for more.
For many years, Oliver wrote a popular column for The Guardian that explored psychology, productivity, self-help, culture, and the science of happiness. His writing has also appeared in The Observer, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and beyond. Oliver, welcome to the Rotman School and to the podcast.
Oliver Burkeman: It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
BH: You've written candidly about your own journey, about trying to master productivity and optimize every moment. Can you share with us what your journey from then to now has been like, and how did you change your perspective?
OB: I think many, many, many people spend a lot of their lives in this sort of general state of trying to make it through to the part where everything is finally sorted out, trying to sort of feel that they finally know what they're doing, that they're organized, and that they're in control of things — productivity culture, productivity techniques. That's one way of manifesting this struggle for control. It was definitely mine for many, many years. I think I believed on some level that I was going to find the combination of techniques and also discover the previously untapped reserves of self-discipline and effort that were going to get me to this wonderful plateau of everything being calm and sane.
Eventually, you know, when you've tried, like, 100 different ways of reorganizing your schedule such that you can finally handle every single demand that's thrown at you, and you still haven't found the solution, the sheer weight of attempts that you've made leads you to an important kind of shift in thinking, like: well, maybe this is the wrong question I'm asking, or maybe there is no silver bullet. It's not just that I haven't found it yet. So that was quite a gradual process for me.
But then I do remember: I was sitting on a park bench, taking a break on my way to my office on a winter morning 10, 12 years ago, trying to think my way through how I was going to marshal all these productivity techniques to get through the unusually large number of deadlines I had that week — and just suddenly realizing, like: there's never going to work. It's just — it's just never going to work. There's nothing that is going to get me to that place.
The main reason, as I gradually came to understand, was that the kind of control I was looking for — that I think many of us are looking for — I would argue, is just not something that is available to finite humans.
BH: You use the term the liberation of defeat, and I wonder if that's what you're alluding to here — that the idea that we can achieve greater things if we focus on the things that are more important to us, and not try to achieve everything that's on our to-do list or everything that's in our inbox.
OB: I think that's right, and I guess I'm also referring to a kind of real internal, psychological, almost spiritual shift, right, where you realize that it's just not going to arrive — this moment of control you thought was very, very difficult to get to. But now you see that it's impossible, or you suspect that it's impossible. And in that defeat, in that letting go of what you were trying to do, there's actually the exact opposite of defeat. Suddenly you're free now to pour your time, attention, and energy into a handful of things that count, without everything you're doing having to be slotted into this long-term project of finally proving yourself or finally getting on top of everything.
We are limited mortal animals with a certain amount of lifespan and a certain amount of energy and attention. When you really realize that what you were trying to do before was not something that humans can do, it's pretty hard to keep on beating yourself up for not being able to do it.
BH: One of the ideas you have in your book is the idea that it's okay to be an imperfectionist, and you have a popular newsletter called The Imperfectionist. What would your guidance be for people in a professional setting or a corporate culture where they feel like they're very often being judged, rightly or wrongly, against a perfectionist standard?
OB: It's a really good question. I use this word perfectionism and imperfection in a very broad sense. I'm talking partly about the desire to produce flawless work, but also, I think people-pleasing is a form of perfectionism, right? That idea that you want perfect control over what everybody in your milieu is thinking and feeling about you and your work.
So, in a way, if you find yourself in the kind of culture where you feel judged by a perfectionistic standard, it's the form of perfectionism that you're struggling with — the desire to please everyone completely. And what's so important to remember, I think, is that imperfectionism is the approach to life in which things actually happen and things actually get done. The problem with pursuing the perfect standard is that good work doesn't get done that way. Maybe a little bit of good work gets done that way, but everything else gets neglected in the obsessive pursuit of perfection in one particular area. Or maybe you just become completely paralyzed and you don't do anything. You play it so safe that, in fact, you're not playing it safe at all. You're putting your career or your reputation at risk because you're not doing anything, you know.
And so the sort of move that I'm trying to lead people through always is to see that all I mean by imperfectionism is the stance that is willing to take action in the world, really, and deal with the fact that it will, by definition, fall short of anybody's perfect standards.
BH: And is there an element of choice there too, in terms of, you know, if I'm going to spend my time trying to make something perfect, I need to choose the things that I don't have time to spend trying to make perfect as well?
OB: Exactly. And it's not a question of me saying do fewer things. It's a question of saying: you are, by definition, already doing a limited number of things. You already have finite bandwidth. And so in every moment, you're choosing. If you choose to spend all your time and energy trying to produce an absolutely perfect result in one area, then you are making sacrifices — sacrifices in other areas of your work, and certainly sacrifices in other areas of your life. And that might be a good choice for some people at certain stages in their career, right? I'm going to have no social life for the next few years because it really matters to me to double down on this thing. But the important thing is knowing that you're doing it, and understanding that you do have the choice, and making that choice consciously, if it's the thing that is right for you.
I think where we so easily fall into this alternative, right, where you're sort of thinking: maybe I can find a way for there not to be any trade-offs here. Maybe I can find a way for there to be no opportunity cost associated with my choices.
BH: You’ve got so many terrific lessons in your book — and some really memorable analogies. One that stuck with me was your comparison between kayaks and super yachts. I want to come back to that in a moment, because I think it’s a great way to think about how we navigate work and life.
But first — if you’re enjoying this conversation, you might also like The Executive Summary, our other podcast where we unpack the latest research shaping leadership and business. Season four just launched, with fresh thinking from Rotman faculty and guests. You can find The Executive Summary wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay — let’s talk about the kayak. Can you share with our audience how the analogy can help people navigate the decisions and choices they face when making a change?
OB: I make the argument that being a finite human is essentially like being in a little one-person kayak on a big river. You're thrown into this situation. You don't know what's coming around the bend, you don't know when the next white-water rapids will be, or the next more peaceful time. All you can really do is navigate by your wits in the moment with whatever happens. And it's sort of a very vulnerable situation.
To be a finite human, you don't get to guarantee that there aren't disasters lying around the next bend in the river. But it's also very alive and meaningful and a sort of an intense experience. I think what a lot of people would far prefer, if they could, is that they would be the captain of a super yacht, programming a destination into the computer, sitting back, feeling in perfect control as the processes were just straightforwardly fulfilled, and you could just reach your destination and be guaranteed that you're going to do so, and have absolutely that feeling of control.
I think a lot of the time, part of the reason I find this so relevant is that a lot of the time, when people set out to change themselves, change an organization, or do new and interesting things, they make this error. They fall into this trap of not actually doing a little bit of the thing, which is very much in the spirit of the kayak, right? You're just there. You just have to try it. But instead, veering off into this attempt to persuade themselves that they're really on the super yacht.
Turning anything into a long-term strategic project is already, sort of, dicing with that kind of thinking, or setting out to change your habits so that you become a completely different kind of person. You tell yourself that what you're doing is changing, but what you're really doing, I think a lot of the time, is trying to make sure that you feel in control as you change. You're saying, "Well, this is a long-term initiative, and as long as I take this long-term initiative seriously, then by the end, I will have straightforwardly sort of brought my will into being in reality."
And this goes wrong in all sorts of ways, not least because it is very often unconsciously a way to avoid doing the intimidating, scary, risky thing that it's about. Real change, I think, certainly in my experience again and again, just requires the opposite of trying to control a process. It requires being willing to let go of a bit of control of a process and just do a little bit of that thing.
So, you know, if you want to become the kind of person who meditates all the time, you need to do 10 minutes of that today, badly, with no guarantee that you ever come back and do it again the next day, but just actually do it. If you want to improve communication in your organization, you could assign a committee and go through a year-long process. Or you could, you know, write an email to certain people today, telling them about what's going on. And it's really hard, actually, for a lot of people to let themselves just take the action instead of trying to incorporate it into one of these much more secure-seeming long-term processes.
BH: And in a lot of organizations, you can fall into analysis paralysis, where you take an idea and just beat it to death by looking at it from every single angle, instead of just experimenting and seeing what works, what doesn't work, and what you can build upon. Right? Absolutely. You also write about the importance of befriending what you fear, and you have another analogy there of what you call just going to the shed. Can you walk us through what you mean by that?
OB: Yeah, this comes from a Dutch Zen monk called Paul Lumens. We put a lot of effort, much more than we realize, I think, into avoiding doing certain things that intimidate us or threaten to overwhelm us. So the classic examples from personal life are, you know, you're worried that you don't have as much money as you thought in your checking account, so you just don't check the balance when you go to the ATM to get money out. Or you've got a pain in your abdomen, you're worried that it could be something serious. You're very careful not to make a doctor's appointment, because then you would have to discover the truth.
We don't realize we're doing it, but I think a lot of the time, we're failing to take action on the things that we care about the most precisely because the stakes feel high, right? It's like these are projects you care about. It would be upsetting for them to go badly, so far better to just avoid starting them at all. Of course, not actually better, because then you never get around to doing the things that you care about.
Paul Lumens has this phrase about just going to the shed. The example is a woman of his acquaintance who had a shed full of junk that had become a really stressful concept for her, because she knew she needed to clear it out, but it was just overwhelming, and whenever she thought about it, she was stressed out, so she didn't think about it, and the shed got worse and worse.
The thing you need to do, he says in this context, is just anything that brings the thing you're avoiding back into your conscious reality. So you do not need to make an enormous, detailed plan for clearing out the shed with a deadline and stress yourself out about how you're going to have it all done within the next week. You need to just literally go to the shed and stand there and be in it, and no longer be putting all that psychological energy into making sure you never do that, and making sure you never think about it.
And I think this is an analogy that works in all sorts of contexts, right? It says if there's something you're finding difficult to make progress on, if there's something that you tell yourself you want to do but you never seem to do, you need to figure out, like, what is the smallest thing? And it could seem quite lame if you told other people about it, right? It's just: what is the smallest action that would mean I was no longer pretending that this wasn't part of my reality, that I was actually allowing it back in because it already is part of your reality in a different sense? Right? If there's something you want to do, or something that needs attending to, or a shed that is full of junk, it's there, so all we're doing is reconciling ourselves to the reality.
BH: You write in the book about learning to pay the price of consequences. What do you mean by that?
OB: I'm riffing there off a wonderful quotation from the therapist Sheldon Cop, who says you're free to do whatever you'd like. You need only face the consequences, which I think is a really powerful and liberating perspective.
I think a lot of the time when we are faced with difficult dilemmas, decision points where we don't know where to turn, what explains our languishing in indecision for long periods is that somewhere, unconsciously, we're hoping for a way forward that doesn't incur a cost, doesn't incur a downside. But, of course, it is absolutely a fact of finite human existence that every action incurs a downside.
At the minimum, the opportunity cost—sacrifice, right?—that if you do something with an hour of your life, you can't do any other things with that hour of your life. And this, sort of, you know, ramifies through the whole of existence. Every single choice you make is, by definition, something that comes with upsides and downsides.
And what's so liberating to me, anyway, about really feeling your way into that, is it means that you never have to worry about trying to find the solution with no costs, with no sacrifice, with no downside, because there never will be one. All you have to do is choose which set of prices you're willing to pay.
And this is relevant on the sort of level of grand life choices and big business decisions, but it's relevant on the level of, like, do I stay at my desk for one more hour and answer email, or do I go home and see my family? There are upsides and downsides, and there are seasons of life when the email option might be the right one for you to take. But, you know, in every moment, all you're doing is choosing one problem over another, and you don't need to beat yourself up because you haven't yet found the solution that comes with no downside at all.
BH: You make it clear that you're not advocating lowering your ambitions. That just because you choose not to do certain things, or you opt not to be a perfectionist in how you accomplish something, doesn't mean that you're not trying to achieve something terrific and have ambitious goals. Help us understand and reconcile what some people might see as a tension there.
OB: I would say it's the exact opposite of settling for mediocrity or lower ambitions. It's precisely, I think, the reframing that permits those kinds of ambitions to be fulfilled. Because, you know, if what you're doing in your life is trying to do everything, trying to stay in control of everything, trying to produce everything perfectly and keep everybody perfectly happy with what you're doing, then number one, that's just sort of dissipating your attention so broadly that you're not going to have enough to focus on the things that count.
But also, you're never going to be in the right position to judge whether to say yes or no to some incoming opportunity. Anything that lands on your plate, the default will always be, “Oh, I can do that too,” because I'm on route to finding a way to do everything. And so you become, in the words of one of the people I spoke to for the book, a sort of limitless reservoir for other people's expectations and other people's agendas. You are precisely prevented, in that situation, from pursuing some dream that you have to the greatest heights that you can pursue it.
And to say that even when you are pursuing that dream, the result will be imperfect, is only to say that you're a human, and that if it exists in the real world, it's going to be imperfect. I don't think that requires us to accept a sort of mediocre approach to our ambitions at all.
In fact, on some level, I think everything I'm always doing in my writing is trying to find a way to say: is there a way of living that is both not anxious and stressed and overwhelmed and based on feeling bad about yourself, but that still makes space for being really ambitious? Because there's a lot of writing in the space of spirituality, meditation, this kind of stuff, that seems to imply that if you really want to be calm and serene in life, you're going to have to be very passive and not do anything, and go to a yoga retreat every few months, and otherwise just sort of float around. And I really reject that. I want to find a way to serenely and calmly and sanely do lots of cool stuff with my life.
BH: So many of these ideas and examples are at the individual level, and they reflect the agency that we have in terms of the choices that we personally make. But if we reframe it and look at it from the perspective of managers and leaders who are trying to organize and motivate their teams, many of them wrestle with how much control they should exert over their teams. What would your guidance be to them in terms of how much they should let go or dive in, how actively they're managing these decisions and processes that are reporting up to them?
OB: My experience of working in large organizations, media organizations, and things like that is that a lot of things happen, and a lot of things go on which are ultimately just motivated by senior management wanting to feel a bit less anxious about what's happening, as opposed to actually bringing that organization's goals into reality as effectively and quickly as possible.
Nobody wants to feel overly controlled by other people. People respond to that by seeking control over their own life and work in ways that might end up, then, with clashes and conflicts. There is this slightly mysterious sense in which too much control seems to squeeze out from life, from business relationships, and from creative businesses, certainly precisely the kind of vibrancy or the resonance, to quote somebody I write about in the book, that makes it all worth doing in the first place. Right? So you end up with the situation where you could have really, really total control over an organization, but as a result, you've sort of prevented people from doing exactly the things that give the organization its raison d’être.
BH: The subtitle of your book includes the phrase make time for what counts. But you caution at the end of your book that if you try and do this too fast, or too quickly, and you try and be a perfect imperfectionist, you're probably on the wrong track. So what would your guidance be to people who are trying to adapt their mindset and how to go through the type of transition that you've gone through?
OB: Obviously, what people want is like the three practices you can do every day, and then you've got this nailed. But a big part of what I'm trying to say in this book is life doesn't work like that. And so, if you actually want the change, I think you do need to work on developing the patience to sort of try these things bit by bit.
If you were to ask me for like, what's one thing that people can do, then my answer would be: there is something in your work or your life that you know is really meaningful to you, but you are neglecting—a relationship, a project, or a kind of activity. Something like that exists. Do 10 minutes of that thing today and actually do it. And if that sounds like an annoyingly simplistic suggestion because you wanted something more complicated, I'd say, well, yes, exactly.
BH: I think that's great advice, and it's practical. As soon as people finish listening to this podcast, they can put their headphones down and go do that thing.
OB: I mean, that is, if a few people listening do that, there is so much more stuff happening in the world than all the kind of endless reflections on cool systems that you could imagine.
BH: Oliver, we really appreciate you being here and sharing these insights and your perspective. I think this is a circumstance that is universal, that we all wrestle with, and you've got a refreshing perspective in this book that I think is valuable for all of our listeners. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much.
Our guest has been Oliver Burkeman, and his new book, again, is Meditations for Mortals: 4,000 Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.
This has been Visiting Experts, a Rotman School podcast for lifelong learners, exploring transformative ideas about business and society with the influential scholars, thinkers, and leaders featured in our acclaimed speaker series. To find out about upcoming speakers and events, visiting us here at Canada's leading business school, please visit rotman.utoronto.ca/events.
If you enjoyed this episode, why not give some of our back catalogue a listen? If you want to stay on theme, check out our conversations with professor Thomas Curran about The Perfectionist Trap, or Amy Edmondson on the science-backed way of learning from failure.
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This episode was produced by Megan Haynes, recorded by Dan Mazzotta, and edited by Damien Kearns. For more innovative thinking, head over to the Rotman Insights Hub and subscribe to our biweekly newsletter.