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A review by emilyinherhead
Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I was lucky enough to read an early copy of this book and it! is! excellent! Burkeman’s previous book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, was quite literally life-changing for me—it’s about the fact that an average human lifespan is four thousand weeks long, and how keeping this number in mind can help you decide how you truly want to spend your limited time.
Meditations for Mortals continues in a similar vein and builds on the idea of creating a meaningful and satisfying life, whatever that looks like for you specifically. It’s written in a month’s worth of small chapters that you can either read through daily, like a secular devotional that you soak up slowly and ponder a bit at a time, or gulp up in a few sittings like a regular degular book. I read it quickly this time, but I will absolutely be getting a physical copy for my shelf, and I imagine that I’ll try the one-chapter-per-day thing when I revisit it in the future.
Meditations for Mortals continues in a similar vein and builds on the idea of creating a meaningful and satisfying life, whatever that looks like for you specifically. It’s written in a month’s worth of small chapters that you can either read through daily, like a secular devotional that you soak up slowly and ponder a bit at a time, or gulp up in a few sittings like a regular degular book. I read it quickly this time, but I will absolutely be getting a physical copy for my shelf, and I imagine that I’ll try the one-chapter-per-day thing when I revisit it in the future.
Burkeman was targeting me at multiple different points in Meditations for Mortals, but here are just a few of the ideas and bits of advice that made me feel the most seen:
- Just do something today—don’t worry about researching the hell out of that thing, or building a habit of that thing, or becoming the kind of person who does that thing. Just do the thing, and if you keep doing it over time, boom, you’ve built a habit.
- We’re obsessed with finding freedom from limitation, when we should focus instead on finding freedom in limitation. You can do anything, as long as you’re willing to face the consequences (good or bad).
- Don’t stress about an unbroken streak, when doing something “dailyish” is completely sufficient.
- One way to defeat perfectionism is to set quantity goals. Don’t worry about doing something good, just do something.
Burkeman also talks about how lots of people are scared to commit to choices, lifestyles, jobs, etc. because they want to “keep their options open” and they’re worried about making their lives narrower and smaller. “But Emily,” he writes (he doesn’t really say my name in the book, I’m doing a bit) (and also this isn’t a real quote), “refusing to make a decision is, in itself, a decision—time doesn’t stop just because you can’t make up your mind. By stalling, you’re just choosing to spend your life in a nebulous space of forever pending. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?” To which I say no, Oliver, it isn’t. And please stop shouting, you’re embarrassing me in front of my friends.
Anyway, I highly recommend Meditations for Mortals!