Does this sound familiar to you? You look at your life — your job, your health, your finances, your relationship — and want to do better. But how? Personal development and self-help plans all sound so laborious, requiring masses of time and willpower. After buying this book, or downloading that app, many of us will simply return to the state of feeling vaguely dissatisfied, until the next time.

Because change is hard. Journalist-turned self-help book author Oliver Burkeman knows that on every level. For 15 years, he wrote a weekly Guardian column called This Column Will Change Your Life, casting a sceptical eye over lifestyle and productivity hacks and gizmos. Since his bestseller Four Thousand Weeks, he has become a bona fide expert in productivity and building a meaningful life.

The concept of Meditations for Mortals is to break his advice into daily portions, so that — if you want to — you can have a month-long ‘retreat of the mind’. Or, you can simply plough through the 162-page book, sucking up the points and processes that might inch you along towards progress.

For example, Day Nine: Finish Things really struck home with me. Thinking I am getting more things done if I have multiple projects on the go, I am far too often repeating and pushing away the difficult parts, tinged with guilt, but somehow still doing it. Burkeman quite clearly describes the discomfort this behaviour produces, introduces words of wisdom from workplace psychology, and a few simple reframes, and — kazaam! — convinces me to see endings as smaller, less dramatic occasions that will energise me for the next boost. It is working quite well, actually.

A key element of Burkeman’s approach is forget about perfection. We are all flawed and struggling at various times. Philosophers and writers through the ages have always known this, but in modern life there is a “fatally misguided idea that reality can and should be made ever more controllable — and that peace and prosperity lie in bringing it ever more fully under our control.”

Burkeman feels it is far saner to accept that you’re never going to sort your life out. “The day is never coming when all the other stuff will be ‘out of the way’.”

Burkeman’s advice then is not broad-sweeping and heavy with statistically proven information, but quiet, thoughtful, empathetic and useful. Choose what to focus on, avoid distractions, keep a “done” list to remind you of what you have achieved. And, as we never really forget that we are mortal, remember to enjoy yourself and those you love.


Watch our interview with Oliver Burkeman here:

 

Meditation for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman is our Welldoing Book of the Month for September 2024

See our previous Book of the Month winners here