The Sneaky Ways You Waste Your Life: Optimize Your Time, Do Less, & Have More Fun

Dec 3, 2025

Join Oliver Burkeman, an author and journalist renowned for his insights on time management, as he shares his unconventional wisdom on productivity. Discover how embracing your limitations can free you from the pressure to always optimize. He offers practical tips like the Reverse Golden Rule for self-compassion and argues for prioritizing daily-ish habits over perfection. Oliver emphasizes living in the moment, letting go of discomfort, and choosing intuitively. He encourages you to spend ten minutes today doing something meaningful without planning—just dive in!

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INSIGHT

Embrace Time's Limits

Accepting finitude reduces chronic productivity anxiety and frees realistic choices.
Oliver Burkeman says facing limited time lets you prioritize without clenching against reality.

ADVICE

Favor 'Daily‑ish' Over Streaks

Use a 'daily-ish' habit approach rather than obsessing over perfect streaks.
Do the practice today even if you missed yesterday to build sustainable consistency.

ADVICE

Don't Be Especially Mean To Yourself

Treat yourself no worse than you'd treat a friend using the Reverse Golden Rule.
Replace harsh inner criticism with friendly firmness when you would counsel a loved one.

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Do you ever feel like you’re behind on the life you’re trying to build, despite constantly being busy? I sat down with Oliver Burkeman, one of the most influential voices on productivity and purpose, to share tools to make more time for the things that genuinely matter so you can do more of what you love to create your dream life.

Oliver unpacks the psychology, sharing a radically different productivity approach: embracing your limitations, choosing what matters, and releasing the pressures holding you back.

🎧 What you’ll learn:

What boredom and discomfort actually signal
How to work on your dreams when you only have 10–20 minutes
A grounding question to decide what’s truly worth your time
How to trust yourself even if you’ve “let yourself down” before
A moment-to-moment practice for choosing what life is asking of you now
Why your brain clings to the fantasy of a “sorted, future version” of yourself
What procrastination is really about (and why it’s not laziness)
A simple tool—the Reverse Golden Rule—for becoming kinder to yourself
How parenting reshaped Oliver’s relationship to time and control
Why daily-ish habits work better than perfect streaks

✨ Homework: Spend 10 minutes doing something you know you want more of in your life—writing, calling someone you love, being outside, reading, creating. Not planning it, not optimizing it. Doing it. This is how change starts.

For more from Oliver Burkeman:

His new book, Meditations for Mortals
His bestselling book, 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
His website: www.oliverburkeman.com

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