This was the book club book for August 2025. Join the free newsletter to get all the posts that talk about it. In September we’re reading Never Play it Safe by Chase Jarvis
Where most productivity books try to give you a system to get more done, Oliver Burkeman takes a different stance. You need to start your productivity journey by realizing that you won’t get everything done1. Make peace with how finite your accomplishments will likely be, and then focus on the things that matter most to you.
The reward for productivity sucks
For most people the reward for doing good work fast is more work, which Burkeman calls the efficiency trap2. He first touched on this idea in Four Thousand Weeks3 which was a much more tactical approach to the world of productivity and overwork. Because doing work well only brings more work productivity porn is chased quickly with burnout as we push ourselves to be more machine-like in our execution of life’s tasks4.
Burkeman says that the problem isn’t that you haven’t found the right way to control your life, it’s that you think everything in life can be controlled at all5. To me this quest for control smacks of the scientific management movement for factory workers popularized by Fredrick Taylor. Instead of a foreman driving efficiency, we willingly watch over ourselves and drive our lives into the ground in a quest to have some picturesque version of productivity we see on social media.
The antidote to productivity
Burkeman’s solution is simple, do more of what matters to you and forget about the rest of it because it doesn’t matter6. Many will cite all the things that they have to do, but Burkeman has an answer here too, you can do whatever you want as long as you’re willing to deal with the consequences of that decision7. While I can agree with this sentence on one level, I also think that Burkeman makes the point far too simplistic and discounts the economic violence visited on people that don’t do as their told8 in terms of homelessness and hunger. It’s easy to say do what matters to you from a place of economic stability, but in the trenches day to day, food needs to get on the table and shelter needs to be provided.
We want our kids to play in fridge boxes, not view them as a viable shelter.
It is a truth though that you can’t care about everything9 so you’re going to need to make a choice about what you focus on and then not worry about the things that pass you by. I do this every summer as I trim my reading time and spend time riding my bike instead. I don’t feel guilty about cutting back, I just enjoy the days out in the wilderness that I won’t get as the weather turns in October.
Burkeman also suggests using NOW or “not now” strategy with your tasks. If you can’t do it, read it, watch it, now then when will you? If you can’t name a time, then let it go. There will always be another task, book, movie that comes along. Dip in to the stream passing you by and don’t let a backlog of things you’ll never get to accumulate.
Should You Read Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman?
While I didn’t find the book groundbreaking in its content, it is a read that makes you ponder what you’re so worked up about your task lists. With that in mind, I can see myself reading it again, much like I do many books that dabble around philosophy. It’s always good to get a check in and make sure that you’re on the track you want to be on.
- Purchase on Bookshop.org – support local bookstores
- Purchase on Amazon
- Meditations for Mortals Pg XIII ↩︎
- Meditations for Mortals Pg XVIII ↩︎
- Four Thousand Weeks Pg 43 ↩︎
- Meditations for Mortals Pg XIX ↩︎
- Meditations for Mortals Pg 7 ↩︎
- Meditations for Mortals Pg 10 ↩︎
- Meditations for Mortals Pg 15 ↩︎
- The Case Against Education makes a good point here about how much of school is about signalling you’ll do what you’re told and not about learning something. ↩︎
- Meditations for Mortals Pg 36 ↩︎