Showing results by author "Oliver Burkeman" in All Categories

Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, Meditations for Mortals offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls “imperfectionism.” It helps us tackle challenges as they crop up in our daily lives: our finite time, the lure of distraction, the impossibility of doing anything perfectly.

Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon.

The Antidote is a series of journeys among people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. What they have in common is a hunch about human psychology: that it’s our constant effort to eliminate the negative that causes us to feel so anxious, insecure, and unhappy. And that there is an alternative "negative path" to happiness and success that involves embracing the things we spend our lives trying to avoid.

There's a ritual of the modern workplace - one you've heard and most likely indulged in yourself. It's the call and response we go through when you ask a workmate how they're doing: 'Busy!' 'So busy.' It is pretty obviously a boast disguised as a complaint. And our simultaneously grim and half chuckled reply comes as a kind of congratulation: 'Ha, better than the opposite.' When did we start doing that? As if he didn't have enough to do, Oliver Burkeman explores this epidemic of busyness to reveal that it may not be what it at first seems.

Writing is important to many of us—for our careers, studies, businesses or creative fulfilment—but sitting down and doing it can feel impossible. We often struggle to give it the attention it deserves. We can't find time. Our focus is torn. Distractions are everywhere. Our inner critic keeps telling us we're no good. But what if you could find a highly effective writing habit that was perfect for you? Bec Evans and Chris Smith have helped thousands of people stop procrastinating, overcome their blocks and reach their writing goals. Now they share their successful approach with you.

Nobody needs to be told there isn’t enough time. Whether we’re starting our own business, or trying to write a novel during our lunch break, or staring down a pile of deadlines as we’re planning a vacation, we’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless struggle against distraction. We’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days.

Why is everyone so angry nowadays, and what is it doing to the world? In the developed world we live in a blessed epoch, a time and a place where life has never been better. Infant mortality has been all but abolished, we have greater personal choice than ever before, we have access to technology that would have been seen as the stuff of science fiction little more than a decade ago. We are safer and wealthier than at any time in human history. So why are we so damn angry about everything?

Journalist and author Oliver Burkeman is well-known for his long-running Guardian column, 'How to Change Your Life', and has written three best-selling books on happiness, productivity and time management. In this radio collection, he looks at four central ills of modernity—busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance. Talking to a range of experts, he discovers how these problems became so widespread, and how we can go about tackling them.

Bestselling author Oliver Burkeman is well known for his books and radio programmes exploring how we can lead meaningful and productive lives in an age of overwhelm. This time, he brings his keen sense of the ridiculous to bear on our obsession with convenience, looking at the hidden pitfalls of a life of ease. In these five episodes, Oliver attempts to assess the consequences of our reliance on convenience.

Oliver Burkeman explores why people are often more successful - as are organisations, armies and governments - when they focus on reasons they are likely to fail; asks where happiness comes from, and whether we look for it in the wrong places; explores a phenomenon that has come to be called 'fungineering' – attempts to boost happiness in the workplace; and confronts what many of us see as the most negative of all experiences: death.

Oliver Burkeman turns decades of self-help advice on its head and paradoxically forces us to rethink our attitudes towards failure, uncertainty and death. It’s our constant efforts to avoid negative thinking that cause us to feel anxious, insecure and unhappy. What if happiness can be found embracing the things we spend our lives trying to escape? Wise, practical and funny, The Antidote is a thought-provoking, counterintuitive and ultimately uplifting listen, celebrating the power of negative thinking.

Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, Meditations for Mortals offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls “imperfectionism.” It helps us tackle challenges as they crop up in our daily lives: our finite time, the lure of distraction, the impossibility of doing anything perfectly. How can we embrace our nonnegotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? How do we shed the illusion that life will really begin as soon as we can “get on top of everything”?

Nobody needs telling that there isn't enough time. We're obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Yet we rarely make the conscious connection that these problems only trouble us in the first place, thanks to the ultimate time-management problem: the challenge of how best to use our 4,000 weeks. Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of this problem.

Award-winning journalist and author Oliver Burkeman has written three bestselling books on happiness, productivity and time management. Now, in this thought-provoking radio series, he looks at the way we consume and obsess over the news, and why it's so bad for us. Tracing the origins of the modern news cycle, from the first mass production of newspapers in the 19th century to 24-hour rolling news and the alluring interactivity of social media, he shows how we have gone from a scarcity to a superabundance of information.

Comprised of four weeks of extended reflections on inspiring quotations — drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help — this audiobook is the perfect companion during a time of turbulence and pervasive anxiety: a source of solace and enlightenment, inspiration and insight, and humour and provocation. The result is a winking challenge to the usual self-help platitudes — a surprising and entertaining crash course in living meaningfully.

In this five-part series, US happiness expert and positive psychologist Michelle Gielan and British journalist and author Oliver Burkeman explore ways to become truly happier, backed up by scientific evidence. Bringing their own unique and counter-balanced personalities to proceedings they ask questions such as: what is happiness? Can we make ourselves happier? And why is everyone talking about mindfulness?

Ein durchschnittliches Menschenleben? Nur 4000 Wochen! Die Zeit reicht nicht aus - niemals. Gerade einmal 4000 Wochen haben wir auf der Erde, und das auch nur, wenn wir um die achtzig werden. Kein Wunder, dass wir unaufhörlich versuchen, möglichst viel in diese kurze Zeit hineinzupressen. Und gleichzeitig die Dinge aus dem Blick verlieren, die uns wichtig sind und uns vor allem glücklich machen.

Lassen Sie uns über Realismus sprechen. Selbsthilfebücher scheinen nicht zu funktionieren, und nur wenige der Vorteile des modernen Lebens sind tatsächlich in der Lage, unsere Stimmung zu heben. Wir können uns nicht einmal darauf einigen, was "Glück" bedeutet. Streben wir also vergeblich danach, oder gehen wir einfach nur den falschen Weg? Oliver Burkeman hinterfragt unser ständiges Bemühen, glücklich zu sein, und zeigt anhand verschiedener Gruppen, die eine überraschende Denkweise teilen, dass es einen alternativen Weg zu Zufriedenheit und Erfolg gibt.

Wie können wir die Realität unserer Endlichkeit annehmen? Wie treffen wir Entscheidungen und handeln voller Entschlossenheit, wenn es immer zu viel zu tun gibt und Scheitern unvermeidlich ist? Wie finden wir zu einem tieferen Sinn, wenn wir erkennen, dass das Leben kein Problem ist, das es zu lösen gilt? Mithilfe von inspirierenden Erkenntnissen aus Philosophie, Religion, Literatur, Psychologie und Selbsthilfe hat Oliver Burkeman den perfekten Begleiter in einer Zeit der Turbulenzen und allgegenwärtigen Ängste geschaffen.