productivity doesn't work

Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman is supposed to be a 28-day read. One short chapter a day for it to sink under your skin and into your bones. Burkeman warns against chasing productivity systems, and insists that reality — this very moment — is all we have. The clock is ticking, but if we can bring ourselves to accept and live alongside that fact, the shape of a good life will emerge.

The first time I read it, I devoured it in a single sitting. I treated it like any other self-help book, and tried to extract, as quickly as possible, the One Idea That Would Change My Life. I digested nothing. I understood, even agreed with, everything I read, but nothing sank into my bones. I wanted fixing, yet I thought I knew better than to heed the fix. I knew I needed to improve, exactly which advice would do it, and which would not. This is the hubris of the self-helper.

So I read the book and relegated it and its ideas to my bookshelf, never to be explored again… until last week, when a friend told me they started working through it. This was a friend that I greatly admire and respect, and they made me realise that I owe Burkeman's ideas serious contemplation.

Self-help authors are sly. They motivate you with novel and exciting frameworks, which they bolster with quotes from other successful and more respectable people. They profit from solving the apparent problem (feeling like you're not fixing your life), while leaving the actual problem untouched: actually fixing your life. At best, something sticks, a new understanding dawns, and you give/take up a habit or a hobby — for now. But more typically (and cynically), these books make you feel like you're further than ever from sorting your life out, and that you need to read the sequel too if you were to have any hope of closing the gap.

Burkeman is different. He distances himself from the heady realm of productivity. He disavows the idea that one could ever "get on top of things". He quotes Zen masters, sure, but his philosophy is more likely to elicit a sobering "fuck, you're right" than a self-pleased "fuck, I'm right." I'd imagine he's the kind of self-deprecating, middle-aged, middle-class Englishman who would wince at being called a 'self-help guru'. He is what makes the book's ideas so truthful and relatable. A (Cambridge-educated) regular Joe[nalist] who survived common-sense myths and lived to tell the tale.

So I started reading it again. Chapter by chapter, day by day. And I'm making recordings that are marked, wholesale, with imperfections. Though I've been told I have a nice voice, in the recordings my cadence sounds a little jarring, my enunciation a little lazy, and my plosives a little distracting. I choose to keep the blemishes anyway. If you read the book you'll understand why.

I read each chapter in a single take. It's difficult to do a take perfectly the first time, but quantity begets quality, so the first take is, more or less, the only take. I read through the text once to see if there are any tricky words for which I need to look up the pronunciation (usually names). Then I prop up my mic, spin up GarageBand, and 15 minutes later I have an MP3 ready to upload.

I have no expectations from conducting this project, other than to pay the book fair consideration. It's not another income stream. I probably won't get more friends. And the ones I already have won't like me any more than they already do. There really is no purpose to this, not even to boast about reading the book, because the people who care (the ones who I care that they care) already know I've read it. This is just an honest offering of my thoughts and my voice. That's what makes this endeavour so freeing.

What I've realised is, as surreal and stupid as it sounds, doing something purely for the sake of it reaps rewards. Action instigated by the grasping at external, future results, whether they be good grades, a higher-paying job, or a seduced date, is more likely to sink your chances for success than it is to increase it. Really. So I impore you to forget about success. Just do it doesn't mean, "do the thing already, because that's the only real choice". It means loosen your hold on the meaning you're associating with the action. Do it only might be a clearer construct. You can study hard and well just 'cos. You can practise your system design fundamentals when you're not looking for a more lucrative job. And you can be nice because, well, you're nice. But just because you don't seek a outcome, it doesn't mean it won't ever arrive. There is an inverse relationship between being externally-orientated and the probability of enjoying positive results. Forget wanting to be cool. Stay cool.

It's easy to talk the walk, but ultimately pithy remarks are empty currency. I spent the better half of 2025 trying to write a single blog post so that I could be a writer. Many will relate to this struggle. I lost sleep writing draft after draft of my "I'm engaged!" post in January. The writing went everywhere and I nowhere. I got so frustrated and so claustrophobic I ended up making a Faustian deal with ChatGPT. Man, did that post read like cardboard cake^[*] (don't worry, this one is all me). Even when I told myself, "eh it doesn't matter. You have something valuable to say/you'll get better at it/no one will read it," I struggled to sever my psychological attachment to my far-too-lofty creative goals. This attachment was the boulder that made writing feel more like content generation than a voyage of my thoughts and feelings. If only I had known that all I needed to do was to start by putting my dumbass voice up on the web!

But enough pontificating. Below are the recordings. At time of first publication, I am on Day 3. Enjoy, play it before bed, and buy the book if you don't have it yet. Just please don't pursue me for copyright infringement — if anything, my narration should be pushing people towards the official audiobook… 🙃