#555: The Liberation of Cosmic Insignificance Therapy — Oliver Burkeman

Tim Ferriss (0:24)

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Show. This special and very short episode requires just a little bit of backstory. Cal Newport, bestselling author of Deep Work, was the first of several people to recommend a book to me called Four Thousand Weeks. The subtitle is Time Management for Mortals. But that doesn't quite capture the core of this book. It's an unusual book. The author is Oliver Burkeman. That's B-U-R-K-E-M-A-N. I recently read it. It devoured the whole thing over a few days and captured hundreds of Kindle highlights in the process. It's quite unlike anything I've ever read.

And it's perhaps a philosophical operating system of sorts.

And one of my favorite chapters was Cosmic Insignificance Therapy. Even by itself, this chapter left me with a profound sense of calm that lasted several days. It seems to stick for some reason.

So in short, I loved the book.

My team reached out to Oliver to see if we could publish this chapter, Cosmic Insignificance Therapy, on the podcast and blog. And here we are. You can find a link to the book in the description of this episode. And you can also find the full text of the chapter over at tim.blogslashcosmic.

That's T-I-M dot B-L-O-G slash C-O-S-M-I-C. And once again, the book is Four Thousand Weeks. Don't miss it. I highly, highly recommend. The author, Oliver Burkeman, can be found at oliverburkeman.com. Again, that's Oliver, burkeman.com. And you can follow him on Twitter at Oliver Burkeman. And last but not least, huge thanks to Macmillan Audio for providing the audio for this. This episode clocks in at around 20 minutes. So my hope is that you'll revisit it often when you need a moment of zen.

It's excellent. I at least found it caught me at the right time and really, really struck a chord. So with that, please enjoy.

Oliver Burkeman (2:21)

Chapter 13, Cosmic Insignificance Therapy.

The Jungian psychotherapist James Hollis recalls the experience of one of his patients, a successful vice president of a medical instruments company, who was flying over the American Midwest on a business trip, reading a book when she was accosted by a thought, I hate my life.

A malaise that had been growing in her for years had crystallized in the understanding that she was spending her days in a way that no longer felt as if it had any meaning. The relish she'd had for her work had drained away. The rewards she'd been pursuing seemed worthless. And now life was a matter of going through the motions in the fading hope that it somehow all might yet pay off in future happiness.

Perhaps you know how she felt. Not everyone has this kind of sudden epiphany, but many of us know what it is to suspect that there might be richer, fuller, juicier things we could be doing with our four thousand weeks, even when what we're currently doing with them looks from the outside like the definition of success. Or maybe you're familiar with the experience of returning to your daily routines following an unusually satisfying weekend in nature or with old friends, and being struck by the thought that more of life should feel that way, that it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect the deeply engrossing parts to be more than rare exceptions. The modern world is especially lacking in good responses to such feelings. Religion no longer provides the universal, ready-made sense of purpose it once did, while consumerism misleads us into seeking meaning where it can't be found. But the sentiment itself is an ancient one. The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes, among many others, would instantly have recognized the suffering of Hollis's patient. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

It's deeply unsettling to find yourself doubting the point of what you're doing with your life, but it isn't actually a bad thing because it demonstrates that an inner shift has already occurred. You couldn't entertain such doubts in the first place if you weren't already occupying a new vantage point on your life, one from which you'd already begun to face the reality that you can't depend on fulfillment arriving at some distant point in the future, once you've gotten your life in order or met the world's criteria for success, and that instead the matter needs addressing now. To realize midway through a business trip that you hate your life is already to have taken the first step into one you don't hate, because it means you've grasped the fact that these are the weeks that are going to have to be spent doing something worthwhile if your finite life is to mean anything at all. This is a perspective from which you can finally ask the most fundamental question of time management. What would it mean to spend the only time you ever get in a way that truly feels as though you're making it count?