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Meditations for Mortals
Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
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Narrated by:
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Oliver Burkeman
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By:
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Oliver Burkeman
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“Rehab for burned-out high achievers.”—The Guardian
How would life open up if we stopped treating it as a problem to be solved?
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”? Reflecting on quotations drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores a combination of practical tools and daily shifts in perspective. The result is a life-enhancing and surprising challenge to much familiar advice―and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully.
A map for a liberating journey toward a more meaningful life―a journey that begins where we actually find ourselves, not with a fantasy of where we’d like to be―from the New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks
©2024 Oliver Burkeman (P)2024 Allen LaneCritic reviews
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
One of TIME’s “32 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024”
A Lit Hub Pick for “The Ultimate Fall 2024 Reading List”
“Oliver Burkeman has a way of giving you the most unexpected productivity advice exactly when you need it.”—Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
“More than a book of ideas, Meditations for Mortals offers a practical path toward personal transformation—one that helps you sidestep the shallow allure of frenetic busyness and find a liberation joy in the limits and imperfections of life. A must-read.”—Cal Newport, author of Slow Productivity
“I follow Oliver Burkeman’s personal, literary, and journalistic adventures into wisdom with admiration and exhilaration. Now he bring us a ‘retreat of the mind’ in a very special book. We should all read this, preferable in the company of others—for the sake of our aching world as well as the state of our souls.”—Krista Tippett, author of Being Wise
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