I enjoyed Burkeman's first book and was curious to see what he did with this follow-up. There are definitely moments of overlap between the two, but I think that the day-by-day structuring of the material did, in fact, add something to the presentation of his theory. I think it made it a bit more actionable for someone who was looking for more of an action-plan (although that does cut against his larger point a bit). I think I probably enjoyed 4000 Weeks more, but my wife found this one more engaging.

I really enjoyed this. I don't agree with everything Burkeman claims, but I enjoyed drinking a cup of coffee in the morning and slowly working my way through these truly meditative ideas. He winds together philosophy and famous authors (and contemporary thinkers and artists) to illustrate the concepts. Will I remember them all? Surely not. Did I enjoy the experience and think a little harder about how I will consider my time? Surely so. Recommended for those in midlife or just curious about a new way of considering their time on Earth.

Sometimes luck, serendipity or the Universe guides us to the messages we need to hear.

Meditations for Mortals is exactly that. Meditations including messages such as to slow down, be mindful of the finiteness of life, and give your precious time to the activities and people that you love.

So much wisdom to learn and apply in bite sized, digestible messages.

YES! Oliver Burkeman does it again!

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for a copy of Meditations for Mortals in exchange for an unbiased review.

An absolutely perfect "self help" book - legitimately thought provoking, well-written, and easy to use in your actual daily life.

Thank you for this advance copy. I ended up buying the audio and 2 hardcover copies for my husband and I to buddy read. It was just that good. Really, I’m not a huge fan of self-help and never stick with the system,s presented. This was refreshing and digestible - smart and, without exaggeration here, life changing. I’ve ordered your backlist and look forward to reading that as well.
With Mayo Clinic, I make the Read.Talk.Grow podcast. I’m not sure whether this is a great fit - but I think it could be. If your interested in connecting, please do. Our email is readtalkgrow@mayo.edu

Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers and the author for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A fulfilled life is a productive life. I absolutely love this phrase. This book has been super helpful in getting out of the mindset of constantly ‘needing’ to be productive, vs having any actual enjoyment in something.

I will definitely be purchasing a physical copy of this to annotate and return to.

I expect to keep this book on my nightstand and reread it frequently over the upcoming years. The "get over it, and get on with life," philosophies invite readers to be less precious about productivity and live because a fulfilling life is productive. This is the kind of self-help book I like. It's inspiring without being prescriptive.

Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals offers a liberating approach to life’s challenges through the philosophy of “imperfectionism.” By embracing our limitations and shedding the illusion of perfection, Burkeman provides practical tools and fresh perspectives to help us focus on what truly matters.

Blending philosophy, psychology, and self-help, the book is filled with actionable insights, thought-provoking reflections, and relatable wisdom. Whether taken as a four-week retreat or devoured in one sitting, it’s an inspiring guide to living more fully in the present.

Perfect for anyone overwhelmed by the pressure to “do it all,” this is a must-read for finding clarity, joy, and purpose in imperfection.

Burkeman’s previous book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, was quite literally life-changing for me—it’s about the fact that an average human lifespan is four thousand weeks long, and how keeping this number in mind can help you decide how you truly want to spend your limited time.

Meditations for Mortals continues in a similar vein and builds on the idea of creating a meaningful and satisfying life, whatever that looks like for you specifically. It’s written in a month’s worth of small chapters that you can either read through daily, like a secular devotional that you soak up slowly and ponder a bit at a time, or gulp up in a few sittings like a regular degular book. I read it quickly this time, but I will absolutely be getting a physical copy for my shelf, and I imagine that I’ll try the one-chapter-per-day thing when I revisit it in the future.

Burkeman was targeting me at multiple different points in Meditations for Mortals, but here are just a few of the ideas and bits of advice that made me feel the most seen:

Just do something today—don’t worry about researching the hell out of that thing, or building a habit of that thing, or becoming the kind of person who does that thing. Just do the thing, and if you keep doing it over time, boom, you’ve built a habit.
We’re obsessed with finding freedom from limitation, when we should focus instead on finding freedom in limitation. You can do anything, as long as you’re willing to face the consequences (good or bad).
Don’t stress about an unbroken streak, when doing something “dailyish” is completely sufficient.
One way to defeat perfectionism is to set quantity goals. Don’t worry about doing something good, just do something.

Burkeman also talks about how lots of people are scared to commit to choices, lifestyles, jobs, etc. because they want to “keep their options open” and they’re worried about making their lives narrower and smaller. “But Emily,” he writes (he doesn’t really say my name in the book, I’m doing a bit) (and also this isn’t a real quote), “refusing to make a decision is, in itself, a decision—time doesn’t stop just because you can’t make up your mind. By stalling, you’re just choosing to spend your life in a nebulous space of forever pending. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?” To which I say no, Oliver, it isn’t. And please stop shouting, you’re embarrassing me in front of my friends.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book!

Meditations for mortals was an excellent read. I read a chapter a day and got a lot out of it. I appreciate the focus on what matters, not worrying over things I can't control, and going inward.

This book was lovely to read. I particularly recommend it at the pace Burkeman suggests: one meditation (chapter) per day. They build on each other as the weeks go by and I enjoyed starting my day off with reading each one.

This book isn’t about hacks, shortcuts, or perfecting a morning routine. Instead, it offers practical advice and gentle reminders that life is finite—and it's perfectly okay not to do everything.

The content is broken down into four weeks, each focusing on a key theme, with short, insightful chapters to read each day. The chapters are quick yet incredibly relevant. One that stood out to me explored how we often overload ourselves with information, reminding us that we don’t need to remember every detail. Instead, we can trust that the most important lessons will stick when we need them.

This is one I’ll be keeping close, both in Kindle and paperback format, for future rereads.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Oliver Burkeman is among the most brilliant, intriguing, and frustrating authors. Why? I can barely make it through one page of his books, emails, or a few minutes of a podcast interview without diverging down a research rabbit hole, lost for who could know how many hours in open tab deliciousness!

His Christ’s College education and fourteen years as a columnist (“This Column Will Change Your Life”) at “The Guardian” cement his vibrant curiosity. His in-depth explorations in previously published books, such as the bestselling “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), display his vast knowledge of contemporary social-psychological structures.

But Burkeman pulled out all of his writing chops (and contemplative stops) with “Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). While “Four Thousand Weeks” was often mistaken as a productivity book and only a productivity book, he declares in “Meditations for Mortals” that the continued pursuit of better, faster, and more will only lead to more misery and frustration. 

Organized into four sections of one week each (Being Finite, Taking Action, Letting Go, and Showing Up) that include a new chapter and insight each day (Stop Being so Kind to Future You: On Entering Time and Space Completely), Burkeman leads us down the path of his own personal study from the Stoics, social theorists (including Hartmut Rosa), and his newsletter “The Imperfectionist.” Highlighting the difficulties of the endless loop of a stay-on-top-of-everything mindset, he aims to insert more meaning into common assumptions about planning and living our “best lives.”

Thank you kindly to Oliver Burkeman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Netgalley for the eARC.

Ever since Oliver Burkeman shunned obsessions with productivity and hyper-efficiency and wrote about things ‘taking the time they need to take’ in order to get done, I’ve taken great comfort in listening to or reading anything else he has to say that will aid in helping me rethink what makes a meaningful life.

In his new book, MEDITATIONS FOR MORTALS, Oliver Burkeman tackles the challenge of figuring out ‘what to do that is meaningful’ in life instead of ‘how to do it all’.
He expands on one of the arguments of his book Four-Thousand Weeks—that the thing you’re putting off ‘until the right time, just until everything’s in order’ will never end up being done, much less started, because you will simply never, ever ‘have everything in order.’ It’s an embrace of imperfection and just. doing. things. Which he graciously acknowledges is one of the hardest things in the world to do for many of us.

I followed Burkeman’s own suggestion for reading Meditations for Mortals as a sort of four-week “retreat for the mind,” by taking in a chapter each day. I liked this low-pressure approach and it was very achievable. Some days I would read two entries but I liked letting the ideas roll around in my mind for a day, especially when something particularly resonated with me.

Thanks Netgalley and FSG Books for the ARC

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts is that rare thing - a self-help book that actually lives up to its title! With personal examples, quotes from a range of experts (including Marcus Aurelius, Jean Paul Sartre, Marie-Louise von Franz, Anne LaMott, Thich Nhat Hahn, and many others) and brief chapters that describe the ways in which people limit themselves AND how they can solve their problems, Oliver Burkman succeeds where so many others have failed. He explains that human beings are incapable of perfection, but capable of accomplishing amazing things.
I found it particularly helpful to read that we can never conquer all our flaws but can, instead, work around and through them to live immensely satisfying lives.
The author contrasts the ways in which modern people put themselves at a disadvantage by assuming they can "fix" the world, with those of ancient people who understood they couldn't control things like weather, war, or disease, and still managed to live rich and often beautiful lives.
He concludes with one of my favorite stories, about the Hasidic rabbi who always carried two pieces of paper (one in each pocket.) One said "I am dust and ashes" and the other said "For me the world was created." Balancing these two ideas enables a person to live a wonderful life.
I found myself underlining more and more of this book until I realized that it was pointless. Either I would remember the useful parts or I could go back and read them again. This is the first book in a very long time that I would actually buy for others and would want as part of my permanent collection. While easy to read and understand, it is best read slowly, one chapter at a time to allow the reader to savor and digest the wisdom each contains.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, Giroux for giving me access to a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I read Oliver Burkeman’s Time Management For Mortals and really enjoyed it so I was excited to see he had another great book on the horizon. I also found this book helpful and enjoyable and benefical.

Wonderful book! Burkeman concisely gives permission to not overthink decisions and focus on being present by living the life one actually has. Burkeman is a master at synthesizing productivity concepts to make them understandable and easy to implement.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for an eARC in exchange for my honest review. This book builds off the author’s previous work “Four Thousand Weeks” and offers a philosophical viewpoint towards time management. The main advantage to this book is its brevity. It’s split into 28 chunks and a total of 200 pages. I followed it as advised with one chapter a day for a month. I didn’t totally overhaul my life, but it was a refreshing change of pace from other self-help books that tend to ignite a flame, then peter out over time. This gave permission to reorganize based on your priorities rather than self-imposed, unattainable social standards.

To be transparent, there are some examples throughout the book that won’t resonate with every reader. The one that negatively sticks out to me is educating your kids outside the school system with the author saying, “There’s a solid chance you can scrabble together the resources and figure out a way.” This isn’t inherently wrong. Some people certainly can, and do. But there is a flippancy embedded that undercuts the reality that this attitude can set children up for failure. In an age where literacy and math scores are rapidly declining, I think it’s important for readers to understand there are differing consequences depending on what priorities are embraced and what falls by the wayside.

Overall, though, there is a solid narrative structure throughout. This will likely appeal to those looking for bite-size chunks of wisdom. I would recommend this book to fans of Ryan Holiday and K.C. Davis.

"Meditations for Mortals" is a thought-provoking and insightful book that offers readers a chance to reflect on their own limitations and embrace the impermanence of life. As a follow-up to Burkeman's previous work, "Four Thousand Weeks," (which I really enjoyed) this book delves deeper into the concepts of time, mortality, and the human condition.

The book is structured as a four-week journey, with each day offering a meditation on a different aspect of life. Burkeman's writing is engaging and accessible, making complex ideas easy to understand. His tone is compassionate and empathetic, acknowledging the struggles we all face in a fast-paced world.

What sets "Meditations for Mortals" apart is its emphasis on self-reflection and mindfulness. Burkeman invites readers to question their assumptions and challenge their habits, encouraging a more mindful approach to life.

Overall, "Meditations for Mortals" is a valuable resource for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. It's a book that will stay with you long after you've finished reading it.

Oliver Burkeman is my favorite self-help writer. The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking and Four Thousand Weeks are favorites in the personal development category. Probably because Burkeman doesn't really try to change you, he suggests subtle shifts in perspective which help you enjoy the life you already live. Meditations for Mortals is BRILLIANT. Once again, Burkeman is suggesting that the key to living the life you want is to embrace the life you have. Yes, there are some tweaks here and there which might prove helpful. Find what works for you. There is no quick fix, mostly because there is no fixing. This is not a guidebook so much as one human sharing their life with vulnerable honesty and offering to take your hand and invite you into your own story. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC.

I love and believe in this book so much that I will be reading it again in January with anyone who wants to join me. If you know me well-enough to have my number, text me and I'll add you to the group chat. I don't plan on having a daily in-person check-in but do think it will be helpful - and fun - to talk about what we agree with, don't agree with, what seems obvious, what we find challenging. Hopefully we can encourage each other to more fully appreciate the life we have. Looking forward to starting the new year with a new perspective!