Marc speaks with Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks, about how leaders can enhance effectiveness through mindfulness, time management, and Zen philosophy. This episode challenges conventional leadership models and offers practical insights to spark creativity and resilience. A must-listen for anyone looking to lead authentically and build thriving teams.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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[00:00:00] Marc: Welcome Oliver Burkeman. I’m really pleased to get the chance to have a conversation with you.
Oliver: Likewise. Thanks very much for inviting me.
Marc: I’ve been enjoying your books a lot and, and I was just, um, teasing, teasing you a little bit by saying that I’ve never seen so many Zen teachers quoted in one book. And in, in truth, you know, a lot of my life I feel like is, I know interpreting or recontextualizing Zen practices, Zen philosophy in a way that is highly accessible. And I know that’s not, I don’t, I guess, I don’t think that’s your, uh, your motivation, but you are taking, I think, some really, you know, profoundly interesting ideas and making that, turning them into things that are highly accessible.

[00:00:53] Oliver: Um, I’m, I’m very flattered to hear it. You know, I think the thing that Zen [00:01:00] I don’t know if this is a widely recognized thing or if it’s just my personal idiosyncrasy, but what I find in zen writing especially is that it sort of, it very much kind of meets, uh, overly left brained people like me where, where we are.

It takes, it takes this sort of, uh, tendency intellectualize and understand life through the intellect. And instead of saying like, no, that’s, that’s bad, you should be meditating on the image of a flower instead or something. It sort of pushes it as far as it’ll go and says, well, okay, let’s pursue this.

Let’s pursue this until the whole edifice kind of shudders and collapses. So I really appreciate the sort of, this kind of, I don’t know if this makes any sense, but the sort of willingness to be met at the point, the kind of nerdy place that I’m, I am in terms of wanting to figure life out and then be introduced to the thought that maybe life is not figureoutable in that,

[00:01:58] Marc: in that sense.[00:02:00]

Yes. Yes. And yeah, that. I think one of the reasons your, your books have resonated with people so widely is that there’s, there’s like a, they pull the rug out from under your regular way of thinking about things, especially time, but in a way that. You feel slightly off balance, but in a way that feels good for you.

[00:02:27] Oliver: Right. And that’s a feeling I have from Zen writing. So there’s an overlap. Yeah.

[00:02:30] Marc: That’s great to hear. Yeah. What popped into my mind as you were speaking was, um, and I don’t know if this is parallel or not actually, but. people will say to me, my meditation practice, my Zazen practice really sucks.

And my response to that, I say, you know, in, in Zen, we call that bragging.

And so it’s a little bit like, maybe the parallel [00:03:00] would be. If someone were to say to you, Oh, I’m, , my time management really sucks or I’m really bad, I’m really bad at, at managing my time in the world that you’ve created, that would be a kind of bragging, you know?

[00:03:13] Oliver: Right. Yeah. No, I, I take that. I take that point. And not only the substance of it, but it’s like, there’s something important about the humor of it too, right? Which is that there’s something, there’s a lot of humor in the, in the Zen. that I’ve encountered. It’s a bit like, the sort of depth, this idea of sort of deep humor is very prevalent in Zen, and it’s, it’s like it is a lot of Jewish humor as well.

And, um, obviously, quite a few Americans Zen masters come from a Jewish background, so there’s a sort of a, there’s a big overlap in that sort of idea of some sort of deep appreciation of the absurdity of the human situation is important here too, I think.

[00:03:52] Marc: Yes. I’m curious, do you get contacted by people in the business world and leaders?

Because in a way, [00:04:00] this topic of, how we live and view, how we live and swim in the world of time is such a core leadership and business issue.

[00:04:11] Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. I do. And I’ve had some really, um, interesting and fruitful engagements there. And I’ve done a bit of sort of speaking and workshop kind of work in that world.

It’s interesting because it isn’t where I. naturally come from. Uh, I worked as a journalist for many years and of course, on some level, this is a organizational role involving collaboration, teamwork, some leadership, but it’s still something very, there’s something very sort of. Solo about even journalists in a, in a big, uh, news organization.

And then what I do now is, is, is a significant part sort of solitary and solo. So I’m always very, really interested in the interface between these sorts of [00:05:00] ideas and like how you get along in a team, how you steer, uh, uh, an organization or a department, things like this. But it’s some, it’s been a bit of an intellectual workout for me.

Cause it’s not where my. It’s not where my mind goes immediately, I suppose.

[00:05:16] Marc: I pulled out some, quotes and words from, I think mostly from, meditations for mortals and, you know, and one, well, I, I love the story that you tell about, you know, staying sane in a, in a world that’s a mess

yeah, it’s, it’s very easy to, um, be caught by, by what’s happening in our world. But I was also thinking how important I, I think humor as a practice for that and there’s a lot of suffering in the world of organizations. , working with other people can, tends to be really hard.

Right. And part of that is. , part of it is humans working together, but a lot of it is actually, I think, expectations about [00:06:00] time and expectations about what’s the aligning around what’s going to get done when. It’s interesting.

[00:06:08] Oliver: It’s almost, it’s almost easier maybe to accept in the two other sort of, you know, the, the, the two other kind of, um, relational contexts in which I’m most embedded, right?

Marriage and parenthood. In both of these, you kind of know that it comes with the territory to have your, your desires to control how time unfolds, relentlessly challenged. And if you’re just a little bit, sensitive to the situation, you know that it’s good for you as well. That this is all very much sort of gross oriented, but it’s something about the, the work world that is where that’s a little harder to accept, right?

Because. Instrumental goals are so predominant. , most people don’t have a goal for their marriage other than to have a really good marriage, but people have goals for their organizational [00:07:00] teams that go beyond, like, we all love belonging to this team. So there’s kind of difficult clashing, intentions at play and things like that, I guess.

[00:07:10] Marc: Yeah, I think people are often surprised in the world of work that it does have goals. A lot of the same challenges of the marriage in, in the human element of, of needing to figure things out with another, another person, I think it’s, it might be the, the last line you, you might know this, you, you’re, you’re like a walking encyclopedia.

I think, um, I do have a lot of quotes in my head. Yeah. So there’s a, the reference I’m thinking of, I think it’s the end, ah, it might be a roomy poem, but I’m not sure. But it’s something like, you know. Uh, one of the hardest things about a marriage is, you know, two, two imperfect birds sharing the same nest.

[00:07:55] Oliver: Hmm. I don’t know that. I love it.

[00:07:57] Marc: Yeah. And, and, and that’s, [00:08:00] I think people are surprised often. I know I was in the work world to realize that, having to align with another imperfect person and how challenging that can be.

[00:08:14] Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. I mean completely and they’re not layered on top of that.

You have the fact that so many people are kind of replaying family roles in the workplace. I realized quite early on in my life as a journalist that I was sort of slotting myself into a sort of child role relative to an editor who would who was in a parental role and and then you see that kind of I you know, I think I hope I’ve got over that at this point, but you you sort of um You see these kind of things replicating themselves and family dynamics causing all sorts of trouble and people looking for approval, but not the kind of approval you can ever really get from a manager, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. A deep [00:09:00] cauldron of stuff. I

[00:09:02] Marc: think, yeah, those, those old, um, the roles that we fall into and. I think it’s interesting. It’s true in in our marriage. It’s true in as parents, you know, how we use our own power and, um, the good use, the good use of power Yeah. But I do want to come back.

I want to come back to this, one of the things that, uh, that jumped out at me from, I think it’s early on in your book, 4, 000 weeks where you say the fundamental problem is the attitude toward that we have toward time that sets up a rigged game in which it’s impossible to feel as though you’re doing well enough.

And, and that was so like. Yeah. Like that’s, um,

you know, be, and I think it’s con it’s, it’s so much embedded in our culture that we’re, that, that we’re, it’s in our, in our language.

[00:09:58] Oliver: Yeah, no, [00:10:00] absolutely. And I think, um, you know, there are a couple of ways of looking at it, but one is simply that we are finite creatures in a, what you could call an infinite.

environment, you know, we, we can, we have so many hours in the day. We have so much energy, certain amount of attention, certain amount of intellect to get our heads around things. And yet we are bombarded by, especially today by sort of effectively infinite number of demands, things that feel like tempting possibilities, choices.

Um, and you know, I guess maybe it just, there’s this sort of problem that all sorts of psychotherapies and spiritual traditions are all trying to address in their own way, which is that we’re kind of, Um, seemingly kind of infinite minds trapped in very, very material finite bodies. Um, or it seems that way anyway, depending on your, your tradition.

Um, and so, [00:11:00] you know, we can, I can think about vastly more things that I can do. I can feel that I ought to do vastly more things than I will ever have the time to do. Or I can feel like I ought to have a degree of control or a degree of understanding of people close to me that actually is just not my gift, right?

So there’s this constant feeling of mismatch between what we can sort of envisage and what we can actually do. And I guess one of my arguments in 4, 000 weeks is that a lot of the ways in which we sort of, the pathologies of time management, you know, the ways we get distracted or procrastinate or bury ourselves in busy work, all these other things, you can kind of understand them as.

ways to avoid feeling the truth of, of our situation. I think that’s something that I really appreciate in a lot of Zen teaching as well, that sense of like, yeah, gently but firmly not [00:12:00] allowing you to carry on avoiding the reality of the situation.

[00:12:03] Marc: Well, you were, um, you were right there just starting to, you know, sound more and more like a, like a Zen teacher.

Um, and, and this. You know, in what you were saying about that we, on the one hand, right, we, um, you know, we, we, we do live in what appears to be a limited body and a limited time, you know, in the Zen world, they, they, they would maybe one of the language they might use is that we live in the relative world.

We do it where everything is relative, but we also live in this, you know, you forget exactly the, the word you used, but the. You know, the Zen world might say that we also live in this non relative world or the world of the imagination or the world even outside of consciousness or, or the, [00:13:00] the world where, um, as soon as you, as soon as you name, as soon as you reify, like non, non reification of, of things, um, and, and.

Yeah. And, and that, that idea is kind of foreign to most of our, you know, Western, especially Western culture and, and how, and, and again, I think in your writing you make, you keep bringing in that idea of the nonrelative world and making it practical and making it accessible.

[00:13:36] Oliver: This is very interesting to me cause I, I’m sort of really glad if that’s true, but it’s, you know, I, but I guess I, I’m.

Uh, it remains a bit of a mystery to me because I think that what I’m, definitely what I’m doing is in some kind of tradition of, you know, negative theology and the [00:14:00] via negativa and all these things about like there’s something really powerful in lots of traditions, I think Zen, but Christianity certainly has, certainly has its, its strand of this as well of kind of, you know, uh, repeatedly showing The, the dead ends of certain ways of thinking or of reasoning in order to sort of, yeah, to pull the rug out because what matters is where you are and what you’re in when the rug is Has, has gone, but, um, yeah, I’m, I feel like I, I don’t quite know or understand what it is that I’m gesturing to there.

I don’t know what, you know, I think there’s so much benefit just in under, in facing how things are in the, in the relative world and not indulging in quite so much compulsive avoidance of how things are in the relative world. Now the process of doing that is on some level to connect [00:15:00] to or to participate in the absolute, but I’m, I’m on much thinner ice there.

I’m fascinated, but I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

[00:15:09] Marc: Yeah. Well, again, I think, you know, yeah, it’s, it’s, uh, yeah. It’s, it’s pretty thin ice there or no, no ice there, you know, it’s

[00:15:19] Oliver: right. Okay. Yes. Maybe no one, maybe no one can talk about it. Okay. Yeah. I’ll accept that.

[00:15:24] Marc: No, I, um, I, I forget if this quote, I don’t, I haven’t memorized all of the quotes in your book.

[00:15:32] Oliver: I forgive you.

[00:15:33] Marc: You use the word control and I’m, I’m curious if you’re, you may, you probably, it’s probably in your book. There’s a very, what I think of as a. Wonderful, beautiful quote that’s in, um, it’s actually from Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind by Shinra Suzuki where he says, the best way to control your sheep or cow is to give them a wide pasture.

[00:15:55] Oliver: Yeah. No, I don’t use that quote. I think I have [00:16:00] encountered it or certainly versions of it. That idea of becoming a, uh, of, of working on sort of becoming a bigger space for things rather than bearing down on them. Well, that’s what that quote says to me anyway. I think there is a really fascinating strand of thinking that is in Zen, but it’s in all sorts of other traditions and, and in sort of sociology and social theory as well about right, this kind of ironic or seemingly upside down relationship between control and the results that we, that we really value.

in, in life. And in the new book in Meditations for Mortals, I do draw quite a bit on the work of this German social theorist, Hartmut Roser, who wrote a huge book, very well, very readable, very worth reading called Resonant, um, where he sort of makes this argument that [00:17:00] as societies, as well as as individuals, our efforts to really sort of control more and more don’t only Fail, uh, and that it would be better to ease up on that as, as the quote you, you just shared, uh, suggest, but also they kind of squeeze out or stamp out the thing, the resonance, the vibrancy that, that, that we actually appreciate.

in, in life. And that’s a sort of strange upside down thing that I feel like owes a lot to, to Zen, among others, that, that notion that the thing you thought you wanted is not the thing you want. And if, when you can sort of unclench from that sufficiently, you find that the thing you wanted was what you had all along.

Yeah.

[00:17:50] Marc: Yeah. Well, that’s, um, that’s beautiful. I, I, um, I don’t, I don’t know that book, but I, I will, um, check it out and, [00:18:00] uh, yeah, I. Uh, I use the language and I, and I find, you know, uh, my, my, my day job is, um, these days is, uh, coaching business leaders and, um, and that one of the main topics that feels like a, um, you know, parallel with as using the word resonance is the word alignment.

Right. Um, right. So instead of controlling other people, this. aspiration to align, align with other people, which, which starts with like understanding what, what these other people actually are saying and want. And, and it also, also means becoming clear about what, you know, what we, what, you know, are becoming as clear as we can about our own preferences and, you know, likes and dislikes and proclivities.

And so both, both of those, but

[00:18:58] Oliver: yeah, and of course that is part of the [00:19:00] reason that’s a useful thing for you to discuss with your clients is because, presumably, because even as you kind of let go of control here, there is a form of influence or agency or some kind of power that I still don’t really know how to talk about that, um, that arises to whatever extent you can surrender the desire to sort of dominate and, and control.

So one of the things that I’m always at pains to emphasize when I give talks and things, and I think it’s something that is. To some extent present in Zen as well is, as far as I know, is that like, we’re not talking here about letting go of control and letting go of impossible levels of goal setting or optimization or efficiency.

We’re not talking about doing all that in order to just sort of float passively through the world and You know, [00:20:00] sit, sit around. There is obviously this stereotype. And I think it is no more than that really about a lot of Eastern spiritual traditions that like, that’s the ideal state, right? The ideal state is like non engagement and just sort of doing nothing.

And I very passionately believe that, certainly based on my own experience as a human in the world, all these things we’re talking about here are the way to, um, get things done. The way to bring really cool things into reality. That these, these are not opposed. I think that’s an emphasis that isn’t always Certainly it isn’t always emphasized by sort of modern mindfulness culture as a whole,

[00:20:44] Marc: I would say.

No, definitely. And even, you know, uh, you know, the, the word, the word Zen is creeping into our language as meaning, you know, laid back, whatever. And I, I, you know, when I hear [00:21:00] that, or if someone says that to me, I say, no, I, I, I think it’s the opposite of that. It’s. It’s not avoiding painful things. It’s not, it’s not avoiding difficulty or in response to what you were just saying, you know, again, going back to, right, people think of mindfulness practice or Zen practice as the, you know, as coursing in, you know, the non doing part or maybe the absolute world.

And, and, and, but the, The practice. And again, I think what you’re writing is, is what you keep coming back to is the integration. How do you do, how do you do both at the same time? Right. Or, right. How do you achieve, you know, achieve goals, get stuff done, advocate for things, but with a, but with a spirit of maybe spaciousness or [00:22:00] acceptance, that’s the.

Too, too, too much acceptance, not, don’t get much done, too much drive, you know, without, without the spaciousness, it can feel very kind of tight and not very creative.

[00:22:18] Oliver: I think that’s completely right. And um, you know, I think when I think about it, why I’m interested in this pairing of Of, of course, all this, these opposites or whatever on some level, it’s just a completely personal therapeutic quest, right?

I have, there are two things that I, that are fairly significant in my personality. One is historically anyway, sort of being prone to anxiety and I would like that to go away, please. And then on the other hand, being kind of ambitious and I would like to salvage that if possible. Right? So it’s that sort of, it’s, it’s that sort of question, can I, am I [00:23:00] allowed to be someone who wants to sort of.

build and create and communicate in the world in a sort of active and hopefully kind of successful and remunerative way and all the rest of it. But not because I think I’m doing it to forestall a terrible calamity or not because I think I’ve got terrible self worth issues and until I’ve done a certain amount of stuff I don’t deserve to live or something.

Can you, can you sort of start from a position of really deeply accepting who you are and how the world is and all the rest of it and then just because it’s a fun way to live can you sort of?

[00:23:36] Marc: Yeah. I mean, I think for, um, for right, for writers or creatives, or maybe for anyone actually to start with what, what, what is it I have to offer and, and, and how is there, how can I do some, something positive in, in the world and that [00:24:00] world can be the world of your family or your children or your wife or.

Or the, or the world of the people who are reading your newsletter or your, your books or, or in the business world, it’s whatever, whatever, but it’s to start like, it, it, it opens the gates toward a kind of, I think, a positive ambition. I like, I’m, people are often surprised to hear me say, no, I, I, I’m very ambitious and I support this.

I know I want people who are ambitiously trying to. You know, reduce poverty, reduce violence, work with climate change like that. You have to be, you have to really be ambitious to go after this.

[00:24:46] Oliver: Right. There’s nothing intrinsically bad about ambition and then, and applied to certain ends or something very, very, very, very, uh, good about it.

Yeah. No, I think that’s, I think that’s right. But I really, you said something at the [00:25:00] beginning of that, which was to do with. Well, I’ve, I’ve completely forgotten exactly what the words were, but the suggestion that what we can be doing when we’re acting ambitiously and being creative in the world, however you define that, is, is sort of an expression of who we are and an expression of being at ease in the world rather than something you do in order to patch up or fill an inner, an inner void.

I think we have a lot of, um, very high profile people at the moment motivated by trying to fill inner voids and, um, it doesn’t, it doesn’t end prettily, but, you know, And it was, it was a fairly big realization for me and not that long ago, actually, really, in the scheme of things, when it sort of dawned on me that the reason I was being asked to, you know, write something for a particular venue or talk to a particular group of people, something like that, was not because the person making the booking wanted to test me to see if I was [00:26:00] actually good enough and to be ready to condemn me to the fiery gates of hell if I fail.

But because they already liked the thing that I was doing and would like me to do a bit more of it. I think many, many people have this kind of the same issue, right? The same sense that like the moment you’re, you have an opportunity, it actually becomes a kind of test of an unpleasant kind when in fact it can just be an opportunity to like, Do your thing, do the thing that you’re,

[00:26:27] Marc: that you’re already

[00:26:27] Oliver: good at.

[00:26:28] Marc: It’s, I think, quite, uh, profound, actually, that, you know, again, those, the various, um, erroneous assumptions that we, that we have that, and part of it, part of it, I think, is the human, you know, negativity bias, you know, that we’re, that we’re wired, we’re wired to scan for threats. We’re wired to do whatever it takes to be, right.

So from, from a, you know, uh,

you know,

[00:26:58] Marc: from a survival [00:27:00] mechanism, right? That those, there’s some positive to that. But from a, enjoying our lives and, uh, and from creativity, it’s, uh, it’s, it can really squelch, squelch that.

[00:27:12] Oliver: Yes, yes, absolutely. And also as, uh, various people, I think James Clear has written about this and several others have argued that, you know, there’s a lot of work on how.

The environment in which these things evolved has, has changed. And if I sort of, you know, if I hear a rustling in the bushes and I’m struck with an anxious thought that my survival depends on getting this one, right. That’s kind of true. And then I figure out what the rustling in the bushes is. And if it turns out to be a harmless bird, then the anxiety dissipate.

But if the thing you’re worried about is like, yeah, whether the. whether the grants committee will approve your application when they meet next month. Firstly, you’re wrong to think that your life depends on that in the same way, uh, although to some extent it might. And then [00:28:00] secondly, That’s a month of curdling in and a kind of anxiety that was designed to, um, pass through you and be dissipated in, in seconds.

[00:28:12] Marc: A, a, I think a close relative to what we’re talking about here is something that I encounter a lot with business people is the, the underlying almost unconscious assumption that I have to be hard on myself in order to get things done. And, uh, and, um, Again, I’ll often suggest, you know, well, maybe it’s interesting, try on, see what happens for, if for the next week or two weeks, try being kind to yourself, just try it and see if your productivity goes down.

[00:28:53] Oliver: Right. Yeah, no, it’s great to be able to put like, and obviously the coaching rhythm can help with this, I’m sure, but like, it’s great to be able to put [00:29:00] boundaries on these kinds of things. I do this myself. You sort of say, well, like conceivably it will, if you sort of reduce the vigilance that you apply to yourself.

You will do nothing. I mean, okay, conceivably, let’s entertain that possibility that you’ll just end up on the couch watching Netflix and eating potato chips all day. But so, let’s just see over the next two weeks if that really happens and then you don’t need to worry that you might forget completely and wake up three decades later and still be, uh, eating potato chips on the couch because we’re going to revisit it.

And of course, yes. It is never the case that making more room for what you want to do or what you feel like doing or the possibility that things might be easier than you thought. It’s never the case that these lead to bad outcomes, really.

[00:29:47] Marc: So Oliver, just, I want to read you just a few of the notes that I took that I haven’t gotten to yet and, uh, but I’ll just read them and then you can maybe whatever comes up for you.

Uh, [00:30:00] the future will cross that bridge. The art of taking imperfect action, finishing things. Uh, life tasks, befriending the rats, uh, daily ish. And um, and, and lastly, and maybe this would be a, maybe a good place to maybe if we, if we want to wrap up this or doc, uh, what if it were easy, what if it were easy?

And that’s always, I think, I think any of these are like, you know, um, these are all like little mini reminders or mini pull out. Each one of these, I feel like is like. Pulling the rug out from our usual way of looking at, at things.

[00:30:43] Oliver: Yeah. Yeah. See, I think I, I think if I, I think I could do the Dharma talks if I was a Zen, but what I couldn’t do is hours of Zazen.

That’s my problem. But anyway, um, a separate conversation.

[00:30:57] Marc: We can work on that. I think, again, [00:31:00] erroneous assumptions. You know, I’ll just, uh, I’ll say one thing and then I’ll, I’ll hand it over back to you. The trick is to sit with other people. It is. It is amazing. People so often say, Oh, I can’t, I don’t have a practice.

Like, are you doing it alone? Yes. Well, that’s, it is not, it was never meant to be an individual sport. It’s a group sport. I can sit still facing a wall for a week with if I’m, if I’m in a room of other people who are doing it, but if I’m by myself, no, no way. Like I’m going to get up in 10 minutes and go, go just, it’s

[00:31:38] Oliver: a way out.

Good. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m relieved to hear that. Yeah. And to the limited extent that I have done, uh, sort of organized meditation, that has been my, that has been my, uh, my discovery as well. Um, just thinking which one of that great menu of things is, um, is worth talking a little bit about for some reason, the one about the very first one, I think about [00:32:00] crossing bridges when you come to them is, um, is, uh, uh, maybe an interesting one.

I mean, I think that, um, what I guess in that little chapter, I’m just trying to point out the, um, surprising profundity of this very time worn cliche, right? That you can about crossing bridges when you come to them. I think a, a vivid way of describing the experience of sort of worry or anxiety, at least from my perspective, my experience is that you’re sort of, it’s basically the mind trying to work out.

Every possible thing that could go wrong in the near future and just checking that you’d have all the resources you’d need to, uh, deal with it if, if that happened, or you’d know what, how to do it. And of course you can never satisfy this because there’s always another thing that could go wrong that you can imagine.

And in [00:33:00] any case, you don’t really get the, the solace of having successfully crossed the bridge until you’ve actually crossed it. Right. Like just doing it in your mind isn’t. Isn’t enough. And I, there’s a quote in there from Marcus Aurelius, who wrote the original meditations in some way, uh, that I’m sort of, uh, arrogantly taking on the mantle of here where he, um, he says, you know, don’t worry about the future because you’ll meet it if you have to with the same, in the translation I talk about, he says something like the same weapons of reason that, that arm you against the present.

The basic gist that I take from this being. Um, you know, the best evidence that you’re going to be able to handle things that happen to you in the future is that you’re doing a pretty good job of handling the things that are happening to you in the present. And we have this weird inconsistency or asymmetry or something where we, we play so much trust in our present selves to kind of figure out [00:34:00] everything that could go wrong that we spend all our time worrying and fretting and compulsively sort of anxiously planning.

But we don’t have any faith in ourselves a week from now when the thing happens to just respond. In the moment, spontaneously, drawing on our, the skills and the resources that have got us to, to this point in life. And there’s something really deep there for me about how like, you need to kind of, there’s an act of faith involved in just sort of launching yourself into the stream of life.

Instead of pretending that where you are now is a kind of control tower. from where you can sort it all out and then it will be safe going forwards. Anyway, that’s what that makes me think of.

[00:34:47] Marc: Yeah, no, it’s interesting. I think, um, we, I think we all, you know, we, I, I think most of us, maybe we all do that kind of, right, that, [00:35:00] that preparing, there’s the preparing for the future, there’s preparing for what’s next.

Yeah. And then it’s, what’s that, what’s the attitude that we have about it? And it’s easy to write to, to be stressed, to look for all the things that can go wrong. And, and sometimes that can be a pro that even that can be appropriate. Right. But, but it’s then like, okay, but what’s your state of mind?

[00:35:24] Oliver: Right.

Yeah. You can use the present moment to do scenario planning. Absolutely. Yes. Right. It’s not, it’s not that that’s terrible and wrong. It’s just that if the, if the spirit in which you’re doing it is. Eventually, I’ll have planned the scenarios to the point where I can guarantee that life will be on autopilot from here on out.

That’s the, that’s the mistake, I think. Um, yes, this is a thing that, more broadly, I think is misunderstood or is a, maybe a unfortunate nuance of a lot of, kind of, be here now, present in the moment, kind [00:36:00] of, Rhetoric in spiritual worlds in general, which is, of course, one of the things you might choose to do with a very present moment is planning, uh, for the future.

It’s just that you’ll be doing it in the spirit of doing something with your moment instead of trying to sort of white knuckle control, uh, what’s going to be happening in the future. Well, Oliver,

[00:36:23] Marc: I think I want to, um, as a way of, as a way of wrapping here, I want to offer you one of my current favorite, uh, quotes from the Zen world.

Please do. Which, and it’s interesting, it’s, it’s from, uh, Shunryu Suzuki, um, who said, um, our, our practice is less like putting things, collecting things and putting them in your basket and more like discovering things or finding things in your sleeve. I thought of that as, um, you know, kind of [00:37:00] parallel with what you are teaching about time.

But a little bit more in the realm of space and, and how we treat, how we treat things or how we treat, uh, events. Right. That, right. You know, I love, I love the feeling, the feeling of that. Um, Um,

[00:37:20] Oliver: me too. It’s a bit mysterious to me. I’ll have to think about it more to sort of unpack it, but I, there’s something very, um, delightful about it even before I’ve,

[00:37:29] Marc: I’ve got there.

Well, maybe the Western, maybe instead of in your, maybe more like the fact the other day. Uh, Uh, I was, um, it’s so funny time, you know, I can’t, I can’t believe that, that I’m, I’m actually older than you, you know, which is so weird. I’m so used to being younger than everyone because I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was a little, I was the little brother of my whole life the other day.

And this [00:38:00] will give you a clue as to why I’ve said that I was, uh, uh, walking. I was at my two year old grandson was in a stroller. And, um, and I reached into my pocket and I was very surprised to find that it was filled with pieces of dried mango. Uh, which, which my, my, my wife had apparently, uh, inserted them in there without telling me.

And cause it’s, it’s one of his favorite things in the world. And, and I was just so, I was just so surprised to put my hand and that was like, just like that. You were about to

[00:38:40] Oliver: say that finding something in your pocket is the. It’s the Western version of finding something in your sleeve. Yeah. That’s

[00:38:46] Marc: right.

Cause we don’t wear, you know, you can, Matt, he’s wearing these in, in, uh, these Japanese Zen guys, they wear big sleeves and the sleeves all have pockets in them where you can put things. That’s where they keep stuff and where stuff collects.

[00:38:59] Oliver: Yeah. [00:39:00] Yeah. For

[00:39:00] Marc: us, it’s maybe more, uh, accessible to say, you know, that, you know, that a, uh, a healthy, vibrant, joyous life, satisfying life.

It’s less about collecting things in your basket and more about discovering, discovering new experiences or things in your pocket, in your, in your being surprised.

[00:39:26] Oliver: Right. Well, there’s, there’s a lovely double nuance there, right? It’s about discovery rather than, rather than going out to collect, but it’s also in some sense about things you already, you already had.

[00:39:39] Marc: That’s right. That’s right. Yes. Which that, that, that’s a, that’s a. A theme that, uh, of your, your work. And it’s a, it’s a key theme of, you know, mindfulness practice or Zen practice, right? That, uh, you already have, what if you already have everything that you need? Everything you need is right there. [00:40:00] Oliver, thank you.

It’s, uh, it’s really been a delight to get to spend a good, a good use of a good use of time. If there’s such a thing. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Thanks, Mark. Thank you.]

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