Erik Eckel

I’m an Oliver Burkeman fan. How can one not be, considering his sincerity, willingness to share his own foibles and his gift for communicating complex ideas using easily understood, light-hearted, succinct prose.

Burkeman’s bestselling book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals is one of those titles with the potential to truly and meaningfully change the way you live life. By illustrating how little control you actually have over events, Burkeman helps you understand the importance of effectively prioritizing how you spend the roughly 4,000 weeks you receive (if you live to the average age of 80).

The book doesn’t present a new system or method for becoming more efficient and productive. Instead, Four Thousand Weeks convinces you of the futility of trying to master events and get everything in order. The book’s central hypothesis (spoiler alert!) is you must simply begin taking time now to pursue whatever constitutes personal fulfillment for you, whether that means pursuing painting, writing, music, becoming a business owner or something else. If you wait for everything in your life to be settled and organized, it’ll never happen, he says.

Now, in his new bestseller, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, Burkeman provides 28 short and readily absorbed meditations to help you do just that. The slim volume is a pleasure to read, presents information in bite-sized chunks and includes quotes and insights from a variety of personalities, including comedian Mitch Hedberg, philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and author Jorge Luis Borges.

Meditations for Mortals isn’t just another self-improvement book or faddish self-help text. The bestseller better enables you to recognize the realistic limitations we’re all subject to, thereby freeing you to actually forego seemingly important tasks in favor of pursuing your true goals and desires now, while things are still messy.