Meditations for Mortals

‘Full of wisdom and comfort … a really important book' CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN, author of Ultra-Processed People

How can we embrace our non-negotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? What if purposeful productivity were often about letting things happen, not making them happen?

Reflecting on ideas drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores practical tools and shifts in perspective. The result is a bracing challenge to much familiar advice, and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully.

Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life – one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves.

Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, it offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls ‘imperfectionism’.

To be read either as a four-week ‘retreat of the mind’ or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life in 2025.

In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.

'Thoughtful, level-headed, and useful ... a book to meditate upon' THE TIMES

'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