This advice might – possibly – change your life (part 2)

On avoiding FOMO and dealing with some of life’s annoyances

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

Two posts ago I talked about my book dilemma where I can’t seem to stop writing. I think I’m finally done with it and it’s now firmly in the editing stages. But my worry is that I might be forgetting something important.

Like many in today’s world, I suffer from FOMO: the Fear Of Missing Out. For some, this might be scrolling through social media and looking at your friends’ exciting lives, thinking, “Why can’t I do all those great things too?”

Don’t worry – you’re only seeing the good stuff. As Morgan Housel says:

“Social media makes more sense when you view it as a place people go to perform rather than a place to communicate.”

and:

“What would Instagram look like if it were an honest reflection of people’s life, instead of a curated highlight reel?”

My own FOMO has nothing to do with social media and looking at other people’s feeds. Mine is with books I may not have time to read, cafés to visit, places to see or ideas for my book. FOMO, as I referred to in an earlier post, also comes in planning a lesson: oh no, have I left anything out? My poor students won’t get to do that cool activity I had planned to practise third conditionals.

My good friend and former colleague from many years ago Mark gave me some excellent advice: students will never know what you missed out on. It’s not like an Intermediate student learning present perfect simple and continuous will be thinking, “Damn it, there’s a great activity for this, why isn’t Daniel giving us that one?”

It’s similar to giving a presentation or acting in the theatre, where you might have made a mistake or forgotten one of your lines. Don’t worry: no one will notice these things. They don’t have the script in front of them.

FOMO affects many of us with news. Watching the news, and doom scrolling through Twitter (or whatever it’s called now), isn’t healthy, but I can’t help it. I’m a news junkie and I have to be informed. A weird thing about this is that I’m somewhat paranoid about missing a lesser-known writer, musician or sportsperson’s passing. If it’s the Queen or someone equally well-known, then there’s little risk of missing out on it – you’re bound to hear about it from somewhere and it will still be in the news a week later. If it’s someone like Martin Amis or Milan Kundera, two of my favourite writers who have departed over the past few months, then I’m usually okay if I go a couple of days because they’ll still be in the news for a bit. But longer than a week, then I might miss it altogether. Friends think I’m odd, and maybe it’s irrational, but I can’t help it. We all have our faults.

We live in a complicated, overwhelming world. There are so many demands on our time and not nearly enough time to get nearly everything done. We’re constantly trying to get through our to-do lists, whether written down or not. We have to pick and choose where we spend our precious free time. When people ask me how I’m able to read so many books, I tell them that this comes at a cost: it’s a priority for me, but I have to sacrifice a lot of other things I could be doing (note to students: if a lesson I’m teaching seems disorganised and badly planned, then it’s probably because I spent too much time reading when I should’ve been planning!).*

In my last post I introduced (or perhaps, re-introduced) you to one of my favourite writers and an inspiration behind much of my writing, Morgan Housel. Now I will briefly tell (or perhaps, re-tell) you about Oliver Burkeman. He’s a writer I’ve probably recommended more than any other over the years.

For over a decade, Burkeman wrote a column for The Guardian entitled, “This column will change your life” (hence the title of my last two posts). I can’t be totally sure, but I think I’ve read just about all of his columns, and when it ended exactly three years ago (4 September, 2020), I was bitterly disappointed. His weekly advice was always a tonic to my soul. I not-so-modestly thought that perhaps one day I’d follow in his footsteps and try to write something similar.

Burkeman considers himself something of an ‘anti-self help’ writer – he’s very ‘anti-positive’ – and in his columns he covers topics ranging from FOMO to time management to whether to-do lists actually work to managing your email inbox to coping with anxiety and overwhelm in today’s world. There is just about something for everyone.

He also has three books to his name, all of which I’ve wholeheartedly recommended countless times over the years:

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking

Help! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get More Work Done (a collection of his columns up until 2018)

You may notice that in his last title he wants to help you become “slightly happier.” This self-deprecation is a stereotypical feature of many British writers and is characteristic of a lot of British humour. We’re talking about lazy generalisations here, but American writers tend to be more full of bravado and overconfidence whereas British writers have that endearingly self-deprecating quality of “I’m not sure if this will really help you, but I think it might, so why not give it a shot.”

One of the most popular so-called self-help books** out there is Atomic Habits, by James Clear (an American). I tried reading it a couple of years ago and couldn’t get past the Introduction. All he could talk about was the millions of copies he’d sold and how influential he is and how this is the best book you’ll ever read and yada yada yada. I can’t deal with that type of cockiness.

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Bertrand Russell

For language learners, Morgan Housel is easier to read. His prose is clearer, more straightforward and he keeps his writing simple. Burkeman uses much more complex vocabulary and is quite philosophical (so is Housel, but he’s more accessible and easier to process). They have contrasting styles, but I find each have so much of value to say.

I’ll share just one invaluable piece of insight from Burkeman: his attitude to email inbox efficiency (in a nutshell). Many of us have to deal with daunting inboxes full of unanswered messages and requests for this, that and the other. There’s rarely enough time in a day to stay on top of things. Burkeman’s advice is somewhat counterintuitive: don’t be in such a rush to answer all your emails and clean up your inbox. Let people wait. The faster you respond, and the more efficient you are with responding, the more people will expect of you. And that quick answer will probably lead to another email and then the chain goes on and on. More often than not, the problem will solve itself or get taken care of and it’s rarely urgent anyway. Obviously this doesn’t mean you can go and ignore any and all emails, but prioritise the important ones and many of the others will sort themselves out.

Another thing that drives him and other writers up the wall is the dreaded red ‘!’ that people attach to emails to signify their importance. This is a big no-no: it screams of insecurity and is basically saying my email is more important than all the others and you should focus on this one first. It’s a bit like teachers in school or professors in university who give you way too much homework and think you should prioritise theirs to the neglect of others since their classes are far more important. “To hell with your chemistry homework, you should be spending all your time writing my history essays!”

In my book I go into more detail about other time management dos and don’ts, and share a few more thoughts on the ghastly ‘!’ attached to emails.

The only Burkeman column I will share is his final one:

Oliver Burkeman's last column: the eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life (After more than a decade of writing life-changing advice, I know when to move on. Here’s what else I learned)

If you’d like to read his previous columns, you can find them all here:

This column will change your life

And his own website:

https://www.oliverburkeman.com/

The beauty of Burkeman’s writing is that most of his columns were right around 600 words. You could read them in a couple of minutes, even if you didn’t quite grasp all of the vocabulary. His final column is a bit longer, about the same length as this post, approximately 1,500 words, give or take. Give him a go and see what you think. Many of my students over the years have enjoyed his columns and books and I haven’t really got any negative feedback yet (I’ve just jinxed it – I’ll now receive a few emails with things like “Are you kidding, Daniel, this guy is a pompous jerk!” and “Advice? Advice? You call that advice? This Burkeman clown has no idea what he’s talking about!”)

As always, thanks for taking the time to read and please share this with anyone you think could benefit from it. Or for your language-learning friends in search of some half-decent life advice.

* I’m only joking!

** I’m not a fan of self-help books at all.