Self-help writer Oliver Burkeman on how to make an imperfect life one to treasure
“My editor at the time on Guardian Weekend saw that I was interested in this stuff and furtively read these books, so she thought she might as well get some content out of it,” Oliver explains from his home in the North York Moors.
His professional interest in self-help culture came from seeking ways to be less anxious in his own life. “It’s advice that I need as much as anyone else,” he laughs.
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Hide Ad“The real revelation about that column for me was that there was a lot of value in this sector, right?” he says. “The interesting thing for me was, after a while, not pointing out the bad stuff – and it’s really there – but pointing out the good stuff. I definitely think the urge to help one self is totally noble, right? That’s not bad at all. There are just some people stepping up to fill that need who are questionable.”


He draws a correlation to the rise of a secular society and self-help. That religious societies for centuries told us through tradition how to act, think and explain things: “You didn’t have to figure these things out on your own and it wouldn’t occur to you to think that your life is meaningless because you’ve had it explained to you from the cradle what your role in the big drama was, and you might think it wasn’t particularly relevant whether you felt happy or fulfilled or not, because it wasn’t about you.”
He warns however, such religious doctrines had huge downsides, curtailing many people’s life opportunities.
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Hide AdOliver grew up in a Quaker family and went to school at Huntington School in York. His parents still live in York. He moved to the North York Moors with his American wife and son after living in Brooklyn, New York, for 12 years.
“People say, wow, going from such a concentrated and dense city to such an isolated part of the countryside must be strange. It is, but it would seem weirder to me go from a busy, big full-on city to a middle-sized city – it’s great to get the opportunity to be in the extremes.”
Oliver, who will be speaking at Durham Book Festival on October 13, would go there growing up for day trips and holidays. “It feels like an extraordinary privilege to get to live here now. You know, I do like deeply the ability to go for a walk at lunchtime in the middle of what I’m trying to work on and be on public footpaths through stunning countryside.”
His latest book, Meditations for Mortals is designed to offer an episodic reflection a day, across four weeks.
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Hide Ad“The chapters all sort of approach from different angles this basic idea of ‘imperfection-ism,’ which is just the umbrella term for finding ways to live and step into a meaningful and productive and enjoyable life right here and now, even if you do it imperfectly. Instead of this thing that we’re prone to, especially in the modern world, of feeling like we’re trying to get our lives sorted out, and then life can really begin.”
Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman is out now (Bodley Head).
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