Meditations for Mortals
Oliver Burkeman's Meditations for Mortals is built as a four-week retreat of 28 short daily essays, each running three to four pages, on the practice he calls imperfectionism. The book argues that almost every modern self-help promise quietly assumes the reader will eventually become a more capable, more disciplined version of themselves, and that the actual move is to give up that fantasy and do the work as the limited person they already are. Burkeman draws on Stoicism, contemplative Christianity, productivity research, and his own decade of writing about anxiety and finitude. Published October 2024 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux as the follow-up to the bestselling Four Thousand Weeks.
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What you might want to know about Meditations for Mortals
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Oliver Burkeman's 2024 follow-up to Four Thousand Weeks is a four-week retreat of short daily essays on imperfectionism and finite human limits.
Yes. Meditations for Mortals is Oliver Burkeman's 2024 follow-up to Four Thousand Weeks, structured as a four-week reading plan rather than a single linear argument. The themes overlap.
Reading Four Thousand Weeks first builds the framework, but Meditations for Mortals can be read on its own. Each works as an entry point to Burkeman's anti-productivity philosophy.
Meditations for Mortals was written by Oliver Burkeman, published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Meditations for Mortals is a standalone novel by Oliver Burkeman, not part of a series.
Meditations for Mortals is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.